School Board Special Meeting 1112017 Part 2

our second part of the agenda tonight and that is the student assignment transition plan for 2017-18.

I also wanted to note for the record that earlier in the evening Director Patu joined us so we have all seven board directors here and I guess I'll hand the mic over to Associate Superintendent Herndon.

Good evening, yes I'm Flip Herndon associate superintendent of facilities and operations.

So for this portion on the student assignment plan this is really a continued conversation from the one started last week on the action item in the agenda on the student assignment plan.

I'm sure you all recall the beginning of the conversations around the amendments and I just wanted to have Noel Treat talk very briefly about the kind of sequence of this and what it means for tonight.

Yeah just as a reminder and to the Noel Treat general counsel as a reminder and for the public here tonight just this is a continuation of the discussion you had at your regular meeting last Wednesday.

It was decided there to postpone action to the special meeting here tonight.

So of course you have before you both the main motion approving the transition plan, student assignment plan along with several amendments and as you recall from other recent matters you will work through the amendments one by one.

And you will make the amendment, the motion for the amendment, discuss it, and then vote on that amendment before moving to the next amendment.

And then after you're done with that, you'll circle back and then vote on the main motion as amended.

And I'm here if questions or issues come up along the way.

So I think with that we will go back to the original motion and then it sounds like discussion working through each of the amendments and of course Ashley and myself are here to answer any follow-up questions you may have.

Do we need to introduce the motion?

Okay.

That would be the first step is the main motion and then you can move into discussion and amendments.

This is the approval of the student assignment transition plan for 2017-18 do I hear a motion?

Yes move for the approval of this item which would approve the student assignment plan dated November 8, 2016. Do I hear a second?

Second.

Okay.

Right now we can open this up for discussion questions about the overall plan.

Does anybody have any questions about any aspect of the plan?

I see Director Patu and then Director Burke.

So what are we voting on right now?

What amendment are we looking at?

Right now we are going to start, we are just going to talk about the whole plan and then we will move on to the amendments once we feel we have, because this is starting off as a work session so we still have a chance to discuss the whole thing before we get to the amendments.

Director Burke.

process question and then a couple of comments I want to try to reflect back what I think I heard so we are under Robert's rules now we are under a motion our discussion is supposed to be focused on the main motion and so what is in order on that?

We should not be focusing on the amendments until they are introduced but if there are other topics that are not covered under the amendments would this be the place?

Back to you have quite a bit of you have pretty wide discretion as to how you want to conduct discussion and at what point you want to raise issues or questions.

There's not a really fixed hard rule about that.

When you get to the amendments you should try and confine your discussion to that amendment in particular but at this stage before amendments are made really you could pretty broadly talk about any aspect of this that you want to raise now.

Okay I'll start with something super general just around process because I know that you For the directors and especially for the public the student assignment plan and boundaries process has been painful.

It's inherently a painful process every year when we have a significant number of changes and even a small number of changes can be really painful for the families that are affected.

And so my my ask is that recognizing that this is a process we go through every year that we take a look holistically at the process and if we can try to break the mold a little bit from our existing sequence which involves developing a recommendation going through a public engagement cycle and then going through board review which has the possibility of creating amendments.

If we can go through a board introduction earlier followed by public review.

so that that public review time period can incorporate any initial board feedback or amendments so we actually separate introduction and action by a public outreach period.

That's one of my requests.

The other one is that we combine boundaries and student assignment plan and I know that in the past they were done together and that they were actually separated because of some of the complexities but that The functionality of boundaries and the functionality of how we direct students to operate within those boundaries or how they're assigned within those boundaries are things that are connected at the hip.

And I think that we we owe it to our community to figure out how to communicate that in a coherent way.

So those are my two high level requests.

Can we just make a correction so in the original motion it was read as dated November 8 but on the updated bar it's actually dated December 22. I just wanted to make sure we were accurate.

So moved.

And so seconded.

Director Harris and then Director Geary.

The segue then from what Director Burke had to say, hopefully by the time that we do the next revised student assignment plan we will have a community engagement feedback tool.

which should help us a great deal.

I know it's certainly one of my priorities and I believe it's a priority of senior staff here at the district.

Because without that we hear from the loudest, the best organized and we are not doing as good a job as we can.

The other piece would be it's the board members rights to make amendments to policy it's a statutorily granted right and job.

And I've seen some emails frankly that are rude, insulting, inaccurate, inappropriate, accusing folks of nefarious ethics.

And it's my hope that one of the things that we can do is do a better job as the board and staff of getting feedback from the potential pitfalls of some of these.

Also to have more staff support in doing things like the race and equity tool.

Because a board member brings forth an amendment I'm not sure it's particularly fair to ask board members that are volunteers to be doing their own research and to be doing their own analysis when you folks are the experts in the business.

So I think we can do a lot of better things next year and get this down to a real collaboration and in terms of some of the cleanup issues If there is a cleanup issue that is created by an amendment is it true that a board member needs to address the cleanup issue or can we say to staff can you address area 93 or whatever number it is?

It's a process question or comment more than anything.

And last even though this process has been really really painful Thank you for being responsive to those emails and to telling us if we are misinterpreting or misunderstanding.

I'd like to see even more candid feedback in the past because conflict is not a bad thing if we get to a better place.

Just a quick answer on the cleanup, sometimes the conflict could be a conflict that requires board action on both sides so for instance if there is an amendment that is in conflict and this gets to Director Burke's comment earlier to an earlier board voted agenda item that set a boundary and now an amendment alters that boundary then it makes it, we can't probably clean that up in a way that wouldn't require board vote.

Not all the time, sometimes we can clean those things up but if there is conflict that requires board vote then we have to figure out the best way to do that.

But can we flag it and say I see a potential pitfall problem here, how do you want to address it?

Yes we can do that.

Director Geary.

Okay I agree with Director Burke's comment in terms of allowing us to build in more time and maybe combining boundaries and student assignment plan and I'm hoping that with the introduction and training on our new planning tool that that will be a much smoother process for us all to engage in the conversations around both of those issues at one time because it seems to have been really ineffective to try and keep it all in your head as to how it rolls out under one scenario or another as you're trying to make all these disjointed decisions.

Right now I'm not in favor of approving the student assignment plan and that has in large part to do with just the creation of I don't think that is the correct tool to use to create a self-contained program indicator.

I think it has unfairly put that movement on your department when that is something that should have been a much greater discussion and I understand that from your perspective you are taking care of the logistics of how we have previously structured our district but it's growing something that I think has been shown to be inequitable as you apply it over our whole district.

And so you know if it was my druthers we would be looking at opening advanced learning opportunity schools in option schools in as I said before Cedar Park and Decatur opening enrollment we would satisfy the law by offering the type of education that the law requires but not necessarily only allowing certain kids access to it and hopefully that would open up because I think there are a lot of parents that would think that their students would benefit from those opportunities that are left behind in the way that we have structured it.

And while we say that we're offering everything in every school because we allow certain kids that would provide the passion to those kinds of curriculums to siphon off into our HCC it leaves the kids who would also benefit from that cohort let's say not getting access to what it brings.

So I have a fundamental problem with that.

So my third point would be that I want the notice I think that we need seeing the public come over and over again with allegations and beliefs of broken promises I would like us to be very clear in our communications to the public that we are still in flux in terms of trying to manage our capacity issues around certain areas and also trying to manage the equitable delivery of our education models to all of our kids.

And that that may require some real reshaping and rethinking because I think what we have are some structural problems within the school district that are contributing to the The opportunity gap and the achievement gap as I see that we are not providing the same kind of opportunities.

We've created a structure that doesn't appeal to all of our different populations.

They don't feel welcome in it and yet they need access to advanced learning opportunities and when I say that I also want to always reemphasize that that means academic, intellectual and creative and I don't think we're hitting on all of those.

So from my personal perspective I will continue to work on changing this but that means that our public needs to be on notice that changes could be coming further and that should this plan get passed tonight then there may be another plan next year after we have the benefit of all the things that I've talked about.

So I just put I just throw that out.

step in here for a minute.

I do recall, well first of all I agree with Directors Burke and Geary that more lead time on these big decisions would be helpful for the board and for the public.

And then as far as bringing the student assignment plan and growth boundaries together I believe staff did do that once before and it was considered too much to handle at once I think and so this time they brought it to us in two different pieces.

And this is the previous board experience what I just described so this is just historical knowledge.

So I think we have to figure out which is the right way to go and what are the necessary supports and steps we need to make whatever choice we do work best for everybody.

These are big topics that affect so many families and there are so many pieces to the puzzle So we all want to make the right decisions and it's hard to know and it's also hard to know what the impact is on some of them.

A couple of questions that I have have to do with the uncertainty of what we're looking at because no matter what we decide tonight we're not really going to know who's going to be in our two new middle schools until after open enrollment.

And so that concerns me alongside the fact that we apparently have no mitigation funds for these schools.

So that's what's been sort of keeping me up at night is how to get these two schools running in a way where we can offer our students as much as we possibly can and is this the right year to be doing this sort of thing but there is no other way really for us to plan.

I mean this is a growing city a growing district we are finally opening buildings rather than closing buildings and it just so happens we are opening two buildings in a year when we have to take a look at serious budget cuts.

So no matter what we decide tonight I really would like assurances from staff and from the superintendent that we will put a really sharp focus on these two schools and make sure we do everything we can to give these schools the resources that they need.

And this is part of the concerns that drove my amendment and we haven't gotten to that yet and nor do we need to get to that just yet.

I just wanted to put that out there.

Are there any other overall comments about the student assignment plan?

Director Harris.

I don't know if this is a question for you, for general counsel Treat and or for Chief But the language regarding special ed placement has that been changed or ameliorated because we've heard a great deal from the special ed community?

Well in the most recent exchange that I had with Chief Jesse and also with our legal counsel I'm not sure if we totally resolved it.

It got down to wanting to change two specific words on page 54 and 53 I believe of the student assignment plan.

And what I was suggesting was we delete the word capacity and that we delete the word greater.

And this is coming to me from the special ed community that would like more predictability for their students.

They would like their students to have the same rights that other students have.

And just removing these two words is believed will show that we recognize that these students deserve the same level of predictability that we can possibly offer.

And so I would still like to make those changes and this being also a work session we could ostensibly make those changes is my understanding.

Wyeth Jessee did you want to speak to that?

Thank you Director Peters again Wyeth Jessee chief of student support services and I just would like to.

Again since we had a correspondence via email I'll just kind of outlay that for everyone here.

It's just around when we're thinking about students and their IEP's.

On their IEP's back it talks about the setting in which they'll get an education.

And that setting often times talk about ratios.

You know small group setting.

What's the staffing ratio is the way we would be looking at how that configuration would look.

So then we calculate that what we call least restrictive environment.

It's a calculation we have to do by law for the individual IP but also for the state we report on it.

And it's actually something that we're working on as a district as we report that.

The reason I state that is the significance of it.

because by law we have to put them in an environment where the individual plan says where they are at.

If we were to not consider capacity and to think about how many classrooms we have designated for the small group space we could easily run afoul of an issue where we have too many students who need specific services in a specific kind of environment because it is down to our case managers in special ed who have specialized skills.

They are the ones that are going to instruct students on those skills and again using the scenario here with the small group we run out of those spaces and if we were to just simply put more students in there we would no longer be looking at a least restrictive environment or most certainly looking at what we are looking at as far as a small group setting.

And this is something that happens a lot during the testing period.

When we try to test a small group and all the students need a small group all of a sudden you have a lot of students in a room.

as we look forward.

And then I know Flip could always talk about capacity, why that also impacts just what we have available at our schools.

Would it be possible to put up the language on those pages that I'm referring to?

Is it part of this slide?

It should be an attachment.

This reflects the most up-to-date so from introduction on December 7 there have been updates and that is what this version is right in front of us.

I think we need to go down just a little bit more.

Let's see okay.

Alright well two of them in the last paragraph here the students who are eligible for other special education continuum services one of them there's a sentence that says finishes with and provide greater assignment predictability.

Do we need the word greater?

Can we just say provide assignment predictability?

And this may not seem like an important issue but to the special ed community It means that we are more committed to predictability when we don't modify our nouns that way.

Is there any problem with deleting greater?

This is one of those preference things, just as clarity I'm almost looking at legal counsel just because it gets down to technical language and I think I'd rather have him start there.

Yeah Noel Treat general counsel again, I don't see a legal concern about deleting the word greater from that sentence.

One procedural thing to point out though is given that we are here for action tonight if you want to propose a change you will have to do that by a motion.

And I do have though a concern when we get to it that I can talk a little bit about the idea of deleting the word capacity there is something to think about there.

Okay now that I found it on the page I'll explain it and then you can explain your concern So the very last two sentences, these assignments are in alignment with approved boundaries and feeder patterns to the extent possible depending on capacity, proximity, and individual service needs.

So that's the place where I'm suggesting we delete the word capacity.

For two reasons, one it's understood in general that everything depends on capacity in this district.

It applies to all students.

So to specify it here seems to be unnecessary.

And then because it says to the extent possible we are talking about proximity and service needs that we are offering the modifiers and the flexibility that staff requires in terms of making these decisions.

So these are the two suggestions that I have.

Director Geary.

I don't see any problem with the word greater.

I do understand that capacity doesn't affect these students because Capacity doesn't necessarily affect a student's right to go to their neighborhood assignment school but because of our need to actually provide very defined services to a student under the legal obligation of the IEP the capacity does take on a different meaning with regard to serving these students.

So I understand difference the greater I don't think that there would be any problem from my perspective on that but the capacity one I agree with the legal analysis and then I did hear from the or I contacted the president of the special ed PTSA and I'm not entirely sure of Hannah Marzinski's role or involvements now but she was very much an integral part of the special ed task force and neither of those people indicated that they had any amendments to make to this language at all at this point just to give a broader perspective of what the community feedback that I sought out from the community.

I did get my feedback from members of SEAC and long-time members of the special ed community and these are issues that actually have come up every single year.

Every single year the special ed community tells us they feel that the student assignment plan does not adequately commit to predictability for their students in the same way it does for other students.

I agree with the comments that were made about the importance of capacity in assigning students for special education services.

I know the intent here based on what you said and what we discussed earlier today isn't to eliminate capacity as a consideration.

but to try and add greater parity between how people see the plan treating special education students versus other students.

The thing though that I would caution is that because capacity is an important, a very important consideration for special education services that the deletion of the word here It could be interpreted by some to mean and by a court potentially because courts usually presume that legislative changes have a substantive effect.

So there could be an argument created then that if you delete capacity here that we might face where a parent or family who didn't get the exact assignment they wanted could argue, hey, you based your decision on capacity.

The board eliminated the word capacity from the plan.

That means you can't use capacity.

capacity as a criteria or a factor.

So I do worry about that.

So if the board were to proceed with deleting this word, I would want, I could help you craft some language on the motion to amend, but I would want it to be clear that you're not suggesting we can't still use capacity for assignment.

You want some hold harmless language for general counsel?

But just because I think we want to be clear we don't want this deletion to later be read as meaning the board indicated you can't consider capacity for this assignment because I think we need to.

Is that not covered by the language to the extent possible?

Well, it could be, but the problem is now we've got a document that historically has this word in it, so a court looking at a legislative change like this would say, well, if you eliminated that word, that had some kind of substantive meaning, and it must have meant you didn't want capacity considered.

That's one potential argument or interpretation I think could flow from making that amendment.

Even though standing alone without the history of deleting the word, you could say, well, to the extent possible, it gives us wide discretion to consider any number of factors.

You know proactively taking one word out could suggest an intent that it not be considered.

So that's just I think some risk you would face in a potential legal challenge down the road.

Well if I were to make a motion to strike the word greater.

I just need to say that and ask for a second?

Yeah you would need to make a motion to strike the word greater from just to be specific you might say from section 3A third paragraph.

Is that correct?

Of the let's see what are we calling this?

Yeah of the December 22nd student assignment transition plan.

Remember that I make a motion to strike the word greater from section 3A of the student transition assignment plan.

Student assignment transition plan.

I second that motion.

So now you essentially have a motion to amend the main motion based on this change.

And then do we at this point did anyone want to discuss it or do we just go ahead and vote on it?

This would be the point where if anyone wants to say anything or ask you a question, that would happen.

I just wanted to, because the conversation went around a little bit, I just want confirmation again from staff that you see this as a neutral change from your perspective and I think that's what I heard.

I'm just looking for confirmation of that.

Yeah, it's more stylistic than I think substantive.

Okay it sounds like yeah.

Director Blanford.

Let me try to add a little specificity.

Is it operationally neutral?

Because it seems to me that it is by removing the modifier it has the potential to make it more operationally difficult.

Is that and I could be way off base here.

And I'm not asking you to say one side or the other I'm asking you to more predict how difficult or how easier it will be to actually move this language into operation.

Yep so for the question so I did again this is somewhat under interpretation and that's why I You tend to go for when I go to the gray I don't tend to have usually a lot of opinion on it, choice I have a lot, greater I don't.

And I don't think it's just to say yeah the link schools chart does provide assignment predictability for most and then there is some other language that follows it as we have unique services that are only located at very few schools.

DHH comes for example at Thompson Roosevelt.

So that's in the plan.

That plan does have historical elements to it and would be help provide that guidance.

So I don't think that provides really to me any significant change to it.

It's under interpretation if it's individual if it did provide greater assignment predictability for you or not and it might not for all.

So that's why I think maybe that's why it was asked.

But I don't even know the intent.

So does that help?

Yeah and I would agree with that interpretation this statement is more just an explanation as to why we do the online posting in the first place so I don't see it as substantively mandating some change in our practices.

So is this the right point to vote on this amendment?

Yes.

Ms. Ritchie the roll call please.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

The motion to amend has passed unanimously.

Are there any other questions or comments about the general student assignment plan before we move on to the amendments?

Okay.

Oh, Ashley Davies.

So I wanted to bring up just two small things in terms of the language one of which there was an email earlier in regards to the addition of Nova as an alternative learning experience school and being designated in that category in the additional appendix that we have added in the updated student assignment plan.

So, initially when we brought this to introduction we had talked about Nova transitioning from, it's currently an option school and it abides by the option school timelines and us moving to Nova to have some more flexibility in those timelines and to have that school be more accessible to more of our students who may have particular needs that aren't met in a traditional high school and so with that initial introduction of the student assignment plan we had said that Nova was transitioning from an option school to a service school and so that language is written in there as a service school.

But with the addition of the appendix of the alternative learning experience schools and moving those four ALEs to that section we would just like to make an update to that language that references us transitioning Nova from an option school to a service school to saying Nova will be moving from an option school from being categorized to an option school to being listed in the alternative learning experience school section.

It has actually always been an ALE because I was previously approved by the board so it doesn't again change any of its offerings or the way students are learning or experiencing the programming there.

But just wanted to say that for the record because we did want to make that update to

Director Blanford.

And to that, I appreciate that change and that clarification.

Does it meet the concerns voiced by the principal of the school?

Because I know that Nova has a very rich history of not meeting its enrollment targets when it first comes out but consistently meeting them over time.

And so does this, does that clarification that you just shared with us, past muster with him.

So the clarification actually doesn't make any change in terms of his perception of the change.

That initial move from an option school to having the flexibility in the timeline from no longer being an option school is what allows more flexibility in students enrolling past that open enrollment and school choice date.

So yes, that will give him access to more students throughout the year.

Excellent, thank you.

I had one other thing, but I didn't know if you wanted to discuss that first and then I can mention my other thing.

Go ahead.

I imagine so in one of the other small changes we wanted to make so there in the tiebreaker section there it says formerly spectrum and so initially we had some language that had said formerly spectrum but we just want to take out the formerly and just make sure it just reads spectrum.

So just read spectrum rather than formally spectrum and that's consistent with all the other instances within the document.

So by that do you mean that it is still called spectrum?

Yes that means we are still calling it spectrum in this document because the other references are still spectrum.

So are these changes that you are making now or are you just drawing our attention to changes that have been made?

And do we need an amendment for these changes?

I don't necessarily think we need an amendment to the, I mean these are what we would consider cleanup of language and typically we don't need an amendment for the cleanup of language it changes none of the intent programming or anything of the document itself.

It's essentially just cleaning up some of the small language pieces.

Thank you.

Consistency yes.

So I don't I don't necessarily know that I don't believe we would need an amendment I just wanted to call it to the attention so that it was recognized that this would be something that we were just going to update.

All right.

Are there any other questions or comments or should we move on to the amendments?

Superintendent Nyland.

Ashley or Flip do either of you have the costs for the amendments as we get ready to move into that conversation?

So I believe I'm not remembering from before I believe that two of them had greater costs than some of the others and as we completed our discussion on the budget I hear you that you want to go forward with Cedar Park and you don't want to cut curriculum that means that we've got part of that 11 million to still fill and then I'm very concerned about anything that we do to add to the whole.

So I heard the conversation about saying that we're good with moving forward with WSS but if we can't get the 11 million somewhere else then we're going to have to come back to staff at some point.

Yes, so one of the attachments on this Agenda does have the fiscal cost.

So there's a two-page fiscal cost piece on there so for amendment one The cost Was estimate costs on transportation is approximately one hundred and fifty four thousand a There's the possibility of 432,000 in mitigation, staff mitigation funds.

And then there was a cost depending on the number of portables, which we don't have yet, but that's kind of a budget of approximately 180,000 per portable.

So that was for amendment one.

For amendment 2, the fiscal note on that is approximately $77,000.

Amendment 3 had been withdrawn.

Amendment 4, the approximate.

Amendment 4 was withdrawn.

Amendment 5, we don't have a fiscal note on that.

Yeah it's just about an allocation of space so there wasn't a fiscal note on that.

Director Patu.

I actually wanted to ask you some question on that on that number five.

Can you tell me exactly the seven rooms that is assigned to Lipton spring, is that seven room actually going to fit the programs that are actually at Lincoln which is 14 rooms with the special ed program?

Yes so I think we had tried to answer this one before so on the two and I believe I sent out kind of a floor plan of the first two levels.

So based on the number of students in there we believe they would fit in the space allocation that we have.

common spaces, some classrooms, and two science lab size classrooms.

So there's one on each floor.

One could be a science lab classroom, one could be an art classroom, and then there's access to the other parts of the building.

So if you're talking about middle school students, there's a chance that they're probably going to flow throughout the building to have access to other programming.

elementary portion that's what most of the physical modifications were to that particular building.

But given the number of students we do believe that they would fit in that allocation of the two floors that they have available.

Thank you.

I'm going to bring us back to amendment one and we will start off with the costs.

So I do appreciate the analysis of the costs.

As far as the mitigation funds I'd like to understand the 432 in mitigation funds because on the one hand we've been told that there are no mitigation funds for next this year and so could somebody explain the breakdown of the 432 what would that be for?

I don't know if I have a specific piece beyond what the sheet is.

So there's a little bit of a narrative on this.

Okay.

And Ms. Berge will be down shortly.

But it looks like in this one, I mean the mitigation funds are an approximation since we don't know exactly what the numbers are.

It can be a little bit of a challenge anytime you're talking about this because a few students one way or another can have an impact on an additional staff person or whatever that may be.

So, and that would go, that would be true also of the buses, clearly we're looking at the additional buses, we'd obviously try and do as much efficiency as possible so it's possible that depending on what the other routes are looking like you might gain some efficiencies in there but this is we want to make sure we're being as accurate as possible about the impact bigger side of the impact fiscal cost rather than underestimate it's best to have the high side on the estimation.

And again for the record we would have to put the money forward For the first year and then the state would reimburse us the second year.

For the transportation piece probably because we would figure out what we are doing with the routes.

For the other pieces you know the mitigation on staffing is what it is.

Right, right.

And then for the portables are you envisioning that we would be adding portables to Whitman and buying new portables for Hamilton or Washington because they both currently have portables And there will be fewer students even if the eighth graders were grandfathered so do you still envision that we would need to purchase even more portables for Hamilton or Washington?

I don't know if we would have to do that.

We do have a challenge with the portables at Hamilton because our agreement with the city was for one year.

I'm not sure how much grace we would get from the landmarks board because they're the ones who actually have to approve that one.

I'm not optimistic about that.

So, it would confine our spaces there.

You're correct about Washington.

The plan originally, once Meany opened, was to assess the number of portables and then related to a small enrollment, we could probably demolish some of the older portables and then you know when we talk about future levies, capital levies and replacements then we'd be talking about a whole new school and then all those portables would go away.

Some of the older portables can't be moved, where we can we try and repurpose portables but if they're of a certain age, portables basically have what's like a VIN on them, like a vehicle identification number and it's a code that the city has so they're tracked.

experienced that they don't have that number on them, they can't be moved.

So in that case we can only demolish.

And we do have portables on some of the locations that are that experienced.

JoLynn the question I had asked before was there is a $432,000 mitigation estimate attached to my amendment.

Can you speak to what that would be comprised of?

Yes.

Thank you.

And I think I'm going to try to cover all the this is about grandfathering the eighth graders.

Correct.

So in the grandfathering of the 8th graders the amount was calculated based on the assumption that potentially two additional teachers above what the typical enrollment would generate would be needed at both Robert Eagle Staff and at Meany middle school due to low 8th grade attendance if not all planned students attended those schools and so when we talk about the grandfathering We have a limit in our collective bargaining agreement about a secondary teacher assignment with no more than three different curriculum course preps and no more than two subject fields and so what we've seen in the past secondary students need a minimum of six courses each year we need at least two teachers for each grade so if those If that school is very small it could mean that we can't offer the regular course offerings without mitigation that we offer at all of our other schools.

It's more limited.

It would be a basic, it's a basic course offering that would differ from what we offer in other places and typically we have mitigated that.

So the board could choose not to mitigate that but it would have to recognize that that course offering could be different than all of our other schools.

Okay well I'm going to step back a bit and just sort of explain this amendment and then lead to another question about contingency plans because I am concerned about open enrollment and what we're going to know and not know until afterwards.

So just for clarity's sake my amendment applies to all the rising eighth graders who are slated to be moved to two new schools that we're opening up Meany middle school and Robert Eagle Staff middle school.

And this impacts students at Eckstein, Jane Addams Middle School, Whitman, Hamilton, Washington, and McClure.

I don't think I've left anything out.

That's a total of 369 students.

The reason why the focus is on the eighth graders is because they are the ones who would be moved in their final year of middle school.

and the spirit of the amendment is to allow them to complete their middle school education in the same building.

It's not ideal to move any of these students and so I'm regretful that we're having to move students at all.

So what I was trying to do here was to try to lessen the amount of disruption for two reasons.

One of them was to just not move as many students and also because we're in a year where we do not have all the funds that we'd like there is an argument to be made that we can better serve our students in places where we already have things in place.

So the let's see The sixth grade students will be students coming up from elementary school who will be going to just a different middle school and they will be able to stay there for three years.

The seventh graders will be able to stay there for two years and graduate from that middle school.

So they will have a continuity that the eighth graders will not.

And so the purpose of this was to allow some stability for the eighth graders.

By way of history this district has a history of disrupting students moving them around and in the past It was for a completely different reason, in the past it was because schools were closed and that's when I first got involved with the Seattle school district was in the closure struggles of 2008-2009 when hundreds and hundreds of students were removed due to closures and splits of programs.

And I joined with hundreds of parents to oppose these closures, we felt that they were disruptive, we felt that the district was growing and that these were ill-advised.

The closures went through And but about six months later the district had to reopen a lot of the buildings because it turned out the district was starting to grow and that's when it started to begin its trajectory that we see now.

So the good news is we do see that now and we are opening buildings and we have to fill them with students.

When Jane Addams middle school was opened a few years ago there were a lot of eighth grade parents in particular who lobbied to have grandfathering at that time.

And at that time the school board which was before I was on the school board opted not to offer grandfathering and I remember at the time parents appealing to the board and also appealing to those of us who joined the board later if we could somehow correct that and somehow retroactively allow some kind of grandfathering and I told them well no we can't undo a decision that was made by a previous board and you know just for the record when the board makes a decision no matter how we vote on it we are supposed to rally around it or at least you know support it to some extent afterwards.

So it resonated with me then that moving students is a very disruptive thing and that grandfathering is one way to allow them to stay in place and finish out and offer them some stability.

So when growth boundaries discussion came up a few months ago from the beginning I I talked to staff about what we can do in the way of grandfathering not only for 8th graders but for 4th graders and 5th graders and some of the amendments that some of us brought forth in the growth boundaries discussion did include grandfathering components to the elementary moves.

Because it was brought to my attention that the 8th grade, my 8th grade amendment may not have been fully vetted, may not have had all the community input that would be preferred I chose not to bring it forward during the growth boundaries discussion but opted to allow two more months until the student assignment plan vote for people to give us input on this and they did.

And so we've heard from people in favor we've heard from people opposed people brought up all kinds of good points pros and cons and I really appreciate all the constructive input that people have given and this is exactly what I wanted.

I wanted to hear from everybody on this.

We also heard from staff on the cost associated with this.

I will say that the cost to some extent we don't know for sure what the cost will be.

And I will come back to that in just one second.

In terms of the pros I think they boil down to this.

It will allow some students to complete their year, their middle school in the same school.

It will lessen the disruption for students.

and to some it may be cost effective to serve students in where they currently are.

It will also be more equitable in that it will allow all the students affected to grandfather.

Right now what will effectively potentially happen is through the open enrollment process there will be students who will be able to stay in place based on capacity and that will likely not be the case for the Washington students or the Hamilton students because their schools are already full.

And so my amendment would allow everybody the opportunity to have the option to grandfather just for this one year, just a transition year and then it would allow the full contingent of the 6th and 7th graders to fill the school.

The cons of course, this would result in potentially a smaller cohort and there would be less resources and I recognize that and that concerns me.

I'm also concerned about the cost related to this.

and there's also a lack of predictability because we're not going to know who's going to avail themselves of these options.

But there's a lack of predictability no matter what.

For the reasons that I just stated and that is that we can have students choose to use the open enrollment option and stay in place.

And so I am concerned about that and I do have a question for staff if We did receive an email from the Whitman PTA saying they had done a survey of their families asking them if they had the option, I mean they do have the option to stay in place through open enrollment, how many of them would have veiled themselves of that rather than moving to Robert Eagle Staff.

And somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the respondents said yes they would prefer to stay at Whitman.

I will say this was not a complete survey and they did not have complete responses, not everybody responded to it.

But if that's any indication we could see a lot of Whitman students who don't choose to go to Robert Eagle Staff and the upshot could be that we don't have the full complement of students in the eighth grade even without my amendment.

So I'm putting this out there because I really want us to be ready to have some kind of mitigation no matter what.

And if we don't you know we need to offer some kind of assurances to the families at both Meany and Washington.

Earlier in the night we talked about the creative arts program that was put on the table something potentially to cut.

I thought I read that that was going to be one of the offerings at Meany and so I am concerned that we need to we need to commit to these middle schools no matter what and offer them the resources that we can.

So finally I just want to say that as a district I would like us to find a way to offer stability and predictability to our families and not disrupt our students as much as we do and that is what I was attempting to accomplish here with this amendment.

I just wanted to add a point of clarification for open enrollment and the point you raised about predictability.

So our open enrollment process is also based on capacity and factors such as ensuring that we are again utilizing the space we have across the district.

efficiently to support the different programs that we have.

So just because every single student at a particular school may fill out a choice application for another school we wouldn't you know deplete one school such that every student could have a seat at another school.

You know there is a balance again between being able to offer choice but then being able to make sure to the extent possible we don't have schools that are overcapacity and we do have schools that have a healthy enrollment to be able to support diverse programming and curriculum.

All right thank you.

I just have one question and then we will move on to, okay.

I'm not sure if I officially introduced that as an amendment.

Okay I'll officially introduce it and then I have one more question that is amendment one to the student assignment plan for 2017-18 allowing grandfathering with transportation for all rising eighth graders.

Would you read that or do I read that?

All right as the author.

Approval of this item would permit and implement grandfathering with transportation at comprehensive middle schools for all rising eighth graders in the 2017-18 school year who live within any area that is changing from one middle school to another for the 17-18 school year due to the opening of the Eagle Staff and Meany middle schools.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right is there any other questions or comments about this particular amendment?

I did yeah I will let Director Geary speak first.

My biggest concern is the future of Robert Eagle Staff middle school and well allowing everybody to do something equally doesn't necessarily mean it will lead to an equitable outcome for the students who end up at Robert Eagle Staff middle school and I don't personally feel like there are the assurances that this is going that if all these amendments go through that what we will have is a fully formed middle school.

And while my understanding of all of these things isn't perfect what it does seem to me is that kids from North Seattle are going to end up in Robert Eagle Staff Middle School and those are the kids during our Olympic Hills conversation we were saying tended to be higher free and higher racial diversity.

And so if we end up having these kids funnel into a middle school that isn't fully developed and doesn't have the resources to provide a robust education that is commensurate with the education that we are providing in all of our other middle schools then what have we done in terms of our goal with regard to providing opportunities for all of our kids.

and closing the achievement gap.

So that is my biggest concern with this amendment and certainly a mitigation price tag of nearly half a million dollars doesn't do anything to help in that analysis.

Just a point of clarity the grandfathering would just be for one year only one time transitionary year and that basically the following year you would have a full complement of sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

And so is one year for one student more valuable or less valuable than one year for another student?

Not one student it's 369 students from about five different schools.

I think Director Blanford and then Director Burke.

I appreciate Director Geary's discussion and analysis of equal versus equitable.

This seems to me that we want part of the argument that has been made is that We want all eighth graders to have an experience in their in the school that they came from and that strikes me as equal and that is very different than equitable which is that we take students who are least well-performing and try to figure out a way to double down on their performance so that they can so they can achieve a level of equality at some point in the future.

So I think that's an important nuance that we need to be paying attention here.

because it's very easy to use the word equitable when that's not actually what we're talking about.

Secondly I think about the equity of the price point on this and I'm thinking of the $766,000 in light of the conversation that we had earlier today how we're resolving our $74 million budget deficit.

It is difficult for me to be comfortable adding one more penny to that because I know that our equity goals will be severely impacted if we add more money to it and we can try to mitigate all we want to but at the end of the day as principal Chris was sharing with us earlier Kronos I'm sorry I didn't use his last name appropriately as he shared with us this is impacting all classrooms So to add even more money to our deficit seems to me to be a bit unconscionable.

And so I'm planning on voting in opposition to this and it is not because I am insensitive to the needs of our rising eighth graders.

But I think in the grander scheme is we're looking at the responsibilities that we have to serve all the students in our schools.

This one does not get us where we need to be and actually works to our disadvantage so I'll be voting in opposition.

Director Burke.

I'd like to begin by thanking Director Peters for bringing this up and I understand potentially among the directors and among the community that there's been some divisiveness around this and you know that that kind of goes here for me because when I mean from the conversations that I've had with my colleagues I have the utmost faith that every single one of us is trying to make thoughtful deliberate decisions.

We're trying to align our decisions with sets of core values.

We're trying to be respectful of families students And this one this has been one of the most challenging ones for me since joining the board as well.

And it's because when I think about my core values and you know what I try to bring to my decision making I talk a lot about disruption and minimizing disruption and you know if we aspire to provide a stable educational environment for our kids picking them up from one site and putting them down in another and saying thank you very much have a great time at your new school is not really aligned with that core value.

Another core value is student-centered decisions and so when we're trying to think about what allows our students to be successful again disruption, relationships with their staff, their teachers, with their peers And so then we take those core values and we contrast them against some of the other things we've been talking about the budget issues.

The fact that we have existing middle schools that are impacted that have that are overfilled.

And as a result we're compromising the educational experiences of the kids in those buildings.

Then we're starting up new buildings.

And if we under enroll those schools.

We risk compromising the educational experiences of those students as well.

So this is not.

a clear cut picking one group over the other this is a question of how to balance all of our core values and all of our district priorities in a way that serves our students and that's one of the reasons this has been such a struggle for me.

I look back you know one of the slides that I found when I was looking at boundaries the growth boundaries there's a couple of guiding principles that the board had identified and one of them was to minimize disruptions by aligning new boundaries with current attendance area boundaries when feasible.

So that relates to boundaries but it comes back to the concept of minimizing disruptions.

Another one was to be responsive to family input to the extent wherever possible or to the extent feasible.

This is one of those soft ones of well how feasible is it.

We have a financial crunch.

We have to populate new buildings and we want to be respectful for our eighth graders.

We want them to have a great a great year our rising seventh graders.

So I think the the struggle for me has been where to come down on this and my my feeling is that as a system we we are better served by asking our eighth graders to go to their new schools and create amazingly successful environments there.

And it hurts me to ask them to do that because I recognize that it's a hardship for them and I recognize that they've come here to ask us to let them stay.

And here I am turning it around putting the pressure back on you and I apologize for that but that's what I feel is the least worst option in this particular case.

But I want to loop back around to the process that we go through to create this student assignment plan and boundaries and that what I've experienced as a director is when we try to do our community engagement and try to understand how our values align with community what are the unintended consequences of potential amendments.

We find that it's really challenging and a lot of times people go places that are you know they go to places of fear or places of discontent as compared to coming together around trying to understand what is the common goal.

And that's why I come back to when we do this in the future when we're making huge decisions that can impact large groups of students that we figure out how to get a more comprehensive engagement that includes board and staff when we go out to the community because otherwise everything looks like a left turn when you are this close to the end.

Director Patu.

I too have struggled with this.

And it's been especially during these times when we're really looking at our deficit.

But as I always said before that we're here because of the kids.

As I continue on to wait out what's the positive and what's the minus I know that there's you know there's minuses in terms of supporting this and there's also pluses in supporting it.

And I realize that many of the students have come out numerous times to tell us exactly what they're you know what is it that they want and I hear them loud and clear where you know we don't want our education interrupted because we decided that we're going to move them somewhere else and as a grandma and also a mother of five kids I have 19 grads short by the way.

It's really hard for me to sit here and say let's not do this.

And so for me, you know, our students have been here on a day out, day in, wanting us to support them moving on to their state to stay on at their eighth grade so they could finish up their school.

And I really believe that we should not allow these kids to be disruptive, especially if they've already started a trend there in terms of them wanting to stay at their school where they need to be.

And it's really hard to be an eighth grader and try to interrupt what's already going on because we're getting them ready to go on to ninth grade.

And if we want them to be stabilized and be able to learn all they can so they can be better students in high school that we cannot interrupt their education again and move them somewhere else.

So I'm really I am going to support this amendment.

Dr. Geary.

That is a fine analysis and I don't criticize it at all but I do think about are the kids that are going to come to us in the fall who are at Robert Eagle Staff middle school begging us for mitigation funds and then we won't have that flexibility then.

So we're not it's not that the voice of any student is being ignored it's trying to anticipate all the voices that we will hear if we go forward with all the amendments that are being student driven.

It's so hard to balance out the voices that are here against the voices that we will hear from.

I too am very sensitive to this issue.

I had a student who went to three different schools during middle school.

He ended up at Ingram in the new IBX program and that was a challenge as well.

He was a student that really went through a lot of changes.

But he was in a program.

that and came from a community that had a whole lot of parent support and a lot of parents showing up at those schools to make sure that the changes that those students were facing were being dealt with.

And I think that is the beauty of a lot of these people who are so interested in having their students grandfathered is that you're here and you will show up for your students wherever they are.

and you will make that change work for them just as all those changes for my students ultimately led to him receiving a great an exceptional Seattle Public Schools education and he is doing great now.

Were there disruptions?

Yes.

Was that hard on him?

Yes.

He came from a population that was ultimately able to support those moves.

I again continue to be concerned about the people who don't come and I worry about the support that those kids will ultimately get at the end of all this decision making.

So please don't think that I am heartless.

I have lived through it.

It is hard.

And I also know that students be supported through it and thrive and do great things.

Director Harris.

Well this is the amendment that's given me the ulcers as you very well know Director Peters.

I too was moved in eighth grade across the country probably two or three years behind from our fine schools here to Montgomery County Maryland.

And I can absolutely assure you that eighth grade stunk.

So The concept that we are moving kids around is very near and dear to my heart but when I took my oath I said I was going to do my best for all of our kids not just some of our kids and I'm going to vote against this and it pains me to do so.

And I want to go back to a couple of other comments that we've raised in the past.

our schools do not provide the same quality of education throughout the city.

And that's one of the things that has made folks so passionate and so vociferous in this issue.

So it's a much bigger issue than whether or not we are letting eighth graders finish out their middle schools at the schools that they started with.

It's a much bigger issue if we set schools up to fail by not being able to offer the kinds of courses that folks need.

And that we don't have excuse me One of our goals this next year is to do a much better job of understanding what we do offer and when and to hopefully to use a much overused word align it better so that folks have better opportunity.

That is exactly in line with closing the opportunity and achievement gaps.

We're going to have to get a heck of a lot more creative than we are right now.

in terms of how we do that in terms of blended learning etc. etc.

It's not just the budget issues here at all it's not just the equity issues here at all it's about being proactive and creative and we can do better and we have to do better and everybody in this room and that's listening I hope to heck we see you in Olympia with your boots on the ground on Monday.

Because if you care enough to be here you need to care enough to get in your car and drive to Olympia and raise a little heck.

Thank you.

Yeah, this is definitely something that I think, you know, another amendment that's coming up as well that as far as Licton Springs and space that.

Some may think that I have a conflict of interest.

We got a call anonymous saying that there could be possible conflict of interest for me in that my wife is the secretary for the Urban Native Education Alliance and they thought me asking for more space at Licton Springs was meant I was asking for space for UNEA and no that is not the case.

I'm asking for space for Licton Springs and their school not for a CBO.

And what then also comes into play for me here is that if I support this amendment people may think that oh if he supports it that means there will be less people going to Eagle Staff and then yes more space will be available at Licton Springs.

So it gets for me and some people may perceive that and although yes I agree with everything that's been said here as far as yes we don't want to be disruptive to our students and moving them from the middle school to spend their last school at a new school.

But then we also shortchange those students that want to go on to a new school and that school not going to be fully enrolled because some of the schools opt to stay.

And then you know we don't have the mitigation funds right now to say yes we'll help out with what may happen at those both schools.

And so I'm stuck between this thing right now where I'm probably looking I'm going to have to abstain from this vote given the coming of amendment for Amendment 5 in Licton Springs.

Director Burke.

One quick parting comment.

I wanted to try to understand what the landscape might be at Robert Eagle Staff middle school and so I had a conversation with planning principal Marnie Campbell and also had the pleasure of attending one of the community meetings around organizing the new school.

And she is building an air of excitement around that school which is it's building a buzz.

She's also indicated that some of the concerns around what sort of courses will be offered is going to be driven partly by the students that show up absolutely but she's also indicated a commitment to provide coursework for example in math that aligns with the pathway students are on providing them the next course they need.

And so I think that the building level commitment to provide amazing academics is there and the community and the staff and hopefully from the board to also sing praises for that new school and help them develop robust arts music theater programs in a short time frame as well is particularly important for me.

Okay and this is my question for staff on this.

The predicted numbers for Meany are do you know Pam what it is like 500 and something and then for Eagle Staff it's 800 and something is that correct?

It was right below 500 for Meany and then it was the 666 for Eagle Staff that was without the grandfathering and then so we talked about the impact of grandfathering would mean below 400 for Meany and then we would anticipate about 233 students impacted by the Eagle Staff grandfathering amendment so that would put them significantly below as well.

Okay.

All right.

Knowing that even if there's no grandfathering we're not looking at huge schools to start out with it's kind of like a startup.

Did you ever consider doing a roll up model a 6th 7th grade roll up model?

I know we probably may not have done this in the past but in a year where we're dealing with the fiscal crisis and we are starting with smaller schools is that something to consider for the future?

So with the roll-up the issues would be similar in terms of as we think about course offerings.

The availability of courses and funding is going to be tied to student enrollment so if we did start with just sixth and seventh that would essentially be similar to if every student who was offered grandfathering were to be grandfathered and so those schools would have lower enrollment and as a result they would just have left staffing.

So that was not something we considered as well as the fact that the precedent with Jane Adams was opening it with the geo split.

And lastly the one thing that a 6-7 roll up would do is give predictability that we don't have right now.

even without grandfather we don't know exactly which students will be using the open enrollment option so we don't really know who is going to be at Robert Eagle Staff and more so that than Meany until open enrollment is over.

So again with open enrollment you know a choice seat is based on space available.

So if a student, any student across the district has the ability to fill out a choice application but if they fill out an application to a school that is overcrowded and there's not a seat available their guaranteed assignment is to their neighborhood school.

So there actually is more predictability with remaining with the geo split because we can look to see where there is space and then instances where we need to ensure that again a school starting up has a healthy enrollment to be able to offer the courses that it needs.

Right okay.

Alright if there are no more comments or questions Ms. Ritchie the roll.

Director Burke.

No.

Director Geary.

Director Harris.

No.

Director Patu.

Yes.

Director Pinkham.

Abstain.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Peters.

Yes.

This amendment did not pass by a 2 4 1 vote.

I want to thank all my colleagues for your thoughtful input on this topic.

I want to thank everybody who came out tonight.

I know it's been very emotional and I know you all put a lot of work into your advocacy and we all need to come together and make sure that all the schools our children are in throughout the city have the resources they need and the support they need.

And I'm committed to that.

Thank you.

All right let's move on to amendment two.

Director Burke do you want to.

I would like to make a motion.

Following Amendment 2 I move that the school board amend the proposed student assignment plan for 2017-18 to designate Greenwood Elementary and Broadview Thompson K-8 as feeder schools for Whitman Middle School.

Editing language in the student assignment plan as shown in the amendment attached to the board action report.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

Okay would anyone like to make any comments or questions about this item?

Director Burke.

I will lead off the discussion sharing a little bit about the basis behind this and some of the community feedback that's been received to date.

The basis behind this was when we were looking at enrollment figures as a result of the geo split the vast majority of the students that feed Robert Eagle Staff are drawn from Whitman middle school.

And so the concern was whether this has an adverse impact on Whitman exactly as we were discussing around Robert Eagle Staff and so really our goal is as we are doing this we are trying to balance the enrollment numbers such that services the capacity the funding the educators is representative and from the projections Whitman was looking to have 485 students in 2017 whereas Robert Eagle Staff would open with A total of the building would open with a total of 810 students including the Licton Springs K-8 school.

And when I looked at the number of feeder schools feeder elementaries that were assigned to assigned to Robert Eagle Staff and I compared that with some of the other comparables in the district it really gave me pause that we were setting up for something that three to five years from now we would still have that imbalance between Whitman and Robert Eagle Staff.

One of the comparables we can think about Hamilton middle school which is heavily over enrolled and it only has three elementary attendance area elementary schools.

It also has highly capable and it also has language it's also a language immersion pathway school.

So it has these two other things as part of its makeup We compare that to Robert Eagle Staff which has in this case originally about four five if you count Broadview Thompson K-8 feeder schools plus highly capable plus Licton Springs.

And so that looked like something that we were setting up for another Hamilton middle school in three to five years.

So that was the basis behind this amendment.

The other aspect about it was recognizing that both Whitman and Robert Eagle staff would not be over enrolled year one.

So regardless of whether this amendment passes or doesn't pass families have an opportunity to select either of those schools through choice enrollment.

So again the amendment would be focused on long term capacity balancing and we would be relying on families in the choice process to make short-term decisions that they felt benefited their family the greatest.

So this is the basis behind it and recognizing that in a future amendment we have a potential commitment to increase the capacity space that we are setting aside for Licton Springs K8 this was a possibility to to try to avert problems in the future.

And unfortunately because of the timing of the holidays this was introduced shortly before the winter break and so we weren't able to coordinate community input until after the winter break and by the board delaying vote by one week we were able to plan and host a meeting which actually took place last night at Greenwood Elementary.

And I apologize I didn't have an exact headcount.

I'll just take a take a wild guess at 40 to 50 people predominantly Greenwood but several Broadview Thompson families as well.

We had the pleasure of Broadview Thompson principal RJ Salmons and Whitman principal Sue Kleitsch attended as well so they were able to share some of their feedback and insight.

And if I were to try to paraphrase the feedback from the community there's overwhelming concern about last-minute changes.

This is something which some families have have watched and been planning for that their students would be assigned to Robert Eagle staff for multiple years and are already part of the planning already excited about it.

And so the risk that they might be assigned to Whitman is really concerning.

In the context of choice that alleviates that in the short term but if they have younger children or younger siblings that concern remains.

And so that's a completely valid perspective which I don't think was fully represented in this amendment.

I think I'll just let other directors comment and question from that point.

Director Geary.

So if this amendment passes my question is well just looking at Whitman are we, is Whitman going to need mitigation if we pass the student assignment plan as it was drafted in order to avoid the same problems that potentially would happen at Robert Eagle Staff if we move everybody away from that school.

What mitigation are we anticipating Whitman will need in order to provide robust across grade curriculum if any with 485 students if I'm reading this correctly?

So far we are not anticipating much mitigation there.

But, I mean, you have an open enrollment process that could have some impacts.

Again, both those schools have some capacity that are built in there.

Obviously, we'd also want to make sure that we're having conversations with the principals to see what the actual schedules look like.

So, but it is driven by the number of students, number of staff that you have in there.

So that's, as Dylan was telling me, we're not anticipating much of that right now.

Director Burke.

I will try to address that and try to channel my inner principal cliche because that question came up at the community meeting yesterday and based on her feedback and also community surveys of existing Whitman families there is a fairly decent size contingent that is anticipating staying at Whitman via choice regardless of what happens because they have that space.

Although she didn't come right out and say we won't need mitigation funding, the concern of the programs being decimated was reduced based on a significant number of families staying in place.

Just a quick comment on that survey, I also am a Whitman parent, I have two boys in that particular school, I did not take the survey so I just kind of left that one alone and let everything else go.

And then just one other point that I just wanted to raise for folks information.

Again, with Whitman, despite the fact that we do anticipate declining enrollment with the opening of Eagle Staff and similarly with Washington and the opening of Meany, part of it is about right-sizing those buildings.

Both Washington and Whitman have a significant number of portables.

Washington has 14 portables.

They are using all 14 portables as classrooms.

Whitman has eight portables that they're actually using for classrooms, and they have additional portables that they have on site, very few of which are in great condition.

to be kind.

So Whitman we do see the enrollment increasing over time so that combination of being able to allow families choice in the short-term when we do see that decline in enrollment also gives us the ability to ensure that there is space when we see growth in that ballot area in the long-term.

Director Blanford.

I appreciate that response and I'm wondering if that is the response to this question which is as you were creating the student assignment plan you you didn't write this in amendment to into it and I'm wondering why you didn't choose the opportunity to write this into it.

What you're thinking.

I think my last point is just about thinking long-term and being able to again balance that with families having the opportunity through choice to be able to access some of the additional seats so that the impact on Whitman wouldn't be as great but again we are still thinking about all of our students today, tomorrow and in the long-term.

And are there any other concerns besides that?

the issue around right sizing that you bring up?

It's fine if there aren't.

I mean the only other concern ties back to the grandfathering the conversation around the grandfathering amendment that we talked about previously so the impact of making that change would be that EGLE staff would have less students as they start up and so that would require funds that we just don't have to be able to support the students who are there at that time.

And then, you know, I appreciate Director Burke bringing up some of the additional feedback that he got specifically around changes last minute that some families aren't anticipating.

With a change like that that talks about feeders we have to think about students who are in elementary school who have been anticipating these changes as well as the students who are currently in middle school who are anticipating moving to Eagle Staff as a result of these changes.

Director Burke.

I just want to I was thinking back about how I had my statement to date and I wanted to be very explicit that for the families who were able to and had the opportunity to attend the community meeting there was pretty clear fairly clear families that are that have students that are already attending Whitman obviously have a higher concern in maintaining supporting this amendment.

Families that don't or that have younger students sometimes you know predominantly at some level appear to have a higher desire to not pass this amendment and remain at Eagle Staff.

And then I just wanted to clarify actually if you could just for the record describe the number of potential students should this amendment pass and should all students move from Eagle Staff to Whitman what would be the impact on Eagle Staff?

So if all students in those particular areas were to move from.

Worst case scenario.

Yeah so we looked currently at the number of students who live within those areas who are attending their attendance area middle school which would be Whitman at that point in time at this point in time and there were about roughly 70 students in each of those across the three grades so that would be roughly about 140 students so if we would anticipate a similar pattern we would anticipate something similar.

Historically I think we would look at a range of maybe somewhere between 120 and potentially up to 200 students who would be impacted.

And that would shift the enrollment for those middle schools.

Okay I'll weigh in on this.

First of all I want to thank Director Burke for the thought that went into this I know thinking about different pieces of the puzzle and he's been conscientious about reaching out to the community and the principal on this and from what I gather he's been getting some mixed results, some mixed feedback.

And I've told Rick all along that you know I'm interested in knowing more about this and you know I'm torn because it sounds like there are know two ways of looking at this.

And you know we just had a long discussion about what happens if we don't have enough students going to a new school.

Again I think we are not going to know a lot until after open enrollment.

You know I think Whitman's numbers are probably going to be bigger than predicted and I don't know what is going to happen you know in other schools.

But you know what we are going to start off with some schools that are just going to grow.

And so I am optimistic about the growth of all of our schools.

that have room.

So but I still feel that I don't have enough knowledge on this item to make an informed decision about this.

And so I'm struggling with this proposal though I appreciate the work you put in especially over the break.

One more clarification question should this amendment not be something that is that passes Could you weigh in on the staff's opinion pro-con of re-evaluating this next year once we actually have some tushes in seats?

Yeah I think there are a couple of pieces that we will be looking at.

So one has a very capital focused analysis and that is Whitman is one of the middle schools that we are looking at in BEX V so that will focus us on Kind of what we're looking at at the patterns and then possibly even timelines.

The list of a couple of the projects, Whitman is one of the ones that we're looking at for consideration.

So in that we'd be looking at what is the right size capacity of the particular building.

We've been with our newer schools right around 1000 for the capacity.

and clearly if you've been to Whitman like several of our other schools it's in need to be redone much like Mercer and Washington and Aki we've got several.

Eckstein's another one, we've got like half of our middle schools probably need to be addressed.

So that will, through that process we'll definitely be taking a look at that and next year's another place.

One of the other processes that we're looking at right now, we were just talking about this today during the capacity management task force meeting, was with the buildings we just opened up this year, five new buildings, is there, what is kind of the magnet effect of a new building Is it pulling students that previously haven't even been SPS students back into the fold?

Is it through open enrollment attracting more students than they might otherwise have done?

So we're comparing this year's enrollment versus last year at some of the new schools.

We'll do the same the following year when we open these four new schools this fall.

So we'll have two middle schools so we can actually take a look at that impact on middle schools and not just the elementaries.

Director Harris.

Another ulcer.

Thank you Director Burke for stretching on this one.

Thank you for taking the time to meet with the folks at the affected schools.

However, we still do not have a system where we have the staff support and the time to do real community engagement.

I'm not suggesting that your community engagement wasn't very real however with some time and staff support and using the community engagement tool one would hope that we would have heard from even greater section of our communities and those affected.

Given that and given my propensity for talking and I hope walking community engagement.

I'm going to vote no.

Director Pinkham.

Mine is just going to be real quick even though yes I am listed as a co-sponsor on this but again for reasons stated earlier for the amendment that I'll be bringing up next I'll be abstaining from this one as well.

Director Geary.

I take great comfort in the information and the long-term view.

that in the short term our parents will have the flexibility to meet their needs and in the long run those people who had a longer vision in terms of planning for the future of their kids that we can serve both by not approving the amendment but I think that your intent was I appreciate the work and I want to thank that both of you for your amendments because amendments are hard.

I want people to know there is something hard about going against the district recommendations.

It doesn't feel good to go against them.

And so that's it's a hard thing to do.

It's not done lightly.

So I appreciate being willing to do it because it's because we don't necessarily have the resources on school board to do all the work to make them airtight to run down every rabbit hole to answer every question.

It is a it's a leap of faith.

That's unfortunate as Director Harris kind of points out in her comment.

But I just wanted to throw that out that it is the work is appreciated.

The conversation is appreciated and in this case I think we have a better chance of the plan meeting everybody's needs.

And then again we'll have a new tool and when we look at everything maybe we will decide that.

Two new tools.

Two new tools that we will.

reexamine and better address the capacity issues.

I just wanted to make one other comment.

in particular to the last few comments about engagement and then you know just looking at the impacts of opening new schools and I appreciate thinking about how we can bring those two together and so when we look in the future at our conversations with the community looking together at the impact of opening up to new middle schools and having an open conversation about the real data when we see it as we are holding ourselves accountable and including the community in that process.

As Flip already mentioned, we are committed to – it only helps us do our work better to be able to look at how things play out every year, but we are committed to assessing the impacts of our boundaries as we've made them.

And then, again, we want to minimize impact in the future, but we also want to make sure that our plans continue to be sustainable long term.

Are there any other questions or comments about this amendment?

Ms. Ritchie the roll call please.

Director Geary.

No.

Director Harris.

No.

Director Patu.

No.

Director Pinkham.

Abstain.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Burke.

Yeah.

Director Peters.

Sorry no.

This vote did not pass by a 1-5-1.

Okay thank you everybody let's move on to the next item and that is what is now amendment 5 to the student assignment transition plan for 2017-18 facility space for Licton Springs K8.

Who would like to read in the whole

Can I do it here because I do have and can someone help me with this because I do have an amendment to the which was originally posted.

How do I read this?

Process question how do we do.

An amendment to an amendment.

With an amendment to the amendment.

Okay we've got general counsel Noll treat here.

All right, Noel Treat, General Counsel.

So you haven't read your amendment yet.

So I think at this point you've noted for the record that you have a change from what was posted.

So what I would recommend is just go ahead and read the amendment as you want it to be proposed now.

You don't have to make an amendment to an amendment because you don't have a true amendment actually before the body until you make the proposed motion itself.

Just to confirm though, there's an amendment that's on the record as a written amendment and then there's the consideration to modify that amendment?

The amendment actually isn't technically before the board until the motion is made here at this meeting.

So we do publish ahead of time the amendments that people may be proposing at the meeting, but until you make the motion verbally here, it's not an active amendment that you have to amend if you're tweaking the language.

I think it's adequate just to note you're making an adjustment from what was published and posted and then you would just go ahead and make your motion.

But then if my added amendment doesn't go through I'd still like the original one that was posted to be considered so that's.

Right so then you would, so what you would do in that, the sequence there would be you would propose the motion now in the way you want it worded and then that would get voted on and if it were to be voted down you could then make a new motion which was the original language and go through the process that way.

Well I think we are talking about two different things.

We are talking about an existing amendment and then a whole new one.

Oh I'm sorry I misunderstood based on something someone told me earlier might come up tonight I misunderstood.

So that being the case don't we start with the one that is already here and then we go to the second one unless I think it is separate from this one is that correct?

The amendment that was submitted by Rick and I originally, I then wanted to add some additional language that I shared with Rick and Nate.

So I guess that's the root issue is if there's an amendment that has language and then there's possible consideration to change that language then both of them are worthy of some discussion, what is the sequence?

Well the sequence really is whoever gets the floor and makes the motion first would make the motion that they want to have considered and passed and then in the discussion of that motion as worded by the person making the motion you could raise I think there's a better way to do this here's the alternative and then you'd vote you'd vote the way it's proposed up or down and if it gets voted down then you could go on to the next one and someone could move that one.

That sequence seems reasonable so I would make

And then I will point out an additional.

Okay let's hear the original motion.

This one is a little bit wordier.

I move that one the school board signals clear intent that the Robert Eagle Staff building will be the long-term home of Licton Springs K8.

Two, allocation of classroom spaces should maintain integrity of the Licton Springs academic programming with consideration for actual enrollment and funded staffing levels.

Three facility space should be provided for up to 250 students sorry facility space shall be provided for up to 250 students for Licton Springs K-8 with reconsideration as part of the 2019-20 student assignment plan.

And four the school board encourages and supports collaboration between Robert Eagle Staff Middle School and Licton Springs K-8 to increase options and capacity for students in the middle grades middle school grades.

And can I second that right now?

So don't we now proceed to discuss what is now on the floor?

So I think there's already been some discussion around this and there's some background information in the motion but recognizing You know visiting Licton Springs and seeing the value of what they serve, the community they serve, hearing the testimony from some of their families and recognizing that Licton Springs has been moved around in a way that's made it really hard for them to reach their target enrollment.

And when it's hard for them to reach their target enrollment it's hard for them to reach their target staffing without mitigation.

Licton Springs has been stuck in kind of a chicken and egg problem where they can't get their numbers up enough to not need mitigation but there have been enough barriers to getting their numbers up and so my perspective which I heard from community and Director Pinkham as well was that we need to give this school a chance.

We need to give this school the space, the support, the continuity and predictability that they're not going to be moved in another year or two or five that they have a long-term home and that it aligns with a place that's culturally important to them and that aligns with past promises as well and so what I had heard from families and building leadership was that barriers to their growth included idea that there was a cap of 150 students and also that their site was uncertain and so I think about that in terms of organization and as a board director how can we provide governance that removes those barriers and so number one the clear intent that the Eagle Staff building is their long-term home we want to be able to shout that from a mountaintop we want them to be able to shout that from a mountaintop that Long-term home means long-term home.

As far as space the idea that the 150 student cap was limiting we want to remove that barrier.

So we want to commit to space for let's let's say 250 that's a great starting place so that there's not a limiting factor there.

One of the other concerns has been classroom allocation and so whether it's 14 whether it's more than 14 whether it's something else entirely And I think this will be a future conversation.

My feeling in crafting this amendment and has been that the best people to determine the number of school the number of classrooms is the school community.

And if we as a board provide them the space the opportunity to do that then they will tailor their programming in a way that meets their needs.

So that's really the the intent and the back story behind the amendment the way it's proposed initially.

Director Blanford.

My question is for the author of the amendment and it is in light of the fact that we've had lots of conversation recently about promises and promises made and then not followed through on.

I look at the term or I look at the statement, the school board signals clear intent that Robert Eagle Staff Building will be the long-term home of Licton Springs K-8.

And it, I just, I have some difficulty with the notion that we're signaling the intent, like that means that it's, we're making a promise that it will be the long-term home.

And I can imagine, though I don't hope that this is the case, I can imagine lots of different scenarios where at some point we have to revisit that.

And so I fear strong language like this painting us into a corner that we may not want to be in.

Have you thought of that consideration and if so would you share your thoughts?

Yeah that has been one of the front and center considerations and I think that when we look at what are the different things that could disrupt that commitment I can think of one that certainly would and that would be a natural disaster.

But some of the other ones we have assignment area schools that feed that building.

Students in neighborhood schools are guaranteed enrollment in their neighborhood middle school.

That's another commitment.

We have another commitment to the highly capable cohort which is that they're guaranteed admission in the highly capable cohort.

So by making this statement I'm publicly saying you know what if neighborhood schools or highly capable cohort create enough pressure that it's potentially going to force Licton Springs to move we have to step back by a couple of years and be really thoughtful and proactive about how we keep them in that space.

That was the thought process behind it.

And for me part of the thought process is the actual site itself.

Licton Springs has cultural significance to the native community and Licton Springs K-8 is right now the only native themed school we have and then if we put them in Eagle Staff then all of a sudden we need room for HCC or something then we move this school from a culturally significant for Native students from a school that was named after a Native American principal here just does not ring true as far as providing someone from this community that would attend that.

school that would make them feel welcome.

You know okay let's put them off over in this other school because you know so for me it's getting to know about equity will access for someone to have a school where they feel like yes this is a school that's going to represent who I am and the theme of this school.

So the intent is let's keep them there as much as we can and not have the plan that if they oh now they have 280 students we need to move them to another location.

Director Geary then Director Patu.

I don't have a problem with the loss of flexibility in this particular regard because I think the assurances is part of though I'm not trained in it but I could imagine that the assurance is part of an equity analysis in that what we need to do to lift up a community that is not advantaged usually within our society is to be very purposeful in creating a promise that we are making that future boards can't easily undo.

Because that is a history a piece of history that has happened too often within this community from what I understand and so I personally am okay because I think this is a necessary part of what we need to do in this instance even though we can't do it with everybody.

It's different but it seems right to me.

That said anticipating the amendment that may be coming and wanting to talk about it while we're talking about everything I do I to me when I think about what we're setting up there's two issues there is space and there is staff.

So I wonder at this point how much mitigation are we providing for this program and is that built into our future budget?

amount of mitigation for Licton Springs?

Right now?

None for next year.

How much are we currently doing and have we built any in any for next year?

How does that change this landscape?

We currently have some mitigation because Licton Springs is small I can't remember if it is two or three additional staff.

Right now since everyone in the WSS that was just consensus A-okayed everyone goes back to base they would lose that part of their funding and then there is no additional mitigation built in for them yet.

We would still run through the $2 million equity tier analysis and they could or could not come out with additional funding from that.

Director Patu and then Director Harris.

As I was one of the regional board directors actually who have really made an effort to save this particular school and program I think it's very important that we are able to really find a space that we had promised that we would be able to actually move them into this particular school once it was built.

And I like the fact that Rick actually has put in here that you know that it's our tertiary duty is to actually to assign space to the school and hopefully that it will be their long-time home.

I believe that this particular program and the Native American program have been moved around too many times and it's time that we finalize and actually give them a space that we can say it's their final home.

And I also believe that once we finalize a space for them where they can actually be able to run their program their enrollment will go up and so I believe that instead of us limiting their enrollment I really would like to see us assign 14 rooms to this program so it can help to grow.

I know right now the enrollment is not as high as we want to but I believe that as we stabilize this particular school and be able to support them in ways that we can and I know we don't have any money but at the same time you can do a lot of things about money at times when you're really desperate.

But anyway at this point I support the fact that that I would like to see staff as the permanent home for Licton Spring.

Director Harris.

I appreciate you bringing this up Director Blanford because that's something that I've looked at and I have to say that if ever we were going to double down this community deserves us to double down and make a really clear statement.

Because for over 25 years this community has been moved around it's like the phoenix has been raising from certain death this program and then combining and being flexible and frankly not being treated very well.

That said I would be unwilling to vote for a 14 room specification because I think that that potentially puts us in a situation while this school is built up to not using space well.

I think the strength of the statement that was made in the amendment that we talked about that I completely embrace gets us to that place where this community will have a lot of leverage behind it should we not follow through on this very strong language.

But at the same time I don't want to handcuff us in terms of using that space while we bring the numbers up and the participation in this terribly important school.

So with that can I do a hopeful policy addition?

Yeah so there's a couple different approaches to this.

One addition and I did just check with Agnes now I understand what you want to try and do.

As I understand it you want to propose to add one additional bullet to the motion.

So one approach to doing that is you could propose to you could move to amend the motion or to move the proposed amendment and then you know you'd move and describe what you want to add and then you'd need to get a second to your amendment to the amendment and then the order of voting would be you vote on the amendment to the amendment and that either passes or doesn't and then you come back and vote on the amendment as either amended or not.

If you want to propose to add your language you can now make a motion to amend the amendment by adding the following and then you can read into the record the language that you sent to Anya earlier.

I want to move to amend the amendment with the following language.

Proceeding actually after the facility space shall provide for up to 250 students for Licton Springs K-8 with reconsideration as part of the 2019-20 assignment plan.

At this bullet point a minimum of 14 full size classrooms plus two research rooms will be allocated for the exclusive and full time use of Licton Springs in the school year 2017-18.

This will enable it to meet current needs and ensure compliance with IDA requirements in relation to the three existing special ed programs.

Is there a second?

I second it.

I would like to weigh in with my comments which actually apply to both amendments and that has to do with the history of this particular school.

In the time that I have been in the district it has been known by multiple names AS1, Pinehurst, Licton Springs and each time as long as I've been here the school has been under some sort of threat of closure or being moved and so this is the first time where it's being given a home and I appreciate the fact that a permanent home and I appreciate the fact that Director Burke is emphasizing that.

And I believe there's a great deal of will on this board to make a commitment to the school and that's one of the strengths of that amendment.

I also recognize that staff did take a look at the enrollment trends of this school and saw that it was only reaching a certain number and that was what helped inform them with what they predicted or allocated for Robert Eagle staff.

But what I would add to that though is whenever you move into a new building you have to anticipate that there's going to be some enthusiasm especially when by new building I mean a new construction.

And I think it's quite likely that we could see some growth in this school.

And I think we should allow for that.

And that is another strength of Director Burke's and Director Pinkham's you know your combined amendment is you're allowing for that growth.

And so I'm excited about doing this and making a statement as a board that we do want to give this school a chance to really put down some roots in land that is significant to many of the students in this school and to the spirit of the school.

As far as allocating a very specific number of classrooms I would like to ensure that they have the space they need, the space they currently have and have space to grow.

I am hesitant though to put an actual number to it because I honestly don't know enough about the space there, the space they will need and so you know I am hesitant to be very specific about such numbers.

I also think the student assignment plan typically doesn't get into that level of detail.

The student assignment plan The main purpose is to figure out pathways and locations without getting into the actual minutia.

And so this would be a little bit of an aberration for the student assignment plan and I don't know if that's the precedent we want to set.

But I still do appreciate the spirit of both of your efforts on this.

Yeah part of the spirit for me behind this is to kind of reflect what Licton Springs currently has at Lincoln and then if we're looking at growing the program and if they currently have 14 classrooms plus the resource rooms for their students that they serve then moving to Eagle Staff with not saying yes you'll at least have what you have at Lincoln at Eagle Staff how are they going to grow so it's like you know taking a a plant from a small pot and put them in an even smaller pot and expecting the plant to grow kind of in a sense.

So that's why I would like to add the language as far as let's at least assure them that they're going to have the same space that they had before as you're linking into Robert Eagle Staff.

Clarifying question, well doesn't the original language say give them the space they have?

In the background information section There's a paragraph that calls out the current use of Licton Springs currently using 14 classrooms and two smaller resource rooms in its interim location.

So that is indicated in the background section.

And then as part of the motion number two allocation of classroom spaces should maintain integrity of the Licton Springs academic programming.

So that's the methodology behind the original the original amendment is calling out what it is and stating an explicit expectation that we will maintain the integrity of that.

I just want to explicitly call out that what I've the feedback that I've heard from the community is that the school has recently gone to individual grade levels.

And while that creates some some real challenges with with staffing ratios and especially in light of mitigation dollars or lack thereof it's something that they're really committed to as a school.

So the feedback was please don't do something with our space that forces us to do to go back to a you know to mixed grades because it's even harder to differentiate at that point.

And so that the attempt was to build that into the original motion.

And I want to also say that either the original motion or as amended I believe that both of those are a huge win for the school for the district for the board and.

I still slightly favor the original language.

I guess for me I just want to make sure that yes it was mentioned in the background information that again how you know allocation of classrooms should maintain integrity I'm not sure you know when we use again a little bit looser language as to how that can mean because I heard some possibilities of you know putting walls in classrooms that currently exist in Eagle Staff versus you know trying to find them another full-size classroom when they're talking about well let's put up bare you know let's put the classrooms that are currently assigned to make multiple rooms.

I want to hopefully provide some better language and say no let's give them the same space that they have now which is at least that minimum 14. And that doesn't mean you know for 2018 maybe we'll look at it again and things can change so I'm asking that we commit to them for the 17-18 year what they have now.

Okay Director Blanford and then Director Geary.

My questions go to the authors of the amendment and the amendment to the amendment.

And I recognize that when we make resource allocation staffing decisions we make them based on where the kids go, where they enroll, right?

And so I'm wondering if we are making a space allocation in this case which I think this amendment goes to it says we're making a space allocation and we're making a long-term commitment to maintain that space allocation.

I find myself wondering if the kids don't show up for some reason what happens in that situation?

Do we have rooms that go unoccupied because we have made an earlier commitment that those rooms are designated only towards Licton Springs?

Just before that was my question and I also wonder if this conversation will be interpreted to mean staff.

That people will say we are doing something more than just setting aside space when we're not having that conversation right now.

So I just want to make it very that's my concern that we're going to set aside space which others will imply will mean something that we're not assuring them of and then it will look like a broken promise.

That is a concern for me because it doesn't make sense to set aside space.

for individual classrooms when ultimately we won't be able to staff them each with a teacher because the numbers don't support that without mitigation.

Well I think what's really unique about this is that it's in another school.

Licton Springs K-8 is in Robert Eagle Staff middle school whereas it's not its own separate building where if it did have its own separate building that had 14 rooms by itself and its two resource rooms would we be concerned too much about is it going to fill all 14 rooms?

we're more concerned about I think because oh yeah it's also part of Robert Eaglestaff middle school to me because there's other rooms that are supposed to go to the Robert Eaglestaff middle school so to me if this was its own separate K-8 school that had 14 classrooms that had two resource rooms would we be concerned about are we going to fill up the 14 rooms as we are now with it being at Robert Eaglestaff middle school?

build on that as well because I think the question is a valid one are we allocating space that could potentially be vacant and I think the underlying assumption behind this either of these amendments which is supported by the data is that we know we have high confidence that in the initial one to two years of Robert Eagle staff it will not be a capacity and so therefore there will be vacant rooms or underutilized rooms and as such it creates more flexibility about how those spaces are used, whether they're used for small group discussions, whether they're used for smaller classrooms, whether they're used for storage, whether they're vacant.

And my belief in trying to put this together was that the best people to reconcile that are the principles the two principles that share that space but the best thing that we can do as a board is provide very clear guidance that if there is something that is encroaching on the integrity of the Licton Springs program the board is not satisfied with that.

Are there any more questions or comments about the amendment to the amendment?

Okay at this point I believe we take a roll.

You call a vote on the amendment to the amendment.

Okay Ms. Ritchie the roll.

This is on the amendment to the amendment which specifies 14 rooms.

Got it.

Director Harris.

No.

Director Patu.

Yes.

Director Pinkham.

Yes.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Burke.

Director Geary.

Yes.

Director Peters.

No.

This vote did not pass at a 4 to 3, 0.

Okay so now we return.

Sorry yes.

3 yes, 4 no.

So we move on now to the original amendment.

Is there any more discussion of this?

I think we probably covered everything.

So without any further ado let's move to the roll on this amendment, the original amendment.

Ms. Ritchie.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Yes.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Burke.

Yes.

Director Geary.

Yes.

Director Harris.

Yes.

Director Peters.

Yes.

This motion did pass at a 6 to 1 0 vote.

Okay I think we have one more vote we need to do which is on the whole student assignment plan.

As amended.

Yes that's correct.

Prior to vote I'd like to make a motion.

If that's the way we have to do this to discuss.

There is a has been a consideration conversation between directors community and staff.

Is this best done in a motion or is this best done as a discussion?

I defer to Olympic view pathways to legal staff.

All right so you have a question that you want clarification on?

Okay so we are back to talking about the whole plan.

Is this the appropriate time for discussion?

Can it just happen?

Yeah no discussion and question before you vote.

Okay that is appropriate so you are directing your question to staff on this issue.

This question is directed to staff and I apologize for deferring it but it was important to not have this discussion prior to it influences all the other amendments influenced this.

Okay.

So there are two parts of the Olympic view area which area is 91 and 92 which the community there has indicated a sort of a long-term concern that they've been trying to understand why area I believe area 91 there's concern that it's been incorrectly drawn that it should have been incorporated in the Jane Addams region but it was only through a couple of clerical errors or not updating maps as a result of board action that that area was not assigned to Jane Adams.

And then area 92 is currently going to Eckstein but it's also a small subset of the Olympic View neighborhood school.

So my my request is for staff to provide feedback recommendation and that recommendation could be couched in terms of what would you recommend for this year for those families and is there a recommendation for next year if there isn't one for this year?

Is this the group or a subset of even of these groups that there will be some kids that will go from elementary school a tiny subset of them will go to a different middle school they'll go to Robert Eagle Staff And then rather than following the Robert Eagle Staff cohort, they will flip back to where their original elementary school cohort went in terms of high school.

So these kids, we have planned them a pathway, this little subset, that they will be bouncing around just by the way we've planned it.

That is my understanding from this community.

And that based on their surveys in 2013, their PTA was unanimously in support of realigning to JAMS and Eckstein, just JAMS or something that maintained the integrity of their cohorts.

And that since that time, they haven't been able to get this perceived issue resolved.

And so that's the request.

There's still a very large proportion based on survey data that was just done yesterday that is willing to do a sharp left turn to make an amendment to adjust that and that recognizing that it would reduce enrollment potentially in Eagle Staff but neither of the previous two amendments passed so therefore the threat or concern to Robert Eagle Staff is minimized.

So I'm wondering for those families where we're creating this localized disruption, Is there an action that we can take by amendment tonight?

So the two areas that were just mentioned, area 91 and 92, those are the reference areas going back to the change areas that we were using during the growth boundaries conversations.

And so those are two areas that were this year in Eckstein and Jane Addams.

And per the growth boundaries plan, moving to Eagle Staff.

So those areas feed into Eagle Staff.

And so again, based on our anticipated enrollments for both Jane Addams and Eckstein and the original plan to have those areas move into Eagle Staff, we are recommending a change to those areas.

non-traveling, being moved away from their cohort from middle school, and then being again moved away from any connections they made in middle school to a separate high school, then the priority was held.

So for our high schools our middle schools don't feed into high schools the same way as our elementaries and we are at the high schools going to be looking at new boundaries for all of that area with the opening of Lincoln.

I'll just kind of do the follow-up question until 2019 when Lincoln opens is that the possibility that some students might go from one place to another?

I just I think that there's a really for all the reasons it's one thing when you have a relatively large cohort traveling together even if they're not their closest dearest friends and it's another if you have just two or three kids clinging back or that way.

And so I really think that we need to put something in there to allow those students some relief either they travel on with their middle school cohort or they don't have to leave the pathway of their elementary cohort.

If it's if it's a small enough and non disruptive enough group and especially that leap from middle school high school to not have any chance to create to carry with you some of the people you've met seems tough.

So recognizing that bad policy or poorly thought out policy even with the best intentions can be really damaging.

I want to be thoughtful about this but I would still like to make a motion.

So but before I do I'm going to try a test balloon.

Would there be adverse effects from Flip and Ashley's enrollment point of view of guaranteeing students in 91 and 92 choice admission should they elect Jane Adams or Eckstein?

basically use the opportunity of choice.

Yeah I was partially hearing that we're also trying to figure out the flow and where the students are and the number of students involved.

Right and so do you see an adverse impact from a policy point of view of Guaranteeing those families in areas 91 and 92 the opportunity to go to Jane Addams or Eckstein where they're currently attending.

Basically just if those schools reach capacity giving them the opportunity to opt in.

And not making boundary changes and not making student assignment plan changes beyond empowering those families or enabling those families to.

To stay where they are.

From a policy standpoint, no.

From an operational standpoint, probably.

Because we have to enact that policy into how that would play out.

That's the challenge with that.

I think we're talking about 60, about 65 students that we're looking in that particular area.

Area 91 has 50, area 92 has 14. And so area 91,

which is currently predominantly at Eckstein.

Eckstein has more space than Jane Addams.

Jane Addams is currently, we're looking at them being over their capacity.

Eckstein is slightly under.

So there's an inherent beauty to that.

92 exists, continues to go to Jane Addams.

Smaller number of students.

The least impacted school.

Area 91, the larger number of students.

has the most space.

Can you just clarify the keeping it just for the way it is this year and beyond?

We would have the opportunity to evaluate it thoughtfully but essentially 91 at Eckstein 92 at Jane Addams is no change.

So our only challenge that we are looking at is also to see if there is a transportation impact associated with this.

This was the basis for the idea of splitting the difference and saying those students have the opportunity to opt in to Eckstein and Jane Addams but they would not be limited.

Basically they would have guaranteed opt in rights but they would not have transportation.

That's an equity issue then.

I'm seeing frowns on that one.

Try in here.

91 to Eckstein 92 to Jane Addams.

Yeah I mean again I think you're right in the numbers and the impact the challenge though is if there's transportation needed for them that becomes a bit of a challenge and then I think some of the frowns are probably telling you it will be an equity issue as well for a small number of students.

I just want to be really explicit that this is not a point I'm comfortable just letting go because it's not a last-minute thing it was raised in 2013 it's been raised multiple times since then it was raised as part of the boundaries discussion and since in the last month it's also been the attention of staff and the board and we have not risen to the level of addressing that concern either with an amendment or a clear reason why we couldn't provide an amendment.

And so I feel a responsibility to that community to do right by them.

So we're just trying to take a look at this because I think, I mean, I think you're correct in that It was an issue raised in 2013, and I think the solution was part of the growth boundary changes that were supposed to, that were being planned upon to kind of create that alignment.

And so when those didn't happen this fall, it perpetuated the misalignment that the families are, have their concern about.

So there was an initial solution to that in that there was going to be alignment or those elementary schools into those middle schools but now that's creating a continued dissonance.

So it is hard to figure out this on the fly and figure out what the impact is.

I'm wondering if there is some kind of language we could say that this needs to be resolved.

in some manner or will be reviewed in some manner and that we would vote on the student assignment plan with that caveat attached to it.

By when?

By when exactly is a good question.

And what fiscal impacts?

Okay.

So again I am looking around the table that collectively we are the body board and staff that has not addressed this and I feel a responsibility to the community to definitively address it and if that definitively address it means sorry no that's one possibility.

I believe that to get there we're going to have to propose an amendment and vote on it and so I'm trying to understand what is the most palatable The least awful from a budget and a family service perspective That does that work?

Director Blanford, did you want to weigh in?

I just want to say I encourage you to do that.

I I Wasn't looking forward to us getting to a point where we actually had to take a vote on this because I don't have any language in front of me and I don't have any analysis of the implications of what you're proposing and And so, it would be very difficult for me to support just because of that deficit.

I think if we have some analysis of the implications of this, it seems to me like it may be not a no-brainer but something that's much more palatable.

But at this point, it's not palatable at all.

Because we're talking about such a very specific issue and I think that there's some more daylighting to be done on it in terms of identifying for me in particular any small pocket of student that is being bounced to a middle school and then able to travel on with that new set of friends.

Is there any way we can look at this as a future tweak or not?

And if I might follow up I have a question for general counsel.

So if we vote on the student assignment transition plan tonight is there anything that prevents us from receiving more information and analysis and amending same in say two weeks?

No legally absolutely not the only thing I don't know is as a practical matter with open enrollment starting and other planning going on if that could hinder implementing a later amendment but you could certainly come back in two weeks and amend it again.

And don't we have the tools to address those families that are impacted by your potential amendment to give them the heads up and to do a real bang up job on community engagement for that.

And by that time be able to get the fiscal note that goes with.

It sounds like we've already heard from the community at least to some extent.

Well you know I'm sorry.

From all 64 students in the

Okay so there are 64 students we are talking about.

A majority but just in the interest of time I would like to make a motion so that we can bring this to some level of conclusion and that is that area 92, the number of students?

50 thank you.

So the motion is that area 92 containing 14 students will attend Jane Addams will be assigned to Jane Addams Middle School and Area 91 containing 50 students will be assigned to Eckstein Middle School for the 2017-18 student assignment plan.

Area 91 will attend Eckstein Middle School.

Clarification question if I might.

Does that imply then that we are giving transportation?

That would imply that they would follow all of the regular transportation rules based on walk zones.

Transportation provided etc.

Even without a fiscal note.

Without a fiscal note.

Thank you.

So this this is something this this becomes the point of discussion for now or for future is the fiscal impact and then it could be considered under budget discussions.

you're talking about how to bring this up in the future, future analysis could include those budget discussions.

And I think the group, from what I recall of somebody explaining to me, the group that ping pongs is actually even a smaller subset in one of these.

And that is the group that I'm most concerned about.

So I would, if that can be identified, highlighted in some future conversation, and a potential fix to that.

If it's a boundary redraw something.

So did we get a ruling on my question from general counsel that we can pass a student assignment plan transition plan tonight without this amendment and then we can come back after some serious decent robust community engagement and if we can't hit 64 families then we can't.

We absolutely can't.

You can certainly come back and amend the plan.

Okay.

In a week or two weeks or at any set period.

Okay thank you.

Point of order there is a motion is there a second?

There hasn't been a second that's right so if there isn't a second then the motion would die for lack of a second.

Is there a second?

I'll second it.

Okay.

Would anyone like to discuss or ask any more questions?

I want to say that I do appreciate the conscientious effort on the parts of Director Burke and Geary to bring this up and it has been somewhat frustrating to follow all the different pieces of the growth boundaries and student assignment plan And I know the board has been asking a lot of follow-up questions on a lot of these things and we haven't always got the answers right when we were hoping to get them but I also know that this has been a massive work for staff.

I tend to side with the logic of Director Harris on this one I think doing this on the fly is not a good way to go I think we are going to miss something.

I'm also mindful of the fact that earlier in the evening I was told that we shouldn't be doing what I was proposing just for 369 kids.

So I mean we need to be somewhat consistent in what we do and we definitely need a fiscal analysis.

So I do want to address what sounds like a persistent problem that's been known for a while and I think bringing it in two weeks makes more sense.

So I will not be supporting your current amendment.

But bring it back in two weeks with more detail and I'll definitely look at it again.

Are there any other questions or comments about this amendment?

Okay then we go to a roll.

Ms. Ritchie.

Director Pinkham.

No.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Burke.

Yes.

Director Geary.

No.

Director Harris.

No.

Director Patu.

No.

Director Peters.

No.

This motion did not pass at a 6 to 1 to 0 vote.

Okay.

I think it's time for us to vote now on the student assignment plan as amended.

The transition plan for 2017-18.

Ms.

Ritchie the roll call please.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

No.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

This motion passed at a 6 1 0 vote.

Okay thank you everybody.

I now call this meeting adjourned at 935.

you