Seattle Schools Board Meeting April 22, 2026

The April 22nd 2026 regular board meeting is called to order at 431 p.m..

We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

Ask staff for the roll call please.

Vice President Briggs.

Here.

Director LaValley.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Here.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Smith.

She will be joining us momentarily.

She's stuck in traffic on her way.

Director Song.

Here.

President Topp.

Here.

Student Representative Mangelson.

Here.

Student representative representative Yoon.

Here.

And student representative Masoudi is unable to attend.

Thank you so much.

We had a wonderful introduction today from the Eckstein band here this evening.

Can we give them a quick hand for their music.

Pass it over directly to Superintendent Scholdner.

Good evening or good afternoon, everyone.

I'll have other comments in a second, but I really just want to thank the band.

You were wonderful, fantastic.

I think we're going to say thanks and take pictures or whatever it is, or we're just going to say thank you.

We could do a quick picture.

Would you be willing to do a quick picture with us?

Awesome.

So we're going to take literally two minutes, and we're going to do it on the stairs up here.

Quick photo, okay?

Board directors and very quick.

Thank you.

Can you Photoshop me in?

Yes, Joe, we will Photoshop you in.

Thank you.

We're going to now go to our student representatives for comments, and I think that they have a video that we're going to show.

Do the student representatives have an introduction to the video, maybe, while we figure out the tech aspects?

So I would like to share exciting news that the project-based student board, PBSB, has been newly launched.

The application is now open for students to apply.

The video will cover most of the information on what this student board does, but I would just like to recognize and thank all the students who have been part of this journey as well as support from the district and Mr. Ted Howard for being just very instrumental in this journey.

And again, the video will cover most of our experience creating this board, so once we can get that.

The future of our schools shouldn't be decided without the people in them every day.

And the most important voices are the students.

Students are the ones living in it, learning in it, and ready to lead the change.

The needs of substantially larger student groups are being ignored.

Student voice is the heart of change.

When students come together, we don't just speak, we act.

Welcome!

The future of our schools shouldn't be decided without the people in them every day.

This is how much power we have.

And the most important voices are the students.

There are students and staff with many different backgrounds.

Students are the ones living in it, learning in it, and ready to lead the change.

The needs of substantially larger student groups are being ignored.

Student voice is the heart of change.

When students come together, we don't just speak, we act.

Welcome to Project-Based Student Board.

At PBSD, this is exactly what we aim to address and execute.

We want to bring students together to identify issues we see in our schools, communities, and collaborate on solutions.

Solutions that work for students, not just developers.

We want to make change for the people that experience school every day.

We aim to execute this through projects that address the challenges we see in our schools and communities.

Ever since I've been involved in Seattle Public Schools, student voice has been important.

Their voice needs to be at decision-making.

But what we heard from students, it was mostly checkbox, things that the district has already done, had already developed, that they wanted students' opinion on, and the students were very clear that that's not what they wanted.

All this year, students have been working, doing incredible work under the leadership of Mr. Ted Howard, who's over our Office of Accountability, and they have transformed what student voice looked like.

Not only will there be student voice for the superintendent, but there'll be a project-based group that will be driven by students and led by students.

The project is a short-term effort, often completed by a team, designed to achieve a specific goal or contribute to a long-term outcome.

At PBSV, our mission is to improve student outcomes through this project-based work that is driven by student needs.

Drugs and bullying have become a prominent problem in many schools.

I'm passionate in advocating for staff to be more properly trained so that they can handle these situations when they arise.

I know what a full day of education looks like.

This is not challenging the students academically to their true potentials.

However, there are students out there who have the ability to challenge themselves, and this leaves students like me and others frantically searching for opportunities.

In order for students to get a quality education, they first need to get to school on time.

One of the things that I'm really passionate about is making sure they can do that through public transportation, which is currently lacking in some areas around my schools.

For example, students from that neighborhood have to take three buses to get to school.

That is unacceptable.

And with the PBSB, I hope to change that.

Last summer, in my role as a student representative, I collaborated with the superintendent's student advisory board, also known as SAB.

We evaluated whether SAB was fulfilling its intended purpose of serving in a student advisory role to the superintendent.

While SAB provided valuable leadership development opportunities, the board's advisory function was not being carried out to the extent necessary.

Recognizing this, we determined that there needed to be targeted restructuring efforts to separate and clarify the board's dual functions.

We did this by creating a separate body called the Project-Based Student Board, PBSB, which would preserve the leadership development opportunities.

We also worked with Superintendent Schuldener to strengthen the student advisory component of SAP.

PBSB is a selective group of students from across the district who are ready to lead, listen, and make an impact.

You need to be a current or rising Seattle Public Schools high schooler, attend at least 80% of our monthly meetings, be constantly engaged in projects, and represent your peers.

If you have an issue you're passionate about, want to collaborate with peers, and are ready to make real change, join PBSB!

I just want to give a special shout out to my classmate Lake Neal from Ballard High School.

He directed, filmed, and edited all of this in two weeks, two to three weeks, because we were on a very tight timeline.

And we only had two meetings, I think, actually only one meeting to film this.

And some of our students showed up 8 AM on a Saturday to film the rest of it.

So I just wanted to give a big shout out to everyone who supported us in this journey to make this happen.

And please apply.

Thank you to our student representatives.

We're going to move into board committee and liaison reports.

I'm going to start with just a few housekeeping items so folks continue to have an understanding of where we're going.

We have two special meetings coming up, work sessions, goals and guardrails update, cell phone policy update, budget, and community engagement review and discussion are the topics for our next two meetings or work sessions, but looking to our board committee chairs or liaisons who have any reports and our board chairs or our committee chairs may have some reports since they had their first meetings between our last meeting and tonight.

So with that, looking to see if anyone wants to go first.

Director Song.

Good evening, everyone.

I will start with a Head Start update.

I am very pleased to share that our SVS Head Start programs recently received the results of their classroom assessments.

These assessments evaluate teacher-child interactions across the three key domains, emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support.

And I'm very proud to report that our classroom scored above both the federal quality thresholds and the competitive thresholds in all three categories.

So that means that our programs are performing strongly and do not require any corrective action or even reopening the grant for a competitive bidding.

These are very strong results and a reflection of the incredible work that is happening in our Head Start and Early Learning classrooms every day.

I also attended a recent Head Start Policy Council meeting.

Policy Council is a required part of Head Start and it gives parent representatives a direct role in decision making for the program.

During the meeting, parents reviewed the budget and spending, they discussed classroom assessment results, and they considered potential updates to their bylaws.

I think it's a great reminder of how a meaningful family partnership can lead to strong outcomes for our students.

Switching now to the Finance and Audit Committee.

Our April committee meeting was rescheduled to May 4th from 10 a.m.

to noon.

As we're continuing to adjust to the return of board committees and the recent changes to the contract approval thresholds, we're trying to be thoughtful about how items are being routed.

um one thing i do want to highlight is that the finance and audit committee will be taking on responsibility of doing deeper dives into board action reports and then making recommendations to the full board but i think from time to time as chair i may recommend an item just go directly to the full board for introduction so tonight's bar on the economic stabilization fund is a good example of this while committee meetings are public There are times when I think an item would benefit from a more formal presentation and discussion during a regular board meeting with the full board present.

At our March 23rd meeting, the committee discussed our goals, our work plan, the budget development process for both the remainder of the 25-26 school year and planning for the 26-27 budget.

The priority for this committee will be doing a deeper dive into selected areas of district spending.

So we want to understand where there is greatest variance between budgeted and actual spending, where spending differs from available funding, and whether expenditures are aligned with district goals and updates.

So I think potential areas could include transportation, special education, multilingual services.

So at the next meeting on May 4th, staff is going to bring us briefing papers.

We're going to review them and decide as a committee which areas we want to prioritize.

We are the finance and audit committee, so our plan is to have monthly meetings with one meeting each quarter specifically focused on audit topics.

So the next audit focus meeting is scheduled for May 18th, and that is also when the state auditor's exit conference will take place.

and I especially encourage my colleagues to attend this committee meeting because there will be important content presented.

I will provide a summary at our next meeting.

Thank you, Director Song.

Director LaValley.

All right, as an update from the operations committee, we reviewed the draft charter and discussed a possible We discussed possible change that we may bring to the policy committee within some of the wording of our charter, which would be a minor update that we would either bring to the policy committee or, if advised, bring to the board directly.

With staff, we discussed some of the past struggles from past iterations of the committee, including prioritization of issues, staying focused, and the large amount of redundancy that staff have experienced in the past.

What the committee had agreed to do was that we would get the presentations and whatever we agreed to move on to the full board will be presented by the chair of the committee for board discussion so that it's not duplication for the staff in the committee and then within the board.

There was a strong interest in not just short-term but multi-year work plans which provide meaningful oversight without going too deeply into the work of the staff or the superintendent so that we got a longer-term vision for the committee under our belt too as so much of the work ends up spanning a pretty long-term need.

The committee discussed making sure that contract reviews were done by the committee and then voted on by the full board are summarized in a way to improve understanding, context, and board requirements as well as timelines because this will expand how many we're viewing with the new approval thresholds.

There was a preference for the committee to be primarily in charge of the capital budget expenditures, although as we get started, there's a little bit of dependence of assistance of staff to help learn where each approval should go between the operations committee and the finance and audit committee.

So there may be a little bit of discussion there that happens both with advisement of staff based on what they're seeing and within the chairs of the committees themselves.

We discussed the student assignment plan and looked at some of the policies surrounding it.

We may look at potential policy recommendations that we would like the policy committee to consider, as well as looking at what our timelines are and what our policies are surrounding board approval of things like student assignment plans, boundary changes, and long-term planning to make sure that we clarify the board role.

Our next meeting is scheduled for April 30th, and we will be viewing a number of construction projects that will then come before the board in the next meeting.

I will continue on to the BECCS meetings.

Both Vivian Song, Director Song, and myself were at both meetings on March 13th and April 10th.

We had project updates on Memorial Stadium, Rainier Beach High School, and Alki Elementary.

The planning team is also working on grants for replacement of ORCA's K-8 roofing, and so there was a brief update on that.

There was discussion on an update and presentation on the John Marshall School that will then be before the Operations Committee this next month.

On April 10th, there was more updates on the current construction projects as well as the district-wide AV safety and security updates that are occurring in a number of our schools and will expand to more schools in the future.

and a presentation from the student community workforce agreement program that was created around Rainier Beach High School to ensure that students were being trained and hired in construction jobs in their communities and working on the schools they attended and where their families are attending.

We had presentations about the program, its expansion, and personal testimonies from former Seattle Public Schools students of Rainier Beach High School who were able to help us build the new school.

In the next meetings, we will be hearing about carbon reduction and energy usage, multi-use building agreements, and we will be doing a lumber tour looking at some of the building designs for Alki Elementary.

Thank you, Director LaValley.

And I've seen the Alki Elementary timber and it's beautiful.

Director Mizorahi?

I have a report from the Policy Committee, also known as the Cool Committee, though we don't get to go on lumber tours.

We went through our work plan and talked about a standing agenda of both reviewing policy that is transmitted from the board, transmitted from staff, transmitted from the superintendent, because we know policies will come up that we are not anticipating, but then also having proactive policy work that we're constantly to update our policy manual and our internal policies to bring to the board.

And then having discussions of further policies that we're doing.

So most of our first meeting was spent looking at the work plan and deciding what our first set of policies will be to take on.

The first grouping of policies that we're looking at are really how policies get to the agenda.

And I know that it might seem a little bit meta for a policy committee to be talking about how policies come to the board, but that seems like foundational work that needs to be done before we can move on to other things.

So we're looking at mostly the 1400 policy section, looking at amendments from the dais, amendments that come not from the dais, what the committee roles are in policy setting and how policies get onto an agenda.

And we have a meeting next week, one week from today, where we will be reviewing a draft of those policy changes, and we can hopefully come with something to the board at the following meetings.

Thank you, Director Mizrahi.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

This isn't a liaison report or a committee report, but it's a committee adjacent, and it involves two committees that I sit on, so it's hard to avoid a quorum without bringing it up in front of everybody.

So is that okay?

I have an agenda request that's going to bridge two committees, and so just...

Yep.

So the policy committee has been charged with the board goals for this year, helping ourselves and the public understand the role of the board.

And a huge amount of that is what does it look like to oversee the superintendent district departments.

and then on the audit committee we have we the board employs the internal auditor and we we adjust and control the work plan as needed and so I have a work plan request which is which I've run by the superintendent which is to add a human resources audit to our annual work plan to address just some really long-standing structural issues that with new leadership in the form of the superintendent I feel we are ready to actually move on as a system.

I want to make clear it's not about misfeasance, malfeasance of fees or any individual person, but we clearly have structural issues in HR, in timelines and investigations, in leaves, in hiring decisions, all kinds of things.

There's a lot of things that keep coming up and have continued to come up and have been very longstanding issues in Seattle Public Schools that I really think we need to in the audit committee would like us to consider what the scope of that might look like and how that fits into the work plan.

And then how it relates to the policy committees in terms of reporting on things that are more operational like HR.

My hope is that an audit would help the superintendent understand quick things to address without having to take the time to go through all those things with an outside perspective.

It would help us on the policy committee also understand what questions does the board need to ask the superintendent to have better insight into what's happening in HR and other programs.

So an audit, and this is what I would like us to discuss in the committee, but it could include recruitment, hiring, promotion, and separation processes, staffing authorization practices, employee relations, workplace investigations, complaint response procedures.

I'm interested in do our policies reflect what we actually need them to reflect and then are they being followed, essentially.

So would love to have us discuss that in the audit committee.

Thanks.

Other committee or liaison reports?

Director Smith.

Hi.

I have a report as the scholarship committee liaison.

Coming up next month on May 28th, the ceremony to honor the recipients of the scholarship, the scholarship committee provides scholarships to students who are kind of slipping between the cracks in other ways.

I don't know, I should leave it to the scholarship committee's work to really describe it.

But especially in light of the board goal to highlight successes in our district, this is a big opportunity to really look at some students who have overcome significant obstacles and hear their stories and honor them as they receive their scholarships.

So that's May 28th at Franklin High School at 7 p.m.

So I both invite and strongly urge all the board directors and other district leadership to attend.

Thank you, Director Smith, for serving on that role.

I got to attend last year, and they gave out 70 $10,000 scholarships, and each student got to speak.

And it was a long night, but it was so impactful, and it was amazing to see other directors.

Okay.

We're not going to start public comment until 5. It's close to 5, but I think it will kind of take us a little bit of time to get there because we're hearing from many community members across a range of topics tonight with a significant number centered on technology use in schools, native education, curriculum adoption, and very clearly concerns regarding the principal transition at Adams Elementary.

I think to the Adams community, this is a very difficult, scary situation and that community deserves transparency, answers to your questions and we know this has been difficult and an emotional process and it's clear from the testimony list tonight And the recent community meeting at Adams Elementary, meeting with teachers as well and the PTA, that there are strong feelings and concern.

This engagement, I think, reflects how much the Adams community really cares about your school, about your students, about each other.

At the same time, our role as the board is not the hiring or placement decisions.

We place that authority and responsibility with the superintendent, but it's our responsibility to keep informed and have the superintendent keep us informed of decisions and reasoning as to why moves are the best moves for our students.

So that said, we are paying close attention.

We are in communication with superintendent and we support his responsibility to lead on these decisions while ensuring the community concerns are heard and taken seriously as he makes the best decisions in very difficult situations.

So with that, there was a meeting last night that I know, two nights ago, excuse me, two nights ago where Superintendent Schuldner, district staff, I know Director Smith and Director Lavalle were also present there, but I'm going to ask in real time for Superintendent Schuldner to provide an update of what happened and where things are at there.

Good evening, everybody.

Thank you so much, President Topp.

I'm going to take some privilege here.

We have a little bit of time.

I want to thank the Adams community for being here, for showing up, for asking important questions about a decision that is very important to your children and to your families and to your community.

Having been through many conversations and many decisions that affect staffing, I understand the passion and the care that comes along with these kinds of decisions.

I also understand that when a decision is made to impart a leader on a school rather than to go through the more traditional process, that that causes even more consternation because certainly, you know, the traditional process is not being done and certainly the voice of the community is not being heard and I really do appreciate that having been on a school board of New York, having been a principal, having been in communities, I do hear that and I appreciate the the ability and the desire to bring those questions up and to question the decision-making.

And certainly, as I've always said, I will try to explain every answer, every question that's asked, every decision that's made, and certainly I will always show up, and certainly the meeting went to many hours in the night, and my promise was certainly that I would stay through it all.

as I did, as the staff did.

And I really want to thank also the staff, especially the folks from technology and comms, who I think had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

But all of that being said, I also want to highlight a feeling of sadness I had and a feeling of unease of what I also saw.

When we started the meeting, we had a series of speakers just trying to introduce themselves, just trying to explain their thought process and what was going on.

And as you all know, the decision was to place Principal Anitra Jones at Adams.

Now mind you, this is a award-winning, national.

She won something called the Milken Award.

She won a state award.

She was the assistant principal of the year.

She won the Foster Award.

Her entire record in terms of her evaluations have been incredibly positive.

In fact, four out of four, most of them.

And she is somebody that I appreciate that there are not perfect questions about what's happened, but here we were trying to introduce this long time, multi-decade service provider, somebody who cares about children to the district.

And what was so disappointing, I think, was that in the middle of her initial remarks, the community just interrupted her and said, how long is this going to take?

When are we going to get to the questions?

So here's the person that's just trying to introduce themselves.

And then, of course, we said, we'll get to it.

We'll be here for as long as you want.

And you could tell there was already this tension.

Now, again, I appreciate that this is an important conversation, but I will say it is It is uneasy when I look at that school, when you look at the equity tiering.

It was the seventh richest school in the district.

The people in the audience were at least presented almost as all white.

And you had a black principal saying these things and being interrupted.

And then I try to speak.

And look, I'm the superintendent.

Please come at me.

I get it.

I have the microphone.

I have the seat here.

And all I asked the community for was five minutes.

I said, I just want to speak for five minutes.

I even took out my cell phone.

And I started the timer.

I was immediately interrupted.

I was immediately stopped.

People were yelling, interrupting.

And I just asked for some grace, some space.

Throughout my entire opening remarks, I was being stopped.

I was being interrupted.

And then throughout the night, things were being shouted in the audience to, again, Anitra Jones, an award-winning principal, a black woman, you're speaking too slowly.

That feels really uneasy.

It feels like there's something else going on.

And I then look at the kinds of things that were then asked and said.

Even my own personal feeling, I can only speak for myself, But somebody in the audience asked if I had my own children.

I said, no.

Just so you know, I'm newly married.

I am very old for that.

I'm 49. I am now married.

Maybe we will have children.

I would love to.

But then you know what's happened?

I've now received emails that say, dear superintendent, well, as a non-parent, I don't know if.

What that says to me is a feeling of righteousness and a feeling of positionality that worries me.

It worries me because it shows not a willingness to truly engage, not a willingness to really listen.

And even when we had said publicly that, like, Anitra had won the Milken Award.

Somebody responded, well, you know, that award is named after somebody who, you know, committed, you know, fraud.

Yeah.

And do you know who, like, Cecil Rose is from the Rhodes Fellowship?

Or the Alfred Nobel who invented TNT, which probably killed more people than others?

But I'll take a Nobel Prize, and I'd be really proud.

I don't think I deserve one, I'm just saying.

And so it worries me that that is acceptable.

And we were in a cabinet meeting today and I said, you know, I'm concerned because I feel like this is how it's been.

And somebody said, yeah, you know, it's the Seattle way.

People get righteous and they say their things and we just say, okay, we can't do that anymore.

If that's the Seattle way, I want a new Seattle way.

I want a place where we can really speak and really talk.

And my proof of that, at least personally, was at the end of the meeting, or somewhere near the end of the meeting.

It was a very long meeting.

Somebody asked, well, how do we know that you'll respond?

How would we know?

And I gave him my cell phone number.

And he even said, please text it so you know.

That's the kind of leadership I'm going to try to give.

I'll be the superintendent as long as this board will have me.

But I want to make sure that we are starting from a place that really is to listen and to care And yet, decisions are going to be bad.

They really are.

And if we can try to explain them, and if we can try to do something, then let's do it.

But the kind of feeling that I got from Monday was really unfortunate.

And I know that that's not the intent.

I know that the person who asked if I had children or not didn't mean it that way.

But the way that it was taken, of course, was then it just led to emails that say, well, you know, as a non-parent.

And I would like to believe that when they asked Anitra to speak faster, they didn't mean that microaggression.

But again, who am I to judge?

My job is to just speak about details and data that I saw.

What I want to make sure also that I say, which is where it's hard for me in front of my bosses, those online and in front, is that You might know that this job was a closed search.

And so we couldn't tell anybody.

In fact, my wife's family is still upset at her that they had to read about it in the paper.

But I'm very good at following the rules.

And when I got the job, you know what my friends said?

All of my friends, superintendents across the country, they didn't congratulate me.

They actually said, Ben, why are you ruining your career?

And I said, well, I believe in Seattle.

I like the weather.

My cousin lives here.

And he said, but Ben, you know the history of what happens to superintendents.

And I said, yeah, but I think this is going to be different this time.

And then I got a call from a very dear friend of mine, deputy chancellor in New York, whose family is from here.

And she said, Ben, you're going to have to change.

No matter how you were in New York or Michigan or Norway or India or England, your way of just being direct and speaking the truth and not worrying about things, it's not going to fly here.

And I said, yeah, but I don't want to change.

Because I think everywhere I've gone, good things have happened.

It's been tough.

It's been rough.

But I know it's possible.

And she said, well, I don't know, Ben.

Good luck.

And I said, well, let's see.

And today, I will tell you, I had a crisis of conscience here, crisis of confidence.

Should I say these things?

Because it could have been easy for me to just say, thank you.

I believe in democracy.

People say you're peace.

Let's go.

But I was walking to the building an hour or two ago, and somebody came up, Ben, just be you, man.

Just be you.

Give me a hug.

And so this is me.

This is me saying it was rough sitting there because of my multiple decades of being in spaces like that and seeing the actions.

And maybe it wasn't intentional.

Maybe it didn't mean to come off that way.

But man, did it feel wrong.

And so I just want to say that I do hear you.

And I'll be perfectly blunt, because that's who I am.

Did Principal Jones come off glowingly?

No.

Was her presentation there terrific?

No.

Do I think my presentation was perfect?

No.

Do I think I could have chosen my words a little bit better?

Absolutely.

But I could only imagine what it must have felt like to receive what she received.

And then what was so interesting at the end was one of the questions was basically, you know, after hearing all this, like, do you even want this job?

Why would you even be here?

And the response was, yes, because I care about children, because I want to do right by children.

That speaks to me.

Now, are we perfect?

No.

Is there baggage?

Yes.

Is my job to hold everybody accountable, all 9,000-something, and is the job of these people to hold me accountable?

Absolutely.

But what I ask is that we move forward together, we don't prejudge, and we recognize how we act in certain public spaces and what we do and how we say it.

And so again, at no point am I meaning to chastise or to blame, but The president asked me for my thoughts about the meeting.

And those are my thoughts.

And I just want to say thank you to the people who came out and said their piece.

And thank you to Principal Jones.

And thank you to Principal Son.

And thank you to director, executive director, Tim.

We have different titles here.

And to be just like...

I know we can do this together.

I do.

But what I saw on Monday was rough.

And I also want to give the privilege to Bev Redman, who is our chief of staff and also comms director, who is there by my side, who's been there by my side for two months and 22 days.

If she wants to share her thoughts, I think it might be helpful.

pressure.

There's never a convenient time to stand or to take one.

For the past nearly five years, I've had the privilege of serving this community and being a part of it and I'm very proud to be employed here and to represent the superintendent and at times speak on behalf and be with the board through all of your work.

I've never, never come to you and spoken out of my own personal opinion.

Pardon my indulgence tonight.

Had the honor to be with Adams on Monday night.

As an administrator, I know that we're going to get slings and arrows.

We're going to take criticism that is part of the job.

As a professional here, one of the things that drew me to this community was that we were rooted in the fact that we respect each other.

We lift up each other's voices and we protect that space.

I will also say that as a black female, sitting in that space, watching another black female be addressed in a way that I thought was insulting, undignified.

That was discouraging for the Seattle that I had grown to know.

We can disagree on presentation.

We can disagree on facts.

We can speak with passion.

But what we should never be asked to do is to surrender our dignity and be treated as less than human.

To the Adams community, I speak with honesty when I say I'd love to come back to the table.

Superintendent has already said it was not an ideal moment.

What I'm hoping for that community and for Principal Jones is for the chance.

Give her the chance.

Give her the conversation.

Suspend the judgment that has already been delivered.

Let her have the conversation.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Bev.

So with that, I appreciate, I love public comment.

I still can't believe that we limited only to 25. I'm not saying to change that, please.

But I just want to say to all of the Seattle community, to all north and south, east and west, to all races, all creeds, all religions, to everybody, we've got to be in this together.

We've got to do this together.

and we really do need a new Seattle way.

Let's build it together.

Thank you.

Thank you, Superintendent Schuldner, and...

Hey, Superintendent, sir.

If we're gonna build it together, let's do it right.

Because it's not about who's right, it's about what's right.

We're gonna hold here.

We've got public comment.

I appreciate that.

We're not taking public comment yet.

We have a list of speakers who are gonna...

What time are you gonna take public comment?

It's 5.16 now.

In just a second, we will start public comment.

I'll go through the rules here and we will start the speaker list.

So I appreciate that, but thank you so much.

We have a lot of people here who are waiting to provide public comment.

All right, so with that, I appreciate everyone being here tonight.

We have a lot of folks who are signed up to provide public testimony.

I'm just gonna read a quick few rules on public testimony as well as turn it over to staff to go over some logistics.

We have a Board Policy 1400 that provides our rules for public testimony.

The Board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as the Board expects of itself.

As Board President, I have the right to and I will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by our procedure.

A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave the meeting.

With that, I will now pass it over to staff just to go over some logistics.

Thank you, President Topp.

The board will take testimony from those on the testimony list and will go to the waiting list if we are missing speakers.

Please wait until called to approach the podium or unmute and only one person may speak at a time.

The board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak to.

Speakers may cede their time to another person, but this must be done when the listed speaker is called.

Time isn't restarted and the total time remains two minutes.

The timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for speakers here in person.

When the light is red and a beep sounds, it means that your time has been exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

For those joining by phone, the beep will be the indication that time has been exhausted.

Moving into our list now, for those joining by phone, please press star six to unmute on the conference line.

And for everyone, please do reintroduce yourself when called, as I may miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list.

The first speaker...

Oh, and I'm just going to say one thing.

Yes.

We have, just to keep it fair, we are keeping testimony to two minutes.

I will, at the end of your two minutes, just say, please conclude your remarks.

Let me just wrap up your final sentence.

Thank you.

The first speaker is Emily Cherkin.

My name is Emily Cherkin.

I'm an educator, advocate, and SPS parent.

In January, I testified before the United States Senate on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about technology's impact on children and childhood.

Today, this district provides one-to-one internet-connected devices to nearly every student, averaging about 9,000 per child on technology alone.

It is past time that we ask, is it worth it?

Because the answers to these questions, how many children should be able to use their school laptop to watch YouTube and play games, search up harmful content, talk to strangers, watch porn, use AI to write their essays, should be zero.

But it's not.

Seattle students have done all of these things on their school devices.

Children do not need EdTech products to be successful in the future.

The best preparation for a digital future is an analog childhood and an education built on people, paper, and pencils.

This is not a kid problem.

This is not a teacher problem.

This is a leadership problem.

So I would like to know, This fall, when SPS hands out laptops and iPads, will the district inform parents that their children can watch YouTube, engage with chatbots, and play online games?

That parents are responsible for laptop misuse?

That the district consents on behalf of every parent to every single privacy policy of every single app or website their child will encounter?

that the safety features installed on student devices for school don't apply at home, that GoGuardian turns teachers into classroom IT police and kids find ways to evade it anyway, and that the CEO of the district's recently adopted Safer Watch app was arrested for bribing the NYPD.

I don't know what topic is more universal today than every child in our district being given an internet connected device, but I do know that very few parents think six-year-olds should be able to watch porn or chat with strangers on a computer at school.

Where are the adults who will change this?

Thank you.

The next speaker is Melissa Martinelli.

I cede my time to Josh Callahan.

Good evening, members of the school board.

My name is Josh.

I'm a parent at Adams Elementary.

Today you'll hear our concerns about the appointment of Ms. Anitra Jones as principal to Adams Elementary.

Our community concerns around this appointment are centered in Ms. Jones' record of district-substantiated teachers' union and student rights violations, none of which are found anywhere in her record.

Adams over-indexes in special education students because of our current principal's experience in this area and our community's care for these kids, we pride ourselves on being a safe and gentle space for those that need extra support.

Sadly, there are multiple documented violations of student rights that occurred at Rainier View Elementary School during Ms. Jones' tenure.

For reference, these are special education community complaint filings 23 through 21, 23 through 68, 23 through 73, 23 through 74, and 23 through 75. I will reference one quote found in 2375. Despite having the process and systems in place, the district acknowledged, in part, based on a previous complaint regarding two students at the school, that the school was failing to consistently document classroom exclusions.

Thus, it is not clear specifically how many students, how frequently, or how much time students were being sent to the principal's office.

The other complaints document violations of the IDEA and the district policies towards students with special needs that result in extra trainings for multiple staff members, including for principals and many hours of compensatory education.

Two of our core special education teachers are leaving Adams next year.

We're deeply concerned that a principal with a substantiated record of SECC violations will be unable to provide the correct guidance to new staff members.

It's unacceptable to expect elementary age children to know their rights or to speak up for their own fair treatment.

The next speaker is Hilary Patterson.

Hello.

Hi.

I am an SPS parent and I'm also a teacher and I'm here to urge the district to set and enforce specific transparent policies and guidelines to decrease the use of technology in classrooms.

You heard Emily.

And it's inequitable to not have consistent guidance for everyone in our district.

Currently managing ed tech is up to school leadership, teachers, and sometimes parents with the capacity to advocate for those changes.

This means extra work for teachers and varied use of apps and devices, creating inequity for students.

I personally have put effort into decreasing tech use in my daughter's classroom and my own, but not every parent or teacher has the capacity to do so, which means most students are left in the vague and under-communicated tech world of SPS.

Our staff and families need guidance and structure on why and how to use technology sparingly, in my opinion, and intentionally.

If only some of us have the capacity and resources to do that work, then we are leaving most students behind.

Even being at a currently non-SPS school, I used to teach in SPS, now I don't.

My school now regulates device use strictly, and that means there are still problems.

I was in a a study hall today, and these are all the things that happened.

One kid was playing a game, one kid was watching a video, one couldn't get started on an assignment because she had to toggle through so many different tabs to do it, and she told me her eyes and her head hurt.

One student was typing into a Google Doc that was telling her what to write.

It was suggesting, so she wasn't even writing it herself.

This isn't learning, it's giving me and my students a headache.

The only solution is to keep devices in computer labs or carts to be checked out for specific approved reasons and shift our assignments back to non-tech activities.

The irony is we often use tech tools to make things more efficient for teachers and really we're having to manage a lot of that technology and it's really not more efficient.

So please create a clear, communicated guidelines for all schools so that every student is protected from all those harms of edtech and also has the privilege of critical thinking, being bored, and human interaction.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Michelle Bradley.

My name is Michelle Bradley.

I am an SPS parent.

I urge SPS to reevaluate the one-to-one device program.

Let me be clear, I am not anti-tech, I am pro-learning.

My daughter declined academically in fourth grade due to her increased use of ed tech.

She's always loved to read.

I was therefore perplexed when she didn't.

When I learned that her teacher couldn't get her entire fourth grade class to finish reading books, I had an aha moment.

I knew that with Epic, students could decide they didn't like a book after a couple of sentences, and with a few clicks, start a new one.

Neuroscientist Dr. Kuni Horvath states that the primary function most children associate with a device is multitasking.

Research offers that when studying on a screen, the average student drifts into unrelated digital distractions within six minutes.

Humans cannot multitask.

When students switch between EdTech programs, Google searches, social media, and gaming on their school devices, accuracy decreases and deep learning is lost.

But that is not all that is lost.

literacy skills grow with long-form reading, allowing students to participate in extended arguments, identify misinformation on the web, and understand others' perspectives.

Don't we desperately need that right now?

Neuroscientist Marianne Wolf stresses that the decline of deep reading isn't a cultural shift, but a threat to democracy.

our children are not as smart as we were when we were their age due to ed tech let's return to what works physical books paper and pencil computer labs or computer carts with devices that are not connected to the internet and with all the money sps will save on harmful harmful ed tech more teachers thank you

The next speaker is Joan Williams.

Hello, I'm Joan Williams and I live in West Seattle with my son and my husband.

I'm here today to say thank you so much to the school board and our superintendent for bringing the Highly Capable program to West Seattle and for creating a pathway for private school kids to apply during enrollment.

having the option to apply for HC during enrollment gave us confidence that our son would receive the services he needs from day one.

When we found out he qualified, knowing that we'd be able to go to school close to home at Alki Elementary, our neighborhood, and be part of an HC cohort, made our decision a no-brainer.

So we have enrolled.

Thank you all so much.

And I also want to mention that I did attend the Education and Candidate Forum at Rainier Beach High School last year.

And the conversations I had there and the people I met, including our school board members here today, made me really excited about being part of the public school system again.

And I hope that kind of forum happens again.

That was really fun.

Thank you all so much.

And thank you so much for all of this highly capable stuff.

I've spread the word to other private school parents in the West Seattle area about applying this summer, so they will be applying later.

Thank you.

And keep up the good work.

We really appreciate it.

The next speaker is Danica Noble,

Hi, everyone.

I'm Danica Noble, and I'm a mom of three public school kids in elementary, middle, and high school.

I spent the last five years suing Facebook, focusing on online harms for children.

I'm here to ask you to make all of Seattle's public schools phone free.

Many schools are phone-free on paper only.

My ninth grader attends a phone-free school, and yet at that school, he's been exposed to livestream torture, gambling, and violent sexually explicit material on other kids' phones during class.

That's a safety and learning concern, but as the evidence mounts from these social media trials and the public research, it raises questions about the future liability for schools that allow this to happen during class.

It's a collective action problem.

The evidence is clear that the broader and the more consistent the policy, the greater the benefits.

The world expert is at Seattle Children's, and his research shows that kids are spending 25%, a quarter of their instructional time in high school, on phones.

And his research also shows that it is overwhelmingly on social media, on short form video, and I suspect increasingly on AI chat bots or cheat bots.

I admire your dedication to championing our children's education, especially while you operate under severe funding constraints while the legislature fails to amply fund education.

But until then, this is a low-cost, high-impact change.

Forty states and countless districts have adopted strong, phone-free policies with room for local approaches, meaningful exceptions, and flexibility at the school level.

but this will take the burden off individual teachers who do this phone by phone and class by class.

And it stops us from giving 25% of our children's instructional time tax-free to the tech companies.

So I urge you to adopt a clear district-wide K through 12, it's gotta be high school guys, phone-free school policy.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Florence K. Fiddler-Lovell.

Can you see me?

Yes, we can.

My name in your community is Florence K. Fidler Lovell.

I'm an enrolled member of the Pembina Band of Ojibwe Indians out of the Turtle Mountains.

And so now that you know that about me, you must know all of my natural protocols, colloquialisms, manners of speech, and looks.

And so I hope, because I clearly heard that warning at the beginning, be nice.

But I think you were saying to be nice according to your community standards, which I'm totally at a loss because I'm not part of your community.

I was born and raised in my own community, and those are the natural rules that I understand.

So if I get out of line on your community's protocols, maybe give me a warning first.

Don't send yet, right off the bat.

But that's something y'all need to understand is that who is sitting up there does not clearly identify .

They need to see it when I glare at them.

We are not, we are not all the same.

Some of the, you know, like that Sesame Street, some of these things are not like the others.

I am not like your school board.

And so, you know, get a grip on that.

I try to be polite.

I try not to personally offend.

I'm going to tell you now, I'm going past two minutes, too, so you can call the cops now.

It'll take them three minutes to get here.

You need to understand this.

The people in this room reflect the city of Seattle, all of us.

and not just the school board.

And I think it's wonderful that y'all are patient and sitting up there.

I think it's great that you give us warning.

Don't get out of line.

We're gonna give you a warning to wrap up your comments here.

I heard you at the beginning, but you took up some of my two minutes by making that big speech.

So to the people who are here supporting that school not getting closed, you need to stay on it every minute, all the time.

They closed our school.

They closed our school a long time ago and we had a good graduation rate.

And it was a strong support to our whole community.

And they closed it and they won't even have meetings to talk about something to put in its place.

Our kids are still suffering.

And when we talk about institutionalized genocide, That speech that we heard earlier wasn't just to us.

That's the same speech our children hear every day.

So when we say every day we send them into a war zone, it isn't just kids with guns

All right, we're going to need to move on to the next speaker.

We're going to, I'm going to ask staff to call the next speaker, please.

I am not deaf, but I am telling you that I've been up here for 40 years saying the same thing.

And I think that it's time for you to stop listening and start doing something.

Thank you so much for that comment.

Staff, if you would please call the next speaker up.

The next speaker is Rebecca Blynder Metz.

One of the things we do is listen.

You could listen, and not for two minutes.

These used to be five-minute slots.

You got tired of hearing people for five minutes, you part it back to three minutes, then you put it back to two minutes.

And this, everybody in here has a thought.

They love their children.

We love our children and we want you to stop killing our children.

Thank you.

Now you can have your podium.

Again, just a reminder to be respectful to everyone's time.

I am going to hold the line strong on this two-minute rule, please.

Thank you.

You took our time.

The next speaker is Rebecca Blindermetz.

I would like to cede my time to Mike Lind.

Good evening, members of the school board.

My name is Mike Lind, a parent of two daughters at Adams Elementary in first and third grade.

My family didn't start as an Adams family.

Our third grader first attended a Seattle choice school as a kindergartner, but we didn't truly feel at home until we transferred back into our neighborhood school for her first grade year.

At Adams, we have found the definition of community.

This is a special school.

Families help each other out with errands, impromptu childcare, bonding together on the playground before and after school.

We also show up for the marginalized and get active with demonstrations against injustice and inequality.

It's likely this spirited activism is also the reason we're so vocal about this appointment that feels much more like administrative will, than a fair and transparent interview process.

I'm disappointed in Superintendent Schultner's interpretation of what the real issue was on Monday.

In addition to our kids, we are showing up for our educators at Adams.

Teachers don't leave Adams, they retire here.

Our children have built trusted relationships with them.

My youngest just yesterday bragged about seeing a picture of our gym teacher's child and how she's so close to walking on her own.

My oldest was unfortunately on watch of the aging class hamster over winter break when it passed away.

Her teacher came over to our house cutting into her own vacation time to ease my daughter's mind and to work through the loss together.

We also lost a beloved teacher two years ago to a sudden and unexpected death and we mourned together with our teachers and principals sewn and planted a tree in her memory.

I come from a family that my mother was a long time teacher in Lake Washington School District.

I know how difficult this job is, but I also know the relationship between parents and teachers we have at Adams is unusually tight knit.

We simply cannot afford to lose these cherished teachers if our staff do not feel valued by their administrator or scared of retaliation.

Thank you for your time and hearing our concerns.

The next speaker is Susan Pambianco.

I cede my time to Christine Treba.

Hello, thank you for the opportunity to be here.

My name is Christine Treiba and I'm a parent of a second and fourth grader at Adams Elementary.

One of the things that makes Adams so special is our teachers.

Our average teacher tenure at Adams is 14 and a half years.

Teachers are part of our community.

They join us for talent shows, potlucks, and little league baseball games.

My concern is that we have not given the people who shape our community a voice in the selection of our new principal.

This year, Adams was the only elementary school out of four elementary schools selecting a new principal that did not have an interview process.

Furthermore, we were appointed with a principal who would give any community serious concern.

The Seattle Education Association filed unfair labor practice complaints against the Seattle School District in May 2023, specifically concerning Anitra Jones' conduct at Rainier View Elementary School during the 2022-2023 school year.

This public ruling was issued on November 4th by 2024 by examiner Jessica Bradley.

The key findings that jumped out to me are discrimination and staff turnover due to toxic work environment.

The examiner found that Jones unlawfully discriminated against employees and weaponized performance reviews against employees who exercised union rights.

The union investigation reported 77% staff turnover at Rainier View in that school year.

The previous school year, 64% turnover.

This is an extraordinary number at any workplace, let alone an elementary school.

In our community town hall Monday night, the superintendent, in addition to telling us this sucks, told us Ms. Jones was appointed at Adams out of contractual obligation and because our strong community could withstand such an appointment.

It is unclear why this contractual obligation exists and why our community or any elementary school should have to withstand their principal after a documented history of discrimination and a toxic work environment that resulted in astounding staff turnover.

The next speaker is Erica Schutz-David.

Good evening, Directors Briggs, Levalli, Mizrahi, Smith, Song, Topp, and Rankin.

Thank you for the work you do, particularly as you work to set the district's vision and goals to serve Seattle families, students, and communities.

My name is Erica Schutz-David, and I'd like to pose some questions to you as you do that vision work.

What is the purpose of school?

Is it to safely contain children for six plus hours a day?

To teach reading, writing, and arithmetic?

Is it to provide sanctuary from poverty, food insecurity, and the worries at home?

Is it to see students on their worst day and tell them you are unique and valuable and I believe in you?

Is it to get test scores that bring money to our district or to get kids graduated?

Some people say it's about teaching skills, including teaching kids technology competence.

But what does that mean?

What skills do we really mean?

Typing?

Research shows that writing by hand contributes to deeper learning, enhanced memory retention, and more effective engagement with written material than typing.

Practicing handwriting helps our brains read better.

So is there any reason to begin typing classes before high school?

Some people say students need to be familiar with current technology, but by when?

What's the science on students receiving iPads in kindergarten?

Do we really think that technology in 10 years will look the same?

Did you need 12 years to learn a smartphone?

But when caregivers ask questions about the educational technology usage at SPS, answers get vague, defensive, and lacking in data real quick.

I've been told it just is what it is.

How are we supposed to trust this system with the minds of our kids?

How can a system unwilling to engage in critical thinking and dialogue offer our children the world-class education set forth in the vision of this district?

So we need you, our representatives, to ask questions and set a vision of teaching technology skills at developmentally appropriate times to set a standard of weighing the benefit of any given product against the losses we are currently accepting blindly.

Seattle Families for Intentional Tech has gathered signatures from over 790 caregivers, teachers, and community members who are asking you for intention and transparency on ed tech.

Each of you will receive a copy of the petition and signatures.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Samina Passat.

Good evening.

My name is Simina, and I'm a parent of an incoming kindergartner at Adams Elementary.

My husband and I spent months looking at private schools and Seattle Public Schools.

When we toured Adams, we loved it because of the teachers, the parents, and the community.

That choice is now something I'm doubting, because as incoming parent, I did something that any parent does before sending their kid to that new first day of school.

I googled the name of the new principal, and what I found was alarming.

not just because Mrs. Jones' public records and the unusual high documented turnover rates for teachers, but because of how she was appointed, bypassing the open hiring process that the SPS outlines on their website and that the superintendent said he prefers.

So I was there Monday together with 100 wonderful Adams parents to meet the superintendent and Mrs. Jones, and I was hoping for reassurance that the decisions are made with our kids in mind and that we will have an open hiring process.

Instead, I was told, contractual obligations, the public documented things are not on the HR file.

hands are tied.

We were told to accept the placement to be a good community.

If concern arise or enrollment drops, we should document it and the district will look into it.

I sat there as a parent of a soon-to-be kindergartener thinking I'm being asked for my child to be part of this evidence to build the record.

But we've been there.

We watched it unfold at Rainier View Elementary and it happened for years.

Now we're about to start over at Adams.

Same system, same person, new school.

Our ask is simple.

We want an open hiring process.

Post a role, let Mrs. Jones and other candidates apply, and let the parents, the teachers, be part of that process.

Is that too much to ask for our children?

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sarah Sens-Wilson.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Sarah Sense-Wilson.

I'm with the Urban Native Education Alliance, co-founder.

I'm also alumni of Seattle Public Schools and raised nephew, daughter, and currently a volunteer at Olympic View with my grandson, Wayland who is enrolled Tulalip tribal member.

So there's a lot of ground to cover and not enough time, but I'd like to just hit a couple points.

So one of them is we would like to see transparency with the Indian ed program.

We'd like to see quarterly reports.

We'd like to see the accountability there.

We'd like to see authentic community engagement with native community.

We'd like to see the district establish a Native Advisory Council.

We'd like to see the district restore the data dashboard.

We'd like to see an overhaul of public testimony process.

We'd like to see restoration of Indian Heritage High School.

We'd like to see that there is community input with the five-year strategic plan and please recommit to community engagement and commit to a true race and equity lens in all decisions going forward.

I'd like to cede the rest of my time to Evelyn Brandon, a student.

Good evening, Seattle Public School Board.

My name is Evelyn.

I'm a Spokane and Assiniboine Sioux tribal member and a sophomore in Middle College High School.

I'm here with UNEA to discuss Every Child Matters Day and request approval for the resolution.

Since time immemorial, indigenous people have been culturally imperialized into the norm of Americanism under colonizer occupation.

Since the U.S. has been established the first Since the first peoples have been viewed as something that must be stripped bare of tradition, culture, and identity to fit into a new colonized world.

Children have been forced away from their families to be broken and rebuilt in boarding schools, suppressed into the white image, causing a generational trauma in all.

As an urban indigenous youth, UNEA taught me and other youth about boarding schools and Orange Shirt Day, and we are here to ask you to also teach us in the Seattle Public School District so others can also be aware.

I'm going to ask you to conclude your remarks.

Okay.

We implore you to adopt the resolution to recognize and acknowledge Every Child Matters Day on September 30th to implement education in the school district to be aware of our people's history.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker is Kyle Elman.

Hi, my name is Kyle Elman.

I'm a software engineer and a parent of a Seattle Public Schools kindergartner.

I build software for a living and I want to offer a perspective grounded in that experience.

The district does not have a coherent, enforced EdTech policy.

What it has are documents that delegate decisions to individual teachers and school administrators.

Which devices, which tools, which grades, who authorizes what, those questions don't have district-level answers.

I learned from my child their iPads were being used in music class, which only meets every three weeks, where they should be making music instead.

And when a parent decides, in their children's best interest, that they'd rather opt them out of personal device use, that puts a burden entirely on the classroom teacher, with no district guidance to support them.

That's not fair to teachers either.

Here's what I know professionally.

Tech companies collect children's data for profit, not as a side effect, but as a business model.

And securing internet-connected devices for children is genuinely hard.

SPS's own policies acknowledge web filtering is best effort.

If the district cannot completely solve data harvesting and device safety, the responsible choice would be to stop issuing one-to-one devices by default to our kids entirely.

I'm fully in favor of dedicated tech education, coding, computers, AI literacy, social media safety, at the right age and in a lab setting with transparency and clarity for parents.

But iPads and Chromebooks issued to every kid is not the way to do that.

EdTech does not improve education outcomes, and the data on this problem is not ambiguous.

Sweden went all in on classroom technology in reverse course, having to spend over $100 million in reintroducing physical books after citing declining student performance across the country.

I'm asking for a district-level EdTech policy review with real timeline and with informed audit of EdTech devices not delegated down to schools.

Deferring real decision-making is not a real decision.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Ashley Gross.

Hello, I'm Ashley Gross.

I'm the mom of two high schoolers in Seattle Public Schools, and I'm also part of a group that's advocating for a statewide bell-to-bell phone-free schools law.

I'm here to talk to you tonight about two things.

First, I encourage all of you to support the positions that Director Eliza Rankin has introduced for the State School Directors Association.

vote for the gun violence prevention position, and please, please, please vote in favor of the three positions on technology and phones in schools.

Dozens of states around the country have restricted phones in schools.

Washington is being left behind.

But having the support of the State School Directors Association would give big help to our efforts to get a statewide law passed.

Second, Seattle Public Schools needs to pass its own away for the day policy for all grades, just like Mercer Island School District did.

We have a patchwork of haphazardly enforced policies here in Seattle, and it's failing our kids.

Smartphone access in schools undermines learning, but it's also a safety hazard.

Just last week on Vashon Island, students discovered a cell phone in a restroom, began recording video, left it above the bathroom stall, recorded other students.

So can you imagine that you go in to use the bathroom at school and instead your privacy is violated and you've been recorded without your knowledge and now those students who did it are facing consequences from the King County Sheriff's Office.

So what happened on Vashon can happen here.

No one made a conscious decision to let smartphones into our schools.

Now we know the harms and it's time to remove them.

Superintendent Schuldner has expressed some concerns about whether this can be done at the high school level with open campuses.

Mercer Island High School has 1,400 students, and they do it.

They use pouches.

But schools across the country are doing this.

They have lockers.

They have lots of different setups, and they've made it work.

We also have a $400 million BEX levy for technology.

This is a perfect use.

Please pass a bell-to-bell, phone-free policy for all students.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Carrie Lind.

I cede my time to Susan Pombianco.

Good evening, board.

My name is Susan.

I'm a member of the PTA and a mom to a fourth grader at Adams Elementary.

I'm here to oppose the appointment of Anitra Jones to Adams School.

We've heard at length from Superintendent Shoulderner about the potential financial and legal risk to the district of not making this appointment.

We do not disagree.

The risk exists.

However, in making this appointment, the district is effectively taking that legal and financial risk and transferring it to a single neighborhood school community.

I want to talk specifically about the financial risk and what we'd ask from the district to protect the education of our children.

Adams has struggled with enrollment.

Parents in our community have a lot of choices.

Plus, Adams sees about 25% of its students transfer to a highly capable cohort school.

We currently have two split grade classes as a result.

It's not perhaps a unique story within SPS, but it is a result of incentives and structures stemming from district policies.

As parents, we've worked hard to control what we can control.

The past two years, we worked to boost enrollment through our school tours, and it's been working.

Three years ago, we had two kindergarten classes, and the past two years, we've had three kindergarten classes.

Now, however, families are very concerned about the way this principal was appointed and the public record of what happened at Rainier View.

They are considering options like private school that they weren't considering two weeks ago.

This is not financially sustainable for Adams.

We did not make the contract that the district made, but we are being asked to bear the financial burden of it.

Please help save our school from losing anything more.

We are asking for a hold harmless agreement, an idea floated by Superintendent Scholdener, to set a floor for Adam's budget at our current 25-26 school year level and to keep it in place for three years.

This will give our new principal and community time to show that we are on the right track, and hopefully reassure families that if they stay at Adams, their education will be funded, well-rounded, and supported by our current amazing group of teachers.

Thank you so much.

The next speaker is Pawel Kuysian.

I am Pawel Kuysian, and I cede my spot to Leslie Hainsworth.

Good afternoon members of the school board.

My name is Leslie Hainsworth.

I have a kindergartener at Adams Elementary and I have two alumni who graduated from there.

I'm here to speak on the appointment of Anitra Jones.

I want to begin by acknowledging the parents and educators who came forward nearly two years ago to give testimony.

It took real courage to speak publicly, often at personal and professional risk.

There were clear, repeated concerns raised publicly, including in testimony before this board, describing deeply troubling conditions and fear of retaliation, among others.

We also now have state findings that substantiate many of these claims and reflect concerning gaps in process, documentation, and follow-through.

When concerns are raised this consistently and clearly, there should be a record of what happened next.

How were the concerns received, investigated and resolved?

But now we have an educator with a long history of complaints and as confirmed on Monday, nothing is reflected in the personnel record.

Why is that?

If the system can't reliably document and carry forward serious concerns, then the system itself should ask and be examined before decisions are made from it.

We are asking for three actions.

Pause the appointment pending a transparent review of how prior concerns were documented and considered.

Add the SECC and PERC findings to the personnel record so documented violations are accurately reflected.

And review the district's documentation and retention process, including why were those concerns not reflected in the record today.

Without that, any future concern risks being treated as an isolated issue rather than as a pattern.

We've been asked as a community to be the eyes on the ground.

In return, we have to trust that what is documented is retained, recognized, and used to inform decisions.

And at the end of the day, if we can't trust the record, then we can't trust the decision.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Karen Bell.

I cede my time to Carrie Lind.

Good evening.

My name is Carrie Lind and I represent Adams Elementary as the PTA vice president.

I stand before you today on behalf of the Adams kids and on behalf of every child in the Seattle public school system.

If our response, Superintendent Schuldner, on Monday was perceived as rude and insensitive, I deeply apologize because we want to stick to the merit of our concerns.

But what you did not mention is that you looked us in the eye and told us to document everything and send it directly to you.

That is why you gave out your personal cell phone number.

This is a clear indication that you do not have trust in the process or in the appointee.

Our community has outlined our concerns based on substantiated findings.

Because of this, we respectfully ask for an open hiring process at Adams for our next principal.

We're standing tonight in the John Stanford building, the same John Stanford who said, we lost our way when we become more interested in the employment of adults than in the education of children.

I ask you in the words of John Stanford to put the needs of our children first.

We look forward to hearing from the superintendent on this matter.

Thank you for giving us the time tonight to present our statements on behalf of the Adams community.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Jesse McFerrin.

We got something for you, Catherine.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Jesse McFerrin.

I'm a high school teacher in Seattle.

I would like to cede my time to my friend Cody.

Aloha mai kakou.

Peace, peace.

Thank you, Prince Atreyu.

My name's Cody LaSalle.

I have seven years teaching, subbing all grade levels and subjects throughout Seattle Public Schools.

Hold a Bachelor of Arts from University of Washington.

And abolishing education as a colonial institution was my undergraduate thesis transition from promoting universal access to quality education to a position of abolishing education once I learned the abhorrent history of boarding schools in the United States.

And I had a position with outdoor and community education shortly following COVID as the head of outdoor and community education for our district, which was eliminated around the same time as funding for maintaining outdoor and community education so that our children didn't have to be trapped inside and incarcerated in the name of education all day.

And I'm also an expert witness and a declarant in a federal lawsuit involving a case in Tacoma, Washington that's now active in a lawsuit against Pierce County Conservation District that is all very relevant legal information for the context that I'm now informing you all formally and publicly so you're aware of the legal context that you're operating in.

Some of the key points here that I'd like to highlight as a parent of two children at Licton Springs.

that is our only explicitly Native-focused school in the district.

I'm going to ask for an extra 30 seconds for the lay.

Thank you.

Very simple.

It's the only school that so many of our children, everybody who goes there, actually feels safe attending where they are not subject to policies and practices that are very similar to boarding schools.

And I would just say be very aware of local, regional, national, divine, natural law, international law, and the potential war crimes that you would be implicating yourself in under the Geneva Convention and laws against genocide if you were to consider closing my children's school.

Thank you.

Save Licton Springs.

The next speaker is Blake L. Lindsay.

Hi, my name is Elle.

I'm a Skill Center student in the Careers in Education class.

My home high school is Nathan Hale, so I make a commitment to travel across the city every morning on my own to get to my Skill Center class at Franklin High School.

I am committed to doing this every day because of the value of my experiences in this class.

I engage in work with John Muir students that are helping me become the teacher I hope to be.

For example, during first semester, we worked once a week in the Jodhmeir Library with a designated first or fourth grader.

In class, we learned how children develop, which allows me to improve my skills to be responsive to student needs.

Second, in class, we learned about pathways to becoming a teacher.

I am a junior and already have multiple options for pursuing my teacher certificate without any costs.

Through a series of guest speakers, I was able to meet professionals in teacher education and those who oversee scholarships for future teachers.

Third, in my current first grade internship, I am learning how to adapt my instruction based on the individual needs and personalities of each student in my class.

With one student, I've learned to balance boundaries and expectations while also making space for joy.

Last but certainly not least, I've gained a community of future educators that I know I can depend on as we go through the challenging process of becoming educators.

Not all of us plan to be classroom teachers, but all of us are committed to children and to each other.

All this to say, I wanted to share my experiences in my Skills Center Careers in Education class.

Thank you for the time.

The next speaker is Dorothea Kast.

Hello.

My name is Dorothea Kasti, and I'm a senior at Lincoln High School.

I'm here because the presence of cell phones in my classrooms caused my high school education to suffer, and I believe Washington needs to pass legislation requiring that schools of all levels restrict phones.

I've watched my school attempt to institute phone policies every year, but without the backing of a statewide law, these systems fall apart in weeks.

The burden of enforcing cell phone policies falls on our teachers, who have told me they must choose between spending 20 minutes of each class chasing down phones or teaching.

It is most often left up to students to limit their own phone use, something we know devices have been designed to make impossible.

Phones are causing Seattle high schoolers to fall behind.

They incentivize cheating, impede social interaction, and worsen relationships between teachers and students.

Frequent uses for phones in my classrooms include using AI to solve math problems, scrolling, or recently online gambling using parents' credit cards.

A state law mandating that schools adopt a bell-to-bell policy would take pressure off of teachers and better the education quality of all Washington students, leveling the playing field with schools in other districts that have already taken action.

Every year that this kind of law doesn't pass, another class of students graduate having missed out on the academic and social skills that we are promised with a public education.

Please vote in favor of all three positions on technology in schools to help this legislation be passed next year.

The next speaker is Kent Tsai.

Good afternoon.

I concede my time to Ms. Brenda McGee.

Good evening, school board members and superintendent.

My name is Brenda McGee.

I am one of the student family advocates of many years at Interagency Academy and also the chair of our BLT.

We've been coming to the school board meetings today as well as this year because we are trying to work through the process of our transparency of our budget and activities going on in our school.

We worked like some other schools to try to pass our budget this year, we did not.

Thank you superintendent for coming to be the designee at our school on the first and we appreciate your time.

You encouraged us to contact you if we had questions.

We had found out from you, thank you, that we had had our budget passed down to the arena, first time that we had heard it.

And we were hoping to get a copy and to have you talk with our staff.

We sent an email on the 2nd.

We're still waiting to hear.

So we are working to try to talk with the school board and the superintendent and school district.

We love our school.

We work really hard.

We're going to be working with our students and families and also our communities that care about our school as community partners to work to organize for our school.

But we're hoping that you will work and meet with us as well.

Our students are upset because some of the staff have been displaced and we're working to see that process gets done.

We were just starting to find out that there were new positions that we had never heard that were published and announced for our school.

So we would like for you to come out and contact us, and please work with us.

We're considering asking maybe for an audit of our budget.

Thank you for your time.

Good evening.

The next speaker is Rin Stone,

My name is Rin Stone.

I'm a teacher and a mom to a future 2028 SPS kindergartener.

This year, I'm a K-3 academic interventionist at Greenwood.

Next year, Greenwood is slated to lose two FTE, which is a conversation that we can revisit in June.

and it means that my current position will be eliminated and I'll be returning to the classroom as a kindergarten teacher.

I come before you today with the support of K-5 literacy interventionists across the district to endorse the expertise of the Curriculum Adoption Committee and support the approval of Emerge by McGraw-Hill.

While I know you understand this, I want to clarify for everyone listening the time to debate the three curriculum candidates has passed.

If the Board does not approve eMERGE today, SPS would be reliant on our current curriculum for another year or longer.

We cannot continue with the current curriculum.

Doing so, especially after the thoughtful research, testing, and vetting from the Curriculum Selection Committee, which was made up of teachers and families across all five regions, would be negligent and impact the students furthest away from educational justice the most.

Some schools, including Greenwood, have recognized the current curriculum is not adequate and supplement with programs like UFLY, while others do not.

This variability undermines the district-wide goals and contributes to uneven student outcomes because CCC is not working.

Emerge is designed for real classrooms.

While I'm devastated to lose the role of intervention at Greenwood, I take solace in knowing that strong supports from this curriculum will help me make sure that all students succeed.

It has clear daily routines, built-in assessments, and integrated small group structures that ensure targeted supports without fragmenting core instruction.

These features make high quality instruction not only possible but sustainable across all schools.

The last time I came to a school board meeting was in March 2024. I came to speak, I'm so sorry, this is emotional, I will be fast.

I came quietly to support my colleagues who were braver than I was and had the courage to speak out about the emotional abuse and HR violations we endured at Rainier View Elementary.

To those coming from Adams Elementary, I see you, I hear you, and I'm advocating for you.

Today, I do feel courageous.

I urge you, please vote in favor of this curriculum adoption.

The next speaker is Sabrina Burr.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Good evening.

My name is Sabrina Burr.

and I'm here to talk about school board meeting last month, performance-based pathways for high school graduation.

Board, you voted unanimously for an intro and a vote, no engagement, and the intro and the vote is against WASD's best practices and yours as well.

For students that we have failed or truly the students furthest from education you rewarded adults for not doing their job timely and you spoke loudly to the black community about how you feel about our children michelle sarju warned us that there would be no director for with a voice for black children on the dais on march 11th unfortunately you proved her long wrong while denying Rainier Beach College in the high school.

Caleb Perkins pushed through with only three months to go for this new adoption to increase graduation rates, which he has done for years.

First, it was with waivers, and then it was through Bridge to College.

Now Bridge to College is tier one.

And so now we're doing this for the class of 2026 with no student voice, no family voice, no community voice.

and no real plan, Sharonda said to you, let us experiment.

And you were okay with that.

You never asked about the class of 2026, how it was going to work for them, how it was going to work with their high school and beyond plan.

Superintendent Sheldner, you influenced that vote, and you showed up as the expert on SPS history, and currently you are not an expert on SPS history.

Board directors, you were the expert.

You said all the things, but you went against your own knowing.

Why?

We have to listen to our children and we need to make sure that we are not sending out children who cannot read, write, and compute.

It messes with our public safety.

In our neighborhood over spring break, we had three shootings in six days and every last one of them had an involved Seattle Public Schools student.

Let's do better and let's stop slowing the standard for black children.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Natassia West.

Hello, my name is Nastassia West.

I'm both a former SPS student and a former SPS educator, and I'm here today with a relatively low-impact ask, which is that the district remove all links and references to its Twitter account from all district sites, materials, and communications.

As some of you may know, Twitter has become a site that not only hosts AI-generated, nonconsensual pornography and child sexual abuse material, aka child porn, but it also facilitates the creation and sharing of such content.

I want to see the district stop promoting such a site by no longer directing community members to access it.

As far as I can tell, the district hasn't even used its Twitter account in some time, so I imagine that the impact of this ask is likely very low.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Lisa Rivera.

Good afternoon.

My name is Lisa Rivera.

I am an SPS parent, former director, and I'm Director of Center of the Comanche and Tarahumara Tribes, standing proudly with the UNEA, and I cede my time to Lucan Marquistam.

I'm an enrolled member of the Makatch.

I'm an enrolled member of the Makah tribe, and my native name is Seti Kleewood, which was gifted to be my grandfather.

I am a sophomore at Ingram High School, and I've been at Urban Native Education Alliance since fall of 2025. And September 30th is Orange Shirt Day.

It is a national day of remembrance in Canada, and it commemorates survivors who lived through the boarding schools.

Orange shirts remind us that every child matters.

My great-grandfather, Luke Markstrom, went to a boarding school, and when he came back, he had lost most of the Macaw language, and he couldn't speak to his family, the elders, and his community.

However, we are currently working on bringing back the language.

What we ask is for Seattle Public Schools to adopt the boarding school resolution, HR 4706, the boarding school resolution.

More people need to be aware of the impacts on boarding schools across generations and their effects on native people, and my hope is for SPS students to graduate knowing more about boarding schools than in previous years.

Thank you, Clicko, and I proceed my time to Daniel Jackson.

Hi, I'm Daniel Jackson.

I'm the junior of Ballard High School and Cornell, that's my tribe, and an intern of Urban Native Education Alliance.

We're here to ask Seattle Public Schools to support resolution to designate September 3rd as Orange Shirt Day and to ensure accurate teaching of Indian boarding schools.

The boarding schools, we remember the victims and survivors of the boarding schools.

We are here today and advocate for SPS to adopt a boarding school resolution and to designate the September 30th as EMC Day.

Every child matters.

Thank you.

That was our 25th and final speaker.

Thank you, thank you everyone.

That concludes public testimony for the evening.

I appreciate everyone coming down to the John Stanford Center this evening to give your time to provide information and testimony to the school board.

We're gonna take a 10 minute break.

We will reconvene at 6.30.

All right, we're going to join back together here.

Director Song, if you'd join us.

Appreciate the conversations going on, but if they could happen out in the hallway, that would be wonderful so we can continue our business for this evening.

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.

Second.

Okay.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

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

Seeing none, I'll go down now to our student representatives for their advisory position.

We advise pro.

Thank you.

Now for the vote, all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

I'm saying it really slowly so Katie can also make her vote.

We'll give her a second.

But that was an aye vote for the record.

Oh.

Should I?

Is it my vote right now?

Yes.

Consent agenda.

Aye.

All right.

Those opposed?

The consent agenda has passed unanimously.

Okay, we will now move on to the action items on today's agenda.

Okay, so the first one is the adoption of the K-5 English language arts instructional materials.

May I have a motion for this item?

Oops, sorry.

Falling down on the job here.

I move that the Seattle School Board approve the adoption of McGraw-Hill Emerge Elementary School Curriculum as recommended by the K-5 English Language Arts Adoption Selection Committee and approved by the Instructional Materials Committee for core instructional materials for Seattle Public Schools grades K-5 classrooms.

I further move that the Seattle School Board authorize the superintendent to purchase McGraw-Hill Emerge as the core instructional material for all K-5 English language arts classes in Seattle Public Schools for an amount not to exceed $5,775,744, including student books, consumables, and licensing to digital products for school years 2026 through 2027 through 2032 to 2033 and professional development beginning spring and summer 2026 and extending through school year 2028-29.

The superintendent is authorized to make any minor additions, deletions, and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to the final agreement.

Second.

Second.

Great.

We have a motion from Vice President Briggs, second from Director Mizrahi.

I understand there have been some changes to the action item since introduction, so I'm going to pass it to Superintendent Schuldner to brief us on those changes.

Thank you so much, President Topp.

I will defer to our assistant superintendent, Dr. Starosky, to update us on the great work that he has done to support both our fiscal and our educational work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Superintendent Scholdinger.

Well, first of all, I'm grateful for the process that got us here to this evening, the great conversations, the questions from school board members and the leadership of Ben in helping us come to this opportunity.

So since the last time we met, there's been some changes reflected in the bar.

specifically that we're updating the contract term from nine years to seven years, which was a concern that was voiced and we definitely heard and our partner with McGraw-Hill definitely listened and has responded.

As a result of that reduction in years, we also went from $9 million as the cap as also reflected down to $5,775,774 saving us approximately $3,224,000.

and so another thing that was also important that we heard was the opportunity for our superintendent to be able to have some type of opt out some type of assurance if things aren't going the way with the ed reports working with McGraw Hill.

They gave us a number of assurances and also put that assurance in writing for Superintendent Scholdener and so in summary we responded into the number of years.

We reduced the overall number which I think is definitely fiscally responsible and then also gave as much as possibly can be some type of assurance that if things are not working out and McGraw-Hill has had the opportunity to address those issues that the superintendent has a clear opt out.

Thank you so much.

And I really just want to reiterate the great work that Mike and his team did.

This is why we have these public discourses and we have these discourses with the board.

We know the great work that our staff did.

Thank you for being here.

And we really care deeply about having a top notch ELA curriculum, but we also know that sometimes we can negotiate and do things a little bit better and so I really appreciate both going from nine to seven, lowering the financial as well as giving some opt-out because that I think allows us to feel confident with what our teachers who piloted it, said they really like it.

It's good.

The kids seem to do well.

But we had some questions.

We were able, I think, to answer most of them and feel confident moving forward.

So thank you very much, Dr. Swarovski.

Questions or discussion from board directors?

Director Smith.

Hi, I have two questions.

The first one is hopefully pretty quick to answer.

I just, in discussion with an educator this week, they expressed concern around the tech component in the 20 minute time period where students in kindergarten, I believe, and potentially first grade, I forget the exact age ranges, but within the two hour period there was 20 minutes where groups could be pulled out and students would be on screens on devices.

And my understanding is that that is a max of 20 minutes within the two hours.

But I heard a concern from a community member that it could be like repeated like if there were multiple groups needing additional work that it could be more than 20 minutes total.

And so just clarification on that.

Yes.

So I'd say it's accurate that it's 20 minute is allotted within that block of time.

and what we're planning on doing with our educators is trying to be really strict in the implementation and the fidelity of implementation.

So I would say that category categorization is correct of the 20 minutes is allotted for that block of time.

OK.

So they would not be a student would not have more than 20 minutes under any circumstances.

Well, I can't guarantee that.

That's the goal.

That's the goal.

That's the expectation.

That's the intention.

OK.

And then my other question is just about the professional development.

given that the contract has changed.

I know the initial contract came with a certain number of hours for teachers that McGraw Hill would be providing.

And then the difference between the nine million and the initial contract was money that was dedicated to supporting the teachers in their professional development.

And I'd like to know how that is changing with the new contract.

Yes, so this is one of the exciting things about working with McGraw-Hill, is that that implementation plan is not changing at all.

Actually, if the vote goes the way that allows us to move forward, we're starting tomorrow with that implementation plan.

And so the professional development is gonna be in partnership with McGraw-Hill, in our central office staff and members within our teaching community are going to be working this problem together.

So we've already shared some initial plans with Ben specifically about what's happening this spring and into year one and some bigger ideas into year two and three.

So we have a very detailed plan that our educators are going to be receiving and it does not impact the last years is not impacting the professional development plan that we had planned for the nine year run.

It's the same as reflected in the seven years.

Okay and then what about the district money.

Are we still spending the full nine million and just allocating more money or.

No we're not.

Teacher development or is that how is that being.

No we're not.

So because it's less years is less money.

The professional development in the materials is where we're spending that that five million dollars or that five point seven seven five.

Sorry I'm confused.

I remember in the initial contract we were going to spend a total of nine million and I believe it was about seven point five million was purchasing the curriculum from McGraw Hill and that left a gap of one point five million between the nine million and the cost and that that was district money that we were then budgeting for.

Is that.

That's not how I'm remembering it in the details.

I apologize.

I misunderstood the previous setup.

Maybe we could have it explained one more time.

Yeah, Mike.

I think it's really helpful if you could just go over the budgeting.

I think everybody wants to know how are you able to save the money, but also continue with the same professional development.

So as the nine years that we had budgeted out was going to be potentially more professional development for more teachers over the life of the contract so that the additional years the two additional years was where we're looking at the additional costs.

I can ask Kathleen or Cashel who could maybe answer some of the more specifics about how they got there.

to that five point seven million dollar mark.

But the thing that is encouraging is that we're getting the number of teachers the materials and the professional development is remaining the same.

the cost went down because of the length of the contract.

We're not losing out on anything that they weren't already going to provide on the front end.

One of the things that we did get some costs down was that we're paying it in three years not paying it over seven years.

That was a cost benefit to us.

Another benefit cost to us is some of the ways that we're doing some of the taxes.

and that's getting into some of the financials that specifics that I'm not that closely aware of.

And not for me to speak or to use a very Washington phrase over my skis but a lot of it to just re-emphasize Mike's point and I don't know if there's anybody on your team that wants to talk about it is When we reduce the number of years, it's not like a one-for-one savings because we're paying it up in a different way.

They're willing to take a little bit less money so that they're getting it in these installments rather than kind of over time.

Think of it like kind of interest or like extra, you know, paying it in installments, stuff like that.

And then we're also saving some, as Mike said, some of the tax things in terms of if you paid things over nine years, you got to pay a lot more.

if you're paying for the seven years that you're able to save money.

But the good news, and I really appreciate your negotiation skills, was to keep the professional development the way it was.

Yeah, and I think you're exactly right.

We're paying up front in three years the total cost instead of going over a seven-year period of the cost going over that way.

So it helps them, but more importantly, it helps us.

Director Song?

I first want to say thank you to all the educators who took a lot of time to vet this curriculum.

After the March introduction, one of the educators that piloted Emerge in her classroom reached out to me and invited me to her classroom so I could see the materials.

and I could hear her feedback, so I really want to thank that educator for doing that.

I'm feeling pretty confident about my vote.

She had some interesting feedback that I'm going to summarize and send to the team, but one thought that I know has been an issue of other curriculum adoptions is always the dual language.

And dual language programs, time is tight.

This, you know, curriculum I think is like very, it's a lot of content.

And so my ask is just that there's some thought given to dual language schools, how will they do the pacing and also incorporate all the target language learning as well.

So thank you again to the educators for the time that they spent.

Director LaVallee?

I want to, first of all, thank the team so much.

I've had a million questions that I've submitted in writing, asked in two-by-twos, asked during meetings, and I appreciate all of the diligence in getting all of these answers back to us in a very timely manner.

It was deeply appreciated.

I think the only element that I'm still not completely clear on and hear repeated within at least my community is when there's a lot of HC students in a classroom that's not in an HC cohort program, how are they getting education and literacy in that situation where the teacher is following the fourth or fifth grade curriculum and also needing to teach a different curriculum to some other kids.

So that's kind of my ongoing question.

However it's not necessarily solved by any curriculum.

So it's not necessarily one for you to answer but one for I hope the superintendent to continue to think about as we look at supporting HC learners in our schools and an ongoing basis.

Yeah, it's a great question and one I think I might have even raised last month.

And I really appreciate that.

As we try to move to be the best urban school district in America, we want to make sure that students are able to go as far as they can as quickly as they want to.

And I think one of the good news stories, of course, is that we already do have a sixth, seventh, and eighth grade curriculum.

And so if there's just ways that we can make sure that we're incorporating that and helping those teachers and, you know, and then, of course, I mean, I wasn't going to say this publicly, but one of my hopes is to actually really have algebra for all, where there's an expectation of having algebra before you get to high school, and maybe even geometry.

We'll see how much we go.

But the way to do that, of course, is with that professional development and having that kind of track.

And so my hope, and certainly I'll defer to you, Mike, but is that as long as there's professional development for the current curriculum we already have adopted for 6, 7, and 8, that will allow them to do that.

Yes and we're going to learn a lot along the way with any adoption.

We're not expecting perfection but the great opportunity is we're asking those questions on the front end and trying to address it and we're going to do that all together with our educators and you know we're going to learn along the way.

And so definitely considering the things around acceleration just in general.

And we're going to be working with our highly capable and advanced learning all along the way.

Yeah.

So just again thank you for all the time and questions that you've answered in such a quick fashion and responded to and renegotiated since the last board meeting.

I really deeply appreciate the time and attention you've taken on this.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah I'll just one one up the questions from Director Song and LaValley for for dual language and highly capable.

And then of course I have to add special education which is a separate conversation but I just I want to be Well, first of all, I'm really excited to vote yes.

I'm just going to say that.

I'm very excited to approve this.

I am increasingly concerned about special education students, especially as going through school visits with the superintendent and seeing some schools where our students are still very very segregated which I know is not a curriculum issue however we do have students who through their IEPs are receiving supports and modified curriculum through the grade level curriculum we also have students who will not be able to access the grade level curriculum and still deserve to learn and still deserve a curriculum and so kind of a sidebar is what kind of adoption or what kind of options are we thinking about that this isn't, for me, K-5, done, and let's move on.

We still have some students at the margins that we really need to keep thinking about.

But mostly, I just wanted to say thank you and to echo what Jen was saying.

As a community member and as a board member, I've been through several curriculum adoption processes.

This is probably kind of the meatiest one, I think.

But, you know, I was around as a community member for the K-5 math adoption and some other stuff, and I wanted to say thank you to Ben and team for, this feels really different, I'm not saying we can't continuously improve, but we were, and I also want to commend all of us up here, for asking the right questions about the process, about the financial impact, and to you all for getting the answers to us so that we There are other times where I feel it backed into a corner, where I feel like, well, this was legally required, or this terrible thing will happen if we don't vote yes.

And oftentimes, I think the board ends up feeling like they vote yes because they have to.

I feel good about this vote.

In the visits to different buildings, I have had so many different educators who have been, who are probably some of our strongest early literacy educators, say how excited they are about this curriculum.

You know, nothing's perfect, obviously, but they really want it.

And we've gotten a lot of emails from educators who have either participated in the adoption or have seen it who are really excited to use it in their classrooms.

and I just think that's really, really fantastic and wanted to say it out loud.

And so thank you for the collaboration and the communication back and forth and helping us do our job and validate the job that you're doing for the most important thing which is getting this material out to schools.

Thank you and I appreciate the compliments but the compliments should be going to the team the leadership with Cashel and Kathleen and leading the adoption process.

Their attention to detail their responsiveness and our educators our community members are the only reason that we can get those responses back to you.

Other directors.

Then I'm going to go to our student reps for their advisory position.

the student representatives' fit pro.

Thank you.

Then I will look to staff for the roll call, please.

Director Rankin?

Yes.

Director Smith?

Yes.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director LaValley?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

President Top.

Yes.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

And just echoing thank you to everyone.

I do feel like I will slightly repeat Director Rankin's comments of like this process felt a little bit different.

We heard feedback.

We expressed the feedback and staff heard and updated the process.

So this was this was a great example of how I would like things to work moving forward.

So next, amendment to board policy number 625, warrant certification approval and cancellation, renamed expense claim certification and approval.

May I have a motion?

I move that the school board amend and rename board policy number 6215 as attached to the board action report.

Second?

Second.

Perfect.

We have a motion from Vice President Briggs, second from Director Mizrahi.

Any questions on this item?

Seeing none, so I'll go to our student reps for their advisory position.

The student reps advise pro.

Great.

Thank you.

And then I'll go to the roll call.

Director Smith?

Aye.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director LaValley?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

All right.

On to the next item, approval of the Seattle School Board sponsorship for proposed Washington State School Board Directors Association positions.

May I have a motion for this item?

I move that the board approve the proposed Washington State School Directors Association position to be submitted on behalf of Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors as attached to this board action report.

Second.

Right.

We have a motion from Vice President Briggs and a second from Director Mizrahi.

I understand that Director Rankin has some additional positions for the board to discuss and adding to this item Director Rankin I'm going to pass it over for you to go through the different items and then amendments making an amendment if needed.

Yes.

So a little bit of a funky because of the motion was to approve positions going to WASDA it wasn't on the single position.

We're going to amend the position to include subsequent positions that are in the meeting materials and then the amendment would be whichever positions that we want to include.

So the vote is still to approve positions and we'll discuss now whether or not we want to include all of the positions to the vote.

Does that make sense.

Okay, so I haven't made any changes since the item was introduced to that first position, the gun violence prevention position.

But there are three on technology, I don't have it in front of me, and one on board training.

So I'll just go one at a time, and if anybody has questions, concerns, even, little bit of wordsmithing you want to do, we can actually do that and finalize it and then make the position as amended, add it to the amendment.

Sorry, I'm scrolling through to find the materials here.

I mean, if nobody has questions or concerns and are comfortable with approving them as they are, we don't have to go through all of them.

But what I didn't want to have was to have somebody say like, oh, I don't like this one word in this one position and feel like they had to vote no on the whole thing.

So we don't need to take the time to go through each of them unless people have things they would like to have questions about or consider.

I'm seeing a lot of shaking heads that you can go through and make them a package.

Okay, so I have an amendment to propose.

I move amendment to...

Where'd it go?

Maybe.

I move an amendment to the approval of the Seattle School Board sponsorship for the proposed Washington State School Director positions.

An approval of this item would approve Amendment 1 to the School Board Action Report titled Approval of the Seattle School Board Sponsorship for Proposed Washington State Directors Association Positions to add positions 1, 2, 3, and 4 to the proposal, which already has one.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

So discussion on the amendment.

I will just thank Ashley Gross and other parents.

She, after a somewhat disappointing result in the Washington State Legislature on technology that kind of took a position to do a study and didn't actually create legislation about cell phones, putting us quite behind a lot of other states, Ashley reached out and said, How do we get WASDA?

How does the body of WASDA put support behind positions?

And I said, oh, that's so funny, because I just introduced this thing, and I was looking at positions to add.

And so it was with her encouragement and support and providing some language that I was able to put together these different positions.

And I really appreciate her connection and knowledge and also encouragement.

to bring this forward, knowing it was in alignment with values of our community and also with some things that are happening across the country.

So there's, yeah, I look forward to WASDA considering them.

So there's gonna be two votes.

The first a vote on the amendment.

If it passes, then there'll be a vote on the item as amended.

Before we call for a vote on the amendment, do the student reps have a position?

We advise pro.

Great, thank you.

So then I will call for the vote.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director LaValle?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Yes.

Director Smith?

Yes.

President Topp?

Yes.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Okay, we're gonna now go to the vote on the item as amended.

Is there any discussion on that?

Okay, then I'll go to the student reps for their advisory position.

Excuse me, President Topp will need a motion for the item as amended.

Sorry, a motion for the item as amended, thank you.

Okay, I move approval of action item three as amended by amendment one.

Second.

So we have a motion by Vice President Briggs and a second by Director Mizrahi.

Thank you so much for that reminder.

And now we'll go to discussion.

None?

Then the student rep position.

We advise pro.

And I will call for the vote.

Vice President Briggs.

Aye.

Director LaValley.

Aye.

Aye.

Director Mizrahi.

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Smith?

Aye.

Director Song?

Yes.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Awesome.

OK, so looking to board directors if we can keep going, or do we need a quick break?

All right, let's keep going.

We're moving on to the introduction items on today's agenda.

The first is approval of the 2526 Career and Technical Education Annual Plan per Board Policy Number 2170. Superintendent Schuldner, I'll pass it to you to introduce.

Thank you so much.

I assume I am turning this over to some of our wonderful friends.

So, career and technical education, who would like to come up to the mic?

Well, I guess, Mike, you should probably go first, right?

So, again, the great Dr. Swarovski, who's in charge of CNI, and he'll introduce this work.

Thank you.

So this evening with the CTE plan, Brian Day is going to be here to be able to speak to the plan and some of the work and some of the beliefs.

And what we'd like to be able to do is just in three minutes or less, just to give you a general overview of this plan for 26.

Good evening.

Thank you, Superintendent Schuldner, President Toppin, board members for allowing me to speak briefly.

My name is Brian Day.

I'm the Career and Technical Education Director and the STEM Director for the district.

I represent 196 teachers, very hardworking teachers, and 16,000 students who are currently taking a CTE course, all very dedicated to what they are doing.

I'm gonna start with a simple idea.

CTE is not an add-on.

It is not just a program for students who are not going on to college.

Every single one of our students will have a career.

We expect that.

And we are in one of the top areas in the country for employment.

There is no excuse for our students leaving us as graduates and not going on to be successful.

When we talk about CTE, we are talking about helping students graduate with a plan, a direction, and real options.

If you remember Elle, who spoke during the public discussion a little bit later, she talked about her Careers in Education course.

She knew what she was doing, she was passionate, and she knew what her next steps were.

That, if you've ever wondered, really is a high school and beyond plan really actualized.

That's really what we want for our students, and CTE is a big part of that.

This work, the work that is outlined in the plan, directly connects to the outcomes this board already prioritizes, graduation rates.

15% of our students would not have graduated if CTE pathways were not available.

30% of our special education students would not have graduated unless a CTE pathway was available.

CTE incorporates industry-recognized certificates, dual credit, work-based learning like internships, industry visits, and CTSOs where students can really experience their future selves, what they're passionate about, and figure out what their direction is.

These are all not separate initiatives.

They are the core indicators of a high-quality CTE program.

When we invest in CTE, we are directly investing in graduation pathways and career and college readiness, two huge areas in our strategic plan.

Concerning this plan, the most important shift over the past three years is the intentional focus on pathways.

Students do not benefit solely from a single course in isolation.

They benefit from a sequence of courses, a cluster of courses, and experiences that build towards something real, something that's real to them.

A pathway, a career pathway, involves two credits in an area, aligned courses, and real-world experiences.

And they leave with something tangible, college credit, dual credit, certification or clear next steps.

Our goal is to ensure that more students are able to complete a full pathway, not just take an introductory course.

There's also a reality we need to be clear about.

Student demand for these programs continues to grow.

Community demand for these programs continue to grow.

At the same time, resources are limited.

So this plan is about making intentional choices, being focused.

We are prioritizing pathways that support graduation, align to high demand careers in our region, and show strong student interest.

That means focusing our efforts where they will have the greatest impact for our students.

At the end of the day, this work is about clarity, clarity for our students.

We want every student to be able to answer three questions before they graduate.

What am I good at?

What opportunities are available to me?

What is my next steps?

And just an add-on here, do I really see myself in this career?

Can I do it?

Do I believe in myself?

CTE helps make those answers real.

This plan moves us towards a system where more students graduate, not just with credits, but with direction, confidence, and a pathway forward.

Thank you.

Questions or discussion from directors?

I just want to say, I want to emphasize the fact that I was a Skills Center student last year.

I also did the careers in education.

I was just about to send an email to my teacher, Ms. Chinen, who was here along with Elle, who spoke earlier.

And I just want to emphasize how important CTE is and how beneficial it has been in my life and my other friends who have participated in the different programs.

I have friends who are in the Autotech program, the CNA, Certified Nursing Assistant program.

I've encouraged more of my friends to participate in the Careers in Education program.

I received so much support, support like I had never felt before from my teacher, Ms. Chinen.

She's incredible.

She is one of my favorite people on the planet.

I still talk to her, including from others.

I've met other teachers, like the maritime teacher.

He subbed pretty consistently for our class, and he was amazing.

The principal of Skills Center was great.

He frequently participated in our classes and discussions, and he was really an advocate for students.

And I just really want to support CTE and the Skills Center, and it's just been so important in my life.

And I'm proud to be a Skills Center student.

Very happy you said that.

And that's really what we want for all of our students, to be saying that about Seattle Public Schools and having that clear direction and really communicating that passion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Representative Mangelson.

Others?

Just, I wanted to ask, you had mentioned that there are the huge benefits to kids who might not be looking at going to a college or at least to a four-year degree, and I wanted to see your opinion on how it does help students who are as well, because this isn't necessarily, I think students, any students can access these programs and learn about different pathways, and how does it, benefit all of our students?

Good question.

So really CTE, Career and Technical Education, really is for every single student no matter what their pathway is.

And that's really a strong message that I want to get across.

All students will have a career.

The earlier they can think about who they are and what that pathway is, the better.

They may not know specifically, but they get that idea of who they are and which direction to go.

So whether it's computer science, business and marketing, construction, our mission really is to make these areas accessible for every single student.

Thank you.

Director Smith.

I hope you maybe will be hearing a lot of the same things.

I think the only context that CTE comes up in conversations for me is it's a strength of our school system, and how can we have more?

So looking at the document you shared with the plan for CTE, really looking at the future growth, there are some great goals.

And so I just hope we can have conversations ongoing on how to help make those happen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I hope that the pictures are great in that plan.

The data, we really pay close attention to the data, we pay close attention to the growth, and we really reflect on where do we need to put support to even have a better program.

Thank you.

Director Mangelson, Representative Mangelson.

I just want to add on one more thing to Director LaValley's question and your response.

Speaking for students who, I'm someone who is planning to pursue a college degree after my graduation from the program.

However, I did receive my certification as a paraprofessional in Seattle Public Schools.

I took my test right here.

I passed it.

So technically, after I graduate high school, I could go straight into being a paraprofessional in an elementary school classroom.

However, I still would like to pursue a college degree, but I think it's awesome that that is an opportunity.

And I'm pretty sure all the students who were in my cohort also did that.

I would like to say that in my class we frequently had speakers.

We had speakers from the University of Washington.

We had speakers from AmeriCorps.

We had speakers from all different people who represented different aspects of the education system and where you can go and where you can find opportunities and I thought it was just so valuable and there was so much passion from everyone I heard speak including my teacher once again she was just incredible but I think there's so many like I know once again I know plenty of peers who are doing these many different programs and they're still planning on pursuing college so I think that it while it is a really amazing option for students who want a different career path or want to pursue apprenticeships or go straight to a job after high school, I think it also really helps students figure out, like, maybe they do want to go to college.

Maybe if they thought it wasn't an option before, they do now.

So the plan is that you continue on in education, you do your student teaching here, and then you work here.

other directors.

He's got it all figured out for you.

Representative Yoon.

Representative Mangelson said most of the stuff I want to say, but I also just want to share another great milestone of my friend at Ballard High School.

She did skill center for nursing, and she will be working at Seattle Children's this coming fall, so it saves a lot of college debt.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

question that I don't need answered right now, but I'm just kind of putting it out there so that I get it to the right person between now and action, which is where skill center and CTE intersect and what What's part of skill center, what's not part of skill center, and how those things work together.

So that might be a more complicated thing than we want to take time with now, but I have some curiosity around that.

And then this is maybe more for the superintendent, but as you've noticed in your, what, 87 days here, or however many it is, we have a series of loosely held together patchworks of things, and then we call that a school district.

and I like where we're headed with actually becoming a district.

And I think I would like to sort of plant for you or maybe hear from you in the future about the citing of different offerings and make sure that we're not just sticking programs where there happened to be some space a few years ago, but actually where we want them, where students can access them and make sure that that kind of intentionality extends to skill center and CTE classes.

I used to teach what would be considered a CTE class to college freshmen in Queens, New York, and told them all the time, like, even if you think this is, you know, not for you, you know, I had kids who didn't know what a sawhorse was.

And I was like, that will help you.

It will help you to know what a sawhorse is and how to use a few things, even if you don't go into that field.

This also to connect to some of our earlier conversations.

These are a lot of careers that actually cannot be replaced by AI.

That is true.

And are growing and so it's it's I just am grateful that this is one of the areas of strength of our district and I hope to continue to see it grow.

and there's many careers that are changing because of AI.

What we're trying to do is understand what those are early so that we can shift and make sure that every student is prepared.

To just briefly answer your first question, our skill center is part of our CTE program.

It's a separate school that's in several schools and we have a principal there.

We have a math program and we have a specialized math school.

set a different way.

CTE, the non-skill center part, is really focused on exploratory experiences with some preparatory.

A skill center really is targeted at an IRC, some type of certificate which you could go on and work, or dual credit.

It's a more intense experience.

It's a progression.

That's super helpful.

Thank you.

I just want to acknowledge the point made.

I think there's no question all these programs are really, really valuable to our students.

I had the honor and privilege of one of the 80-something programs that I had in schools I've seen.

I got to go to our auto shop and firefighter work.

which was terrific as well as some of the great CTE work that's going throughout the district.

So it is certainly my intention to be a strong advocate for these things in ways that are thoughtful and structured rather than possibly haphazard.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Others?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll move on to our next item, approval of board resolution 2025-2614, authorizing an amendment to the repayment plan of economic stabilization account and authorizing the use of capital fund interest earnings for instructional supplies, equipment, or capital outlay purposes.

Superintendent Schuldner, I'll pass it to you for introduction.

Sure.

So, clearly, I won't want the great Curt Buttleman, Dr. Buttleman, to come and speak about this, but I do have a little bit of some financial background, so I will take the privilege of talking a little bit about this and then give it to my learned counsel over there.

One of the things that school districts have the ability to do is use certain pockets of money for operation.

Now, that's really a great thing because so many of our dollars are prescribed.

I appreciate very much the families that talked about the technology and that if we didn't buy computers for everybody, couldn't we give it to teachers?

The problem is different buckets of money.

And so if you have money that's being paid for out of a technology budget and then you're not using it, it still has to go, in essence, to technology and not necessarily salaries.

However, and I want to thank Dr. Buttleman and the work that we've been doing is that there are, if you know the rules, there are some ways to be really thoughtful around moving money into operations to help support schools that is legal, I will try very much not to break the law here, but that are creative.

And I think one of the ways that we are trying to address our $100 million insolvency problem is by being very thoughtful around what we can or cannot do for the betterment of kids.

So Dr. Butterman, if you want to speak to this, that'd be great.

No, I think you did it really well.

I do want to give a little credit where credit is due.

I'm Kurt Bettelman, Assistant Superintendent for Finance.

One of our season ticket holders, Mr. Jackins, brought this to our attention a few years ago, the utilization of capital fund interest for school supplies.

So I just want to acknowledge that, that The community is making a difference in the way that we're utilizing some of these funds.

And here's a good example of that.

For that point, so this bar and this resolution introduced two different things.

One is utilization of capital fund interest for instructional supplies and equipment and capital outlay for each year.

And this contemplates $5 million in usage for next year's budget.

we do spend more than that on things like science kits instructional materials in schools it's well in excess of five million dollars each year and we make sure of that before we transfer these funds.

The second item is a little bit of a technical mind-bending one for some.

So the second item is delaying repayment of the rainy day fund for one more year.

So the district three years ago used the rainy day fund, $42 million to balance the budget, and there was contemplated a repayment plan at that time.

The last two years, the board has voted to delay the first installment of those repayments.

This is another request for delaying that repayment.

Doing so, in effect, the projected deficit of $87 million that we've talked about quite a few times at these tables goes down to $80 million, because we built in this repayment of $7 million upfront.

And so by doing, passing this $87 million deferment of that first repayment, our $87 million budget deficit becomes $80 million is the problem that we're working on for next year.

So not doing that we would have to reduce the budget by an additional $7 million for next year.

I see a couple of quizzical works.

And one thing I might add is that when you borrow from yourself, you get to tell yourself when you want to pay it back.

And one of the important things is that if we are trying to get to true solvency, to true zero, we are going to want to pay this back.

and we're gonna owe, right?

We cannot go away for our obligations.

But the good news is that we do have the authority to continue to do this as we continue to strengthen the district's efficiency.

But I certainly appreciate, again, the thoughtfulness around how do we get to that zero dollar so that we are not owing ourselves or others.

But this is a really helpful mechanism that allows us to have a balanced budget without making even more cuts.

Director Rankin.

I know you actually kind of just said what I was going to ask, which is, yes, this changes next year's budget deficit from 87 to 80, but the deficit still exists and is just basically being punted.

So I guess the question is, do we think that our financial situation is going to be that different in a year that that $7 million would be easier to close?

you know, in 27, 28, or?

Yeah, I mean, that's certainly our hope.

I mean, is that what we've been showing over the last two months and 22 days is that we're trying to really start to figure out ways to save money.

And I think we've done some pretty good things, you know, tens of millions of dollars.

And so by allowing this, we get kind of one more year to really try to do that.

I mean, you know, I don't want to talk about what I might be sharing soon.

But clearly, one of the things we're going to want to do is to actually be solvent, actually have a fund balance, actually be there.

And I think the timeline to get there is a couple of years.

This allows us to buy one more year of figuring out how to cut thoughtfully without it going to the bone, only to the fat, and hopefully not the muscle either.

So I guess a way of restating it is it's not just kicking the can.

It's actually we have this size of an issue.

We have made difficult decisions to close this much of it.

If we can move that, it kind of spreads out the pain, so to speak.

Absolutely.

That's a great way.

And I can just add to Superintendent Schildner's point that the 87 days you've been here, is that the number?

Exactly like that.

We're not kicking the can down the road.

I was going to say 87 days, that's a million dollars a day.

That's right.

There's no chance the superintendent's going to kick the can down the road going forward.

Okay, that's good to hear.

From my experience.

I also think, and would defer to you as well, there was some legislation that came forward about minimum fund balances for school districts that didn't pass, but I would expect that those will pass eventually.

Like, I don't think those are going to go away.

And so this still wouldn't, I don't think, bump us up I don't think the expectation will be made of school districts before one more year, I guess.

No, and it's a fund balance.

This is different.

This is the economic stabilization account.

Oh, sorry.

It's 68% of fund balance of what you received in state apportionment the previous year.

So it's complex and overly convoluted.

But we would make sure this would kind of move in line with that.

So we would be...

we'd be in calibration with both those going forward.

Thanks.

Director Song?

I think this is, I'm trying to understand the order of things.

We are passing this so that you have the authority as you are working on your 26-27 budget, to close a $80 million deficit versus a $87 million deficit.

So I think for me, this feels a little bit out of context without knowing what the ending fund balance will be.

I think that is a piece of helpful information.

If you can share with us, and I sent the screenshots of a previous presentation, I'm sorry I sent it today so you didn't have much time to absorb it, but I think it was the December budget work session.

You did a really elegant job of going through what are the different components to get us to what an ending balance is, I think it would be helpful to understand where this kind of fits in and where we're expecting to land as we're trying to close the $80 million deficit, what we're expecting our ending balance will be.

So I don't know if that can be covered in the next finance committee or information that can be shared with the board, but this right now feels a little...

abstract.

No, no, and I appreciate that.

It is abstract, right?

I mean, I think that what we have to do, again, because of Washington state law and certain things, is ask for your approval to allow us to use the tools at our discretion to get there.

And so I certainly, you know, I would defer to Kurt, but I think it would be great for us to share at the Finance Committee some of the information that we're working on.

And this, again, is just introductory.

So next month, we're happy to share.

I mean, we work on this on a daily, so I think that would be good for us to share next month anyway.

And we do have May 6. There's a budget preliminary presentation.

It will be covered there in not quite the depth we did in December, but sort of the trend and what you're asking.

We'll share that then.

Other directors?

All right.

Thank you.

So those were our two items for introduction.

We are now moving on to informational presentations, which we're going to take just a few minutes to get over to the U-shaped tables and make that transition.

Okay.

Okay, we have two presentations for us, for informational presentations for us today.

The first is on expanding access to advanced math in middle school.

So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Superintendent Schuldner.

Thank you so much.

It is really my privilege to be here today to talk about these two presentations, but I want to start certainly with the first one.

So, as I've been here now for, you know, two months, 22 days, it is so clear to me how talented the students of Seattle are and how talented the educators of Seattle are.

And I think as I visit our 106 schools, what I've seen is the district in some ways get in the way of having our children learn to their ability, to their speed, to their interest.

and so one of the things that Dr. Montgomery has been really working on is how do we expand access to our students and I think that what's really helpful and important to kind of hold on to is that this is one of the, I think, first big wins to show the trajectory we're trying to do to make sure that our students, our staff, our community really have access to this kind of high quality, high rigorous work.

And as I said from the dais earlier, this idea of possibly having an algebra for all or even a geometry for all, it starts with creating systems and structures that allow more children to have access to advanced work.

And so what this is really, I hope, comes across is Dr. Montgomery's really thoughtful work over the last couple of months on how do we create a system and structure that allows our students and all of our students, and you'll see this, kind of access to the work that they are at the level of currently, rather than having to wait or be held back.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Montgomery.

Thank you.

As Superintendent Scholdinger said, we've been working on this for a few months.

And for those of you who were board members last year, or even community members last year, you might remember around this time last year, before I was even officially in the position, we knew we needed to do something about that five to sixth grade transition.

for our students, especially our HC-identified students.

And so we created the pilot program last summer where we had 244 students who were HC-identified but who had stayed at their neighborhood schools.

We gave them the opportunity during the summer to take a faster track sixth grade math course online those students are now in math 7-8 at their five hc middle school sites they're actually doing beautifully and so as we were gearing up to continue that program this year we took a look system-wide we had some collaborative conversations using data specifically map data something called curriculum embedded assessments and we really looked to see which students are clearly ready for something more than just sixth grade math in sixth grade.

Earlier today, in a couple different presentations, there was talk about getting predictable pathways, getting consistency throughout our district, and this is one step in that direction that we are implementing actually starting tomorrow.

So just to go through the presentation quickly, we're offering a 12-week summer program.

It's online.

It's self-paced.

There are teachers attached to the program.

It is an OSPI-approved course through Imagine Learning, which is the course provider for our virtual academy and Cascade Parent Partnership.

The course has been modified so that our students who are ready for acceleration can move through the course at a faster pace.

And this option, at this point, will set our students up no matter what elementary school they went to, when they hit middle school, they'll be on the same secondary math pathway as the students who are now attending Cascadia, Thurgood Marshall, and Decatur.

The identification for this, we've identified students based on a pattern of exceptionally high math performance.

Also, like I said, CEAs, curriculum embedded assessments that are happening throughout the year in fifth grade.

And then also our students who are HC identified but are in our neighborhood schools.

They're not at Cascadia, Decatur, Thurgood Marshall.

Right now they're taking fifth grade math.

I just want to kind of highlight and stress that point.

We love all of our schools and we want to support all of our schools.

And one of the things about kind of HC designation is at times parents are pulled in two directions.

Do I send my child to the HC program and leave my, you know, neighborhood school, the one that I can walk to, et cetera, et cetera?

Or do I have my child stay at the neighborhood school that, you know, they've been there since kindergarten or even nursery school or pre-K?

But, you know, to what end?

With this ability, it allows us to kind of get them to where they would have been in HC kind of over the course of a couple of years.

So I think it's just, again, part of this expansion of access for children to get the skill level that they are at and not be held back because of what school that they go to.

Now, there's a lot more to do, don't get me wrong, but this is a really good first step that we're trying to kind of telegraph the kind of work that we're trying to do to support our families.

To follow up on that, one of the things that we heard last spring from our neighborhood elementary school leaders and families that they appreciated this option.

They're hoping for additional options in the future, but this is one of the options that supported neighborhood families staying at their local school because they knew that once they hit middle school, they could go faster, they could go deeper.

in math if they so desired.

So just some numbers up there, 555 students representing 57 elementary schools across our district will be invited into this program at this point.

I think it's important to know that 25% of those students do not have an HC designation.

So we're using real-time data, we're using the fall map, we use the winter map, we're looking at SEA data.

We even have a list of students we're continuously watching over the next couple of weeks to see how they do in the spring map and we will invite them in as well.

And so this really, you know, this is an expanded access.

This represents over 300 more, 300 additional students accessing this program if they so desire.

Overall, this is really setting about 23% district-wide of next year sixth graders in Math 7 or above, which sounds about right.

We've heard from families, we've heard from students, they're definitely ready for more, and we're using data to show, yes, they are truly, truly ready for more.

The data is there, it's clear.

And again, I can't stress this enough, about the 25%, so a quarter of those students that are being invited are not HC-designated students.

Now, I would like us to take that as a win by saying, wow, when they took the test for HC, they weren't there, but look at all the great work that the Seattle Public Schools have done to move them forward, which is a good way of thinking about it.

But again, it's still about this kind of access question.

as kids are going through the system, do we have multiple checkpoints so that they can get to the work at their level, their desire, et cetera, et cetera.

So I really appreciate the work of Dr. Montgomery.

Right, and then just call out to the timeline.

One of the pieces of feedback we heard last summer was that families felt like they didn't have quite enough time.

We opened this program in July of last year.

So, we're actually going to open this program in early May.

Doesn't mean that kids have to start it in early May, but we want to just give families as much flexibility and as much time to do this.

that they want and they desire.

We also have fifth grade elementary school teachers who have talked about, you know, ways that they might be able to support students that are doing this program in the final months of school as well.

And we're really just trying to get to a consistent way at sixth grade for who goes into 7th grade math or Math 7-8, who has 6th grade math.

And then we're really set up, I think, beautifully as a system at 7th grade, system-wide, where we have compacted Math 7-8 for all kids.

We have a real clear pathway to calculus by your senior year for all kids.

This is to almost equalize or get kids who stay at the neighborhood schools on the same pathway as the students.

who went to the HC elementary schools, which is a two-year acceleration in math.

It gets kids to calculus their junior year in high school.

I'm happy to take a few questions.

I'm happy also to have board members email me if you're curious or want more details, more of the weeds.

Happy to answer those questions as well.

questions but I do think that you know expanded access taking this as a win trajectory where we're going just repeating things you said all very important things as we're really focusing on how do we make sure that we are offering rigorous programs and holding our students to the high standards we know that they are at

Absolutely, and as you all know better than I, as I am new to the city, there had been some real concerns about geographical access throughout this city and throughout this district, and this really helps us start to highlight that as well.

So, thank you.

other directors.

Director Mangelson.

Representative Mangelson.

I'll get it at some point.

I know you've talked a lot about access for these programs.

I think it's great.

I know that I went into middle school right around when a lot of these programs, at least in my middle school, were kind of dismantled.

And I know that my parents were frustrated about that.

And so I have Kind of two questions, but I'll just ask the first one.

You briefly touched on geographical access.

So one thing that's kind of related to that is I was wondering if there's going to be any supports available to students and parents who may not necessarily have access to the technology that may be required for this.

Will there be supports in, for example, public libraries or something along those lines, or summer school?

Yeah, so I love that question.

And this is an online program.

My vision would be that we could do things like this in person as well for that reason.

But part of our registration process is to ask families if they need a computer and if they need a hotspot or Wi-Fi access.

And so last summer we did distribute Wi-Fi access.

We distributed computers.

And then a portion of my team works all summer long.

So we are monitoring it.

We're calling families.

I'm emailing kids sometimes and saying, hey, notice you haven't logged on.

So we're trying to set it up.

The course itself is pretty robust with support as well, but we're not just shoving it over to an online provider, we're here as well to monitor it.

And I do love your question about internet and computers.

Thank you so much.

They don't have to go to the library if they don't want to.

They could though, that's a great place.

Vice President Briggs?

Yeah, I missed the beginning, so apologies if this was covered at all.

I guess I'm just curious.

So when my older kids were in middle school, my understanding was that anybody could opt in to Math 7-8 in seventh grade.

You didn't have to have HC identification or any particular map performance.

So is that still the case?

And is this, like, this is not feeding into that, and if you don't do this summer program, then you can't opt into Math 7-8?

I'm just trying to understand the relationship.

Yeah, so this was created, we have all sorts of different things happening right now at middle schools in terms of skipping Math 6. We don't want kids to skip Math 6, so this is really a system approach to say we're not skipping, we don't want to skip any math, we want to compact it, provide opportunity.

So we still are set up, all kids, any child can take Math 7, 8, in seventh grade.

And that is that pathway onto calculus your senior year.

So it's a great pathway.

I think it's a huge win for Seattle that we don't celebrate enough.

But this is a model that gets kids really to calculus their students junior year.

Yeah, so that's on the same pathway as Cascadia, Decatur, Thurgood Marshall.

Yeah, and then students go to Running Start.

Students might take AP Statistics.

There's some different options their senior year if they so desire.

And I will say, just personally, I am a little jealous.

The last time I took a math class was in 11th grade because I took BC Calc and my high school didn't have anything for me.

And I did not take math in college.

I mean, I took physics.

But it's really nice to see that.

I mean, I was at a couple of high schools this last couple of weeks.

11th graders in BC Calc.

That's incredible.

And I'm like, well, what happens next year?

And they're like, oh, AP stats or multivariable or I can do running start or I can do whatever.

Those are great things, which I did not have the option for.

So I'm very jealous.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

So I feel like we have been, we, I, some of us, have been pounding against a brick wall for a decade.

And this is like some light coming through.

Finally, after being like, why are we limiting children's access to things?

Why is it this or this and no in between?

What can we do?

At some point, I asked, why can't we offer something in the summer or something supplemental?

No, we weren't allowing outside district credit for kids taking stuff during the summer.

And the response that I got was, well, everybody doesn't have access to that.

I said, well, then why don't we provide it?

I don't understand why we would stop children from learning.

So this is really great.

I also know, of course, that not everybody has the time to do it during the summer.

So my question slash hope is that this is a step in this direction and that this isn't the solution for branching into different ways, but also that once we get hopefully some school year opportunities that we retain this because it's great, we should, and especially because we do have families.

So my kid came from, my younger son who Paula knows was a student at her school, came from a neighborhood school as a highly capable student.

took Math 6 and it just was miserable, took Math 7, 8, and then last summer, I think, he brought this to us.

He said, I really want to take Algebra 1 over the summer so I can take Geometry as an eighth grader.

If he was an HC cohort, that's what he would be doing in eighth grade.

And he took it at a school that doesn't happen to be recognized by SPS for getting credit.

And I know I'm not the only one that has experienced this.

And so that's actually another question that I have is if there's a program.

This is the Robinson Center at University of Washington.

It's not like somebody out of the back of their car being like, hey, I got geometry.

Like, this is pretty legit.

And for some reason, the response that I and other parents have gotten is it doesn't meet our, it's not aligned to our curriculum or it doesn't meet standards.

I would be willing to bet if somebody from SPS were to call over there and say, hey, we have families who take your classes during the summer.

We would like to give them credit for it.

Here's the place that doesn't align.

Are you willing to adapt your program?

Or maybe we could have somebody reevaluate whether or not, like...

I mean, I think it kind of does align.

It actually prepared my child really, really well to reenter SPS to take the next in sequence.

So this is all just connected to how do we continue?

This is so great.

and also in some ways seems so simple that you know I'm not going to belabor why hasn't it happened sooner.

I think we honestly didn't have the people willing to do it and now we do and that's really exciting and so just whatever we the board can do to continue to support these opportunities I think that you know when I go on to like the Bellevue School District website, for example, you can see a flow chart really easily of what their math offerings are.

We still, I think, will be dealing with an SPS for some time as kind of demystifying.

Like, where is that?

How do I get to that?

I didn't get the email about the summer thing.

I'm sorry, I'm totally rambling.

It's after 7.30.

But basically, just this is such a great concrete step towards showing that we can provide more opportunities for more students.

And I would just encourage us to keep Keep doing that, keep going, and also look at those kind of streamlined district-wide things.

Any middle school you'll go to, you'll be able to access X.

It might not necessarily mean that the smallest middle school has a geometry class, but you will be able to access geometry in this other way, or whatever it might look like, I think.

that we have said no to people because of where they live or where their kid goes to school is really not okay.

And I'm really excited to see this taking shape and moving forward and yeah, however the board can help make that more present, more whatever it is you need, thank you.

I appreciate that.

I also appreciate the recognition that this is a step It's an improvement over last year.

And thinking about just how do we build a system?

How do we build coherence?

How do we build something that's predictable and sustainable?

So this is one step.

There's a whole lot that you said I won't respond to at all.

Sorry, yeah, that was way, that was really.

Yeah, there's a lot there.

But I think that there's been some really nice collaboration between multiple departments, you know, highly capable, CAI, even we had our assessment team weigh in on this project.

We had our technology team.

and I think that that's what it takes for us to build systems to move forward regardless of what school kids go to.

One technical question is when kids finish the program, I could imagine a scenario where some kids do really well and are passing whatever online thing they have to enter really well.

Some kids maybe are not doing well.

Who is then the determining factor in Maybe it would be best for the student to essentially retake the course when they come back to school in the fall.

Who's deciding that or talking with families of like, yes, your child took this course, but they really struggled and we think they would benefit from taking Math 7 in seventh grade?

Do we have a...