Seattle School Board Meeting November 1, 2017 Part 2

our board meeting.

We do have a quorum so I am going to go ahead and proceed.

Just want to clarify the reason why we needed to take a break was actually a technical one.

We needed to change the tape.

Believe it or not.

So that is why we had to take the break then.

So I'm going to conclude my comments and then we're going to call up our internal auditor Andrew Medina who's going to make a presentation to us.

I mentioned already the wonderful performance we had from the Dearborn Park international students the dancers.

Fantastic.

I highly recommend watching the tape of tonight's show show board meeting with the show at the beginning because it's really worth it.

And thank you also to Trent Randall our student from Middle College who is with us this evening.

I had my last community meeting this past weekend and you know I thought maybe it would be a nice quiet affair with a few people but no.

Standing room only and the topic the main topic was the growth boundaries and where families in my district which is Queen Anne, Magnolia, Ballard, lower Queen Anne where they are going to be sent.

And something that definitely came up was the fact that families feel that transportation was not factored into some of the plans, I guess it's plan H2 that's out there right now.

The logistics of sending Magnolia families to Wallingford has come up as a concern.

So obviously we do have to factor in transportation and it can't be just based on maps.

It has to be based on realities and what we're dealing with in terms of bridges construction the realities of what it takes for parents and families to get their kids to school.

Let's see the other issues that came up were pathways.

One of our speakers tonight from the public used the term family pathways and I thought that was an interesting concept and that's something that we're hearing from our communities is they look at things from their perspective the family perspective.

On the inside I think when staff does some analysis of what we're doing often things are looked at from a different perspective a practical one a pragmatic one a financial one but it doesn't necessarily mesh with what works best for our families.

So I thought the idea of looking at things through the lens of a family pathway was was very valuable way of looking at things.

And so that includes whether we allow siblings to grandfather, whether things are practical in terms of distance, we have to look at it that way so our families can be best served.

Because ultimately that is our goal.

Walkability was another issue that came up.

And then if our students at the high school level especially if they're having to take a bus home one of those bus routes look like.

Let's not presume that we have ideal bus routes for our students.

And so these are all all considerations.

I did tell the families that came to my meeting that nothing has been decided yet.

We've got some different plans out there and right now the district is in the process of gathering information and feedback from the community and nothing has been officially presented to the board yet.

And so now is the time to weigh in.

I also wanted to thank our athletics our phys ed representatives who are here tonight and I have to say one of the educators who was called out was Ms. Bader and on a personal note she taught both of my children.

And once upon a time at Lowell Elementary I had a student there and one of the programs they have there is they do have a very medically fragile program and Ms. Bader oversaw the adapted physical ed program there and using a company called access for all students would go on little field trips and they would have bicycles and they'd have Things they could ride regardless of what their abilities were and students who were not disabled able bodied students were asked to come along as buddies for these students.

And my son was asked to be a buddy.

And I have to tell you that to me was one of the most valuable experiences he had at that school.

And so it's something that is that is dear to me.

And I'm really glad to hear we are expanding those sorts of programs.

Oh another topic that came up at my community meetings was the topic of Naviance which has been mentioned by other directors and so again this is a case where we are trying to find a tool to help our students but whenever there's student data attached to something we have to be extremely careful of how we use that data, who gets to use it, how it's transmitted And so we are duly wary of how this is going to be used and so we're asking lots of questions and that's one of the reasons we're not voting on it tonight was because staff is doing their homework for us and getting answers for us so that when we do come to vote for it we're fully informed and have the right things in place so that you know if we do do support it we can feel comfortable about supporting it.

And let's see.

Someone brought up the point that it's hard for the public to come to our meetings and I am sorry about that.

One thing we did do though was it used to be that the public speaking time started at five o'clock and we heard from the public that was very hard to get down here at that time during rush hour so we bumped it to 530 and that's something we've done for the past couple of years.

I hope that's made it a little bit easier for people but we definitely are hearing from hearing your concerns and trying to accommodate them.

And transportation.

OK I think that's just make sure I got everything off my list.

OK then the last thing I want to do is a little shout out for our various musical students throughout the district.

I went to the jazz symposium that was sponsored by the Edmond school district over the weekend and we had I think it was six different schools from Seattle Public Schools represented there.

We had Nathan Hale, Hamilton International, Eckstein, Jane Addams middle school, Roosevelt high school and Ballard high school.

They all had jazz bands, jazz ensembles or combos who all participated in this event and it was fantastic.

And there were schools from other districts as well and it was a non-competitive event it was simply kids being able to perform at a high school theater and then they would go and have an expert come and give them feedback on what they were doing.

It was really wonderful event.

So congratulations to all the bands that got to participate in that and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

So thank you to Director Burke for his kind words earlier.

I have certainly enjoyed working with him and all my colleagues and there's I'm sure I'll have more to say next time in our next meeting our final for some of us our final meeting.

So without any further ado I am now going to invite our internal auditor Andrew Medina to come to the podium and present to us his report.

OK.

And thank you for your patience.

OK.

Andrew Medina director of internal director of internal audit and ethics officer and I'm here to provide two annual reports.

The first is the internal audit report that requires I do a annual report on the audits completed major audit findings corrective actions taken by management and significant findings not addressed by management.

This slide shows the audits we completed this year.

We completed 11 audits this year which is consistent with our productivity from prior years.

The next three slides identify some of our more significant findings.

These are not presented in any order of severity but they do represent some of the findings that we will want to continue to monitor to ensure that corrective action is taking place.

I will let you read them but I am not planning to go through each individual finding in detail mostly due to time constraints but also because the internal audit process is all already very transparent.

Each finding is discussed in detail at a public audit and finance committee meeting.

All of our reports are made public on our department Web site and at the Next regular school board meeting the chair of Audit and Finance makes an announcement of any completed audit internal audits.

For the corrective action plans I just want to it's important to note that the corrective action process is actually a management function.

As internal auditors we make recommendations only.

We do not have any authority to direct staff write procedures or design internal control internal controls.

The district employs an audit response manager who assists departments in developing corrective action plans.

All of the corrective action plans have to be approved by the superintendent and are then distributed to the Audit and Finance Committee and then the Audit and Finance Committee also receives quarterly updates on the status of those corrective action plans.

To date we have issued 375 recommendations.

Of those 1 percent are overdue and 14 sorry less than 1 percent are overdue and 14 percent are in progress.

We issued 75 new recommendations this year compared with 49 the prior year.

The number of overdue items has dropped from 7 to 2. Two years ago 4 percent of our audit recommendations were overdue.

Last year it dropped to 2 percent and this year we're down to 0.5 percent.

So this shows that management is making progress towards our corrective actions and taking our recommendations seriously.

We do not have any disagreements with management on our on our findings.

They have concurred with all of our items.

However some items take a bit longer to resolve.

Currently the open ones are related to bargaining.

They've got some labor negotiations involved.

For the annual ethics report I'll go through the number and types of contacts received the percentage of contacts received anonymously and the status of the ethics training program.

So every contact that I receive I log and categorize them into one of 10 categories.

This chart illustrates the breakdown of the different types of contacts that I've been receiving.

For another year the majority of the contacts received are advisory opinions.

I think this is encouraging because it demonstrates that employees are trying to do the right thing and they're being proactive and contacting the ethics office before they actually go out and take action on something.

And overall the workload has remained consistent since I've taken over the ethics officer responsibilities I've been averaging about seven contacts per month.

This slide shows the total number or the percentage of contacts that are submitted anonymously.

However.

I'm not a real fan of this slide because it shows all contacts including items such as advisory opinions and conflict of interest disclosures which aren't normally submitted anonymously.

So the next slide is specific to complaints I receive.

For.

62 percent of whistleblower complaints and 81 percent of personnel complaints are submitted to my office anonymously but only 33 percent of miscellaneous complaints and 43 percent of ethics complaints are anonymous.

I think this information is important because having a high percentage of anonymous complaints could indicate that there's a maybe a lack of trust involved with the investigation process.

Last year I was asked if I could trend the anonymous complaints to see if there's any sort of trend of whether or not they're increasing or decreasing.

So I was able to do that for the whistleblower complaints and the ethics complaints.

So you can see the there isn't the percentage of anonymous whistleblower complaints is increasing.

However the number of.

Anonymous ethics complaints is decreasing.

So this could indicate there is a degree of trust with the ethics investigation process but there still may be some concern with the whistleblower process.

The ethics training program is largely unchanged but I have made some improvements to the ethics website.

The website now contains more information about the whistleblower investigation process.

It also includes an FAQ document that employees can reference to for some common just as common topics that I encounter.

And then the website also now includes an online reporting form so people can submit a complaint directly from the ethics website.

Those are all improvements from last year.

Ethics training is included in new employee orientation and I will respond to any requests for training.

But there are still not a formalized ethics training program.

We do have a our media operations center is available to develop some online training material.

But as of yet those resources haven't been made available to cover those costs.

The Audit and Finance Committee has approved next year's audit plan.

It is available on the public Web page along with copies of all of our completed audit reports.

And then before opening it up to questions I did want to highlight that the white paper on internal auditing in great city schools is now complete.

I emailed you an electronic version and I placed hard copies in your box in the board office.

So I passed council great city schools conferences.

I presented I led a session on best practices and internal auditing and I've also done some benchmarking on the internal audit.

function.

Those were shared with the council and received some very positive feedback.

In response to that the council reached out to me and asked if I would co-lead this white paper project.

We assembled a team of volunteers and created a task force.

I drafted the introduction and the executive summary and then provided guidance to all the volunteers.

Each volunteer authored a different section within the white paper as they would do their draft they would submit it to me.

I'd review it provide some feedback.

After a series of edits we got to one document and then the council made a CPA firm available to us to provide additional edits.

And then at last year's conference with the internal auditors all the internal auditors in attendance did a very thorough review of the document.

So there were a lot of eyes involved in this project which caused it to be a bit of a lengthy project but at the same time I think it ended up being a very thorough document.

I did present it last month to the councils at the council's annual fall conference in Cleveland.

So far the feedback that the council has received has been very positive.

The two main themes that I'd like to highlight from the white paper.

The first one being independence throughout the document you'll note that we talk about the importance of having an independent internal audit function and the benefit of that is if you're into your internal audit function is independent.

You can rest assured that your their results and reports are going to be objective and honest and that allow for better decision making for the school board district management and also for the public.

The second theme is that the school the internal audit function shouldn't just be limited to financial transactions or school activity audits.

Internal audit should really be viewed as a resource to help identify significant operational and compliance issues that would prevent a district from achieving its objectives.

So within each section of the white paper we've identified the best practices for that topic and we've also identified a value statement as to if you implement as to why implementing those best practices is going to be a value to your school district.

I did meet with the deputy superintendent earlier this week to discuss some of these topics and he and I will be meeting on a monthly basis going forward to continue that conversation along with the assistant superintendent of business and finance.

So I encourage you to read it and please reach out to me if you have any questions or observations on the document.

Thanks.

Peters

Director Pinkham.

Thank you for your presentation.

On the side where you're showing about the number or percentage of whistleblower and ethics and the change in it over the years.

Did you also have something that would show the number for each over the years as because I would hate to see that it increase so much because like two or three whistleblowers.

That's a great question because for this year's current year's whistleblower complaints I think it's only one or two that are in that sample of 100. So.

There are quite a bit of.

There's more ethics complaints that come in than whistleblower.

The whistleblower definition is defined by RCW so not every.

That's why we have the miscellaneous complaint category also because not every complaint technically qualifies as whistleblower.

But there is a.

greater population for the ethics complaints than there is for the whistleblower complaints.

So I don't have the specific numbers with me but I can get those to you.

is the chair of Audit and Finance.

I just want to say thank you.

Really hugely appreciate your work.

Thank you.

I want to thank you all for the support too.

It's very helpful.

Director Blanford.

As a member of the Audit and Finance Committee I would say that first off one of the biggest and one of the heaviest responsibilities that we have as school board directors is the fiscal stewardship of funds that have been entrusted to us to serve the students that we have been entrusted to our care.

And when we have a good sense that both fiscally and performance wise that that we're a well-managed organization it gives us the comfort to be able to go into the community and articulate the positions that we want to take and so it makes my heart warm to know that you have not only done good work inside of the district but you've been recognized amongst your peers nationally to lead this project and to present it out to board members and superintendents across the nation.

It's been a pleasure working with you over these years and whereas I don't always appreciate every aspect of audit and finance and service on that committee.

Usually when we are having conversation I always learn something.

I always leave from those conversations feeling like that aspect of our operations are running extremely well.

And so I want to thank you for your leadership and for your leadership not only of the district but your leadership nationally.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay and I'll just close by saying as the former chair of Audit and Finance Committee I also had a chance to work with you and even not even aside from that I've appreciated the work you've done.

It's really important for us to maintain that level of oversight and independence.

And this is something that the district set up.

I don't know how many years ago it was was it like six.

Yes so a number of years ago and I think it was a wise choice to have this in place and I think we've had some good results as a result of it.

We haven't had as many issues as the district has had in the past.

So thank you very much for your work.

OK so we now actually have to go back to our consent agenda.

So we have reached back to the consent agenda portion of tonight.

And may I have a motion for the consent agenda.

I move we approve the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

Let's see.

Do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda.

Seeing none all in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

All opposed.

The consent agenda has passed.

So now we leap to the action portion of the meeting.

OK.

So the first item amend board policy number 5 0 1 0. That's right.

Non-discrimination and affirmative action adopt new board policy number 5 2 0 7 prohibition of harassment intimidation and bullying and adopt new board policy number 5 2 4 5 anti-retaliation.

May we please hear from the chair of the Audit and Finance Committee.

This matter was approved on excuse me this matter was moved on October 9th for consideration.

Clover Codd assistant superintendent of human resources and John Cerqui deputy general counsel.

Good evening.

Good evening.

So since introduction we have made changes to the bar and policies based on the comments that were presented in introduction by directors.

We'd like to go over those changes.

We also want to make it clear on what the board is and is not voting on tonight.

Several things have come up over the last week.

We want to address those and then we'll answer questions so kind of have an agenda for how to get through this so that it remains in order.

So changes to the bar.

So we made it transparent that staff will develop a fair and appropriate hearing process and establish written guidelines for what occurs before during and after a discrimination appeal hearing.

We commit to report back to the board how the processes are working and determine if modifications need to be made.

We did a further equity analysis and added that to the equity section.

And then we changed from non retaliation to anti retaliation per the request.

And John's going to talk about the changes in policy.

So we have three policies that we're asking the board to approve tonight.

The first one is I'm turning to my sticky 50 10 and from introduction we had a comment related to the district will not discriminate against any veteran who is dishonorably discharged solely because of their sexual orientation.

We included gender identity or other protected classification listed in Section 1 of this policy.

So if there was some discrimination by the U.S. military related to what we consider to be a protected class like religion or ancestry that we would not discriminate and not hire that individual if they were terminated from the military for that purpose.

So that's the one change we made to that policy.

The policy on 5207 we added we added an and or to the prohibition of intimidation and bullying in the second paragraph.

And then.

With respect to the what was the non-retaliation policy we've changed that to the anti-retaliation policy in the header and in Section 1. Those were the changes to the policy.

Thank you John.

OK so what is the board voting on tonight?

What is the board not voting on tonight?

I think there's some confusion.

Want to make sure we're clear and we'll talk about next steps.

So you are voting to adopt a new adult harassment intimidation and bullying policy.

We did not have a separate adult policy on that.

It was in the 3000 series where we have the student HIB policies and procedures so we broke that apart.

and we are presenting to you for action a new adult harassment intimidation and bullying policy.

We also made a change to the discrimination policy to include that we will not discriminate against veterans who may have been dishonorably discharged because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

We also included other protective classes.

And then you also are voting on adopting a new board policy with respect to anti-retaliation.

So that is what the board is voting on is those three policies.

There are superintendent procedures that accompany these and the board is not voting on those tonight.

But we put them in the bar for context so that people understand when they're looking at the policy and they're looking at the procedure how things go together.

We worked with labor partners internal staff board directors superintendent to make sure that we proposed changes that were acceptable to all.

And those edits were presented at introduction not because you're voting on them but because we wanted to be transparent in our process.

So since that time directors have expressed additional changes that they think are important and need to be included.

We have not had time to properly engage staff or our labor partners on what the directors are proposing.

So to make sure you understand we're not moving superintendent procedure 50 10 forward to the superintendent at this time for signature.

or the reporting improper governmental actions and protecting whistleblower superintendent procedure at this time for superintendent procedure so we can do more collaborative work engage the right stakeholders and make sure people feel comfortable before they go to the superintendent.

But again tonight you are not voting on the procedures you're voting on the policies.

So now I'll open it up for questions.

Director Blanford and Director Harris.

So I wasn't part of the conversation around the change to from non-discrimination to anti-discrimination or I got that wrong anti-retaliation from non-retaliation to anti-retaliation.

And I'm not familiar with what the impact of that change would be nor am I familiar with the rationale for making the change.

The request was from a board member that they thought it added more clarity or prior policy was anti-retaliation.

Staff thought non-retaliation was potentially clear but I think both of them give the message when you look at the substance of the policy so we defer to the board's request that it be an anti-retaliation policy.

And if I can follow up is knowing that the language of this may have implications for a future lawsuit.

I'm wondering if that language is accepted in the legal profession.

Is it going to get us into any kind of trouble?

None that I can foresee at this time.

I think either language works to protect the people who report misconduct.

Director Harris.

Thank you for the lengthy heavy lift on this.

I appreciate it's been frustrating.

I appreciate it's been a lengthy back and forth iterative process with any number of stakeholders hugely appreciated and recognize the good work with respect to the superintendent procedures.

I think often that the superintendent procedures are not as clear where they sit with respect to policy.

Superintendent procedures, board procedures, administrative procedures.

Because the board has the internal auditor and the ethics officer it would seem to me that there is further work to be done on the superintendent procedures and potentially splitting some of that out to board procedures because the whistleblower piece may well belong in the board's portfolio since the ethics officer and internal auditor reports to the board.

And and I appreciate your giving us your word that we'll continue on this path and untangle a process that is not very clear.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

I wanted to also echo Director Harris's gratitude.

I know that this has been a lengthy dance and it's really it's one of these things that I struggle with as a as a director because I guess one of the ways I vetted this was I sent this information to two people that I'm familiar with.

One that's a former educator and one that's a former volunteer.

And I said what do you think about this as a document would this have helped in your engagement with the district and provided a better experience in the bumpy ride that you had.

And the feedback I got in both cases was probably not because really What matters is is that we engage with each other as as respectful humans.

And by the time it gets to this it's it's pretty much too late.

So it's that's that conversation with with people who had been affected struck me that this this work this is really like I liken it to the insurance policy on the car that you keep in the garage and you only drive once a year.

That really the place where we want to focus is not on this policy we want it to protect us.

We want it to exemplify our values.

But the place where we need to work is on the culture.

And I say that knowing that that's the place where you are working and have been working.

And I want to turn this conversation to end on that from my point of view that I want to thank you for putting that effort there as well as protecting the legal aspects.

Thank you Director Burke for making that point.

I agree that is where the main focus needs to be but this is a tool we need to have in the event that something has broken down.

We need to make sure everybody has the fair process to resolve issues.

So I appreciate what Dr. Codd was explaining about the superintendent procedures and I just wanted to follow up on that because we did start a very interesting conversation about this at the last meeting and as a result of that we have worked on the language in the superintendent procedure pertaining to the hearing examiner component of the process.

And I think something that troubled a number of us was the fact that the board seemed to no longer have an oversight role in an appeals process.

And the appeals are when an employee has gotten some sort of determination by either another staff member or the superintendent and they are not content with that and so there's an appeals process that's built in that traditionally has gone to the school board.

This now takes it to an outside hearing examiner and what we decided to do was to have the hearing examiner bring forth a recommended decision but we still will have a process a layer in which the board will have a chance to review the decision.

and ask some questions and says the school board may either adopt the decision, remand the decision for further fact-finding by the hearing examiner or adopt a different decision based on the facts found by the hearing examiner.

So I think that was a really good hybrid.

It allows us to hand this challenging task to somebody who may have the more professional aptitude for it but it still allows the board to have some measure of oversight which is what is expected from our employees and from working so hard on this particular document to make sure that it aligns with board duties and expectations.

Thank you.

And I just want to make it clear to the public that what is posted online is a draft and we have not engaged labor partners or internal staff stakeholders.

So we just want to make that very clear.

I think we're we're very close to a middle ground from what we put at introduction and where we are to make sure we get both of these right.

But I wanted to make that clear.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

I had brought up the comment as this is introduced about the use of the word repeated was how is that vetted out to where it still says HIB in the workplace refers to repeated.

I thought we added and or so that it could be or about being volunteer employee and or volunteer.

I thought we had made a change to that policy by adding and or it was in our highlighted notes so it may not have made it to the final It should.

So I think that I left the notes for somebody to transcribe it and they put the and or for employee and or it should be have been the workplace or first repeated and or unreasonable is that the comment.

Yes.

So I was out of town for 10 days and I don't have a chance to proof the edit so I apologize.

I think if if we can make that edit and put it up and have that voted on that would be the correct verbiage.

Nice catch.

Director Pinkham would you like to amend it thusly.

Do I have to make a motion?

It should be amended.

Then I move to amend the harassment intimidation bullying section 1 second paragraph moving to end or after repeated and before unreasonable.

Second the motion to amend.

OK.

Would anyone like to discuss this motion?

We would like to vote on this motion.

Check the roll call please.

Director Blanford aye.

Director Burke aye.

Director Geary aye.

Director Harris aye.

Director Patu aye.

Director Pinkham aye.

Director Peters aye.

This amendment has passed unanimously.

Are there any other questions or comments about.

Just I want to again thank you also for the work on this and as I look at this one this is about our employees and volunteers and I'd be curious to again look at what it says for our students when it comes to HIB in particular for like some of our native students.

There's a rise in for many of our native cultures to return to some of the traditional practices that takes them away from school time and how that is handled and approached.

In particular I can talk about the Sundance.

You know more of our native children are getting involved in that and trying to pass it on and so they have to go back to certain areas and.

and go through that.

That we need to be sensitive to those issues.

And also as far as length of hair when it comes to athletics I know there's sometimes that coaches know you must cut your hair to play in our sport.

I don't know if that how that is handled but just be something I'd be curious to see if we're ready to handle such things.

Okay there's no further questions or comments.

I'm going to ask Director Harris to read the motion in for the record.

I'm not sure that we did that.

I apologize.

I move that school board amend word policy number 5 0 1 0 non-discrimination and affirmative action.

and adopt board policies numbers 5 2 0 7 prohibition of harassment intimidation and bullying and number 5 2 4 5 anti-retaliation as attached to the board action report.

Pinkham Do we need to specify 5 2 0 7 as amended?

Harris 5 2 0 7 as amended.

Pinkham As amended.

Pinkham I second the motion.

Peters So at that point I think we are ready for the roll call.

Director Blanford aye Director Burke aye Director Geary aye Director Harris aye Director Patu aye Director Pinkham aye Director Peters aye.

This motion as amended has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

We now move on to the next item on our agenda and that is repealing school governance structures policy and procedures F20.00 F20.01 and F20.02 and adopting new board policy number 4 1 4 0 collaborative governance structures.

Let's see may I hear from the chair of the Audit and Finance Committee and then we will.

No I guess we do the motion and then second.

Read the motion in first.

I move that the school board repeal policy F 20 and board procedure F 20.01 and F 20.02 and adopt a new policy number 4 1 4 0 collaborative governance structures as attached to the board action report.

I second the motion.

Now may we please hear from the chair of the curriculum and instruction policy committee.

This was heard curriculum instruction policy committee October 10 and moved forward to the board for consideration.

Good evening directors Nate Van Duzer director of policy and board relations.

So as a quick recap from last time this is a action that would replace to one policy and two board procedures that were last updated in 96 with new policy language that speaks to the importance of collaborative governance structures.

And we are making this change because the older policies had language that were not in alignment with current practice because practice is shaped by the CBA.

the collective bargaining agreement with the Seattle Education Association specifically the language in that document around building leadership teams and program leadership teams.

Since introduction, we have put more detailed language into the policy in response to the conversation we had two weeks ago, where there's a desire to have a little bit more in the policy about what we wanted in these structures.

This language is in alignment with what's in the current CBA, but it's not at a level that's so detailed that it's likely to be out of date the next time changes are made to the CBA.

It's at a kind of topical level.

And that language is shown in track changes in your packet.

And we'd be happy to answer any questions.

Peters Any questions or comments?

So I wanted to point out that.

comment was made in public commentary about the board relinquishing its oversight through this but it does state here that collaborative governance structures will recognize and observe existing policies and procedures, collective bargaining agreements, other district agreements and applicable laws.

So it doesn't, there are still policies that will need to be followed.

And I think what we identified in our last discussion about this two weeks ago was sometimes collective bargaining agreements change policy.

And so if we don't want that to happen then that has to be something that happens during the collective bargaining process at that time.

So Director Blanford.

Do the changes that we're talking here have any impact on our on the collective the current collective bargaining process?

No not the changes that you see here tonight.

So.

Not the changes that you see here in track changes.

I ask a question of Director Blanford.

When you say current collective bargaining process are you talking about the collaborative work that has already started for the next collective bargaining agreement or are we talking about the collective bargaining agreement currently in effect.

I was not sure.

When I asked that question I was primarily concerned with the flexibility that is necessary to get to an agreement between our labor partners and the school district and not wanting or wanting to be sure that we had maximum flexibility primarily because board members in the past I don't know how it will happen in the future but board members in the past have tried to have some distance away from the day-to-day negotiations that go on and have entrusted that responsibility to you know our senior leadership which is taking on that role.

And so as I was reading this I was just thinking to myself and just wondering does this have any negative impact on the flexibility and the nimbleness that is necessary to actually get to an agreement?

So that's why I asked that question.

I think that the key verbs here are they will recognize and observe existing policies so there's nothing in those words that would impact negotiations process or a collective bargaining agreement process at all.

Director Burke.

I just wanted to say thanks for the edits.

I think that this is a nice sort of parallel construct with the work that's done in the CBA and feels like a sort of formally capturing that work on our side on the policy.

And so thank you for that.

Any comments or questions.

Director Harris.

This one has cost me more.

I don't have a good word for it.

More consternation perhaps because I am very much a huge fan of our labor partners.

I am very much a huge fan of innovation at our schools.

Because what works needs to be replicated.

I'm very much in favor of collaborative work.

But I struggle mightily with the lack of definition of administrative oversight and responsibility.

And and I'm I'm probably going to abstain from this not because I don't support this good work but because people elected us to make policy and a good bit of policy has already been abrogated in the collective bargaining agreements in years past.

And my refrain when am I going to see a chart that shows administrative oversight and building base management and quit doing this when problems come up.

I have difficulty when high school principals can decide on an individual basis which online learning programs are acceptable for that high school when the high school a mile away does accept those online programs.

I there is a granularity to some of the decisions that are made here and an inconsistency to some of the decisions that are made by building based management that I am hugely uncomfortable with because I believe that the voters think that that policy belongs on the people they can throw out of office if they don't like the results.

Thank you.

Dr. Geary?

Thank you for the work on this.

I see a lot of what's been discussed incorporated in the language from all different levels.

I think from my perspective this raises the issue that gets to what Director Harris is saying but I don't think this is the place to resolve it.

It's that as we go forward and issues are brought to us what is our assurance that What is being brought to us isn't in violation of an existing policy somewhere.

And so I know we've talked about that a little bit and I was wondering what work is being done and or do we need to consider a board policy that just makes anything that moves forward without that being highlighted to us reversible or.

or null and void for failure to follow existing policy.

How are we moving forward on that issue which I think is the underlying what has been exposed in this.

Yeah so Director Peters has been working on that in a different policy so I'll let her speak to that.

That's not before you tonight.

That's not part of this is something totally separate in a different policy.

But Director Peters.

Yeah so directly to that point something that I think I ended up identifying as a result of our conversation two weeks ago was that when we get to this point we've already got things in place.

We've already got the CBA and the CBA has to honor whatever the existing policies are.

But what we realize is over the years policies have changed because they've been potentially effectively bargained away.

So we have a policy on collective bargaining and that's what I'm working on and what I've done is I've made an adjustment in there to do exactly what you were saying which is to establish that if anything in collective bargaining is going to change a policy the board needs to be apprised of that, they need to be apprised of which policies are going to be affected.

and the board has to be to approve that basically so that we don't end up with just a CBA at the end that we have to vote up or down on that has some components that we are unaware of.

So we are still fine-tuning the details of this but the idea is for the board not to ever be in a position where it's unwittingly agreeing to policy being changed or rendered irrelevant by something in a bargaining situation.

Yes so I think there's an initial draft around that and there's much more work to do.

We need to be very careful with the language so that we don't find ourselves in a situation where labor partners might say you're not bargaining in good faith.

They're sort of you've already predetermined there are certain things that you can bargain and certain things that you can't.

So I know that our legal team and Stan have been doing a little bit of research around that.

So we'll talk about that more not tonight because it's not applicable to what you're voting on tonight.

But we'll need to be very careful with the language.

We want to get the you know the capture the spirit and the intent of what you're saying but make sure that it's not violating any of our state laws with respect to bargaining and that.

Director Blanford.

Is there a timeline for this document to come before the board?

I believe Director Peters plans on bringing it to the next executive committee which I don't remember the date of the next executive committee.

The next executive committee meeting is next week.

And following up on that?

Well if it makes it through the committee then it would be introduced I guess on the 15th.

Director Pinkham.

Thank you for this work and what it just seems kind of.

Again the board said to me that we seem like we're needing to write a new policy because of an oversight that allowed a collective bargaining agreement to go through that was violating policy in the first place.

So as we look at how we can address this and it says alternatives the board may choose not to take any action but this is not recommended as would leave in place policy language that is overwritten by current CBA language causing continued confusion for the public.

So it seems like we're changing something here because of something happened to CBA which which seems it should have came up to us ahead of time.

Sure.

So I think the big sticking point here is that 20 years ago then Superintendent John Stanford then executive director of SCA then board don't know who was on the board 20 years ago.

Entering into a commitment around the building leadership team structure was a massive decision and it was not an oversight and it was something that everybody was well informed.

It was a very big deal.

It was a very important collective bargain both for SCA and for the district.

So I think we need to be careful to talk about because there are there are potentially some policies that we may not.

There may be some oversight there may be something that we haven't thought of and we need to do a thorough policy review before we bring a collective bargaining agreement forward.

But I think with respect to building based management site based leadership building leadership teams that was a very intentional decision at that time by that board by that superintendent and by the Seattle Education Association.

So I think it's important to just put that on the record.

Pinkham thank you.

So I'm just wondering if there's any language you can add in here that this new policy in no way diminishes board oversight.

I would say that in the current collective bargaining policy it already highlights how the board has to approve any collective bargaining agreement and I think that's in state law as well.

So that coverage exists within the policy book already.

And the one last point I'll make is again we just got we mentioned this last time we discussed this was there is state law that says that collective bargaining agreements effectively override policy.

And so that's the framework we're working within.

So if we don't want an agreement to change a policy then we have to figure that out sort of ahead of time.

Well.

And don't approve the collective bargaining agreement that you don't agree with.

Right right.

So.

All right well if there's no further questions or comments let's check the roll call please.

Director Geary Aye Director Harris Abstain Director Patu Aye Director Burke Aye Director Blanford Aye Director Pinkham Aye Director Peters Aye This motion has passed with a vote of 6 to 0 to 1.

Okay item 3 adoption of board resolution 2017 18 dash 3 career and technical education CTE partnerships.

I have a motion.

I move that school board adopt resolution 2017 slash 18 dash 3 career and technical education CTE partnerships as attached to the board action report.

I second the motion.

And may I please hear from the chair of the curriculum and instruction committee.

Curriculum and instruction committee move this forward October 10th to the full board for consideration.

Has anything changed since introduction?

Director Burke.

Nothing on this has changed.

I will bring up that since this was introduced the Washington State PTA adopted a post-secondary higher ed resolution and I wanted to publicly acknowledge the work of Heidi Bennett in this in support of the career aligned work and CTE classes.

So that's a body of work that has been going on for a couple of years and has made it to the PTA platform level this year.

Another example of potential partnerships and what I consider to be sort of a perfect storm in this area.

A good perfect storm.

Are there any questions or comments about this item?

Director Pinkham.

So after the passing of this resolution hopefully we are going to reach out to the women and minority owned businesses locally and say hey look at what we passed so we can again start that dialogue with them about how we can use the CT.

And I did forge an email that I got from the Associated School of Engineering Education American Society of Engineering Educators about CT.

Director Geary.

With this past I'd like and our all the work that we're doing around re-revisioning high school and the 24 credits.

I really would like to take this opportunity as we talk about the changing of high school to when we have those discussions to get examples of how we're weaving in opportunities for CTE for all kinds of students.

And that discussion should be geographically and interest based so that we can have a good understanding of how accessible CTA is to our different students around our district and what type of opportunities they have and how we are making it available to them.

And I just point that out because I think we're having so many conversations that I just want that to be built in to every conversation as we move forward.

And if it's not I will ask.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Can you assist me in understanding what you mean I understand about geographic based but interest based.

I know that different CTE opportunities are designed around not every location has the same opportunities.

And so I just want to have an understanding of how a student who lives in South Seattle what that means in terms of them traveling to get to an interest based form of CTE and how that melds in with their obtaining the credits necessary to graduate.

It goes back to us making decisions but really having a deep understanding of what that means to our kids on the ground and and how accessible it is so that we don't find all of a sudden that something we thought was really cool is withering on the vine because somehow the pathways of accessibility haven't been thought about and fostered.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

There was an opportunity to provide some information or opportunity for input into the final language of this resolution.

And at that time I shared a desire to know more about the rationale undergirding the resolution.

And I think it would be good for the public, the viewing public to have that understanding if you could share that.

Absolutely.

So the I did provide the email to you that had that but really there's three sort of areas where I think one of them and I probably should just go back to the email and read it but there's a body of of of evidence which is is fairly strong that shows that students that enroll in CTE classes have a higher graduation rate or is an indication of a greater engagement with the academic content.

And we've heard a lot of qualitative studies but we also have quantitative data from some of our programs and some other evidence from other districts.

And so identifying that this is an element of an educational system which really contributes to our gap closing mission and higher attendance and higher student engagement makes it seem like wow we should be doing more of this.

So it sort of builds in with our existing imperative.

The second part of it is that well if it's such a great thing why don't we do more of it.

And the reality of our financial situation is we can't grow additional programs.

We don't have the funding to take a program and grow it without additional support.

You know we have to the dollars follow the students but CTE programs are typically a little bit more expensive and in some cases a lot more expensive than traditional classroom programs.

And the state funding formula recognizes that in some cases.

But anything that we want to start up there's an investment curve.

So building from our 11 percent CTE participation that we have now to something that's more in the upper team teens 16 18 19 percent which is more typical of our surrounding districts is not something that we're really in a financial position to do given all the other initiatives we've got going on.

So then the third part of that is relates to well if it's a good thing and if we can't fund it how do we do it?

And also recognizing that CTE is it's like a career preparation thing and we do K-12 But how do we really bridge our kids into careers?

And that involves things that are beyond the K-12 realm.

So looking at partnerships that provide those bridges provide funding supports provide curriculum support provide teacher training provide workforce experience and opportunities for our students.

Those are all areas that don't really fit in our K-12 bucket.

but are really important factors to the success of this work.

So that's kind of the the premise behind this is reaching out to the community to say hey we think this is important.

We can't do it without you.

Will you help us.

If I can follow up, I didn't provide this piece of philosophy that I think may not actually reside in this document but should be considered and that is I come from a community of people who feel very strongly that when we increase the amount of CTE offerings and encourage students to pursue those offerings that the student gets to make the choice.

That it's not a choice that adults should make for students.

It's a choice that the students and their families get to make.

I don't know that that belongs in this document but somewhere as a philosophical statement is a statement that the board agrees to.

I believe that there should be some recognition that education systems frequently will push kids towards CTE offerings to the detriment of their other choices because it sometimes becomes easier to do that.

And that we should actively resist the opportunity to push kids but to encourage them to explore their options and to make The choice that they and their families thinks is in the best interest of the student is a piece that I think needs to find its place somewhere in some document.

I don't know that this is the right one.

Director Geary.

I appreciate that very much.

And while we don't necessarily want to hold this up now for that I think that there is that principle that it goes back to I think what has been raised around the Naviance tool and its directive aspects and how we as a board can make tools that are available but also protect our kids from being tracked by somebody's perception that isn't theirs or their families.

And I think that that is something that we should think about in terms of making a fundamental principle in how we.

judge what we are using and how we are marketing or guiding our students.

So thank you for raising that.

Peters.

Both Director Blanford and Director Geary's comments bring me back to the concept that we have a critical shortage of high school counselors.

And that if we don't have high touch and if we don't have real relationships and true guidance then we're not doing right by our students.

And We have got to figure out a way to have more mentors and more counselors if we indeed are going to have our students career and college ready.

It's it's painful to think that we have not been able to prioritize that and highly sad and ironic.

Director Burke.

I would love to touch on that topic because I appreciate Director Bland for bringing that up that that is absolutely the mindset that that has provided a lot of the space to have these conversations.

And when I've talked to people they've they've described how that historically the environment wasn't such that we could do this but now people are recognizing that the CTE classes benefit all students.

It's not for my students and your students or these students but not those students.

It's there's advantages for all all students and that it is an opportunity.

that we're providing that students can choice into and not something that we're pushing them into as a track.

And then just as far as a place to put that we do have a policy 21 70 that is for career and technical education.

I haven't looked at in great detail but perhaps that's something that we could take on and make sure that it it really clearly articulates that because I think that's a really important part of this work.

If we are moving it forward in a way that that makes it more robust that we have to do it with strong values.

Director Patu.

And I believe that when we are looking at CTE versus college education we really want to make it very sure that kids know the difference between the two and they have an actual choice in how what CTE's opportunities is going to be beneficial to them and what is the college education is going to mean.

to them also when we had discussed this with some of the parents when we brought up CTE a lot of parents were very excited about having actual apprenticeship programs for their children.

And I guess one of the things that we actually are looking at is hopefully that we can have actual apprenticeship where kids can actually be able to get those training throughout the time that they're in when they become seniors and then hopefully when they leave the company that they're getting the apprenticeship will be able to hire them on as regular employees.

So that is the future of what we're looking at in terms of when we're looking at providing real apprenticeship programs for our students.

And I do agree with Director Blanford that It's the students choice that anything that we do in terms of providing opportunities that it would be the students to decide whether that's the direction they want to go or not.

Peters if there's no further questions or comments Ms. Shek the roll call please.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke aye.

Director Geary aye.

Director Harris aye.

Director Patu aye.

Director Pinkham aye.

Director Peters aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Item 4 the 2017 18 legislative agenda.

I move that school board adopt the 2017 18 legislative agenda as attached to the board action report.

I second the motion.

This item came to the executive committee on October 12 where we advanced it for approval.

So are there any there's been no changes since introduction from what I can see here.

Are there any questions or comments about this document?

Director Harris.

Thank you to our legislative team.

Thank you to those of you all that put a whole lot of miles on your cars going down to Olympia and back and reaching out to folks.

And also thank you for giving our friends in the legislature technical support.

The fact that they come to us for answers is a source of great pride.

Director Blanford and then Director Geary.

My question is for Superintendent Nyland.

Last year I fielded a request to have the district sign onto a letter advocating for legislative change.

and you and I had the discussion and your response to me responding to that request was no because we wanted to be laser focused on only the things that were in the legislative agenda.

And so I'm wondering in this one if we have a similarly restricted direction that we're taking or if this one is more inclusive of the many opportunities to advocate for different issues that we as a district will be facing.

I'll defer to Steven and Aaron.

It does seem to be an ongoing issue for us in that we have just as we do coming before the school board there's always many many many many things that we are interested in and concerned about.

And I suppose there's a temptation to include many things in a document so that we can say sometimes like legislators do.

Oh yeah we heard you and it's in there.

The problem comes when we take the very valuable time with our delegation to push the one or two items that we really really really want them to move.

So.

Maybe there's a little bit of latitude but not really on the ground in Olympia to push 25 items because if we push, pardon the exaggeration, but if we push too many items then we really push nothing.

I will just, Erin Bennett executive director of government relations and strategic initiatives good evening.

So I did want to I think that was a great explanation there is some language in the board action report that I would point you to that does speak a little bit to your question.

Just within the background information it does say that although the legislative agenda is typically focused on a limited number of priorities The formal agenda does not limit district input on other topics.

Looking at sort of the three areas that are in the agenda with the budget and then the capital and sort of eliminating the opportunity gaps I would say that the most flexibility lives in that third area simply because you don't know all of the policy bills that may or may not come down however I would say to Dr. Nyland's point You can't be spread so thin that they don't see the focus.

And so there were, and I would imagine there likely will be again, times where we have to say we are focused on the budget because we see the train coming.

So in response to those two comments and I appreciate them both, having spent some time down in the legislature and knowing that if we spread ourselves too thin then our message is greatly diffused.

I would also argue on the other side of that coin that that sometimes the absence of Seattle Public Schools in a particular campaign for a specific thing is highly noted right?

We are the largest school district and we have a larger share of our contingent of legislators right?

Blanford.

And so the example that I'm thinking of and I'm not thinking of the specific subject matter but more thinking about we were asked to sign on to a letter that was advocating for something that was very much about closing opportunity gaps and in choosing not to do that A couple of legislators came back to me later on and said I noted the fact that Seattle Public Schools wasn't listed amongst the you know 50, 60, 100 districts that signed on to the document.

And so I don't know how to deal with the tension between spreading ourselves too thin and being laser focused on the specific things that we want to and I actually think it's it is something that we've entrusted you with making that decision so I'm not actually arguing against the decision that was made last year.

But I do think that on a either on a case by case basis or with some attention to the cost benefit analysis of signing on or not signing on that we take opportunities to advance the causes that we believe in and particularly the three goals that the district has set.

Sometimes those don't come packaged neatly into the buckets that we have put them into but may advance our goals one way or the other.

Well said and thank you for that thought and that comment Stephen Nielsen Deputy Superintendent.

I would say that it fits within the context of the highest need compared to a nice to same kind of situation that is often presented to you where in that particular case there was a request to have more resources go to very specific and very good things.

We recognize that.

That said.

Our main issue as we said last year and is in front of you again here is to address underfunding of K-12.

So it would literally have taken resources away required by the Constitution to be used in another arena.

while those are very good ideas we didn't feel that it would be consistent with our overall policy to say we'd like that when we're going we know for sure that would take away some of the opportunity to fully fund basic education.

Director Harris and then Superintendent Nyland.

I feel as though we're talking behind the curtain and I would really appreciate some details here because I feel as though I may have missed a memo or two.

What specific letter are we talking about?

What specific bill are we talking about that we may have missed an opportunity or at least an opportunity for a thoughtful conversation?

So I do not recall excuse me. the name of the letter it was not any there was no bill.

Frequently interest groups will come together we do this and promote an idea together to say dear legislature would you please do something.

And I'm doing this a little bit foggy in my memory.

It had to do with raising resources to help some schools.

And we looked at it and said we like these ideas.

Again the problem is they do not necessarily align with fully funding basic education as the first thing necessary for the legislature to accomplish.

There was no bill.

I can give a specific I don't think it's one that we were talking about here.

I think it was either road map districts or Puget Sound DSD wanted us to sign on to a K20 bill saying that we support I could make a disparaging remark I won't.

Everything from early education through college.

Good thing to do.

Colleagues we asked for their help.

They stepped up and they helped us get various things that we needed and hopefully some of those things were a two way street i.e. the latitude on K-3 funding so that at least for one year there were fewer strings around that.

But as Stephen said in that case is college important?

Sure.

Is it a constitutional mandate?

It is not.

And that was our priority.

And I got it.

A lot of my colleagues could sign on because they're small fish and the legislature or others are going to take their signature with a grain of salt.

In our case.

points well taken.

Oh well we have a mandate now that we I mean we fight it all the time.

I mean it's kind of like we do roads we do Puget Sound cleanup we do environment.

I'm sorry Your Honor Supreme Court we don't have enough money.

And we've seen it again right now as we speak.

So anyway there may be other examples if it was clearer to the EOG and K-12 I would certainly be far more inclined to sign on and say yeah that's something that we should fund.

Director Geary.

That's exactly right.

We did.

We talked about it as the legislative delegate.

We talked about it.

I can't recall how far out that conversation went but it definitely it seemed at the time given our focus and where we were with McCleary that it was important that we stayed focused on the advocacy of funding for K-12.

And so.

perhaps should have brought out a larger swath in terms of that discussion.

So that would be on me but I was included in the discussion as the legislative delegate and agreed with the district's perspective in terms of whether or not we should sign on to something that seemed inconsistent with our overall agenda.

And I don't recall the time frame that we had to work in on that.

Director Blanford.

So this is all very helpful.

I would suggest in the future because we have partners who are in who are down at the legislature who are advocating for our students in many cases as well as other students around the state that we be as transparent as possible about our decision-making processes because the feedback that I got on that particular situation was that The answer was no and there was not very much explanation as to why the reason was no.

There may be a very legitimate reason I think you guys have articulated why we would fall on the side of being focused on our three topics as opposed to other topics.

But we could potentially burn bridges and upset folks that we need to have advocating for us that are advocating for our interest as well when we are not communicating sufficiently.

So whatever we can do to make sure that our rationale and our thinking processes are really clear to folks.

and broadcasting those out at the start so maybe some other organization will make the determination we are not going to reach out to Seattle Public Schools we can handle this on our own.

Or understanding why we might want to partner with them in our advocacy efforts.

I think we would kill two birds with one stone and we need to do that as much as possible when we are down in the legislature.

To the extent if I should continue to hold that position and or in the guidance of anybody who takes it I would be happy to share that wisdom.

Peters I'd like to ask Director Blanford when you discover that the district did not sign on to this letter did you ask Jill our legislative liaison about that or Superintendent Nyland?

Yeah you asked Superintendent Nyland about it at that time okay.

Maybe we just need some kind of format or mechanism where something like this comes up it can be distributed to the whole board and it can be a conversation about some sort of advisory recommendation from the board on what to do.

I will say I do feel there's been mission creep in terms of what we're all supposed to be responsible for.

It goes from K-12 to then pre-K to 12 and then pre or P has been defined both as preschool and prenatal.

in some in some areas and then now we're going up to 20. So I can understand that the frustration of being asked to be spread so thin when we still aren't doing what we need to do for our primary mandate.

So there's a couple of different things that we're touching on in this conversation.

Director Harris.

I appreciate the the conversation and the discussion.

I think it goes a long way.

I think one of the things that With the next legislative session certainly ramping up to the next biennial would be to figure out a mechanism so that our extraordinarily capable staff can keep us a little more tightly in tune with what's going on because it's a shared responsibility not just the legislative liaison.

We're devoting extraordinarily high talent to this because of its importance and You know I can disagree with organizations etc.

But I never ever want to burn a bridge.

And if we can spread the information on this topic and others topics in a better more rich way.

We all win.

Director Blanford.

I don't want to beat a dead horse but I will say that I hope because I'm not going to be around I hope that in the future we think less about this being an issue of mission creep and think more inclusively about how we get to our goals and one of our goals is to close our opportunity gaps and improve outcomes for all of our students.

And one of the best ways to do that is to focus for example on early learning because we don't do a very good job of educating kids that arrive at the kindergarten door behind.

So, if kids arrive at the kindergarten door and are well-trained, they do better.

And so we need to have a more organic view of how we get to our goals and one of those is to support things like early learning, support the support services that students need when they're not in our school buildings in order to accomplish our goals and I think that more organic approach will allow us to partner with organizations or groups of individuals who are out there advocating on the behalf of Seattle Public Schools and its students.

Peters All right if there are no further questions or comments let's check the roll call please.

Peters Director Pinkham.

Director Blanford aye.

Director Burke aye.

Director Geary aye.

Director Harris aye.

Director Patu aye.

Director Peters aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Item 5 kids in the middle grant from the Nesholm family foundation.

I move the board authorize the superintendent to accept the kids in the middle grant funds from the Nesholm family foundation in the amount of five hundred ninety six thousand six hundred and eight dollars.

I second the motion.

May we please hear from the chair of the Audit and Finance Committee.

Forward on October 9th for approval.

It does not appear to have been any changes to this item since introduction.

Does anybody have any questions or comments about this item?

Seeing none Ms. Shek the roll call please.

Director Blanford aye Director Burke aye Director Geary aye and with acknowledgement and thanks.

Director Harris aye.

Director Patu aye.

Director Pinkham aye.

Director Peters aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Item 6 the 2018 19 implementation amendment to the 2013 20 growth boundaries plan for student assignment.

I move the school board amend the 2013 dash 20 growth boundaries plan for student assignment so that change area 128 as defined in attachment A is included in the Loyal Heights elementary school attendance area beginning in the 2018 19 school year and direct the superintendent to take any appropriate actions to implement this decision.

Pinkham I second the motion.

May we please hear from the chair of the operations committee.

This item was heard by the operations committee on October the 5th and move forward for approval.

I notice this item has been edited or changed since introduction.

I wonder if staff members could address what the changes are since we last saw this.

Thank you.

Good evening my name is Ashley Davies director of enrollment planning.

So we did add based off the introduction of this bar line item in the background that referenced the fact that we were I'm recommending grandfathering for the previously approved changes again in that 2013 growth boundaries plan as well as indicated the cost for the maximum cost for transportation in the event that there was transportation provided for grandfathering.

Again to ask one was to have a reference in here that talked and referenced the other changes that go along with the one we are proposing and then the piece about transportation.

Peters Any questions comments?

Director Burke.

I want to thank you for adding this and but I just saw it now.

So I apologize for not doing my read aheads deep enough and bring this up in my board comments is something that I'd like to see in the student assignment plan because it's already here but it's not here as an amendment.

So my understanding is that it is here for information only and that this if it is approved with a vote would be approved as grandfathering without transportation as written.

Did you want to say anything further.

I'm comfortable letting this go through some comments before I make an amendment from the dais.

Oh OK.

Director Harris.

Understand the fiscal pressures we have on us.

But has the choice not to provide transportation been run through the race and equity tool.

So in terms of the instance of transportation being provided this was something that came up last year when we had the conversations around the student assignment plan growth boundary changes and transportation.

And so part of that discussion and again carries forward with this discussion is around families ability to take advantage of the opportunity to be grandfathered without transportation will vary depending upon the families impacted.

So one thing with you know Loyal Heights relative to some of the other Loyal Heights Whittier and Adams relative to some of our other schools across the districts are considered lower equity schools.

We did determine based off of again the conversation that we had last year around this that it would not be equitable to have grandfathering without transportation.

So that previous to last year that wasn't something that was provided but that was part of the discussion that we had last year.

So by adding grandfathering without transportation are we setting precedent and the rest of the changes we make in the future.

And I appreciate that these may be better endowed schools as a group.

But I would submit to you that there are families and students in those schools that have high needs or are single parent families or two working families.

And I am most concerned about taking what looks like a fairly innocuous vote for one or two schools and setting a precedent so that we have to live with it because we won't be fair to other folks.

Director Burke.

So just as a comment quickly so Flip Herndon associate superintendent of operations and facilities.

I don't think voting this is setting a new precedent.

There has been there have been instances in the past of grandfathering with transportation but for the most part grandfathering has not included transportation.

With or without transportation.

I don't think the board is setting any sort of new precedent in relation to this.

It's just there is a fiscal impact to it.

So then it would just be.

Are we therefore being inconsistent in how we treat our schools.

Well yeah I mean there is some inconsistency in that but I think there are also times where just by definition equity is not always consistent either.

So that's kind of the definition of equity is you decide when and where to apply that and the resources go accordingly.

If you are looking for consistency in an equal application then I'm afraid we don't have that because we've done both.

So in this case however you vote is not setting a precedent because we have done one or the other in the past.

On section 4 background information with the addition that you added to it you reference change area 2 and 127. Are we talking about those two areas?

What happened to 128?

Or.

So the bar itself is just for 128 because 128 wasn't initially included in the 2013 growth boundaries plan.

128 would have last year with the series of changes that weren't implemented moved but because it didn't move there would be a misalignment with this year's changes.

And there would be a section, you'd have the Whittier boundary, you'd have Loyal Heights and then there would be this small section that was Whittier over the Loyal Heights boundary.

So that's why we are coming forward with the bar for just section 128. which we said is less than 12 students who are in that area and again to align all of those changes from Whittier moving to Loyal Heights all together so there's not an island.

Based off of the introduction that I did previously, and the fact that we are recommending grandfathering for those other areas that are changing with the opening of Loyal Heights.

We wanted to have it on record that we were recommending grandfathering and because there's no bar for that since there are no additional changes there being made we put that here in the background.

So it's there just to mention that reference the fact that that change is also coming and that we are recommending grandfathering.

Okay thanks for that clarification.

And then when you quote the transportation not provided for grandfather students review the maximum potential cost for grandfather students.

Now are you including all change area 2 and 127 and not and 128?

It is 2, 127 and 128 included in that transportation cost.

So then if we ask well what is the transportation cost just for 128?

It would probably be extremely small because it is less than 12 students in that particular area for just 128. But again since we're talking about grandfathering for all the students we included the cost for all the students.

Pinkham But then this amendment this motion is for area 128. I think that's I guess my understand that was information I was looking for.

What's the cost for transporting students from area 128 to Adair?

So I don't have that section specifically but again as we think about whether we would have transportation for those areas impacted we would want to be consistent in any of those changes either having transportation for all or or not so.

Peters Superintendent Nyland.

I'll reiterate some of the themes we've talked about certainly I understand the heartstrings in terms of wanting to protect preserve opportunities for families and the challenges of two jobs and transportation and getting to different schools at different time zones.

I will speak up on behalf of our staff and I've inherited in other districts kind of the aftermath of repeated decisions so every time an exception is made then it's harder to balance enrollment the next time.

So if you if you need to move.

10 to 20 kids to balance enrollment and you're going to grandfather the kids and you really haven't moved 10 to 20 kids and you're moving pick a number you're moving half of the kids and then We grandfathered them so then they can continue for however many years depending on how old the kids are.

And if we do siblings we could be looking at multiple years.

So we're extending our supply chain.

So in the beginning you may it may make sense to run a bus and you have 10 12 kids on a bus and it's efficient and over time your area becomes smaller and you hope smaller and smaller and smaller because you needed to move the group in order to balance out enrollment.

So we do have a challenge coming in that as enrollment continues to get tighter and good news is we added more seats this year than we have in the past but otherwise we just keep getting tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter.

And we then make heartfelt decisions that take more slack out of the system.

And then we put pressure on staff to keep track.

So it's not just keeping track of attendance areas anymore now it's keeping track of attendance areas except for that.

Oh yeah.

And that one.

And then we give staff a bad time when well why can't you tell us how much we're going to cost to move this boundary or why did we miss the enrollment projection.

So I get it.

It's it's challenging.

And we're talking about all of the important issues.

I just wanted to kind of put them all together and say I appreciate the good job that staff does.

And I know that we're going to make difficult decisions and at times we're going to bend those rules for good reasons.

But yeah thanks.

Peters

So I completely understand where Superintendent Nyland is going with this because when we look at the complexity of our system just based on the rules that we make in the student assignment plan.

It's it's a challenge to take addresses and pathways and things like that and turn them into student assignments that are predictable reliable and we make mistakes in that and every exception case we add.

is another thing that we have to maintain the accounting of.

And as we extend it through grandfathering or even family fathering the tail on that work goes out longer and longer.

So I understand that but I still feel like I have to advocate for my community in this way.

The place where I'm coming at this is we have to maximize education and minimize disruption and do that within our our our fiduciary ideally within within our means.

And I believe that minimizing disruption is so critically important to that education that this is a place where I wanted to put forth an amendment.

And I do have one question before doing so that might be for transportation.

This area is nominally three blocks north to south.

Is it viable in our transportation service standards for students to walk into the region that is covered by the existing Whittier bus structure and does that change the costing of this in any way?

Pegi McEvoy assistant superintendent for operations.

We have depending on what area we are having students walk to three blocks is not an unusual distance it just depends on whether there's a major arterial and if it's considered a safe walk zone.

for staff and we have had students who live outside of an area and want to go to a different school and we allow them to walk in to pick up a bus and we assign them a space available and then they jump on those buses to get to certain schools.

Burke Thank you and just a point of clarity for public and anyone on the board it is more than three blocks I was looking at a map with Director Geary here.

to actually make that walk is a few more than three blocks it looks like it could be in the order of five or six and could potentially cross an arterial.

And that would be something we need to look at but certainly we do have the one mile walk zone around all of our schools so three to four blocks is usually less than one mile so not extreme.

So I would like to formally make a motion and let me just pull this up.

that as part of this.

Sorry wrong one.

I would like to move that we amend this board action to include transportation for the affected areas of grandfathering.

Yeah maybe that's that's sufficient.

Trying to think this through make it up on the fly.

Yeah.

Move move that we know.

Peggy do you have any language I could build into this here.

I'm struggling.

I think.

Yes and exactly.

Dr. Herndon and I are agreeing it should be added to the transportation service standards would be what you would be recommending.

So if you want to grandfather and then grandfather with transportation your amendment would be to add the transportation to the transportation service standards and then we'll bring that forward with the cost analysis and everything embedded that way.

Perfect.

So that essentially makes this a two step process.

It's not a cost commitment here but it puts it into the policy structure and allows us to have a conversation around the that as part of transportation service standards.

Correct.

So we are not within that suggestion.

We're not officially locking transportation.

We're recommending it for inclusion.

I'm not completely comfortable with that.

So are we talking then about unpacking the transportation standards at a later time and basically nullifying this if we don't like it?

I don't understand the process here.

My recollection is in the past when we did grandfathering we would include it in the the the bar that we related to grandfathering and it would be grandfathering with transportation or without transportation.

That's my recollection as well.

And if we do it in a two step process it seems a little backwards to me that that we would be needing to unpack it and it would nullify what we're just doing.

Longest motion ever.

Can I can I look to one more read from the team there.

I think for us what we're just talking about is our assumption and I think you're wanting to send a message to families to say we're including transportation and grandfathering.

For us I believe what Ms. McEvoy is saying is that that would be included in the transportation service standards with the price tag associated with that.

I don't recall, and Ms. McEvoy has been here longer than I have, if the recommendation for paying for transportation in a grandfathering case has then later been unpacked out of the transportation service standards.

I think you're pretty much sending the message, we understand, which is why we gave you the total, hopefully the biggest cost associated with transportation so you could make that informed choice.

later on it would be yeah I think it would be definitely sending a mixed message to say we are approving it tonight but then in transportation we are going to take it out later.

Burke okay so my understanding then is that it goes into transportation services or transportation service standards no matter what.

So the motion is to adjust let me get the exact language.

I got it in my head now.

I got it I got it I got it.

Where's your motion?

Purpose?

Recommended motion?

So the My amendment is in the recommended motion.

There is I move the school board amend the 2013 through 20 growth boundaries plan for student assignment so that change area 128 as defined in amendment A is included in the Loyal Heights amended elementary school attendance area beginning in the 2019 school year.

Comma.

And at that point.

It would it would include with transportation grant for grandfathering for this and neighboring region.

Second the motion.

I have a question on that motion.

Harris.

Where are we getting the potential 150 thousand eight hundred and thirteen dollars and 34 cents from.

Is the question addressed to anyone who can answer it?

The Stephen Nielsen deputy this would require us building that into the budget construction for next year.

Would this be reimbursed money a year later?

Burge assistant superintendent for finance not necessarily.

I mean it's not necessarily going to be reimbursed money.

So I would just throw out there what precedent we could be setting not just for this one off which we potentially could handle.

It's what we're setting for an expectation for our families from here on out.

That makes me worry.

Excuse me.

When you say not necessarily be reimbursed.

I'm having a moment of deja vu.

I recall having this exact exchange before and recalling that we were told at some point in a work session that 90 percent of our transportation costs are reimbursed.

So doesn't that mean it's fairly likely it would get reimbursed.

90 percent likely.

I think what we have experienced is that there is a threshold So there's a regression analysis that runs at the state level and it's your expected costs versus your actual costs and it's the lower of the two.

Our actual costs had been the lower so we've gotten 100 percent.

I think in more recent projections since we've moved to two tier transportation and some other things that we no longer feel that that is going to happen to us.

I'd have to relook at the projections.

I wasn't prepared to talk about this at this meeting I have to say.

So we'd have to relook at it because I think we could be in a place now where the expected costs coming out of the regression analysis which is the black box out of the transportation formula for the state could be the lower of the number.

And then regardless of what our costs are we're going to get this lower amount.

That's my worry.

Okay but at this point we don't know.

Yeah we'll have to look at it again.

So you're saying it's a difference between 90 percent cost back and 100 percent?

Potentially it is.

Potentially I mean it's dependent upon a lot of other factors how many routes are running all of those sorts of things so generally has run about 90 percent.

But with the change that we had going to two tier and the additional information that was fed to us out of the state we felt like our projections no longer were holding the same pattern that they had in the past.

And so we're more you know we're more worried about it.

Director Pinkham.

And with Director Burke's amendment were you doing anything about siblings of grandfather students?

That that is not covered within the scope of this amendment.

And I think what I'm hearing around the challenges of managing that I believe to do that we would have to build it into a more explicit and comprehensive student assignment plan that I think we have the support for right now.

I did want to say for me as a director When I look at my values if we're going to offer grandfathering I believe we should offer transportation and that was the decision that was made by this board last year and that's the position that I'm taking this year as well.

So I believe that that is a consistent position and I believe it is a statement of our values and I recognize that it costs more.

Peters Dr. Nyland and then Director Blanford.

Can you refresh my memory in terms of why we were shorted in transportation last year?

No because I can't remember right now.

I can't remember Jack this is an honest answer I don't really remember at this point.

I think we are all a little tired and it's been a little long since we had this conversation.

I don't think that it's 90% of this route, it's kind of more like the straw that breaks the camel's back.

So we keep adding to it and adding to it and adding to it and then they run it through the regression analysis and they say tilt and then they don't fund it.

So in essence it's the last additions that we made that caused the system to go tilt.

So and we can't answer your question.

How far can we push before they tell us we've pushed tilt.

I don't know that.

Yeah one of the things about the transportation formula that's different than other parts of the formula is many of them use a one-year look back so the years last year's data and we know what that data is and we get earlier projections but the transportation formula is using current year data and so they'll will report out something in February or March and then they update that year's formula what we're going to receive as far as revenue on us.

So it's it's unsteady.

That's why in the McCleary bill they talked about relooking at the formula and trying to do some different things.

Every district is struggling with the same thing about projection.

Peters

In Director Burke's remarks about his service with me he said something about me being fiscally responsible and probably no one on the history of this planet has ever known me to be fiscally responsible.

But I take the compliment.

So I'm going to put on my fiscally responsible hat and talk a little bit about what I've heard so far about our values and making this decision.

One of our fundamental values I believe we talk about it, it's the superintendents amongst the goals that have been set is around equity, is around closing our opportunity gaps.

And I believe that when we make exception after exception after exception we actually are hurting our ability to do that thing that we say we are going to do which is to close our gaps.

Because each time we dip into our general fund, that's less money available for the types of work that we believe are going to close gaps.

And so, and we don't talk about that enough, we hear from our communities who make a passion plea for one exception here or an exception there, all of them costing us money.

And then we listen to those folks, we feel their pain and their passion and we agree to whatever they are requesting.

No one is saying on a daily basis, no one is coming in here and yelling about we need to close these gaps.

And so there's less money available and closing gaps cost money.

It's not something that is free.

It costs professional development, it costs staff time, it costs a number of other initiatives that are in place.

So though I feel strongly that we have a responsibility to families and I think we need a transportation plan and assignment plan that actually solves all these problems and doesn't build so many exceptions that it doesn't make sense after a while.

And I think we're headed in that direction.

I also believe that we need to truly start to look at these decisions through a lens of equity which says that when we make exception after exception we can't actually do the thing that we say we are all about.

And so for that reason with all due respect I intend to vote against the amendment.

I'm going to weigh in.

So my understanding is that in 2009 the student assignment plan did provide transportation for grandfathered students.

So we do have a precedent with that but I know it's changed.

In terms of heartfelt and passionate and emotion and all of those ideas that have been put forth I really don't want to belittle the concerns of families.

Families are simply saying give us stability, give us predictability, don't divide our families, don't divide our children, don't send us to multiple schools.

It's really hard to do.

And in the 12 or 13 years since I've been involved with this district I've seen the district do it time and again.

I know families whose kids have been moved from schools like six times.

Six times.

Right?

And I remember back during the closures of 2009 there were students who were moved from MLK elementary to TT minor to Lowell and then they went somewhere else after that and I remember transportation wasn't necessarily provided for these students and as a result some of these students couldn't go to Lowell and these were low-income children of color.

right?

So we have a mixed history in terms of how we treat our students and I think we have to decide what our values are and yes I know there is a cost, there is always a cost and there is always an opportunity cost.

If we tie everything we do to the opportunity gap then what does that mean?

Does that mean we just don't do anything at all that is not directly related to the opportunity gap?

I mean all of this can be potentially connected to it if you want.

You know I mean we're talking about stability for all of our students, predictability for all of our students and this is not a race and gender or socioeconomic decision.

This is about our basic values to our families.

So you know if we're not talking about a great deal of money and if we do have a history of doing this you know I don't see the huge harm in doing this.

And I think we just have to remember what our values are and vote accordingly and try and do as much as we can throughout the district to offer consistency and stability to our students.

But we just have a history as a district of just moving kids around, moving families around an awful lot.

And it really, I understand it's an aspect, it's a result of us being a city that is growing.

But back in 2009 when the city wasn't growing we were still doing that.

So I think some of us come from that background and it's very real and it's not just, it's not an emotional thing, it's a reality for families.

It's very very hard for them to predict what's going to happen and they have to make all kinds of accommodations.

and we can wash our hands of it but what we are doing is we are pushing it on to our families, these decisions we make.

So I don't think this is an unreasonable request.

Just one point of clarity, as far as transportation goes this is a conversation I was having with assistant superintendent McEvoy as well.

When grandfathering with transportation has happened in the past there's two ways that it's happened.

One is that the board votes on it annually knowing that there's a cost annually that comes up in which case you have to approve it every time in the transportation standards each year.

The other is to basically put the timeline that says the youngest student is will be in first grade next year and by the time they're in fifth grade that's five years.

transportation for this change area sunsets in five years because in that way you don't have to approve of it every year.

And the cost may vary.

That would be updated in the transportation service plan.

But the fact of whether or not you want to provide it or not wouldn't we'd already have that baked in.

So I just want to make sure there's some clarity on how you want to address that because one is we're going to provide it for the time that is all the way there or you're going to annually update that every year yes you provided grandfathering but the transportation pieces there were a couple of examples where every year I can think of former director Martin Morris who would annually say and we need to make sure we include the funding for transportation for grandfathering for these students who moved from this area to this area.

So I just want to make sure we are clear as a staff and then it is memorialized in something so that we just we aren't missing anything.

And we can account for that.

The way I believe I structured that amendment was just linking it to the grandfathering.

So if there is grandfathering there is transportation.

And that's sort of the values that I've internalized and I'm trying to share and sort of test the water with it.

That's an element of if we commit to one aspect it's connected at the hip to transportation during you know over its whatever life the the grandfathering applies to the transportation follows.

If there are no further questions or comments about the amendment we should first vote on the amendment which is to provide transportation for the students who are grandfathered in the bar in front of us with the details to be determined once we work on the transportation standards.

Is that correct?

No.

Grandfathering equals transportation.

Well wait a second.

So you're saying.

The the language of the amendment was for students that are grandfathered.

They are provided transportation.

Right.

But in terms of.

There's no connection to the student assignment plan.

That's a separate transportation standards details will be.

Yeah the transportation service standards is a separate conversation that staff will do and they will bring to us and if there's something there to unpack.

That would be part of that conversation but we don't necessarily have to create that linkage because it automatically happens.

Okay so you're just saying if we grandfather students we pay for the transportation or at least in this instance or are you making a broader statement than that just in this instance?

The conversation is around this instance.

Okay.

All right.

Director Geary.

I am so thankful that we were able to find the 2.3 million dollars necessary to move our busing from three tiers to two tiers.

But we still don't know how much of that we're going to get back.

And we know around transportation we are being asked to somehow throw our weight behind potential strike issues.

And we don't know really the cost of that.

And I'm assuming that we are opening schools that we believe in and we're giving people an opportunity to go to schools that are going to provide a solid preparatory education for their children to move on.

That is our goal.

And we are allowing them within our rules to choose to send their kids to a new school on a bus And then we're also going and we're paying for that.

And then we're allowing a lot of choice.

And at any point those people who are going to choose to grandfather could choose into an option or choose into an HCC pathway if they qualify.

And then we hear about all these people who say a bus shows up with one student in it.

Who's paying for that.

Because we have no guarantee that any of these people will grandfather or that the bus route that we set up for these working families who have to get before school care are going to be using this bus anyway.

So I am a little worried.

That in all of these machinations and and trying to make sure that everybody's situation is covered while trying to do a macro analysis of providing good schools for our kids in accordance with the rules the big rules that we've applied that we're not being consistent and we're not being fiscally responsible.

And I don't have enough information to know if potentially there could be one bus that could be extended that's already an existing route that could be extended up and grab these kids and so that it would be a nominal increase which would be great.

Or if we're sending one bus specifically up to gather five kids for five years to show up and then we get phone calls about what we're paying for.

And does that look fiscally responsible to anybody when we have all these buses running all over with very few kids in them.

So.

Well I truly.

I sympathize with the desire to do this.

I don't know if I can support it because there's just too much about it that doesn't make sense.

And when I take all those factors into consideration and still not understanding if the moving to the two tier system has been something we can afford to do in the long term.

Harris.

Can I get some assistance from assistant superintendent McEvoy please.

I very much appreciate the sort of cascading parade of horribles that was just brought up.

However don't we in fact already have scenarios where that happens.

And don't we try to re-engineer those bus routes to make them more efficacious.

Yes and don't we do that pretty frequently.

We route and reroute continuously over the summer to try and get to maximum efficiency.

I often hear that people will see there's one student on a bus and that seems inefficient.

Usually when we've gotten complaints like that, actually every time I've gotten a complaint like that, we've gone back to analyze that, it is actually not bringing kids to school, it's when they go between schools and they have programmatic changes.

that are going on.

So we try and route as efficiently as we can.

And I know that the estimate for the two buses was really a scenario based on not knowing how efficient we could get with this.

We just wanted to be very transparent that it could cost as much as this.

We will try always to be as efficient as we can be.

And you do that on a regular and continuing basis correct?

Yes.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

Do we know how many buses currently transport students to Whittier?

I don't have that but I can provide that for you.

But just looking at the map like the major arterial way may be that the Holman Road and if we got a bus already coming down Holman Road.

Hey take a left right there you can pick up those students in area 127 on your way to the area where you're picking up students to go to Whittier anyway.

So that's kind of things that we don't know and kind of Director Geary's point that we don't know what the impact is going to be on this if we include this.

So maybe we should add a little fiscally responsible transportation provided to help also with Director Blanford's.

One of the things that people have talked about and I'm unclear as to how often and how functional it is to do this when we use one bus for multiple schools.

In order to be efficient because you're grabbing multiple within one geographic zone you're serving several schools and providing transportation.

And we have not traditionally done that.

There are a few schools that we have exceptions to.

Most of the time when we have done that in the past, we have gotten requests from schools and principals that we not do that because it's very hard to manage some of the behavioral issues that go on sometimes between the different schools and students.

And so traditionally, we don't do that.

And we try and route full routes for every particular school.

Any more questions or comments.

OK well then we have a motion and amendment on the floor.

And I guess we are now ready for a vote.

Mr. Van Duzer the roll call please.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

No.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Peters.

Aye.

This motion is passed by a vote of 5 to 2.

And that brings us now back to the original item.

We there's no further conversation.

I think let us not go to the roll call for the vote on this motion as amended.

Director Geary.

Director Harris aye.

Director Patu aye.

Director Pinkham aye.

Director Blanford no.

Director Burke aye.

Director Peters aye.

This motion has passed as amended by a vote of 6 to 1.

All right.

So that concludes our action items for the evening.

We now move on to the introduction items.

The first one is amending policy number 2 4 1 5 high school graduation requirements.

Let's see.

The next two items went to our curriculum instruction committee.

Both of these next two items went to the curriculum instruction committee on October 11th and were both moved forward for consideration.

Good evening.

My name is Caleb Perkins director of college and career readiness.

I'm here with Chris McBride academic intervention specialist from Garfield High School.

Very honored to have the opportunity to introduce these two board action reports to briefly summarize what was shared at the October 11th board work session so that we to refresh your memory on those discussions.

This board action report for 24 15 and the one following 24 20 are efforts to update policy to connect to our secondary revision to update policies that have needed to be connected to our efforts to move students to college and career readiness.

2415 relates to the 2.0 GPA requirement.

We believe that removing this requirement would be helpful for a number of reasons.

To summarize the very powerful testimony that principal Wynkoop from Ballard High School and Ms. McBride shared at the work session.

This policy while we embrace the importance of rigor believe is unnecessary and unhelpful at this point.

Unnecessary given the fact that there are many other requirements that students need to meet to reach a higher level of rigor including state testing in terms of standards in terms of course audits and for advanced placement classes.

And at the same time it's unhelpful when we heard the testimony that just again to refresh your memory of The many students that go through the angst and anxiety of having to go through the waiver process and the inconsistency that it's a struggle to apply this consistently and as a result we have students for example who do much better in their later grades than in their earlier years in high school and have to operate under this anxiety of potentially not graduating because of the 2.0 GPA requirement.

So for all those reasons we are asking for the removal of this portion of 24 15 and we appreciate the opportunity to share this tonight and to get your respond to your feedback between now and the action on November 15.

Peters Any questions or comments?

Director Pinkham.

Thank you for bringing this forward and for us to consider.

And I want to just address that let this not be taken as we are lowering the standards for to try to reach equity and equality that's more that If we're giving if our grades have a passing grade of certain level then that should be the passing grade and we should then say oh it's a 2.0 if you want to get a diploma though.

If we're passing students on from one class to the next with a sub 2.0 grade.

That's something we should if we're not going to give them a diploma after we pass them on for that then we're not doing them justice.

So.

I do support this that we since we are again given them passing grades that are sub 2.0 they should still be able to get a diploma even though sub 2.0.

But this is not a means to lower the bar or something for our underserved and challenged students.

Absolutely.

Director Burke.

Another point of clarification along this not not necessarily lowering the bar but recognizing that this is a little bit of a loopy bar sort of a fuzzy bar in that it doesn't truly represent a comprehensive picture of the student because of the way the GPA is calculated and so the policy language that we're talking about.

that we're we're talking about removing is a little bit of a of an obscure process anyways that doesn't necessarily add benefit to that student work.

And maybe if I could turn that into a question since we've got we've got the subject matter experts here and I'm super grateful that they were willing to stay and listen to us yammer on a little bit I'd love to hear what.

this particular requirement does or doesn't motivate our education or our educators to do to support those students.

And if this weren't here what is the motivation to help those students that are struggling.

So I'll start and Ms. McBride would come and give the school based perspective I think that everyone find that valuable.

But to paraphrase what principal Wynkoop from Ballard High shared there are many pieces in place now since this 2.0 GPA piece was first put in place.

We have many more rigorous bars rigorous standards to to meet to ensure students are clearing a level that makes sure they're ready for college and career readiness.

And that was the point he emphasized in his many many years in Seattle Public Schools.

This may have been useful once upon a time but since the advent of the common core standards the new state testing the other things like advanced placement course audits This is no longer as you say this is no longer a meaningful bar especially compared to those others.

And I know Ms. McBride also has specific cases to speak to.

Good evening Chris McBride academic Dean at Garfield high school.

Thank you for the opportunity to listen to this again and have us back.

One of the things that you asked about just a few minutes ago was what does this.

do or what doesn't it do as far as educators and how it impacts what they do in their classroom or for these students.

I can think of several things but one of the things that stands out to me is you know imagine we're a week before graduation.

Grades are getting ready to come out and there's a kid who's been on the cusp really been improving pushing to get you know that core GPA up to 2.0 and he's earning a C minus in a really hard physics class.

And that's great.

C minus.

That's not terrible for a kid who's been struggling and really working to improve and challenging himself taking a rigorous academic class.

But a C minus is only a 1.7 on our 11 point as you know the 11 point grading scale that's part of board policy.

So that doesn't help him.

And what I've seen happen is that student in conjunction with a very caring teacher decide not to take the final exam therefore earning a zero therefore bringing his grade down to an E which will not impact his GPA in this policy.

OK because of the E's not being counted.

And so what we're talking about is for lack of a better phrase playing playing a little bit of a game work in the system.

And we don't want to do that.

What we want to do is reward this kid for all of his hard work given the C minus that he earned and the credit that he earned after a semester's worth of work.

So that's one example that I think is pretty glaring and that we see frequently at the end of every school year.

You're welcome.

Can you please remind us what other districts are doing with regard to this?

Didn't you say that some neighboring districts also discontinued having a GPA requirement for graduation?

Correct.

In my research I could only find one other district and this is also referenced in the 24 credit task force.

There's only one other district in the state that has this similar GPA requirement for graduation.

Which district is that?

It's Bellevue.

I know this has been brought to the board before.

I don't know if it's been brought to the board for a vote but I know it's been brought up before just in the four years I've been here I think three times and then before I was on the board I remember previous directors discussing it and the concern was always what message are we sending in terms of our standards.

And so.

I mean I think the case that needs to be made here is that this alone does not really show the measure of our student.

That they can be prepared for the world in other ways.

Can you speak to that a little bit about how these other things we use, you mentioned these other tests.

Are you saying that a student could pass every single required test they need to graduate.

They could have everything else completed every project completed.

But just because they don't have a 2.0 grade point average they would not be able to graduate.

That is correct.

They would need to apply for a waiver and in some cases they would not be granted a waiver.

So that's that is correct.

I don't know if there's.

And there are certainly cases each year where that happens.

So these students then will have passed the smarter balance test.

They would have passed whatever other tests are required of them.

But just this is the only thing that's holding them back.

Correct.

And again many students then apply for a waiver and then many are granted but some are not.

And so again it is it's a one of those situations where I think one case is too many of a requirement that we don't think is meaningful anymore preventing students from getting to the next phase of their educational careers.

Harris.

Can you speak a little bit about the waiver process and is that by school or where does that go.

What's the process.

It is by school meaning that the principal in fact reviews the each case and it's typically the counselor or the academic intervention specialist I believe who goes through and prepares the case which is another aspect of this that seems a little outdated given the relatively low value of this that it's a large number of hours to engage in this review process in the waiver process.

But it is ultimately the individual principal's decision the way it's currently set up.

So in one school.

Student A could get the waiver and in the next school student B with the same set of circumstances would not get the waiver.

That is yes.

Thank you.

That happens.

Any other questions or comments about this item?

Director Blanford.

I would given the lateness of the hour it's probably not the appropriate time to have this conversation but when I left from the conversation last time when we were talking about this I thought that we needed to have a little bit of dialogue about the grades and about the subjectivity of grades and how I know because my wife was a part of it when she was employed by the district.

Teachers have been working on standards based grading so that some of the subjectivity has been taken out of the grading process.

And it'd be great if we could have a little bit of information about that as well because I think it would be easier easy for the casual listener to think well just you know there's a lot of subjectivity in the grades that are assigned to students.

And I know that we've been working on trying to.

make grades based on performance as opposed to other factors that may or may not be appropriate.

So if if there's a paragraph or two that you can share when we bring this to action that would be helpful.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

I think that connects to the next board action report as well.

There's no further questions or comments at this time.

Thank you.

We'll see you in two weeks.

See me in a little shorter than that but anyway.

Or even sooner.

OK.

We'll see you in a minute.

OK item two amending policy number 24 20 high school grade and credit making marking.

And this also went to our C&I.

Did you already speak to that?

Same.

OK.

All right.

And Caleb you're back.

Hello.

Nice to see you.

So this is the second policy we discussed at the board work session on October 11th.

This is asking to remove the 150 hour per credit once again because of the detailed analysis the 24 credit task force did among a number of other groups and educators.

that revealed by removing this we provide two potential helpful opportunities to improve pedagogy to improve teaching and learning at our high schools.

One it gives schools more flexibility to offer more flexibly design and creatively designed approaches to getting credits things like internships things like work based apprenticeships and many of the things that were discussed earlier related to the CTE resolution.

On the practical perspective what I don't want to lose sight of this is also very connected to the need to expand credit earning opportunities at nearly all of our high schools to address the 24 credit requirement.

As I've had detailed conversations with many of you in the recent days and others over the weeks We need to make sure that students have more than 24 credit earning opportunities over their four years in high school and we are planning to make a move for next year on how to do that.

That requires that we have flexibility in the number of hours per credit.

This does not change the fact that we want to make sure that these credits have rigor connected to them and there is a high bar in order to earn these credits.

And after reviewing what a number of other districts have done as well as consultation with you all there has been an addition since the original bar.

So just to read it very quickly that Director Geary in particular said we should we should define a credit and this connected to what Director Blanford was requesting as well as Director Peters if we're going to remove the 150 hour per credit what are we replacing it with?

And just to read briefly that The proposal is students will be awarded high school academic credit upon successful completion of a specific unit of study which means the following.

Earning a passing grade according to district's relevant grading policies or counseling manual provision and or demonstrating proficiency mastery of content standards and or successfully completing an established number of hours as deemed appropriate by the district for particular courses.

So we believe that provides enough clarity with following the model of many many many other districts who have taken the state's opportunity of removing counting hours as the way to determine whether students are meeting particular proficiency and instead moving to real rigor.

And we appreciate your consideration of this especially as we think about planning for next year's high school schedule.

Peters.

Thank you very much.

One request following up from the discussion we had in the definition of a credit.

The you know this is focused on the academic credit.

We have other policies relating to competency based credits and work based.

So my request would be if we could add a bullet D that says something like.

Additional credit learning opportunities through work based learning and competency based credits are described in procedures blah blah blah blah or some way to cross reference that just to indicate that those do exist but not detail them in this policy.

Excellent.

to clarify.

So with with the description under the credits where you have a A B and C having a minimum number of hours required for a course is just one option but it's not required.

Correct.

So it gives the power to the board and the district to deem certain experiences worthy of defining hours.

So for example there are some districts that have said work site experiences should actually have more hours because of the importance of the contact hours.

And so again that would be something that we would have the flexibility to determine based on the experience.

Well a concern I have is that it wouldn't be at the board that would be deciding this it'll be individual principals because that appears to be the trend.

So what kind of controls do we have in place to make sure that we don't have some schools where you have to do X number of hours and.

You know demonstrate mastery and another school where you just simply have to demonstrate mastery by taking one test and you're done.

I mean how are we going to have any kind of standards.

And I don't mean Common Core.

I mean you know a consistency of quality and expectation from school to school because we don't have that right now.

I certainly appreciate the thought of how to get to more consistency across high school.

I think that's part of the spirit of the secondary revisioning work.

And there are many times that we check in with high schools on what they're doing in terms of reviewing their master schedule in terms of looking at the courses that there there's a there's a course catalog that goes through my office in terms of any new course reviews are centrally reviewed.

So there are a number of checks I think maybe to your point there's some of them could be made.

stronger but they exist.

The opportunities exist to provide the oversight and to ensure a basic level of consistency and that would only be enhanced by the change in this policy.

Peters Okay to that point will there be any kind of review done like six months a year after we if we go ahead and do this to see check in with the schools and see what each school is doing and if you find a huge disparity between one or the other that we have the same problem we have right now with the waivers with the previous issue whereas it takes a lot less to graduate from one school than another.

So will there be anything that your department is going to do to review how each school is interpreting these guidelines?

A good question and one that that requires I think or merits a detailed response I'll just say initially you know in terms of especially as we transition to the new high school schedule there are a lot of checks along the way in terms of how folks are making the transition to add more credit earning opportunities that has to be done in a rigorous way that has to be done in a thoughtful way.

And that will involve my office and others spending more time reviewing what high schools are doing.

Director Harris.

I want to confirm what I thought I heard that as that high schools that are offering particular courses or new courses have to route them through central office for review.

So is that the case where we can our expectation as a governance body is we could expect that any course that's offered in a high school either fits a standard model or has been vetted by central office and approved?

them to offer something in their master schedule.

It's they've checked the boxes for whatever the you know our team thinks is meeting these requirements of policy.

The short answer is yes particularly going forward.

But to be transparent there are certainly courses that are in the course catalog that merit more rigorous reviews.

Thank you.

Would you include the new advisory period on that.

That doesn't seem to be consistent between any of our high schools.

Appreciate the comment.

One of the things that we're doing with the SEA as close partners is figuring out the level of rigor and guidance related to implementing advisory.

I think that is something that that that we're trying to find the right balance between central guidance and and local innovation.

And that's but.

Are you suggesting that.

Are you suggesting that SEA is going to determine the content of our advisory periods in our high schools?

I appreciate the question.

No that's not what I'm suggesting specifically.

Help me with your nuance then please because I truly am confused.

OK.

The point is that the rollout of advisory it's obviously a very important initiative.

The support of social emotional learning and the personalization of what of the supports that we provide students at the high school level particularly around future planning.

So the SCA is a partner in that in helping us think about how to support that.

But in terms of the theme of what we're discussing now in terms of how that earns a credit I agree with you that there should be some basic level of consistency and to Director Burke's earlier point that should go through a common review process that would still go through the central office.

Harris When are we going to have a consistent advisory committee and a curriculum and a framework and all the other structures scaffolding.

When is that?

When's the ETA?

Because we're in November now.

Well I could say we share the goal of wanting to get there and we're trying to do that in a thoughtful collaborative way.

And I'd be happy to get you a more specific timeline I probably shouldn't won't be able to do that in this moment right now.

Thank you.

Can I just confirm since since advisory was brought up is that an example of bullet C successfully completing an established number of hours of a planned alternative instructional activity determined by the district.

So we could say if it's a 15 minute advisory it's X credits if it's a 30 minute advisory it's X credits.

So that's where hours corresponds to a certain number of credits.

Is that an example of that just to make it concrete in my brain.

Yes.

That is an example.

And again there should be consistency across ultimately consistency across the district in terms of how that is perfect.

Thank you.

I just needed that concrete example to put it to something.

Any other comments questions or concerns from my colleagues.

Director Pinkham.

Director Burke brought up like a bullet D about other new other ways to get credit again.

Can you clarify that a bit for me.

There the we have two other probably more than two but I know of two other policies one for work based learning where hours in an approved workplace under an educational supervision you can earn academic credit for there are certain rules around it.

And then also competency based credit which I think we're primarily focused on with world languages where you can get credit based on proficiency test and both of those can get credit but weren't explicitly stated here are covered in other policies and I didn't want to lose them if somebody just looked at this they might think wait what about these other things.

So it's really just a request to cross reference those other policy documents.

Thank you because that's kind of what I'd be looking at and considering as this conversation has come up with with Gail Morris I talked to her about you know we have the since time immemorial that we have to include but we don't have any assessment for it to say OK let's test our kids.

How are you doing with since time immemorial.

No we just had to offer them the course.

We don't have any way to assess them to see.

Hey are you proficient in this or.

So just a question that I had in my mind but there's credits that we're asking them to take and coursework that we're asking them to do but we don't have assessment for everything other than what we see here math science language arts but now we can also with Part D include other skills and knowledge.

Peters If there are no further questions or comments then I guess we'll move on to the next item.

Thank you.

Item 3 resolution 2017 18 dash 4 certification of excess levies and calculation of general fund levy rollback for 2018. May we please hear from the chair of the Audit and Finance Committee.

Went through October 9th for approval.

We got no choice in it.

It's a question of legal arithmetic.

Yes.

Linda Sebring budget director.

Is there anything more to understand about this?

On the request of board members at audit and finance we added some additional documentation to the original bar that we brought forward which is in your packet.

There is a slide that is a brief explanation for those who have not encountered what is Why is the board recertifying levies that were voted on a couple years ago?

And so it goes through the bullet points of there's two levies that we have the voters vote on.

One is the maintenance and operations levy.

The other is our capital levy.

So state law as Director Harris said requires us to recertify in the fall before the county sets the tax rates for all of the taxpayers.

So we are doing two things at this time.

We are.

doing what's called a rollback on the maintenance and operations levy.

So if you look at the slide that had a bunch of you know bar charts in it that shows you what the amounts were that the board approved and that the voters approved for our levies.

And it also shows the amount that we are unable to collect.

Sorry we're unable to show it on the screen.

But what is happening for this is you are approving the 2018 tax collection amounts.

The maintenance and operations levy when we originally ran it by the voters was for two hundred and fifty million three hundred thousand dollars.

At this point it is restricted collections because there's two factors that determine what the actual taxable amount is going to be.

One is what the voters approve and the second one is a calculation from the state.

And the calculation from the state came in less than what the voters approved at $233,365,000 $961.

So what we're asking the board to do is through a resolution is to roll back the collection amount to the lower amount which is the amount the state has authorized.

You will also see on the resolution the amount for the capital property tax levy.

There is no change to that dollar amount.

Peters Any questions or comments.

In terms of chronology rolling back does that simply mean not collecting the maximum amount that we had originally intended?

That is correct.

Okay.

No but I'm saying if the original amount that was approved was 250 but we're only able to collect 233 it's not we're not giving anything back we just haven't collected it and so we have a different ceiling now.

Correct and when we built the 17-18 budget and building the 18-19 budget we take into consideration new information.

When we put this levy to the voters, what was it, three years ago now?

Almost three years ago?

We had certain assumptions.

We thought McCleary would be fully funded.

We had seen that maybe charter schools would be using part of our levies.

So we had built some capacity into the levy.

Some of those things did not come into being, so we will not be collecting that full amount that the voters had authorized.

Director Peters.

We had a rich discussion of that very issue in the audit and finance committee.

And we're clearly informed that there would be no refunds that were going that this is just a it's not an accounting change but it is a recognition that we are authorized to receive less money than we have received in the then we said we were going to receive.

And as a result.

we are just signing a resolution rolling back the amount that we originally thought we were going to get to a smaller amount.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

It wasn't very elegant the way I stated it.

You did a better job I think.

You are recertifying the levy and this is the amount that King County will take and it will They will look at the assessed value in the county and they will divide it up across the taxpayers.

So it will change the mill rate which is the dollars per thousand that taxpayers pay because housing prices have gone up.

So the assessed value is higher than we thought it was as well.

A question around just messaging and this is more of a question for the district historians and maybe for Flip.

We are essentially collecting less money than our voters committed to pay us.

And so as we go out to future levies is that one of our talking points?

We are actually collecting less money than we originally proposed even though it's not through any conversation of our own.

No harm in asking.

I just look at it from the standpoint that we asked for as much money as we could and we didn't leave any on the table but we probably don't want to mess with that either.

So assistant superintendent JoLynn Berge finance.

The message is going to be vastly different because of the legislative change.

So what we've said in the past will be not what we're saying in the future because we're going to have to describe a completely different set of policy that's now flowing out.

So when we come to the 2019 levy renewal we'll have to provide different information.

You'll pay more and you'll get less.

That could be.

So I think there's still a lot of road.

There's still a lot of runway between now and and and then.

Peters Are there any further questions or comments on this item?

Okay then we now go on to the next item which is item number four the superintendent's employment agreement.

Employment agreement cost of living adjustment COLA.

This one let's see did not go to committee.

Oops I'm going in the wrong direction.

Here we go.

So let me read a little bit about this.

We the board is tasked with annually evaluating the superintendent and this past year we decided to reset when we do that because for various reasons evaluating a superintendent November December didn't make as much sense as evaluating the superintendent at the end of the school year in June so that is what we did.

And under the contract we are obligated to consider any changes to the superintendent's contract by the first legislative meeting in December.

And we took under consideration the changes to the salary like a raise and also cost of living adjustment.

Under the current circumstances where we've all been doing a lot of belt tightening with the budget, it was mutually decided that a raise would not be appropriate at this time for the superintendent.

However, a cost of living adjustment is something that is also offered to other employees throughout the district.

And so the board is putting forth a proposal that the superintendent be awarded a cost of living adjustment to his current salary and that is what we have before us here.

Does anybody have any comments or questions?

Superintendent Nyland.

All right well then we'll move on to the next item.

Item 5 BTA IV award construction contract K 5 0 7 8 bid number B 0 8 7 0 5 to form a construction company for the Magnolia elementary school renovation and addition project.

May we please hear from the chair of the operations committee.

Blanford.

My sheet says that this was heard on May the 18th and move forward for consideration and seeing nodding so that must be true.

Correct.

I'm not remembering that far back.

So I'll go ahead and introduce this.

We are asking that you consider awarding construction contract K 5 0 8 bid number B 0 8 7 0 5 to form a construction for Magnolia elementary school addition and renovation project.

Best.

The reason director Blanford we brought this before the operations committee back in May prior to bidding this project this is a BTA IV project we bid the project and the project bid substantially over budget.

It's in the background information the project bid.

Well it bid $4,939,080 over budget and would have necessitated a program contingency transfer of $5,709,823.

In the capital projects office we reached out to numerous contractors that we worked with including lighted construction, Cornerstone general construction and also including Forma.

All of them advised us that if we were to rebid this project we would probably receive a more favorable bid in the fall of 2017. They just noted the tremendous amount of work that was bidding at that moment in time and the lack of capacity in the construction industry to implement all of the work that was bidding and so there were very high prices.

being bid on projects.

We did work with our architects Malum architects to redesign the project to identify some cost saving measures so I want to make that comment as well.

And the project rebid and including the selection of alternates 1B which is the temperature control system that we'll be placing in the building.

Alternate two which is the three classroom addition and the library above and alternate three which is linoleum flooring.

The project contract amount will be twenty six thousand two hundred seventeen thousand five hundred dollars plus Washington State sales tax.

At this time that project would require a transfer of $5 million from the BTA IV program contingency.

Currently remaining in the BTA IV program contingency and I will add this sentence in a revised bar when we go for approval is $12,487,499.

So we do have money in the BTA IV program contingency to implement this work.

Our two, we do also have two large projects left to bid.

We have the additions to Ingram high school.

Which at this time is a GCCM project and working with our GCCM contractor we believe is within budget.

And we are in the process at this time in the construction document phase we've gone through schematic design we've gone through design development.

So we are nearing bidding this project but that project won't bid until the early late winter early spring of 2018. And then also we have Webster building which we are also bidding in a timeframe of fall of 2018 for construction to begin winter of 2018 or early you know just after the new year.

That project we do anticipate will continue to need a budget transfer.

I think the difference between those two schools and similar to Magnolia, Webster is a facility that is approximately 100 years old.

Magnolia was built in the 30s.

We have much better information on Ingram high school and it's much more attractive projects to bidders.

So from a risk standpoint I see one project in which we have some risk and Ingraham high school I do not believe we have a lot of risk.

So I think from a program contingency standpoint for BTA IV I feel comfortable making this recommendation to you.

I also think and I don't mean to confuse the matter but I think we also need to talk about BEX IV a little bit.

And the program contingency there.

I will inform the board that Lincoln high school has bid and it is bid within its Mac project budget that I will remind the board that you did supplement that budget in June.

of this year for windows and for repair of the masonry on the exterior of that building.

But we do still have three projects to bid on BEX IV.

They do not bid until next year or later as well and they are Queen Anne, Bagley, and Wing Luke.

So I just wanted to inform the board that there is another levy and it too has some projects and it too is in a very heated construction market.

Those projects we feel very comfortable with where we are at at Wing Luke.

We do have concerns about Bagley and Queen Anne.

We are working with our architectural teams to keep those budgets as constrained as possible within the the levy and we are trying not to mix funds.

At this moment in time we've got projects identified in BEX IV that we move dollars from the BEX IV program contingency if needed.

We have projects identified in BTA IV and we only move funds from the BTA IV program contingency.

When we opened bids on October 25th I will note that we got three bids.

We had much better subcontractor participation.

31 bidders picked up documents and the bids were all very close.

When we bid this project in the spring there was a five million dollar difference between bidder number one and bidder number two.

Bidder number one and bidder number two was just a couple hundred thousand dollars in difference and bidder number three was a million nine thousand dollars higher than bidder number one.

So you can see we're much more compressed.

We had hoped and I'm going to say I'd hoped to have this project bid within budget.

We're recommended to go forward with this project.

It will open one year late it will open in the fall of 2019 in lieu of the fall of 2018. We think the added time will enhance the quality of the work that we get.

We're also bidding later.

So I open it up to questions.

Peters Any questions or comments?

Director Pinkham.

Pinkham With the three bids that we got this time around how close were they to the first two?

Were they closer to the higher or the lower of the

They were actually closer to the lower.

And I have both bid tabulation forms in front of me.

The low bidder with with selected alternates in the spring was 26 million 832 0 8 0. And this is where we're recommending at this time $26,217,500.

Pinkham So what are the first two bidders?

Best And I should point out at this moment in time and it's noted in the bar.

We are not recommending at this time either acceptance of the covered play area which was alternate number five or are we accept recommending acceptance of the construction of two learning commons on the upper floor at Magnolia elementary school.

Both of those would be highly desired.

Both of those are items that we have constructed in our other projects to date.

The learning commons allows flexibility of learning it allows individual learning to occur there it allows participatory learning to occur there.

Covered play area obviously you know the benefit of having a covered play area for rainy day recess.

And so these are difficult decisions we are hoping that we can do some value engineering with our contractor after this project to see if there are other ways that we can construct these amenities.

to at a lower cost or there are other things that we could shift around to lower cost but we are not recommending them at this time.

Director Harris.

Sorry and since you mentioned it you brought up Webster so is there any intentions or plans with Webster yet?

As far as what grade levels it may serve?

We're still focusing on that one.

We don't have a solution to that yet but obviously will before we bring that to you.

So we're just trying to stay focused on this Magnolia project for tonight.

Two quick questions one value engineering to what sort of MWBE participation if any.

I don't know the answer to your latter question.

I'm sure there is some MWBE participation however there are no MWBE participation requirements articulated in our contract.

But I am sure that some of these firms do have that I'm sure the low bidder does have some MWBE for subcontractors working on this project.

As a rule do we ask for MWBE?

in our bid documents?

No we do not.

Interesting.

And value engineering real quick because we're running out of time on the clock for the video.

We are continually doing value engineering on all of our projects.

We saw a couple opportunities for making some minor modifications on this project between the spring bid and the fall bid.

We did not make substantial alterations.

The project was really designed in accordance with our educational program.

We articulated a couple areas that we would have as alternates.

If we had bids similar to the second bidder in the spring that would give you some options but we eliminated a concrete sidewalk on the project and then made some minor finish changes on the value engineering between and eliminated one stairwell.

So.

Okay one last question to Director Burke and then we do have to move on.

We have a quick comment.

If we think we're a tough crowd the BEX oversight committee that asks questions of Richard Best about how contingency funds are going to be used.

They are really a tough crowd in terms of making sure that we're not burning through contingency dollars before we get through a high number of projects so I wanted to again acknowledge them.

As I read this we're looking at the previous bid came in 5.7 million give or take over this one is essentially five million over but include some alternates.

Is that is that an appropriate characterization that the through the delay we saved about 700000 and got some alternates?

Best I would say we saved 700000. We had alternates selected in the other bid as well.

Director Burke because there were some alternates we had to make a choice between one or the other.

Okay so I guess though we did save some money I think we saw we lost a little in escalation for the extended construction period.

I also think though that we will see benefit there long term on operational costs because I think we will have enhanced quality.

Okay the crux of the question is Would you recommend in the future that if we have a bid that comes in high that we try to schedule it at a certain time of the year?

I think the guidance of bidding projects in the fall is a very good I do not think we will get good good bids latter part of April in or May We need to avoid those months.

We've struggled Past three years on projects that have been in those time periods.

So it's gonna require a restructuring We open you know we do not have a lot of projects going forward as we've completed.

You know I'm thinking for 16 of the 20 BEX IV projects are either under construction or complete.

So I'm going to have to close the conversation right now because we have another tape changing moment which means we're actually going to have to conclude the meeting because we are now going to adjourn into.

I'm sorry we're going to recess into executive session.

The board is now immediately recessing the regular board meeting into executive session to consider the selection of a site or the acquisition of real estate by lease or purchase which is scheduled for 30 minutes with an anticipated end time of 11 or 2 p.m.

The meeting will adjourn at the conclusion of the executive session.

Thank you.

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