School Board Meeting Date Nov. 18, 2015 Pt.1

So do you want more effective presentations?

All right my clock on my laptop says 418 and we are all assembled up here at the front so we will go ahead and start.

And I will start by saying welcome to everyone here in the room and anyone watching on the television.

Pleased to have you here and first order of business is to call the roll so Ms. Fote please.

Director Blanford.

Director McLaren.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Peasley.

Here.

Director Peters.

Here.

Director Karr.

Here.

Alright the next item would be the Pledge of Allegiance so if you could please stand.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

My cadence was a little too quick.

I should have deferred to the experts down there.

Alright so the next item on the agenda is a recognition item and we do not have any recognition items this evening.

So that takes us to the second major item on the agenda which is student presentations and I am very pleased to welcome Rainier Beach High School and their ASB performance with activities coordinator Andrew Henderson.

Are they out still in the?

Okay, they were here a moment ago.

We will pause and I'll welcome them when they're actually here.

Oh, should I go ahead and do the intro then?

All right so I've been informed I need to do the intro before they walk in because as they come in it's part of the presentation so we're going to welcome Rainier Beach High School and their ASB performance with activities coordinator Andrew Henderson.

This performance has been planned and organized by Rainier Beach High School students representing the first Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools cohort in Washington State.

Freedom School is a nationally proven high-impact literacy based program that was launched at Rainier Beach High School this past summer through a partnership with the community with a community-based organization Urban Impact.

And so with that it says I'm to invite Andrew to the podium to do an overview explanation of the presentation.

And we will pause while we wait for Andrew.

I'm not sure.

I think this is a little bit different than I think it may be more participative.

And so we'll wait for some further instruction from the coordinator.

Alright this is looking hopeful I'm seeing things that look like props.

Good evening everybody.

My name is Laura Wright and I represent Rainier Beach high school.

So I just want to introduce our little presentation that we have for you all.

This performance has been planned and organized by Rainier Beach high school students representing the first children's defense fund freedom school cohort in Washington state.

This summer 65 Rainier Beach high school students called scholars grades 9-12 engaged in multicultural curriculum centered on I can make a difference themes.

Connecting to their own sense of power scholars also learned how to create change in their communities with hope, education and action.

Throughout the summer our Rainier Beach high school student scholars researched transportation policies that have a disparate impact on low-income students.

Scholars organized several demonstrations to invite the city community and school leaders to hear directly from our students.

A primary component of our freedom schools program is something called Harambe.

Can you guys say Harambe?

It's actually Harambe.

Harambe is a key Swahili word that means let's pull together.

So we are going to do a Harambe for you all.

We invite you to participate with us.

Thank you.

We're gonna fight all day and night until we get it right.

Which side are you on, my people?

Which side are you on?

I'm on the same side.

Which side are you on, my people?

Which side are you on?

I'm on the same side.

Roll up our sleeves for the freedom fighter who taught us how to fight.

We're gonna fight all day and night until we get it right.

Which side are you on, my people?

Which side are you on?

I'm on the freedom side.

Which side are you on, my people?

Which side are you on?

I'm on the freedom side.

Army's doomed from the freedom fight.

Who taught us how to fight?

We gonna fight all day and night until we get it right.

Which side are you on, my people?

Which side are you on?

I'm on the freedom side.

Which side are you on, my people?

Which side are you on?

I'm on the freedom side.

Good evening, everybody.

G-O-O-D, E-V-E-N-I-N-G, good evening.

Good evening.

G-O-O-D, E-V-E-N-I-N-G, good evening.

Good evening.

Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening.

Good evening.

Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires.

All right, Freedom Schools, I got a question for you.

How are y'all feeling tonight?

Fantastic!

Terrific!

Great!

All day long!

Whoa!

Okay, audience, so you guys can either say ding, ding, ding, or eh.

So was that enough energy for us?

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Really?

Okay, so everybody say it.

And I invite you all to stand up with us.

So again, we're going to say, how y'all feeling?

It's been a long day.

Potentially, you're a little tired.

We understand that.

So our first thing, we're going to say fantastic.

And then we're going to go with our last terrific.

And then we're going to say great.

And then we're going to say all day long.

And then you get to stop your feet, and then do the matrix.

All right?

Are we all ready?

So, everybody, I have a question for you.

How y'all feeling tonight?

Fantastic!

Terrific!

Great!

Oh!

Great!

Oh!

Whoa!

Everybody says?

Ding, ding, ding!

All right.

Thank you.

Y'all can have a seat.

Appreciate you.

Check, check.

Motivational song.

What am I supposed to say?

Please stand for our motivational song.

You guys come together a little bit.

You guys come in a little bit.

I need both of those letters connected together.

The higher we build your barriers, the taller I become.

I become, I become, I become, I become.

The further you take my rights away, away, away, away, away, the faster I will run.

I will run, I will run, I will run like a track star.

You can't deny me.

You can't decide to turn your face away from me.

No matter.

No matter.

Because there's no matter.

Something inside so strong, so strong.

Flex with it.

I know that I, I know I can make it.

But you're doing me wrong, so wrong.

Thought that my pride was going to strike.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Something inside so strong.

Oh, something inside so strong.

The more you refuse to hear my voice.

Away, away, away, away.

The louder I will sing.

I will sing, I will sing, I will sing, I will sing.

You have the high walls of Jericho.

Away, away, away, away.

Our lives will come tumbling down, down, down, down.

Deny my place in time.

You squander wealth, that's mine.

My light will shine.

So brightly it will blind you.

I can't see.

But inside, so strong, so strong.

I know that I, I know I can make it.

But you're doing me wrong, so wrong.

You thought that my pride was gone sight.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Something inside so strong.

Oh, something inside so strong.

I know I can.

I know I can.

Be what I want to be.

Be what I want to be.

If I work hard at it.

If I work hard at it.

I'll be where I want to be.

I know I can.

I know I can.

Be what I want to be.

Be what I want to be.

If I work hard at it.

If I work hard at it.

I'll be where I want to be.

I'll be where I want to be.

Be, be.

Brothers and sisters, two steps.

Brothers and sisters, that's not good enough.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

But we know better.

We know better.

Look them in the eyes and say, we're going to do it anyway.

We're gonna do it anyway.

We're gonna do it anyway.

We're gonna do it anyway.

Do, do, do, do, do, do.

Something inside's so strong.

So strong.

Wait for it.

I know that I, I know I can make it.

But you're doing me wrong, so wrong.

You thought that my pride was gone.

Sike.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Something inside's so strong.

Oh, something inside us so strong.

Everybody say cheers and chants.

Cheers and chants.

Cheers and chants.

Cheers and chants.

Cheers and chants.

Cheers and chants.

Cheers and chants.

Cheers and chants.

Got hope, got hope, got hope, got hope, got freedom, got love, got hope, got hope, that's dope, that's dope, that's dope, that's dope, got freedom, got love, got hope, got hope, got hope, got hope, got hope, got freedom, got love, got hope, got hope, that's dope, that's dope, that's dope, that's dope, got freedom, got love, got hope, got hope.

Red hot!

Freedom schools is what?

Red hot!

Freedom schools is R-E-D with a little bit of H-O-T.

Freedom schools is R-E-D, red H-O-T.

Red hot, red hot, red hot.

Freedom schools is what?

Red hot!

Freedom schools is what?

Red hot!

Freedom schools is R-E-D with a little bit of H-O-T.

Freedom schools is R-E-D, red H-O-T.

Red hot, red hot, red hot.

I got a recognition, y'all.

Recognize.

We said we got a recognition, y'all.

Recognize!

We want to recognize you guys and thank you guys for letting us come out here tonight.

I got a recognition, y'all.

Recognize!

I said I got a recognition, y'all.

Recognize!

We would like to recognize all the people who have been here for Rainy Beach High School and also recognize the the city for granting vocal cords to all free and reduced students.

So recognitions are a way that we affirm and acknowledge our community.

Does anyone have a recognition that they would like to give?

I got a recognition for you all.

Recognize.

I would like to recognize all the parents who stood with the strikers, showed how powerful that the family of Joe, the people on strike, cared.

I got a recognition, y'all.

Recognize.

I don't think you heard me.

I said, I got a recognition, y'all.

Recognize.

We would love to recognize our school board members and recognizing that tonight is the summer of your last night after years and years of service.

So thank you so much.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

So first of all, thank you very much.

My goodness, when they told us the format was going to be a little bit different, I had this fear that we were going to have to do something super challenging.

But this was very energizing, and we appreciate the opportunity to see you all come here and present this to us.

Here's what I'm going to ask you to do.

If you could each state your first name only and your grade and pass the microphone on down.

And what I will do, I'll be smarter this time.

I'll start it at this end so that I'm at the end to receive it.

My name is Ahmed Abdullahi and I'm a freshman at Rainier Beach High School.

My name is Anna Terrell and I'm a freshman from Rainier Beach.

I'm Carl and I'm a freshman.

My name is Katera Howard and I'm a sophomore.

My name is Ife Abshir and I'm a senior.

My name is Jamejah Brown and I'm a sophomore.

My name is Alexandra and I am a sophomore at Rainier Beach High School.

My name is Savannah and I am in ninth grade.

My name is Miriam and I am a sophomore at Rainier Beach High School.

My name is Desi and I am a sophomore.

My name is Ryan and I am a junior.

My name is Jermaine and I am a freshman at Rainier Beach High School.

My name is David and I am a sophomore at Rainier Beach High School.

My name is Bethlehem and I am a ninth grader.

My name is Anthony and I am a ninth grader at Rainier Beach.

My name is Chelsea and I am a social worker at Rainier Beach High School.

My name is Luke and I was a teacher this summer at Freedom Schools at Rainier Beach High School.

My name is Lauren.

I'm a program director for Urban Impact.

And real quick, did you hear how many of these students are ninth graders?

I just want to call that to attention.

These are our young leaders who are really leading our school, ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders.

My name is Tyra, and I work with freshman at Rainier Beach High School.

Well, again, thank you to each and every one of you for coming here today for the work that you're doing here.

And we'll look forward to seeing you back at some point in the future.

Oh, sure.

You've got a closing?

OK, sorry, closing act.

So we're going to ask you guys to stand up one more time.

Sorry for that.

Last time, I promise.

So this next chant that we're going to do is really important.

It's called the Asada chant, and it was done at Mizzou, like what's happening in Missouri, too.

And it's done all over.

It's kind of like a symbol.

So basically, what you do is you raise your right fist up, and it's kind of like a call response.

So you just repeat after me. but we ask that you only say the words if you believe them.

Okay, so this is how it goes.

Okay, so it is our duty to fight for our freedom.

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

It is our duty to win.

It is our duty to win.

We must love each other.

We must love each other.

We must protect each other.

We must protect each other.

We have nothing to lose.

We have nothing to lose.

But our chains.

But our chains.

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

It is our duty to win.

It is our duty to win.

We must love each other.

We must love each other.

And protect each other.

And protect each other.

We have nothing to lose.

We have nothing to lose.

But our chains.

But our chains.

Ashe.

Ashe.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Let's have one more round of applause for these students.

Alright so why don't we give it a minute or two for the room to transition, the board directors to head back up.

Yeah it's maybe easier if you come out the side, there you go.

All right so it looks like there's some empty seats up in the front so if you're standing don't be shy about coming and sitting down.

I don't think they're reserved for anyone at this point.

Alright so that takes us now to our superintendent comments and so with that I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Nyland.

Again congratulations to Rainier Beach students and their demonstration of Harambee.

We wondered what an ASB presentation looks like, now we know.

Harambee is Keith Swahili for Let's Pull Together and as you saw it includes song and dance designed to energize and inspire the school community.

Had the opportunity to be at Rainier Beach for freedom school summer school and walked into the band performance area and innocently asked How are you doing?

And I got back.

One of those chants.

Fantastic.

So I think that's an important part of the turnaround work that's been happening at Rainier Beach and they've made dramatic increases in graduation rates and a lot of good work by staff, students, and community partners.

So thanks to Urban Impact and all of our other partners with regard to Rainier Beach.

Tonight is the final board meeting for four of our directors.

We'd like to honor them.

So we have some cabinet members that will be coming forward to reflect on accomplishments by our four outgoing board members.

Together they have provided 24 years of service to Seattle Public Schools and our 52,000 students.

So we want to take at least a few minutes to honor their commitment, their dedication, their hard work and their accomplishments.

So I would like to invite Erin Bennett up and she will make a few brief comments and then we will recognize each of those four directors.

Good evening.

Tonight we thank four of our directors for their service to Seattle Public Schools for all that they've done for our community, for our students and for our district.

And so the first director that we would like to recognize is Director Carr.

So Dr. Nyland.

I would like to recognize Director Sherry Carr currently serving as you see as Board President.

Several words that come to mind as I think about Sherry over the last at least year that I've had the opportunity to work with her.

First one is leadership.

She's provided a great deal of stability during a period of superintendent turnover and senior staff.

She's helped restore public confidence during our fiscal crisis a number of years ago.

has helped to stand up an internal audit office and an oversight process to assure the public and the auditors that we are being fiscal stewards of the resources that we have.

So thank you for helping us advocate for building trust and fiscal accountability.

Second, is service.

Eight years of service on the school board with sometimes meetings on Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, on a weekend.

In addition to that Sherry has served as labor relations liaison, legislative liaison, Curriculum and Instruction Committee member, Chair of the Operations Committee, Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee, some of these multiple times, and most recently as President of the Board of Directors.

So thank you for your strong and forthright leadership, being even-handed and trying to make sure that all voices are heard so that we can make great decisions for students.

The third is focus.

Great school boards keep a focus on what's most important and I think a year ago as I was preparing my remarks for the state of the district it was, you didn't mention the strategic plan until paragraph 3. So it was, we have to keep that strategic plan first and foremost.

We have to keep remembering that we're here for every student, every classroom, every day.

The goal process and the superintendent evaluation process that's been set up over the last few years we now know from a recent conference nationally is among the best in the nation.

So thank you for keeping that focus on student achievement.

And then advocacy.

Sherry has advocated over the years for many things to make Seattle a better place.

Certainly the 2010 and 2013 operations and capital levies are a big part of that.

And most recently thank you for your strong voice with regard to the legislators.

and the need to fully fund McCleary.

So thank you for keeping that message front and centered.

So thank you for being a rock-solid leader for us.

We'll miss you.

We'll miss your expertise.

52,000 students say thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We would now like to take a minute to thank Director Martin-Morris for his service to Seattle Public Schools.

In recognition to Director Harry and Martin-Morris we want to thank you very much for your eight years of board service to the children and parents of the city of Seattle.

Your steady and experienced leadership will be greatly missed at the district.

You actively served in multiple board committee assignments over the years, both as chair and as member.

Five years with the curriculum and instruction committee, four years with the operations committee and another four years with the audit and finance committee where you are currently serving as the chair.

In addition you also provided active legislative advocacy for the district serving as the board's representative on several national committees and associations.

Including your important role as a head start board liaison and also your work with the Council of urban boards of education I know this past legislative session superintendent and Island were greatly appreciative your active support and Olympia helping to advocate on behalf of full funding of McCleary as well as testifying against some of the anti Seattle public school bills there are out there and During your term you were also a true champion of the Seattle's students, putting them first.

Among your many accomplishments you authored a resolution to place a moratorium on out of school suspensions to help close the achievement gap which also included additional support structures and targeted services to students and schools in need of support.

This resolution was unanimously passed.

by the board and receive very positive national attention as an important strategy for addressing the achievement gap.

Your board service also resulted in enhanced public accountability through strong board operations and financial oversight of the district.

Your record of achievement occurred during one of the most difficult economic times in recent memory, which forced the board to make a lot of difficult decisions and choices on how to spend dollars more effectively and efficiently.

And during your last three years, the district witnessed dramatic improvement in the audit committee accountability process.

and which focus strong attention on closing out audit issues and shifting our attention more towards operational performance improvement strategies and recommendations that supports the district including things such as the enterprise risk management initiatives and the lean process improvement strategies.

Finally, I would like to point out that probably your most least visible legacy at the district was your actively promoting the school board members and the senior district leadership team through your mentorship, advice, and guidance.

As I reach my second year as the district's assistant superintendent for business and finance I want you to know that I truly appreciate your active advice and counsel on board policy, procedures and agenda setting matters.

You proactively helped myself and my colleagues as we navigated our way through difficult board issues and helped turn many of our problems into exciting improvement opportunities for the district.

We respect and learn from your data-driven decision-making approach, the importance you place on safety and on system improvements.

And then finally, on a personal note, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to co-present with you in Arizona recently.

Our topic was a more deliberative approach to budgeting.

The session was at the fall coop conference.

When you and I were sharing our school boards at colleagues many of our board best practices worked together.

You spent the time working with your colleagues at the individual tables helping explain and answer questions to them on some of the difficult concepts they were kind of struggling to grasp.

For your long record of board service, always putting the Seattle students first, actively lobbying and advocating on behalf of the district and the mentorship work you've done for my colleagues and I, we want to thank you for your service and we look forward to a great period of time after you're serving the district.

Anyway, thank you.

We would now like to recognize Director Marty McLaren.

Director McLaren.

We're all proud of you.

We're proud of your accomplishments and your dedication and your hard work to put always students first.

And I'm here proud to tell you also that we consider you as an equity warrior.

Your commitment to ensuring that every student that comes into our care in our district gets their needs met and that they achieve to the highest potential is something that is remarkable and we want to recognize you for that.

Your accomplishments are too many to mention in this short time, but I just wanted to make sure that I highlight some of them.

And you have been working relentlessly for us to understand implicit bias, institutional racism, and the opportunity and achievement gaps, also the disproportionality and discipline gaps.

Your strength to make sure that our work continues, to ensure that every kid gets what the Constitution of the United States which is a high quality public and free education is something to give you accolades for.

You were a driving force when we passed the ensuring educational racial equity policy.

in 2012 and we were the only second district in the nation, the second district in the nation to pass such a policy.

You need to feel good about your accomplishments because you have approached the job as an educator and you have kept that focus of putting children first all the time.

As an educator, Director McLaren galvanized the power of knowledge and the fundamental importance of respectful relationships with each other.

We had the opportunity to travel to Harvard together, and you provided us with guidance and support on how we can strengthen meaningful, intentional, and strategic family partnerships, and how we can see our families as equal partners in the education of our children.

You spent a lot of your time as a board member learning, drilling down to understand our school district more deeply and figuring out what is important to know and shining a light on that for everybody to understand what we need to do and focus on.

You have always put students first and it has been very important to you to honor the achievements and contributions of our staff.

You have been a leader who has supported the staff in a great way and we always think that you have our backs.

Your decisions as a board member were always made to inform the community and the staff about the remarkable work that is going on in Seattle Public Schools and to help us understand our work more fully.

Your focus on the success of the whole enterprise is something to be also aware of.

You have been creating a sense of improvement in systems so that we can support each and every student that comes into our care.

You have served as the chair of the Curriculum Instruction Committee for three years, and you have been member of such committee for four years.

You were a member at large of the Executive Committee, in two years, and you were a part of the operations committee in 2013. You have led our school board goal on strengthening partnerships with ethnically and linguistically diverse communities as part of your commitments and goals.

And for that, we thank you.

We're going to miss you.

We're proud of all your accomplishments.

Thank you for your leadership.

And now we'd like to take a minute to recognize Director Sharon Peasley.

It's been a long four years I know and lots and lots of hours that were put in and your dedication and service has really been, moved us as a district forward.

And I just want to highlight a few of the accomplishments that you have shared and some of the comments some of the staffs had about working with you.

So, for all four years Director Peasley served on the operations committee and was also involved in BEX oversight.

In 2012 and 13 she also sat on the C&I committee and during 2013 she became the board's member at large.

In 2014 she became the board president and in 2015 she has been serving as the vice president.

So when I asked our staff can you give me some adjectives that might describe Director Peasley they were ready and willing to do that and some of the highlights were community advocate, classroom focused, inclusive and focused or as one person put it tenacious.

And I'd like to just describe some of those things that she accomplished using those adjectives.

So as a community advocate she worked to help implement the green resolution.

She really listened to our community and tried to make sure that our buildings were built in a way that were sustainable.

She helped launch a number of new schools, Jams, Hazel Wolf, Licton Springs, Boren STEM, Cascadia and most recently Robert Eagle Staff.

She was classroom focused.

She passed a testing resolution and worked with the superintendent to shift away from excessive testing towards classroom-based formative assessments and we are really leading the nation on that.

She was really proud of the work to help start the IB at Rainier Beach along with Director Patu.

Indian heritage middle and high school program that is now being launched at Denny and Chief Sealth she worked tirelessly to make sure that that could get started.

And as all of our technology staff want to make sure we highlight She really focused on district-wide Wi-Fi, getting state-of-the-art classroom equipment related to technology and trying to move us closer to one-to-one commuting for all of our classrooms.

As far as inclusiveness, she was also really working hard to make sure that we passed the race and equity policy and was a strong advocate along with Director McLaren on that.

And as far as being tenacious, focused, or She, first of all, helped hire our current superintendent when we needed her tenaciousness related to that.

She helped pass the BEX levy with the strongest support we've seen in quite a number of years and that was no light lift so thank you for that.

And then of course tonight we are talking about bell times and four years ago She began the drumbeat about how important it was that we start to look at this issue and so it is her four years worth of tenaciousness that have gotten us here tonight.

And with that I just want to say it's been an honor to work with you and to work with all of you and we thank you very very much.

So we would like to invite you all to come down and take a picture with us.

And we have some small mementos to thank you.

But I just wanted to say on a personal note, I have so enjoyed working with each and every one of you.

And thank you for all of your tireless, so many hours working with us.

And so we thank you.

So please, come down and join us.

So you'd like us to come down?

All right.

Are we all coming down?

And a wedding cake.

It's good.

Are you sure they'll give them back?

That's right.

Well again thank you to our outgoing board members for your dedication and hard work.

I too have very much appreciated the opportunity to work with you.

American Education Week is November 16 to 20. This week presents an opportunity for us to celebrate public education and honor individuals making a difference in ensuring that every child receives a quality education.

This year's theme is great public schools, a basic right and our responsibility.

Today is education support professionals day.

Includes all of those people that help get kids to school, get kids fed, help support teachers and educators in the classroom.

And many many people who are dedicated not only to the students and to their jobs but in our communities as well.

Thursday is educator for a day, Friday is substitute educators day so we certainly thank and applaud the hundreds and thousands of employees that we have that are education support professionals.

You might also recognize tonight we're not able to be in two places at once but the University of Washington is welcoming Dean Mia Thuan as the new Dean at the University of Washington and also honoring longtime educator community advocate Carver Gayton.

So we wish them well and we thank the University of Washington for their many many partnerships with us.

Also, tonight we'll be hearing from Greg Juan, Schools First, and we thank Greg and all of the committee members, many of whom have served many, many terms, gone through many, many elections to help support and promote the funds that are so important for day-to-day operations and for our buildings, technology, and academics.

Thanksgiving break is coming next week Thursday and Friday November 26 and 27. However for elementary and K-8 students there will be no school next week because that's teacher conferences earlier in the week.

Middle school and high school students will be released one hour early on Wednesday November 25 and classes will resume on Monday November 30. A few comments about tonight's board meeting.

The student assignment plan was one that we removed from the agenda two weeks ago to provide for additional time to meet with families.

We held three additional meetings in the last two weeks.

We heard clearly from parents that we were moving too fast and so based on what we heard Our enrollment planning team is proposing several things.

One, to resolve the existing policy conflict in regard to tiebreakers.

two different policies that are conflicting.

And secondly to adjust the May 31 date if needed and treat this coming year as a test drive for that work.

And thirdly to delay the more extensive changes that were reflected in the documents that were posted for review by the board next year.

Our goal is to provide greater clarity for our parents, to provide earlier notification so that we can hire outstanding staff early in the school year and that we can minimize disruptions as we start each school year.

We hope that these changes will help in that effort but we will certainly test drive those changes and look at the revisions for the following year.

Also on the agenda tonight are SMART goals and again I would commend the school board for their focus on board governance priorities and superintendent SMART goals.

Outstanding school districts pick four goals, four years student achievement.

We are moving in that direction.

I really appreciate the focus that the board has provided.

We'll be acting on those goals.

There's six goals, actually seven counting the personal goal that I have with the board.

And those include several steps to improve communications, partnerships, and engagement in decision-making.

And at the top of the list are student achievement and closing the opportunity gap.

So board members will be offering some amendments tonight.

Those amendments are about wording.

They are not about keeping or discarding any of the goals.

All of the goals I think we have great unanimity and agreement among the board on the importance of each of those six goals.

There will be some discussion later tonight about the wording of some of those goals.

Bell Times, I think many of you are here tonight to say a few words about Bell Times.

The Seattle Times told the story quite well in their story on the front page tonight.

It's been a long journey.

It's been many years for many of the board members.

It's been two years of work by Peggy McEvoy and her team including community members.

I have done six rounds of community engagement, community involvement, have tried to be responsive and listen at each stage.

At the same time have been dedicated to finding a no-cost solution that would move us in a direction of later start times for older students that the sleep research is based on and dedicated to.

So, the most recent change that's reflected in the action this evening is to move all of the schedules earlier by five minutes.

So, still recognize that tier 3 is a challenge for many of our schools and our parents.

We've reduced as many of those schools as possible.

We'll continue to work on that as we're able.

But we have to recognize that and try to accommodate that by at least the five minutes.

And then finally with regard to tonight's board meeting the board will also be voting on my salary and contract.

As I've indicated at earlier board meetings in the state of the district I'm pleased to be of service to the city where I grew up and where I graduated.

The school board has asked me through the board governance priorities and the SMART goals to improve learning, close opportunity gaps, repair systems, and rebuild community trust.

We've made gains in many of those areas.

We still have a lot of work to do.

I certainly appreciate the board's recognition of the work accomplished this past year and the proposed salary increase and I applaud the board's desire to keep Seattle's salary competitive for future superintendents.

I'll be glad to contribute all of that salary increase back to the Seattle Public Schools.

In other updates, the Department of Early Learning this week had RULER training.

RULER is a social emotional program that is now in about 50 of our 60 elementary schools.

It stands for recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing and regulating emotions.

It's providing great terminology for students and great terminology for adults.

We had great training today or recently for team leaders, Head Start, and 10 site teams that will be launching the ruler work in their buildings.

The Beacon Hill international testing incident now, I guess two years ago, there was suspected test tampering that we reported to OSPI.

We undertook an extensive investigation.

We've now concluded that investigation.

We found that there certainly was tampering but we were unable to determine exactly who was responsible for that.

Since then we've made major changes in our testing protocols and we've also gone to an online testing system that has greater security for student records.

And I want to recognize the continued great efforts by the Beacon Hill staff, students and parents.

Also recently the Seattle School District and the SEA, the Seattle Education Association met together in a partnership committee dedicated to closing the opportunity gap and working together to increase understanding with regard to race and equity.

Had the opportunity this last week actually to visit Broadview Thompson in Viewlands at Broadview Thompson where I once graduated.

I had the opportunity to visit with the MTSS kindergarten team and saw their dedication to closing gaps for kindergarten students.

And at Viewlands I also saw the opportunity for teachers and paras to work together on student achievement.

Final comments on some good news.

Student Dwayne Jack a Native American student was nominated for the Superior Court Youth Award.

Plans to go into a culinary art program at Seattle Central.

Working in the food environment as a prep cook at Century Link.

Beacon Hill had a walking school bus event this last week.

Senator Ed Murray participated along with the Seattle Seahawks mascot Blitz.

Mayor Ed Murray.

Orca K-8 is in the process of a playground ribbon-cutting celebration thanks to the community partners that have made that possible.

Special education last year was rated number 4 which is not good on the federal watch list.

Diligent, diligent hard work by staff this last year.

They have now moved up to level, past level 3 to level 2. And they are working in partnership with OSPI who has been out to start to look at the work that is being done in our schools.

The Northwest was the first region to go through on-site verification with OSPI and they were recognized for their achievements and part of the money that was withheld from the district a year ago is now being returned to us as part of that process.

So congratulations to special ed and their staff.

A week and a half ago we did the state of the district address.

Thanks to the city for providing a place for us to hold one of those events along with one that we held here in this auditorium.

We highlighted some of the successes as well as the challenges and the opportunities ahead.

We were blessed with a performance by the John Rogers otters choir and our youth poet laureate Leah.

Far stole the show with a standing ovation.

She is a Cleveland high school student and has a bright future ahead of her.

And we want to continue to work toward orientation and bringing on board our newly elected directors.

Thank you again for your dedication and commitment to stepping up to take on a big responsibility.

Swearing in ceremony will be on December 1 at 5 PM and we will recognize those incoming board members and then we'll have an official board meeting on December 2. So welcome and I look forward to working with each of you.

So with that I think I will conclude my remarks as indicated Dr. Herndon will have some remarks with regard to the student assignment plan when we get to that item on the agenda.

Thank you.

All right the next item on the agenda is listed as the student comments.

That would have been the student comments had we had students here at the end of the dais with us not the first position on the public testimony list.

So we don't have those student comments up here tonight so we will pass on that item.

And that takes us now to the consent agenda.

So if I could please have a motion.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

Do directors have any items they want to remove from the consent agenda?

All right seeing none all of those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

All right that passes the consent agenda.

Thank you.

Alright so that then takes us to the public testimony list and since it is after 5 o'clock we will move straight into public testimony.

So for this meeting we had a large number of requests to provide public testimony therefore according to board procedure 1430 BP the testimony list was increased from 20 to 25 speakers.

The rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

I would note that the board does not take public comments on issues related to personnel or individually named staff.

I would also like to note that each speaker has a two minute speaking time.

When your two minutes have ended please conclude your remarks and the lighting system on the podium tells you at yellow you have 30 seconds to go and at red your time is up.

Okay so with that I'm going to find my list.

Alright and what I will do is read the names three at a time.

If someone's not here I will circle back and give them an opportunity in the event that they came in late before I go to the waitlist.

So let's start with Elizabeth Osborne, Diane Casper, and Federica Merrill.

And the timer will start when you start speaking so just feel free to begin whenever you're ready.

Hello my name is Elizabeth Osborne and I am a senior at Ballard High School.

I am here to address the problem of overcrowding at my school.

The overcrowding is not only due to higher enrollment but underfunding.

Over the last year our student body has increased by about 80 students and estimates show that next year it will increase by about 150 and by 2019 Ballard will reach almost 2000 students while our building was made with a capacity of 1600. The largest problems due to higher enrollment are crowded hallways, which make it hard to get to class on time.

Freshman year I was able to get from one side of the school to the other with time to spare, but my sister, who is now a freshman, has to make the same trek I did four years ago and can barely make it to class on time.

Overcrowded hallways also make it hard for students to get to their lockers, if they're lucky enough to have one.

Only about one-third of seniors this year have lockers.

Overcrowding in classrooms is largely due to underfunding.

Instead of having enough classes and teachers to keep the amount of students in a class at 32 minimum or maximum we are forced to have as many of our core classes as large as 37 students.

I am a hardworking student but even I find it difficult to work in a classroom with just 32 students.

The largest problem caused by overcrowded classrooms is that teachers do not have enough time to help all their students that request it.

About a month ago I asked my former language arts teacher to help me with my college essay and he hasn't had enough time to meet with me yet due to an overwhelming amount of students requesting for help and large amounts of work to grade.

Many classrooms are not large enough to hold these class sizes.

In my language arts class there aren't even enough desks for all the students and no space in the classroom to add more.

I understand that the solution for crowded hallways and lack of lockers is simple but hard to execute but the solution to overcrowded classrooms is simple, more funding for more teachers.

I think it is in the district's best interest to address this problem so that students and teachers have the best high school experience as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Diane Casper followed by Federica Merrill and Noam Gundel.

Good afternoon.

First I would like to thank all the board, particularly the outgoing board members for their service.

These people volunteer thousands of hours over the course of their terms learning and thinking hard on many complex issues, taking on great responsibility and always with the good of the students uppermost in their hearts and minds.

I know I stand with many parents in being grateful for your service.

Thank you so much.

I've waited a very long time for this day and more to the point the students, thousands of students have waited long for this day.

It's been quite a journey.

After four years of work our hugely improved bell times proposal is in front of you.

Given the requirement for cost neutrality this plan is an exceptional value.

I'm so grateful to the transportation department for doing the work to put so many schools into tiers that are optimal for learning and health for each age group.

Passing this now is critical.

Starting next fall this plan will benefit tens of thousands of students and we can finally stop having a schedule that science has clearly shown that damages health and impedes learning.

Passing this now also allows more time for the many adjustments that will need to be made by both families and businesses.

Failing to pass it on the other hand will leave almost all our secondary students at an unhealthy time.

Failing to pass it will leave 33 schools with the challenges of tier 3 rather than 13 of them.

This proposal is a huge step forward for our students and clearly deserves your vote but the work is not done.

I call on our next board to continue the work and to work to strive to give all of our students a schedule that supports their learning and health.

passage of this proposal will create a legacy for which students will be grateful for years to come.

You can be really proud of it.

I thank you for all you do and particularly for your tenaciousness and your steady hand in guiding this process to fruition today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next is Federica Merrill.

I'm not sure I see Ms. Merrill.

Hi thank you to board members and Sherry who is a former parent of Roosevelt High School where I teach and I am a pre-calc teacher and I have four sections and I tell you the kids, they thanked me for coming here to testify and I'm thanking you on their behalf because they were like yeah Ms. Merrill tell them you know.

It is so hard to be at school thinking functioning at 730 in the morning and learning about how to write a quadratic equation with matrices after doing numerical analysis.

I mean it's really hard right?

So I know you would want to do that and I think there are a lot of adults in our community who do not start their day at 730 in the morning doing that kind of work.

So, thank you so much for approving of this and I come every day to Roosevelt High School from South Seattle, I live on Beacon Hill and I ride the train and the bus every day with students of color who come up to Roosevelt to get an education at Roosevelt and those students get up even earlier, right?

And I've got students in my first period class riding that bus with me every day and sometimes they don't make it.

And I've had a lot of students over the years who have been late for first period class.

A lot of the first period math students try to switch out.

So I've only got like 20 something first period and then my later pre-calc classes I'm overloaded, 33 and 34. And everybody who could switch out did and then the other students are stuck with first period pre-calculus.

So, really they are thanking you and I think they are going to learn more and we live in a beautiful city with a lot of arts and music and a lot of these kids are musicians and they like to go out and play music at night and they perform some of them and you know we want to support that kind of life too.

We live in a beautiful city with a lot going on at night.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Noam Gundel is next followed by Rachelle Dickerson and Emily Lieberman.

Hello my name is Noam Gundel and I am a distinguished science educator in Seattle and I teach my students every day to research and evaluate data, to make conclusions, help make decisions, solve problems and make their communities better.

And this is in line with our state learning standards and the national science, next generation science standards and today I am inviting the Seattle school board to do the same.

We have gone through an extensive process and I believe the research is clear.

It is time to make the changes our students need.

I am a high school teacher.

Through most of my career at Ballard High School we have begun at 745 AM.

I learned quickly my first few years that I cannot be as successful with my first period as I can with my students the rest of the day.

And this is based on biology.

The research done in developing our continuing school improvement plan at Ballard High School found that our school at least, student absences and tardies during first period were four times as high as all the other periods combined.

This seriously affects their academic achievement and their abilities to succeed in high school.

Two years ago our staff took an advisory vote on moving start times later and the vote was unanimous in support at least among the staff that were at the meeting.

And today we voted again in preparation for this testimony 95% agreed that later start times would be good for students.

This is the best decision for our students and for our schools and I support it because I'm a scientist and I know it follows the same standards I teach every day to support this decision.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Rochelle Dickerson followed by Emily Lieberman and then Tina Podlodowski.

I think I ruined it.

At two of the hastily staged community meetings I attended on the student assignment plan it was crystal clear at both the community is not comfortable with the changes being made in this plan.

Community members repeatedly brought up real issues with moving the date to May 31. Even Dr. Nyland tonight acknowledged this and said it should be a trial plan and see how it goes and if that is true the plan should say that or you should vote no.

The district staff was not prepared to give real answers to indicate how they intend to get the waitlist to move quickly by the end of May.

What about seats that become open as people move and change schools over the summer?

What about the seats left empty?

There will need to be a reshuffling at the end of the summer to fill those spots or face teacher cuts again.

Why not hold the waitlist on May 31 then resume movement within the first few days before school or in August?

An option school seats being offered to families moving into the district after the date has closed instead of those who were on the waitlist, some for years, is unacceptable.

What problem is the district solving with this firm desolation date?

The answer we were given was predictability.

Supposedly missed enrollment projections and a large number of teacher reallocations occurred in October because significant numbers of families left for neighboring districts or enrolled in private or charter schools.

Changing the waitlist date to May 31st gives predictability on none of those scenarios.

Our community is greatly concerned that there has been woefully insufficient planning and research done to determine how to implement the changes the district intends for this transition plan.

Again if this is now a trial plan and if it is not certain and we may change it later the plan needs to say that before you vote or you need to vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Emily Lieberman followed by Tina Poblodowsky and Horacio de la Iglesia.

Hi I'm Emily Lieberman I'm the parent of two students in the Seattle Public Schools and I was the PTA president at my kids elementary school for two years including the year during which our school had a significant boundary change.

And I am here tonight to strongly urge you to retain the distance tiebreaker for neighborhood schools.

I would also like to say that Rochelle really accurately represents what seemed to be the unanimous opinion of the 50 or so families that were at the Ingram community meeting that I attended and from my understanding the opinion of the families at the other meetings as well.

The biggest concern for me in my remarks is that I strongly urge you to keep the distance tiebreaker for neighborhood schools.

I recognize that you have attention before you in your decision-making.

You want neighborhood schools and you want choice but there is a mechanism for dealing with that.

Keep the distance tiebreaker for neighborhood schools while eliminating it for option schools.

I know that the distance tiebreaker wasn't in the 2009 student assignment plan but it has been employed since then for a good reason and it continues to be extremely important to neighborhood schools especially in the midst of boundary changes such as those that are ongoing in our district now and upcoming in the future.

Finally I have to urge you to vote against the transition plan because of what has felt like as a parent a completely insufficient public engagement process.

I want to acknowledge that everyone staff, you, the parent community have the best interests of the kids at heart but it is disheartening as a parent to see these three public meetings held and I know that there were meetings earlier but they were styled as growth boundary meetings.

We never heard about a May 31 date.

It's disheartening to see not one word of the pretty unanimous feedback get taken into account.

And frankly it doesn't reassure me to hear Dr. Nyland say earlier that this is just a test if even the staff acknowledges that this proposal needs more consideration.

I hope you will vote no or postpone your vote tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tina Podlodowski followed by Horacio de la Iglesia and Christian Weinman.

Thank you my name is Tina Potlodowsky and I'm a parent at Queen Anne Elementary with a child on track to be stuffed into overcrowded Ballard High School in about eight years.

Please hold on voting for assignment plan changes until the new board is in place.

The hastily arranged public meetings over a week and a half by staff coupled with an incomplete documentation for public review does not constitute a true public process.

Given that boundaries will be changing and programs like advanced learning appear to be changing the whole plan will need to be changed yet again very soon.

This is a job for the new board and there is no pressing reason to vote on this tonight.

At the very least if you do please amend the waitlist end date to a date later than May 31st.

and indicate that it is a trial plan.

Third, many folks will be speaking about the proposed raise for the superintendent this evening and reading the very short evaluation that has been made public.

I cannot see how a raise is justified by the board and I cannot see why a raise would be accepted by the superintendent even if you are going to give it all back.

By voting in a raise, by accepting in a raise, please be aware of the message that you're sending to families in this district.

It's not a positive one.

Leadership means taking responsibility and we're still waiting to see who's going to accept responsibility for the lack of timely bargaining that brought us the teacher strike, enrollment errors that impacted 30 classrooms, And in different and inadequate communication that forces parents to act like detectives just to find out basic information that should be readily available.

I would just love to have someone take responsibility for fixing the rat problem at John Rogers cafeteria.

Finally at Queen Anne Elementary we are still waiting for the superintendent to meet with us after the untimely and unjust loss of our principal.

When will that happen?

Sadly I think we are at the very end of a long queue of empty promises.

That's not taking responsibility.

Please fix that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Horatio De La Iglesia, Christian Weinman, Anthony Shoecraft.

I cede my time to Dr. Vitiello.

Thank you.

My name is Michael Vitiello and I speak in favor of delayed school start times for Seattle secondary school students.

I'm a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the UW, past president of the Sleep Research Society and a past chairman of the National Institute of Health's sleep disorders research advisory board.

And as an educator I've taught thousands of adolescents in early morning classes.

All of my scientific expertise and teaching experience convinces me that Seattle secondary school students deserve the benefits afforded by later school start times.

The scientific evidence in support of such a change is overwhelming.

Over the last 20 years research has demonstrated that when children reach puberty there's a natural delay in their biological clock coupled with an increased ability to remain awake.

These two factors delay both biological sleep onset and biological wake time.

Because teens typically cannot fall asleep in later hours of the evening delayed school start times provide them with the opportunity for longer sleep times.

Teens need nine hours of sleep a night but typically only get seven.

When a school district starts secondary schools later this results in more sleep each night, increased alertness at school and overwhelming better and overall better achievement.

School start times are also associated with improved mental and physical health and decreased suicidality.

A comprehensive report on this issue by the independent Brookings Institute stated starting secondary schools later can be an inexpensive way to boost achievement and disadvantaged students benefit the most from later start times with effects roughly twice as large as for disadvantaged students.

I recognize that while the science supporting such a change is clear.

Implementing school start times is a case of the devil being in the details.

Yet you've addressed many of these details.

Nevertheless students clearly need and deserve a change and its beneficial consequences.

I urge you to make this a reality and I urge you to make this a reality today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Christian Weinman, Anthony Shewcroft, Greg Wong.

Hello my name is Chris Weinman, I'm a parent at Lafayette Elementary in West Seattle.

Lafayette is one of 10 schools placed in tier 3, one of 10 of the elementary schools.

It's the only one of 11 in West Seattle in tier 3. I think everyone agrees that budget-willing all elementary schools should be in tier 1. Please understand though that it is indisputably a burden for my school and its families to remain in tier 3. This is my seventh year at Lafayette.

I have three kids and by the time I'm done I will have spent 13 years there.

Every year I've been at the Lafayette, the past seven years we've had a late start time, 925 or later, every single year.

There is no other school in West Seattle with that unfortunate track record.

The first question we asked when the news broke that we'd been placed in tier 3 was why, why our school?

We are not a Title I school but there are many non-Title I schools in West Seattle and Lafayette has a far higher percentage of free and reduced lunch than the other non-Title I schools in the area.

It isn't even close.

If you base this decision on percentage of free and reduced lunch Lafayette would clearly be in tier 1. I personally posed this question why us to Marty McLaren a few weeks ago and went back and forth on email with her.

We've had direct dialogue with Peggy McEvoy about this and others.

Marty you came to our school and we talked about it a year ago.

It's been on everybody's radar for a long time.

Here's why Lafayette was put in tier 3. Because we already had a late start time.

We've been getting this raw deal for the past seven years, so we were the ones picked to continue getting it.

You picked the school that's gotten the worst treatment and continued that treatment.

With that history and our high free and reduced lunch percentage, shouldn't we have been the first on the list to get out of this?

I know, I know you're all good people.

You're reasonable and smart.

You wouldn't be up there if you weren't.

So thank you.

But by God, this is horribly unfair.

The last you could do, the least you could do if you are going to do this to our families is to tell us why.

Give us some reason, some rationale, some rational basis.

And if you can't even do that, give us a plan for how you are going to fix it.

We deserve a plan.

Thank you.

Anthony Shoecraft, Greg Wong, Sabrina Burr.

Good evening I'm happy to yield my time to Mr. DeCorey and Roundtree Jr.

Good evening.

My name is DeCorey and Roundtree.

I'm an 8th grade student at South Shore Middle School.

From young black males perspective I see a lot of gang activity and a lot of young black boys roaming the streets before and after school.

I believe that there should be A group for African-American males scholars initiative focused on African-American males.

Because there are some young boys who don't have an older brother or father figure at home or school.

As a result they act out negatively and ultimately drop out of school.

That's why this initiative is so important.

It's for young black male students to have mentors and educators to talk to about school and their future.

This is very important to us because it sticks to show that over 20% of the 12,500 high school students in the Seattle Public School District were suspended.

18% of 8,000 middle school students were also suspended and yet blackmails account for more than 40% of the school suspensions.

as more than a quarter of all black school pupils have reduced short term suspensions in any given year since at least 2006-2007 academic year compared to 7.4 annually for white students.

I give you this information because I feel that me and other young black males have not been heard or given the opportunity to state how we feel.

We want the opportunity to be college bound instead of in prison or racially profiled.

We want the opportunity to have someone to advocate for us when we are frustrated.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

All right the next speaker is Greg Wong followed by Sabrina Burr and Jonathan Knapp.

I don't know if you can hear me.

Greg Wong, Sabrina Burr, Jonathan Knapp.

Good evening board members my name is Greg Wong I am a parent of three children in Seattle Public Schools and I am the volunteer president of Schools First.

the nonprofit of people who care deeply about the success of our schools that comes together every three years to make sure that our school levies pass.

I'm urging you tonight to please make sure that you vote yes on the BTA IV levy resolution.

Two weeks ago I thank you for approving the operations levy resolution but we're now less than three months from election day.

It's February 9th and so with the holidays there's not much time for the campaign.

The list of projects in BTA IV is well vetted.

They were chosen based on objective criteria and they create safe and healthy schools for our children including earthquake and fire alarm safety upgrades, new roofs, new heating systems, athletic fields and more.

And in part it Part of the BTA IV will go to help address the capacity needs including in high schools in North Seattle such as Ballard by adding more than 2,000 seats of capacity.

We know that we can't fund every needed project in the capital levies that's absolutely the truth.

but we think that this is a good package.

I think you and the staff are doing a good job putting it together but now really is the time to finalize.

The deadline for filing the ballot initiative is quickly approaching in just a few weeks so we urge you to vote yes tonight.

Then we schools first can go out with our partners, the PTAs, the business communities, the parents, all of the people who care deeply about our kids to make sure we are successful in getting the levies passed.

Thank you.

Thank you and thank you for the work that you do on behalf of the levees.

Sabrina Burr, Jonathan Knapp, Cynthia Chatul.

Hi I'm Sabrina Burr and I am going to cede my time to Kevin Washington.

Good evening I'm Kevin Washington citizen of Seattle.

I'm also a member of the Black Education Strategy Roundtable and I'm representing that group tonight.

Many of you have seen me wearing a number of hats but that's the hat I'm wearing tonight.

As an organization the Black Education Strategy Roundtable is a group of 400 plus largely African-American citizens of Washington.

We represent people all over the state of Washington.

We have educators, professional people, teachers, administrators, business folks, community-based organizations and the whole goal of that organization is to drive positive results for African-American school kids in the state of Washington.

We are unapologetic about that focus.

We are unapologetic about that goal and we want to make certain that we get those goals accomplished.

All of us recognize the importance of this work.

Every once in a while we talk about lots of anecdotes around who the problem kids are and it's always African-American males.

The Black Male Think Tank is supporting some initiative work in the city of Seattle.

We want to urge you to continue to support that work.

That group was a group of district center office staff, principals and community-based leaders.

They've convened by the district.

and they have a project in mind and it is that initiative focused on improving results for African-American males.

That focus on the most impacted students has paid off time and time again.

It's a matter of we know where the smoke and the fire is, let's put the resources where that problem lies.

There's lots of people who will want to try and persuade you to do something different, broaden the approach, but we know that when we put the resources where the problem is, we get better results.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Jonathan Knapp followed by Cynthia Jatul and Leah Van Maar.

Good afternoon Board President Karr, Board Directors, Superintendent Nyland, I think you know I'm Jonathan Knapp the president of the Seattle Education Association which is the voice of Seattle's public school educators.

I have a couple of comments tonight that I'd like to make.

First of all I'd like to recognize the outstanding work of assistant superintendent of operations Peggy McEvoy on the bell times and transportation portfolios.

She has shepherded a long and involved process of community and parent engagement all the while validating educators and public health experts concerns about adolescents changing circadian rhythms.

SEA has supported this work from the beginning.

I also want to signal the important and tenacious contribution of SEA member and Roosevelt high school science teacher Cynthia Jatul.

That's actually worth a round of applause I would say.

will be the speaker right after me.

She's really one of the educators that I appointed to the task force to work on the bell times issue.

I don't think it's an overstatement to say that without her unrelenting commitment we would not have arrived at this good compromise.

Not perfect but let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

With this more than 83% of Seattle school children's academic work will now be aligned, better aligned with their sleep needs.

So please support the Belltimes transportation proposal as educators do.

Finally I also want to call out how important it is to understand the groundbreaking work of the Seattle teacher residency.

This new teacher preparation track succeeds because of the commitment of current SCA members to transmit to the next generation of teachers the human elements of the craft of teaching.

As a partner in the STR endeavor from the beginning SEA is proud of the leading work that we have done nationally in redefining quality teacher preparation programs.

What we will see with more and more clarity in the coming years is that STR is not just a good idea it's a good deal.

The additional cost per teacher of people coming through the program will be far offset by the reduction in turnover of teachers and in long-term retention of great teachers.

Happy to see that you are recommending the approval of the grant.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Cynthia Chatouille, Leah Van Mar, Karen Town.

My name is Cindy Jatul.

I am a parent, a teacher and co-chair of Start School Later Seattle.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight in support of revising bell times.

For historical perspective Start School Later began the current round of advocacy for biologically aligned bell times when Susan Enfield was interim superintendent.

Our advocacy continued throughout Jose Bonda's tenure culminating in the formation of the bell time task force in July 2014. An engagement and analytical process followed which continued until this month.

This encapsulated history shows the depth and thoughtfulness that have gone into developing the current proposal.

As pointed out by operations staff this proposal moves 83% of our students into healthy start times by moving 20 schools out of tier 3 and moving all middle and high schools into tier 2. To those who urge a no vote on the basis that 13 schools will remain in tier 3 I ask what will be gained.

A no vote will just keep 33 schools in tier 3 and almost all secondary schools in tier 1. To those who urge tabling the vote in the hope of achieving a two-tier system I remind us that members of the task force vigorously advocated for two tiers but a two-tier system will cost more money which the board will not approve.

Gambling that a new board will raise transportation costs risks the enormous gains the current proposal will ensure.

This board should decide on this policy.

This is the board that established the task force that has considered its recommendations and super annihilates recommendations.

This is the board that heard from over 4,500 people and numerous community representatives who have asked for a flip of our bell time.

I urge this board to make the decision tonight to vote yes and to take the very significant step of improving bell times and thus the learning, health and safety of tens of thousands of Seattle students.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Leah Van Moore, Karen Town, Alexia Katsaroff.

Hi I am speaking to you tonight as a teacher and a parent who is urging you to approve the revised bell schedule.

In the past week alone three of my students have come to me concerned about their ability to take a test because they were overtired due to outside commitments.

We want our students to be well-rounded and participate in community activities but as they get older those happen later in the evening.

Additionally the early start leaves kids walking to school in the dark.

In a vote of our staff, 41 out of 45 staff members supported a later start time for students specifically for academic reasons.

Please trust that we, as teachers, have our students' best interests in mind and we know that our students need more sleep.

Modified bell times are also good for secondary teachers.

Many of us teach 150 students a day and spend our time at school contacting families and planning our classes.

We grade our 150 essays, lab reports, and exams at home, often staying up until 11 o'clock or later so that our students get timely feedback.

Allowing our middle and high school teachers a little more sleep will give us better educators.

We'll get sick less often and have more energy to put back into our classrooms.

Finally, I am also a parent with children currently on tier 3 and even with the bell time switch we will remain at a tier 3 school.

I understand the concern of having elementary children start so late.

As a working parent my children are at a before school program for two and a half hours before their school starts.

However, if we do not support the revised bell schedule there will be more elementary kids on Tier 3. It doesn't make sense to me to object to something because it isn't great for my kids when the alternative is that more kids would be subjected to it.

I appreciate the board prioritizing Title I schools for Tier 1 because as not great as it is for my kids I do have the resources to get my kids adequate stable care for those hours I am at work.

Just like I have the resources to be here tonight while my kids are home safely eating dinner and doing their homework.

As inconvenient as it is, I really want them to have those later start times in middle school so they do not fall asleep in the middle of a lockdown drill as my student did yesterday.

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

I'm a disgruntled Seattle sports fan.

Am I in the right place?

The Seahawks and the Huskies came so close to winning this weekend and Seattle schools you're so close to getting these bell times right for our kids.

You've put in the time, you've put in the research but it is not a win.

It's not a win unless it is the best learning start times for all the kids in this district Research and teacher feedback have shown negative effects for teaching and learning with schools that start at 940 in the morning.

Seattle schools is using bus costs as a reason for keeping the 10 to 13 schools in their tier 3 outside of the new bell proposals.

But at Laurelhurst Elementary on bus 98 there are five kids.

On bus 99 there are nine registered kids.

On bus 233 there are eight kids.

On bus 396 one child.

So to me given these numbers just at our school alone it seems that perhaps we have a lot of work to do in not cutting costs but in making our bus system more efficient and not cutting the 10 to 13 schools out from their optimal learning times.

We're not asking you to go back.

We believe in this work.

We're asking you to please continue to move this work forward by creating start times that work for all kids.

Tier 3 students best learning should not be sacrificed for the betterment of everyone.

It's just not fair.

You're in the fourth quarter.

You're on the one yard line.

Do not pass the ball.

Give it to Marshawn Lynch.

Grind this out.

Do the work so all kids in this district win.

We don't want kids in tier 3 to lose with late start times.

So we urge you to keep working on this and make this a two-tier system now.

Thank you very much and go Hawks.

Thank you.

Alexia Katsaroff followed by Laura Burke and Carolyn Leith.

Hello, my name is AJ Katsaroff and I'm here speaking to you as a teacher, a parent and a scientist.

I'm a biology teacher at Franklin high school.

I've also spent a bunch of my adult career as a PhD researcher at Fred Hutchinson and spent my time collecting data and looking at evidence.

Just like Noam talks about his biology students, we collect data and look at evidence.

And the evidence says by changing these start times to align so that more than 80% of our kids have a more effective start time.

for their learning, this would be in the best interest of our kids.

It's the best interest in kids of all ages.

I'm also a parent of two young children, one in kindergarten now who doesn't get to start kindergarten until 940. We're currently in tier 3 and this means hours of wasted time for him when he could be by scientific evidence learning at his best.

We have clear evidence over and over again that more sleep leads to better education and is the mission of Seattle Public Schools to do our best to educate kids.

Our current proposal helps so many students it would be a waste to let it go now.

I really urge you to vote yes on adopting the new start times and the new transition plan so we can be at our best to educate kids as is the mission of this school district.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Laura Burke, Carolyn Leith, Anna Knudtson.

Hi my name is Laura Burke and I am a parent of a first grader and fourth grader at View Ridge Elementary.

Along with you I believe in and want to encourage strong public schools.

You know, I know, the bell time task force knows that tier 3 bell times aren't good for elementary schools.

They aren't aligned with their sleep cycles and optimal learning.

Kids are tired the last two hours of school.

This isolates them from the rest of the community.

It deprives them of activities and teachers from professional development.

And there's a 100 minute gap of peak learning with all other elementary schools.

I'm hard pressed to find another in the country that starts after 930 AM.

And yet you've left behind 10 elementary schools.

That's bad enough.

But they are also getting it worse than they already have it.

I get you're trying to be fiscally responsible, I get that.

But consider this analogy though.

If the district adopts a new reading curriculum because it's decidedly better, would they roll it out to the majority of the schools but handpick a minority group not to get it?

And then say, 87% of the reading materials are free, but we don't have the funds to pay for the rest of you.

We have no idea if we ever will so your kids will have to stick with the curriculum they have.

At least you're used to it.

So I'm here to ask you what's the plan?

How are you going to fix this and when?

Because it's not equal and it cannot stay this way.

In a poll of our View Ridge families 85% prefer an 8am start or a time that is equal for all elementary schools.

Find the funds to make this happen, or get creative, dig in, and find efficiencies.

Our cost per rider is 70% higher than any other district comparable in size.

And our basic riders per bus, butts in seats, is 30% lower.

Why are we left behind?

What is going on?

Please use the feedback gathered from elementary schools these last two weeks for potential swaps and to meet their needs too.

In 2017 when 20 minutes are added to the school day do we change it all again or push end times past 4 o'clock?

I do not want to scrap the hard work that's been put in thus far.

I'm just asking you to finish the job.

There is still time.

I ask the board to find the path that gives all kids peak learning times and push off the vote until December.

Respectfully and with gratitude for your service and your consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Carolyn Leith, Anna Knudson, Jill McCorkle.

Hi my name is Carolyn Leith and I have two kids in Seattle Public Schools.

Last month Shawna Murphy and I formed the tongue-in-cheek group teacher retention advocate parents or TRAP during the staff shuffle that caused so much disruption across the district.

We held a half-baked bake sale on the sidewalk outside of this very building to draw attention to the absurdity of trying to fund education and offset staff cuts with car washes and bake sales.

We believe Dr. Nylund's offer to donate all of his rays is a very nice gesture.

However, we strongly urge him to decline the rays altogether.

Instead we would like to ask Dr. Nyland to take a moment to consider the $13,000 question which is what problems could our school solve with the superintendent's proposed raise?

Dr. Nyland here are some ideas submitted by students to help you get started.

I have many more letters like these on display in this book at the back of the board meeting.

Dear Mr. Nyland, if we had $13,000 our school could buy books for our library and notebooks for our classrooms.

We really need school supplies for all students so our teachers don't have to buy them.

Thank you.

Dear Dr. Nyland, if we had $13,000 our school could buy a science lab.

We could also use more computers for researching things like earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.

My classroom also needs more math books.

Dear Mr. Nyland, I'm a second grader at John Stanford International School and I have the smallest playground in all of Seattle Public Schools.

We only have a slide, a monkey bars and a bouncy thing.

The rest is all concrete.

I'm very disappointed that parents are giving to the purchase of a new playground from their pockets.

Please consider how your $13,000 could help us get a new playground.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anna Knudtson, Jill McCorkle and then Catherine Darley.

Good evening my name is Anna Knudtson and my son Riley is in first grade at Schmitz Park Elementary in West Seattle.

He is here tonight with 28 of his first grade friends and many parents.

Superintendent Nyland thank you for agreeing to return your full salary increase to the district.

So the question is can you please earmark it for class size reduction?

The reason we came here is that we have grave concerns about how the Seattle school district is allocating funds as reflected in the overcrowded classrooms and early grades throughout Seattle schools.

My son Riley began the school year in Ms. Peach's first grade classroom with only 21 other students.

He was thriving.

On October 7 we learned her classroom was going to be dissolved due to inadequate funding for such a small class.

He is now in a classroom with 28 other students.

Two of the first grade classrooms have 29 students in it.

Although our community probably could have raised the funds to keep Ms. Peach we chose not to because of the economically unjust precedent it would have set for less prosperous communities.

But today a group of frustrated parents has brought 29 kids to show the school district what this number looks like.

You have to agree it is far too many kids for one classroom.

It's also probably too many kids for a school board meeting.

But thank you for your patience.

But our question is, given that the state has allocated funds to greatly reduce class size in early grades, why isn't this happening?

Why are Riley and his good friends here still in terribly overcrowded first grade classrooms?

And if the response from the board is that there's simply not enough funds, I will say we will pay more taxes and make sacrifices.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Alright our next speaker is Jill McCorkle followed by Katherine Darley and Russell Palumbo.

Hi I brought some handouts for you but I'm going to cede my time to Chandra Hampson.

Alright.

Alright the meter is running so you're going to want to start talking.

Good evening my name is Chandra Hampson.

I am Ho-Chunk from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and Ojibwe from the White Earth Nation.

I speak to you today as Vice President of the Seattle Public Schools Title VII Native Education Parent Advisory Committee.

Regarding the Superintendent's SMART goals please focus on African-American males as originally proposed.

We were not consulted about our inclusion But our committee which is responsible for the advisement and approval of Title VII funds which are provided to support the education of Native students because it is the policy of the United States to fulfill the federal government's unique and continuing trust relationship with and responsibility to the Indian people for the education of Indian children.

We discussed the change at our meeting this past Thursday.

We asked whether we felt there was justification in expanding the language to focus on all underserved groups of which we are one.

Unequivocally, the answer was no.

Why?

While it is true our children have tremendous need, it is our need, not the need of those descended from slaves or interned in camps or indentured on the railroad or who fled or are fleeing war.

Those groups have different needs and as I alluded a very different relationship with the institutions that govern and serve them.

Our need is not to enter a school system proudly, check a box that says American Indian only to have our school reports show that there are no native children.

serving because to be served because we also checked white or Latino or Asian American.

Our need is to see our state mandated since time immemorial curriculum show up in our children's classrooms so that our children might not have to answer I thought all Indians were dead and instead see the pride they feel in their own history reflected in the history taught about our nation.

We do not speak for the needs of the African-American male other than to say that a focus on meeting their needs is in no way diminishes our community.

Moreover we urge you to assume the challenge of hearing and responding to the specific needs of African-American males and prove to them and the broader community that you have the capacity to demonstrate measurable success in doing so.

Once that's done we expect a smart goal target for our community but please resist the temptation to sweep all underserved into one big category and force us to fight amongst each other for already slim resources.

It's erasure by inclusion and serves no one in an attempt to serve everyone.

We choose not to be part of that.

Wai'ini ginopshina.

Thank you.

Alright the next speaker is Catherine Darley followed by Russell Palumbo and Catherine Harmon.

I cede my remarks.

My name is Lina Fine.

I'm a neurologist, psychiatrist, and sleep specialist working currently at Swedish Sleep Medicine and Swedish Neuroscience Institute.

I'm also a working mother of two elementary school children.

Children, especially adolescents, who are forced to function outside of their natural circadian clock patterns become rapidly sleep deprived as their peak alertness hours become skewed.

Ignoring these rhythms results in poor school performance, anxiety, weight gain and high rate of motor vehicle accidents.

2014 study of 20,000 Swedish school children showed that short sleep duration increased their risk of failing at one or more subjects during the school year, especially for adolescents sleeping less than seven to eight hours on school and weeknights.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota analyzed data from more than 9,000 school students at eight schools in Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming, and found that shifting the school day later in the morning resulted in a boost in attendance, test scores, and grades in math, English, science, and social studies.

There was also a decrease in tardiness, substance abuse, and symptoms of depression and dramatic drop in teen car crashes.

Sleep deprivation in adolescents of driving age is a direct safety concern.

A study of Virginia schools in adjacent counties recently with start times 7.30 a.m.

versus 8.45 a.m.

showed that almost 370 fewer teen-related crashes.

That's lives saved in the group that started at 8.45.

The years of effort you have put into this evidence-based initiative will systematically improve the health and safety of thousands of children every year.

Please vote today for a later start in 2016. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Russell Palumbo followed by Catherine Harmon and Kevin Baker and if all of those people are here that will take us to 25 and we will not go into the waitlist.

Good evening my name is Russell Palumbo I'm the school nurse at Washington Middle School and the current president of the Seattle School Nurses Association.

I'm here today to speak in support of the later school start times.

I want to first thank Peggy McEvoy for the work she's done and the task force as well and the school board for considering this proposal.

As a school nurse, as a bachelor of science in nursing I look to the evidence-based research when I form my practice.

And you've heard a lot of it today, a lot of great speakers here and I'm not going to go over that again.

However, the anecdotal evidence I have as a school nurse, every morning I'm working with students and other secondary nurses in the district as well working with students who are sleep deprived, who come with upset stomachs, headaches because they're only getting less than seven hours of sleep a night because we're not meeting the needs of their natural biological rhythms.

The number of school students who are failing first period classes at Washington Middle School because they cannot get to school on time because it's too early for them to get up there in the morning can be increased.

I urge the school board to approve this proposal tonight and for the benefit of our students.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right the last two speakers Catherine Harmon and Kevin Baker.

Hello I'm Catherine Harmon speaking on school start times.

Over the last three and a half years you have built a solid foundation for a yes vote tonight.

Thank you for sticking with this initiative for the sake of our students and for listening to all of the voices involved from the beginning straight through to the final speaker before you now.

First, this is an evidence-based decision.

You often are faced with making decisions based on little knowledge.

However, in this case, the medical and educational research is conclusive.

Teen students are better able to learn when school starts later.

They are healthier and make less risky decisions and their safety improves as disease and auto accidents decrease.

Second, the community strongly supports your yes votes.

From El Centro de la Raza to the Seattle Times to the sleep community to the 4500 petition signers, many groups are behind this landmark decision.

The extensive community engagement process last spring showed a majority of parents, teachers and students want this improvement.

Outreach included neighbor-to-neighbor meetings which engaged for the first time some communities that haven't been involved in the past and those communities also want this improvement.

Third, there is the issue of equity.

I became involved in this effort after reading about the particular effects of bell times on students of lower socioeconomic status who are placed at higher risk of getting too little sleep.

Students inequitably affected by sleep deprivation should not be further harmed by early start times.

I am happy that all title I schools were placed in bus tiers 1 and 2. Now is the time.

Seattle Public Schools will be in the vanguard as the largest system in the country to adopt biologically appropriate start times.

As a board you have been committed to making this improvement and have systematically built the foundation for its successful implementation.

I thank you for your commitment to improve success, health and learning for Seattle students beginning next fall with your yes vote tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our final speaker is Kevin Baker.

Keep the focus on African-American males and the focus statement of SMART goal number two.

My name is Kevin Baker, I'm an education consultant with a focus on culturally responsive education, a member of the men of Middle Passage and a community member.

Today I'm going to speak to the need of specialized strategies to narrow the achievement gap and opportunity debt.

by specifically focusing on educating African-American students as a whole and African-American males in particular.

My focus today will be from a historical context.

First, there is no other group of people that have been exposed to the daily traumas of chattel enslavement.

The violence enacted on enslaved Africans here in America in which we are the descendants coupled with a systemic racist philosophy propagated by school systems, court systems, and other social control and government centers have failed in its attempts to assimilate African Americans fully into this society, if that was ever the goal.

Thus, we remain outliers.

You wonder how to solve the problem.

Developing focused strategies that are designed to disentangle the unique issues inherited and faced by African American students.

and African-American males in particular can only do this.

Research done by Geneva Gay, John Ogbu and others support this.

We ask that you affirm your SMART goal with focused attention on African-American males.

Second, we must defend against the use of diversity language and dialogue being used to further marginalize groups who have already been marginalized.

by stating that marginalized groups have to be grouped together in order to be served.

This is merely a covert way in which systemic and structural racism seeks to divide and conquer.

We must not let this happen.

We understand that there are other marginalized populations and just because we speak on behalf of ourselves does not mean that we are against any other groups.

Perhaps there needs to be specialized programming for indigenous populations, Samoans, Pacific Islanders, Mexicans and Latinos.

Please conclude your remarks.

We humbly ask that you recognize the unique needs of African-Americans and that you do not shrink from the pressure of those who do not recognize their privilege.

Please conclude your remarks.

And bias and keep your focus on African-American males and smart goal number two.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right that brings us to the end of public testimony and to the board comment section.

And so we have a couple of annual report items that we will lead with and then we'll turn it over to individual directors.

So let's begin if we would please with the internal audit annual report and ethics report.

And I'll turn that over to Director Martin Morris and maybe he has some comments as we're waiting for a speaker.

So as part of our annual work we as chair of the audit and finance committee we have a report for the board which lays out the work that has been accomplished over the year.

as well as information on various things that happen as part of our ethics work that is also under the same department.

And I see Andrew coming to the dais so I don't have to make up anything else until he gets done speaking.

Good evening Andrew Medina director of internal audit and district ethics officer.

You're going to have to speak up a little bit as people are transitioning.

It will be a little difficult to hear.

So this is our annual report for internal audit and I also have an ethics report to provide.

For the internal audit annual report this is a requirement from school board procedure 6550 BP requires me to present Go over the audits completed, major audit findings, corrective actions, and significant audit findings not addressed by management.

Normally this comes in October, but we were delayed a little bit with September audit and finance meeting being canceled, quarterly meeting.

So first topic, audits completed.

We did 14 audits this year.

I wanted to highlight that our three of these are related to capital and our capital audit function is up and running.

I also want to highlight that the majority of these are actually follow-up audits.

The board procedure requires that we do follow-up audits within six months of corrective action plans being completed.

I also just want to take a minute to discuss how these Audits are selected.

We do an annual risk assessment and audit plan each year.

We get feedback from management as well as the board directors, present it to superintendents cabinet and then it is approved by the Audit and Finance Committee in a public meeting.

The school audits that we select also are also done on a risk-based basis.

As far as major audit findings I've got a couple slides that address just some of them.

I just want to first point out that they're not in any order of severity, it's random.

I wasn't going to go through and revisit each individual finding at this point.

But I just did kind of want to take this opportunity to highlight the transparency of the audit process.

As I mentioned the risk assessment and audit plan are presented in a public audit and finance committee meeting.

Each and every audit and each individual finding is also discussed in detail at the public audit and finance committee meetings and then at the subsequent board meeting the chair of audit and finance will make an announcement of the internal audit findings that were presented at the last audit and finance meeting.

The next topic is corrective action plans.

This is really more of a management function so I wasn't going to go into the specific plans that management has implemented but I did want to highlight what the process is.

The district does have a new audit response manager that started last year.

There are quarterly updates to the audited finance committee on the progress of the corrective action plans that management is implementing.

And then once those plans are implemented as I mentioned we will go in and do a follow-up audit.

And then the next slide just provides a It's kind of a snapshot of the progress that we're making on the corrective action plans.

Since I've been the director of internal audit we've issued a total of 251 individual recommendations.

84% of those have been implemented.

12% are in progress meaning that they're still within their six-month window that they're allotted to complete.

And of all of those there's only 4% that are actually considered overdue.

For significant findings not addressed by management, first I just want to highlight that we haven't had any disagreements with management.

There haven't been any recommendations we've made where they flat out said no we're not going to do that.

The ones I've highlighted here are more along the lines of they're just taking longer to implement.

The first one being a point of sale system for our schools to have an electronic receding function and be able to accept credit cards.

This is one that's for funding purposes has not been made a priority.

We'd like to see it bumped up if we could.

And then the second item is the custodial evaluation document.

We had a recommendation to make some revisions to that document and this has become a bargaining issue so it can't be addressed until the next bargaining session which would be summer of 2017 I believe.

Lastly for the internal audit piece, next year's audit plan has been approved by the committee and it is available on our website.

All of our, actually I also want to highlight that the plan can be changed and new risks can be brought forward at any time.

We do have a means to do that.

The individual audit reports are also available on our site.

For those unfamiliar just from the district's homepage navigate to the department list and you will find the office of internal audit.

So are there any questions or comments specific to the internal audit function before I go into ethics report?

Questions from directors?

Director Martin Morris.

It's more of a comment than a question.

I just want to publicly thank Andrew and his team.

There are only three internal auditors for the district.

And when you look at the size of our district and the amount of work that they accomplish with just that staff of three is amazing and phenomenal.

There are very few districts quite frankly that I'm associated with that I'm familiar with that actually even have an internal audit function.

They usually rely on outside groups to do that for them when there is a crisis.

I want to commend Andrew and his team for really thinking in a proactive way around keeping us out of, in essence out of trouble in terms of identifying those risks and getting there before it really becomes a major problem.

I would also ask moving forward that the next board even consider expanding the size of that department so that we can actually get more of those school audits done because as it stands right now it will take about 15 years to get to all of the schools in the district.

to do all of the audits that need to be done and that's way too long and that's too risky.

So I want to publicly thank you and your team.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

I'm in complete agreement with Director Martin Morris' comments I would only add that as a member of the audit and finance committee I've been impressed not only with the quantity of work given the being short-staffed but also the quality of the work.

As I've reviewed the audit findings I've been continually impressed by the depth and the the amount of attention to detail on those audits.

When I came on the board I was really concerned about, I'm sure I'm not alone in this, concerned about the potential for an audit finding that would get us in trouble.

And a lot of those concerns have been alleviated.

I'm not saying that they're all gone but I believe that we can rest well at night knowing that we have an attentive staff that's paying attention to those issues because we have a fiduciary responsibility to the voters and the citizens of Seattle to make sure that their dollars are stewarded well and I believe that the audit function in Seattle Public Schools is helping us in that regard.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Why don't you go ahead and move on to the ethics component.

Thank you for that.

I do want to acknowledge my team also.

They do make my job easier so I do appreciate them.

For the ethics report, this is not something that is required by board policy anywhere.

It was formally required by the contract we had with the City of Seattle but I did I think you would appreciate one so adding it today also.

I was just going to go over the transition that we've gone through from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

Some of the summary of the contacts we received and some of the next steps.

So for our transition we've created a new ethics hotline number.

We've disabled the caller ID on the hotline so callers can remain anonymous.

We've created an ethics email, ethics at Seattle schools dot org email account.

Updated the website and reporting forms.

We've ensured that the website is searchable by whistleblower or ethics from both internal and external sites.

Created a log to track all the content.

Contacts we're receiving.

Increased the security of the ethics officer office.

And I've also received specific ethics officer training and attained a leading professional in ethics and compliance certification.

For the types of contacts received I put this chart in to give first of all just kind of an idea of the workload that's been involved in absorbing the ethics officer role.

And also to just kind of give a snapshot of the type of contacts that are being received.

The other items are items that aren't really related to ethics or complaints.

Some examples are other school districts calling on how to set up their own ethics office or employees wanting help with their Safe Schools account set up.

But I did want to log them to keep track of all the contacts coming in.

The exploring other options are callers that they are not providing enough information to actually launch an investigation.

They just want to know how the process works, what's the best way for them to go about it.

We do have Fairly high number of those, 13%.

And it's a little concerning just there's no way of ever knowing if they actually do call back and end up filing a complaint or not.

And then lastly, what I want to highlight was the advisory opinions which actually makes up 54%.

of the contacts that are received by the office and this is actually very encouraging because these are employees that want to do the right thing, they're being proactive, checking in with me to see if outside employment, serving on a board, traveling to conferences, that type of stuff is acceptable before they go forward with those actions.

The next slide highlights the anonymous concerns.

So I've kind of taken out all of the advisory opinions, conflict of interest disclosures, the items where you wouldn't normally have a need to be anonymous.

So of the people that are calling with concerns we do have a relatively high rate of anonymous calls.

So people exploring available options 75% and whistleblower allegations 71%.

could be indicative of people not trusting the system yet, still having a fear of retaliation or maybe not really trusting that all of their complaints are going to be followed up on.

So for next steps, I've just kind of highlighted a few.

A need to update the ethics policy.

If you would like to have this annual report formalized, this is the place it should probably go.

A training program needs to be improved.

Hopefully by increasing our training this will also increase the awareness of the ethics office.

I would also like to start creating a FAQ or quick reference type document that will have some of these advisory opinion type information readily available on the website.

And then more long-term is trying to get to more of a culture change and creating an environment where employees do feel comfortable reporting and they do believe that their concerns are going to be addressed.

Are there questions or comments regarding the ethics report?

Director Peters.

Well as the third member of the Audit and Finance Committee I thought I should weigh in and first of all offer my appreciation for the work that you do Andrew and your team and acknowledge also that you are wearing two hats now that the ethics office is in your department as well which has been just a year is it that you've had that?

It was July so about 15 months.

Okay so I appreciate the fact that you are tackling two very big important issues.

I would like to support making this annual report a formalized part of our policy so that you present it to us in this manner every year so I think that is something I would definitely push for.

And I appreciate your efforts regarding an FAQ I think that would be helpful if you can put some information up on the website and make it clear where it is on the website that might help decrease some of the calls you get and streamline the process a little bit.

And your greater goal of a culture change I completely support as well.

So thank you for your work.

Thank you.

Other questions or comments?

Well I'm not seeing any others so I'll just make a couple of brief comments.

First for the benefit of the audience both here and at home we implemented an internal audit program and an ethics program in response to the very critical state auditor's office report that the Seattle school board received in 2010 I believe it was 2009-2010.

I worked very closely with Andrew, I actually hired Andrew from the Port of Seattle.

We were very fortunate to get someone with substantial experience and he joined us and helped implement this program and has been instrumental in the growth of the program.

And I would just be sure that everyone understands that this is an essential, both ethics and internal audit are essential components of the governance system of a school district.

And so I want to say thank you to you for your work.

and I've appreciated the partnership.

Andrew does report to the board.

You always hear people say the school board only has one employee and that's the superintendent.

Not so.

Andrew works for the board.

His supervisor of record is the chair of audit and finance so right now that happens to be Director Martin Morris.

And so the board has an independent opportunity outside of the management team to look at financial controls and policy compliance and so Andrew has done and his team have done terrific work and I'm just eternally grateful for the work that you've done.

So thank you.

All right I've lost my agenda.

Here we go.

Oh all right the next item under the board comment section is another annual report and what it is is the superintendent evaluation.

And so I'll just give a couple brief remarks and then I will actually read the document into the record.

In 2013 the board made changes on the superintendent evaluation process.

The most significant of these was the desire to have the evaluation be more evidence-based and align more clearly and strictly with the Seattle Public Schools strategic plan.

So to that end we made a couple of changes.

One was that the board changed the process to move the evaluation and the reconsideration of the contract from June.

to November and this is the first cycle since we made that decision that we've actually used it because of course Superintendent Bonda resigned his leadership position prior to the first time we would have done it.

And we did this in order to better align the evaluation with the release of testing data and with the state of the district report.

And I'll leave it to the wisdom of future boards to determine if that's an approach that we would want to stay with.

I've offered my editorial thoughts on that.

Secondly, in addition to the change on the timing the board under the leadership of my colleague here Director Peasley who is the board president and with help from WSSDA moved to a structured rating instrument which was clearly aligned to the strategic plan.

And so these changes included goals that cover the entire duration of the strategic plan as well as include a rubric to enable differentiation so that we can really be more clear when something is unsatisfactory versus basic versus proficient versus distinguished.

So that was a very helpful and useful tool and again the management team provides a body of evidence to make their case where they believe that the work ended.

And I will just do a call out to both Director Peasley and Superintendent Nyland that they had the opportunity to showcase the work that they did on this at the council for great city schools fall conference just this past month, was it last month?

October.

It seems like longer ago.

So with that I will go ahead now if you give me just a moment.

What I'll do, we've never done this the same way twice but sometimes we've read it into the record and so I'll go ahead and do that.

So it's dated November of 2015 and it reads as follows.

The boards had the opportunity to work with the superintendent for the last full year following his November 2014 evaluation.

Over the past year the board is pleased to inform the students, parents, families and staff of Seattle Public Schools that the superintendent has met and in some cases exceeded the board's expectations.

Having said that and while the board did not evaluate the superintendent as unsatisfactory with respect to any of the strategic plan goals against which he was evaluated over the past year the board likewise emphasizes that significant work remains to be done in order to fulfill the mission of Seattle Public Schools.

The board appreciates the superintendent's steady hand, calm demeanor and deep leadership experience.

He has stabilized the district senior leadership and reduced the high turnover of recent years.

Further he has strategically reorganized central offices in order to better support long-range plans, long-range progress.

The superintendent has demonstrated strong financial acumen and clear understanding of the financial issues facing the district.

This, the first full year of Dr. Nyland's superintendency was spent developing plans to achieve the strategic plan goals adopted in 2013. Notable progress toward these goals was made in closing opportunity gaps and action plan for accelerating achievement of African-American males and other students of color.

The superintendent is also to be commended for the progress in meeting 40 out of 40 items in the RC cap and having OSPI issue a compliance determination for the 2014-15 school year of level II needs assistance.

A marked improvement from level IV needs substantial intervention two years ago.

Further progress requires extensive investment in relationships.

The labor strike with SEA and events that followed represent a setback for Seattle Public Schools and work must be done to restore the trust and confidence of our families.

In addition relationships with our legislators need to be nurtured in order to support their success toward amply funding K-12 education in Washington.

The recent separation with the alliance for education provides an opportunity to take a more direct and proactive approach in working with and gaining greater support from the business community.

This opportunity should be seized.

The superintendent also needs to ensure effective engagement with our educators in continuing to implement the improvements required by the strategic plan as well as state and federal mandates.

The board expects the superintendent to develop and implement a strong communication strategy for both internal and external communications and to design a senior leadership succession plan that will sustain progress in meeting the needs of current and future students.

Attached to this narrative is the 2014-15 evaluation rubric for Superintendent Larry Nyland.

This narrative and evaluation rubric were completed based on Board of Directors feedback.

And I've signed it and dated it as of last Monday 11-16-15.

All right so with that read into the record and of course we have an agenda item later on that will take up the contract piece of it.

I will turn it over now to board directors for comments.

And then I will just send the signal that we are two hours and 15 minutes in and we will take a short break at the end of the board directors comments.

So is there anyone that would like to speak?

Director Blanford.

I'll start off by thanking the Rainier Beach students who performed their Harambee in front of us.

That was a fabulous opportunity to see their work and lit up the room in a way that we need to have more of that.

I have a community meeting that is scheduled for this Saturday starting at 10 o'clock at Douglas Truth library we go from 10 to 1130. Douglas Truth is at 23rd and Yesler and I'm looking forward to seeing as many people as we can fit into the room.

And I'll conclude my remarks, I have a lot more that I could talk about but I will conclude my remarks by just thanking in the way that has been, that we've started but I want to offer some personal remarks and thank the retiring school board directors, Sharon, Sherry Herriam and Marty in many ways over the course of the last two years you have been, you've provided leadership and mentorship as I've come on board and as my ballot mates have come on board and we are grateful for that.

For those of you who don't know being a school board director is not an easy thing.

I've discovered that much to my chagrin but it's made easier by the fact that my colleagues, our colleagues have risen to the occasion and provided that type of mentorship and support.

as we got on board and started to learn our roles and so I just want to take this personal opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your leadership and the great gift that you've provided to Seattle over the many years of your service and so again thank you.

Thank you.

All right other directors.

Director Patu.

First of all I want to say thank you to all the people that came to voice their concerns about the issues in the district.

I also want to give a great thank you to the Rainier Beach students for their great presentation.

I think that this group has actually proven that it takes action to move issues that they are very concerned about so we are very proud of them.

As I recently came across a quote from writer Charles DeLint that resonates with me.

Quotes, I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other, not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand.

I can't change the way anybody else thinks or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit.

As I've thought about the rumors that have been spreading within the black community, which is not an accurate claim that I don't support the SMART goal for African-American males, This is really sad because I have always been pretty straight forward about my intentions.

about the very reasons why I am on the school board which is making sure that all students have an opportunity to have an equitable and high-quality education no matter what their ethnic or financial status.

I have served many underserved students for over 30 years especially African-American males.

I have 19 grandchildren who are African-American which of six of them are African-American males It is all our responsibility to make sure that all these opportunities happen for all our students.

Yes, being on the Seattle school board is a big responsibility that requires making difficult decisions that are not always popular with others.

But it is also an opportunity for us to really make changes.

that will benefit all our students and their families.

It is easy for some people to criticize some of the decisions that are made but please be a little more understanding and let us know about what you don't agree with rather than not just talk about what we are not doing right.

I admit I am not perfect and I will make mistakes but realize this, that in my heart I am here to make, I am here to make a difference and change and changes that will provide every opportunity for all our students in Seattle Public Schools to successfully excel in their endeavors.

My intention of changing the original amendment was because it did not give context and greater details what the district was going to do to bring about success for African-American males.

I have seen and said in many meetings in the past that talked about this very same issue and out of that came the African-American academy which was not successful to the point where it was close.

We need to commit to real solutions that really help.

Also it is what we do to ensure the success of our African-American male students that is going to also prove opportunity for historically underserved students such as Native Americans, South Pacific Island and Latino students in Seattle Public Schools.

Remember it is the implementation and accountability that are going to provide the sustainability for this to work.

Also I would like to say thank you to Director Harry and Martin Morris for the great work and always has positive things to say even though sometimes him and I do not see things eye to eye but I thank you for always being there and giving great advice.

To Marty McLaren I thank you for the special time that we spent together visiting the different schools and having lunch at your house.

that is something that I will never forget and yes we also don't agree on everything and we disagree on some but we realize that we are both here for one thing and that is serving all students so they can have a quality education.

To Sherry Carr, your leadership has been amazing.

I think you are here, this is the best time because with the many issues that we had to target and that came about us we needed a leadership that actually was strong enough to hold on and realize that we got to stand still and continue on the work that we are put here to do.

I thank you for your leadership and the understanding and always being supportive when I need your assistance or when I need advice.

To Sharon, we came a long way.

We worked together when you first got on the board, we became accepted on the committees even though sometimes we also don't agree on many things.

But I appreciate all the work that we worked together, the projects that we have done and also the initiative to make changes in the district so we can actually be able to have more of do more communication with our parents and be able to introduce to the community all the issues that goes on in the district before they come out.

So I thank you to all of you for your service to the Seattle Public Schools and really appreciate the help and support because I know that being on the board is not an easy task.

But working together as a team which is something I realize that this board has done has really been amazing and has brought about many changes that few of us can make but together we can be very successful.

Thank you very much.

Good luck.

Thank you.

All right is there others that would like to speak?

Let's go to Director Blanford.

Oh I'm sorry I saw your hand go up and I thought you wanted to speak.

Director Peters.

Well Betty is always a hard act to follow.

I don't know if I can be as eloquent as she has been tonight.

First of all I would like to acknowledge the Rainier Beach high school students who were here earlier and they had a very energetic and inspiring presentation.

It's always great to have the students here and they got us up and moving as well.

A bit of housekeeping, my community meeting will also be this Saturday, November 21 from 11 to 1 at the Queen Anne library.

You know someone in the community asked why we don't coordinate our meetings better so we don't have them all on the same day.

And you know I thought for a second, I felt bad for a second and I realized you know we are working around our kids soccer games, we are working around our family lives And so it is hard to even get the community meetings on our own calendars and so we are trying our best and sometimes they overlap but I can certainly bring this up with the new board members to see if we can coordinate but honestly I am not going to promise it because it is our weekend time and it is hard to do.

Okay.

We recently had a state of the district address and I was lucky to attend the one that was held down in a very nice room in the city hall and I thought it was a very well done presentation.

I appreciated the comments from Dr. Nyland and just the whole event was very nicely balanced.

I think though I would be remiss if I didn't call out, well there were some really adorable children who were singing from one of the schools but there was also a poet from Cleveland high school and that is our poet laureate Leigh Shafar and she You shouldn't even read it.

I mean, she's got it memorized.

This amazing, powerful poem called For Black Boys.

And I asked her for a copy of it afterwards.

And she said, oh, it's going to be in my book.

So look for a book of poetry.

I think she said it's coming out in January so that's something for us to be proud of and it shows you the testament to the power of the spoken word and her focus.

Her focus was a very profound and magnanimous one.

So not an unrelated issue.

Another topic that has come up recently is the annual MLK celebration at Garfield High School and I know there is a lot of interest in making sure that that happens again next year and so I have said I definitely support that.

I believe the board as a whole said that we are interested in making sure that that can happen.

So I know there are conversations going on with Dr. Herndon.

and principal Ted Howard about how to make sure things run smoothly and I know the committee that is organizing the event would also like to meet with board members and I said I would be happy to meet with them to help navigate this so we have a much stronger event without any hiccups in it next year.

So let's see.

I would also like to thank my colleagues for their service.

I've only worked with some of them for two years, some I've known for a little bit longer.

And it's always a humbling experience to take on a position like this and I thank them for what they have taught me and for having the chance to work with them.

and I wish them all the best wherever they decide to go next.

And I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome our new directors who will be joining us at the next board meeting in December and that is Jill Geary, Leslie Harris, Scott Pinkham and Rick Burke.

Thank you all for taking that on.

I wanted to respond to a couple of things that were brought up in public testimony.

Well first of all we had an incident recently at Ballard high school that was pretty frightening and that involved a lockdown thankfully nobody was hurt and I wanted to just thank the students and the faculty for keeping things calm and for the response that we got from the police and from staff on that issue.

It's always a scary thing.

Which leads me to another comment that was made tonight about overcrowding at Ballard High School.

It's true we need more space for high school students and so we will be opening a high school in the not too distant future over at Lincoln that will be reopened as a high school which I actually know some former graduates who are surprised and thrilled to hear that will be a high school again.

Regarding the student assignment plan we will discuss that later tonight but there is going to be some language that will allow us to extend the waitlist beyond May 31 to give us some wiggle room at least in this first year and see how things work out and to give us some flexibility.

So I appreciate staff for listening to the community on that.

Regarding the tier 3 of bell times I hear your pain.

I've been in tier 3 as well.

We are going to add something to that in order to allow some flexibility to address that and we will discuss that later tonight but I think there is some good news for all of you about that.

One of you mentioned something the term potential swaps I think that might be a possibility for those who want to swap from one tier to another if there is a critical mass from one school to another school maybe we can make something like that happen.

And then there was a question asked about why aren't we able to afford smaller class sizes since we got money from the state.

That's a really excellent question.

We did get money from the state.

Unfortunately it doesn't cover everything that needs to be covered in order to make us achieve the smaller class sizes that we are aiming for.

I was shown a really interesting diagram about that from I think it might have been from Ken And if it hasn't been already posted on a Friday memo I'd like to have that posted out there for the public to see what happens to the money we got from the state and how some of it goes towards I think administration that doesn't translate directly into immediately smaller classes.

So again it is a funding problem and it's something that we have to keep lobbying for some more funding there.

Alright and so finally I just want to finish with just a little comment about the sad news out of Paris last week.

When I was young I lived in Paris for a year and I studied there.

It's a city that is dear to me.

Like many I've tried to understand you know what would drive someone to commit such heinous acts and I read that the radicalization that is done involving the perpetrators is done in these groups where they have like-minded It's almost like severe peer pressure indoctrinating these young people into doing these acts.

And it just reminded me how important it is when we teach our children in our schools and at home to teach them to be independent thinkers.

To teach them to be creative thinkers.

And I think about this whenever it looks like public education is being overly standardized and we are not encouraging our children to think for themselves.

And it is something to keep in mind because I think we need to at the end of the day have children who are not just college and career ready but ready to be thinkers, creative thinkers and humane citizens.

And that is an even bigger mandate for us to fulfill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Martin-Morris.

I will try to be brief since this is my last official meeting as a school board director.

First I would like to give out a few thanks.

One of them is to my mother.

who instilled in me a real healthy respect for the value of a solid public education.

She used that always to say that is the vehicle to success however you define success it's a good education that's going to provide that to you.

In my eight years of being on the school board I have seen a lot of positive things that we have done.

Looking at where we were back in 2007 and where we are now today we are seeing that steady increase in enrollment.

A lot of the reforms around policy, the work that we have done and just stating the problems in a public way.

Everyone used to know there were certain things as truisms but they were just what people thought.

And we started to act on some of those things using the information, using the data and so You know a lot of that I would like to publicly thank the staff for all of their incredible hard work.

Most people have no idea the dedication, the efforts, and the amazing hard work that the people that you see along the perimeter of this room do on a daily basis.

It is thankless, thankless work.

And they do it with style, they do it with grace.

You know as we move forward there is no doubt we have challenges, every urban district in this country does.

But I think Seattle is in a very unique position to, we have the tools, we have the smarts, we have the people that can, if we can't solve them then no urban district in the entire United States can solve it.

We have everything we need right here in this city.

And I want to remind people of that even though it gets hard sometimes and it's messy.

We have what we need to make it right.

I would also like to thank my colleagues.

I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do in the morning when I'm driving to work and I won't be able to talk to Director Carr.

Usually at 7 o'clock in the morning we're on the phone talking to each other about things that are going on.

It's going to be a big change not having those 7am phone calls but I'll adjust and adapt.

And lastly I would like to thank my wife Dr. Linda Martin Morris.

For her support, I couldn't have possibly done this work without her being there for me, challenging me sometimes.

After these meetings you have no idea the interrogation that I go through when I get home because she watches on TV.

But that's what keeps me sharp, that's what kept me going doing this work.

And my kids who gave up a lot to have a dad that's on the school board and you're in high school, not an easy thing.

And they also did that, you know, they kind of rolled their eyes sometimes but they also helped me to understand what was going on in school and helped me to understand what things are really in the best interest of all of our children.

So I thank all my colleagues, I thank the community for the most amazing opportunity that anyone could ever have and that is the opportunity to do public service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Peasley.

So where to start, okay I think I'm going to start by thanking my board colleagues.

When I came on the board, the board was split and we were a polarized board and we were slammed in the press so frequently that it was almost daily.

And if it wasn't one thing it was another and I got so tired of hearing about how dysfunctional we were knowing how hard we work.

And knowing that we are doing this for our kids.

We are not doing it for any other reason.

We are not getting paid for it.

We are rarely thanked.

We are rarely respected in fact.

And this board came together.

The board that you are looking at right now, we came together.

There have been no allegations of school board dysfunction for at least two years.

So and that is because we have worked very hard.

to focus our efforts on what we are here to do.

And I would like to thank Dr. Larry Nyland because he has played a very significant role in that.

And Larry has really focused us all on alignment.

Alignment meaning that we are all working towards the same goals whether we are on the school board or on staff and those goals are laid out in the strategic plan so we all know exactly what they are.

And in fact we all decided on them.

So they are our goals, we own them and Dr. Nyland has made enormous progress in getting us all aligned around those goals.

And that has played a significant role in healing the rift in the school board.

But it is mainly the efforts of school board directors to overcome disagreements and we all have them.

We frequently disagree.

We are not elected to agree with each other.

But it is really important that we put something in front of our disagreements and it has to be what we are elected to do.

which is to improve Seattle Public Schools to meet the needs of every single one of our students and to do the very challenging work of bridging an age-old opportunity gap that is deeply entrenched in our culture.

So thank you to my colleagues, thank you to Dr. Nyland who deserves enormous credit and he certainly deserves the raise that we are offering to him and that he is donating back to us.

And that will come later on in tonight's agenda but I just want to acknowledge him for his outstanding remarkable leadership and dogged determination to do the work we need to do to meet the needs of all of our students and particularly our most underserved students.

And I would just like to say very briefly I would like to speak to what Betty Patu said earlier and we are going to get into this later in the meeting and I really want to thank all of you who came for this entire meeting and who are still here because It requires a great deal of patience and we are not even going to get to the SMART goals until later on.

But there is nothing in the amendments that are under consideration that in any way diminishes the focus on African-American males.

What we are tweaking is the language in the goals so that all of our communities realize that all of our students will be beneficiaries of this work.

It does not impact the programs that have already been developed for African-American males.

It does not dilute them, it does not remove them, it does not divert them.

It simply clarifies that the work that is being done and that will continue to be done will benefit particularly our most underserved students, all of them, not just some of them.

And we, this is our mandate, this is our job.

We cannot have winners and losers.

We passed a race and equity policy to get past, to budge the needle to eliminate institutional racism so that we do not have winners and losers.

All of our kids need the supports and the special programs, whatever those programs may be, the special interventions and we are not prescribing what the programs or interventions are, we are merely setting the goals.

to address the needs of all of those historically underserved students with a focus on African-American males.

So I just want you to know that nobody has it in mind to dilute the programs, the focus, the intentions.

It is mainly just to message, to communicate, to convey that all of our underserved students will be the beneficiaries of that work.

I would like to thank my children.

I am here for my children.

If it weren't for my children I would not have taken this on.

I have two adopted children, one with special needs both from very underprivileged circumstances.

They started school as English language learners, they came out of dire poverty, neglect, abuse, trauma.

I have had to fight every battle there is to fight on their behalf and I came on this school board to ensure that we are meeting the needs of every single one of our students and we are providing multiple pathways to success.

Because children have different needs, different learning styles, different ambitions, different talents.

There is no one size solution for our children.

We need to be highly sensitive to the cultural, emotional, social, intellectual, artistic needs and abilities.

Lack of ability, lack of interest, we need to support all of our children so that they can succeed and this is the most important work that we as parents and as leaders can do to make our world better for the next generation and the generations that come after them.

So, I want to thank my kids.

They have had to fix their own dinners for the last four years.

We've learned every microwaving trick there is.

We've eaten a lot of pizza and Subways.

I doubt they're watching.

They probably have better things to do.

I wish they were going to be the beneficiaries of the later start times but I'm glad, they both graduated last year, but I'm glad that other kids will.

I wish the very best to the next school board.

Seattle Public Schools is a work in progress.

We will never be perfect.

We don't have the resources to be perfect.

We could do a lot more if we were fully funded and I am just going to end on a thought on funding.

We are the wealthiest nation in the world.

We should be fully funding public education.

It is a disgrace in our state and in our nation that we cannot find ways to fully fund public education.

There are so many things this board would like to do including a two-tier transportation system.

and all of the supports that every single one of our students needs to succeed.

Smaller class sizes, it goes on and on and on.

We cannot do these things without the funding they require.

So please put the pressure on our legislature.

We need to find sources of revenue in Washington State and I just have to say that I have never lived in such a tax-averse state and I've lived in a lot of places.

So, if we want good public schools somebody is going to have to pay for them.

That's where we need to put our advocacy going forward so that we can give our kids what they need.

And I have to thank our staff because our staff back there along that wall and wherever they are probably a whole lot of them still up in their offices.

They know what our kids need and they put in incredible hours and work to do what we the school board have set as goals.

And it would be really nice if we could employ a few more people to help them too.

So thank you all so much.

This has been an incredible experience.

I know I will miss a lot of it.

I will miss the work.

I will, there are other things I won't miss. greatly enjoy having some more time to make a living and do a few other things that are important.

But thank you so much for this great opportunity and I wish the next board the very best.

Thank you.

Director McLaren.

Wow everybody is so eloquent and none of them was reading but I had to write out what I want to say so please bear with me.

First of all shout out to the Rainier Beach ASB that was just fantastic and I also appreciated Elizabeth Osborne from Ballard High School and all of you who came out to testify and educate us.

So, first of all, I want to say what an incredible privilege it's been to work with each one of you, my colleagues.

Sometimes it's been a bit trying, but nonetheless, I'm really, really proud of our work together.

It's been an incredibly fulfilling experience.

It, this is awkward because I've been, I was defeated in the election by a three to one margin and I'm sitting here one last time.

So a huge number of people clearly resent the fact that I and many of us have seemed to ignore popular opinion on a variety of issues.

And I do want to say that I deeply regret the fact that I was not successful in conveying respect and compassion for the emotional toll that families, students, and educators have paid over the last year around a variety of hard decisions that have been made by our district leaders.

For me, there did come a point where I was so attacked and beleaguered that out of exhaustion and self-preservation, I often chose not to engage.

I think the big lesson learned from all this is that our district must develop ways to engage families and educators around important issues.

Starting at our schools we need to partner with families by sharing information and asking for families guidance and help.

We as a district must give our educators strategies, tools, and information that they can share with families in partnership.

But we also know good leaders will continue to make hard decisions.

Decisions that will be painful for some or many.

This is what good leaders must do.

As one who has been closely involved with our district leadership over the last four years I want to testify to the incredible integrity of these individuals.

All of them.

It's not that they are saintly, it's not that they don't make mistakes, it's not that they aren't hampered by our need to rework our communications with families and educators.

I've grown to love and respect all of our leaders in central office.

I have to call out my special regard for Teresa Hale, our magnificent board office manager.

I've had extensive experience with almost all of these individuals who are our district leaders.

Each one is inspired, talented, incredibly bright, and driven by a commitment to our students.

It's been a once in a lifetime privilege to serve with all of them.

And it's been an honor to engage with you, parents, students, educators, and community members.

And particular thanks go to those of you who have taken the time and made the effort to suggest solutions and offer to work together with us.

I will always be in solidarity with you and I look forward to continuing to work with you as we nurture and empower our students and hopefully each other.

Thank you.

Well like Director McLaren I wrote my comments down so I'll work from a script.

And I'd like to similar to the others I'd like to start with a list of thank yous.

And I'm going to start with thanking the Boeing company.

Director Martin Morris and I work for a company that is so generous to let us support us in the work that we have done and I couldn't have done it without an employer that has been supportive and as well as the co-workers that have been following all of this with interest over the last eight years so I just want to say thank you there.

I also want to thank the Hearthstone and Bethany community church.

Really difficult to find places to have community meetings and those two organizations opened up their facilities and let me use them for free so I say thank you to both those organizations.

I would like to thank my former board colleagues as well as my current board colleagues.

And the directors that served before me.

It's an interesting kinship that you build with people that have been board directors.

And even ones that you hadn't met before when you meet them there's an instant connection because this is really really hard work.

And I have over the years tapped directors that I never even served with or they would call and offer their thoughts or just a word of support and so I'll make that same offer to those that are about to join the ranks and say that you're always welcome to call me if there's something I can do to help.

I would like to thank the five superintendents that I've worked with over the last, over my experience and I'm including the years that I was the PTA president because I was the Seattle Council president and the superintendents kind of like my principal.

And that would be superintendents Monhaus, Goodloe, Johnson, Enfield, Bonda and of course our Dr. Nyland.

And as well as all the district leaders that I've had the opportunity to work with both here in the room and over the years.

And right back out Director Martin Morris I want to thank him for the partnership the friendship over the eight years and I want to thank his wife because she has shared him generously and so thank you to Linda Martin Morris as well.

To my mother, 89 years old, she truly still is my biggest fan and advocate.

At 81, she doorbelled with me and when I didn't move along fast enough, she'd lean back where the voter couldn't see me and she'd go like this and give me the signal that I had to hurry it along.

So, she has been a great champion and advocate and of course has monitored all my media coverage over the years and let me know when she thought that somebody wasn't nice to me.

And then lastly to my family of course I could not have done this without them.

My daughter Taylor was in elementary school when I started this journey the first time I ran and then of course the second time she was just I think starting high school and she was completely convinced that all of this was about was ensuring that I humiliated and embarrassed her in front of all of her friends throughout Seattle Public Schools.

That was all that this was about was having a mother running around putting her name on yard signs all over the city and knocking on doors and having her friends answer and she was standing there so it really wasn't about embarrassing Taylor and she knows that now so I thank her.

My daughter Bailey, she was my campaign manager the second time through.

She was a senior in high school at Roosevelt and she was with me through the primary and then went off to the University of Washington and now has graduated the University of Washington and works for the Boeing company with me.

So you can see kind of eight years what that's meant in our household.

I started out with the youngest in elementary school and now the older ones through college and already out in the workforce.

And then of course my husband Bill who is here and if you want to wave your hand so we can see who you are.

I want to say thank you to Bill who supported me through all of the nights away from home, the vacations that got interrupted with district business like boundary changes in 2009 and so forth.

And the list goes on so you've been a terrific supporter.

A terrific member of the and I've got it in quotes spouses of school board directors support group because while the board directors have a kinship so do their spouses and so he's been a terrific supporter.

So thank you.

And then lastly, now I'll just make some general comments and I won't go into the list of accomplishments over the last eight years, there have been many.

I would suffice it to say that the district that I leave in 2015 is substantially improved over the one I inherited in 2007. I want to thank the leadership team of Seattle Public Schools starting with Dr. Nyland but along with all of these folks along the wall and in the back of the room and some of them that are not here and some of them that don't work here anymore but also contributed to that progress.

You guys are my heroes.

You are my heroes.

And I will be forever grateful for the work that you've done and the work that you continue to do.

Yours is the hardest work in the city and but it's also the most important because it's about our children and their future which is of course our future so thank you very much.

The work is not done and progress is hard to make and it's made worse when you have chronic leadership turnover at the top of Seattle Public Schools.

In my tenure there have been statistics, get your pencils out.

And again I've taken a little creative license because I was Seattle Council PTA president and part of Seattle Council so I included those years so this is kind of 2005ish.

Six superintendents.

7 chief academic officers or leaders of teaching and learning, 5 chief operating officers, 9 chief financial officers, 6 chief information officers, 8 human resources directors, 9 leaders of special education, Five general counsels, three deputy superintendents and that position didn't start until 2011 and three assistant superintendents of capital or school operations again that position only started in 2012. No institution, no organization, public or private can be successful with this amount of leadership turnover.

I have stated numerous times that school board is a team sport and we directors don't make decisions we make choices.

And so it's the responsibility of the board and it's also the responsibility of the community to ensure that we attract and retain high-quality leaders.

And it's imperative if we hope to deliver on our mission.

and our promise to serve our students and to close the opportunity and achievement gap that is a barrier to success for so many of our students.

My grandmother was born in 1895 she taught in a one room schoolhouse in rural Nebraska.

My mother was the valedictorian of the eighth grade at a similar one room schoolhouse called the Prairie Queen.

Of course we privately suspect she was the only eighth grade student and I have pointed out to her that I can make a public records request to find out that fact.

I know how to do that now.

My sister is a public school teacher here in Kent.

My connection to public education runs deep and I'm proud to have followed in their footsteps.

It has been an honor to serve the students of Seattle Public Schools and the citizens of Seattle in this capacity and I thank you for this opportunity.

Alright well we made it through that without crying so that's a start.

Alright so we are going to take a 10 minute break.

We've been going three full hours.

We'll take a 10 minute break and then when we come back we will jump into the action items.

Alright so the clock looks like it's about 716 so we'll go to 726.