School Board Meeting Date 10072015 Pt.2

Okay, as everyone's sitting down, I'll just make mention that there are seven action items, one of them, potentially some substantial conversation, and then several, another seven introduction items so we'll need to be attentive to asking questions and getting answers but also being mindful of the time.

So let's go ahead and start with action item number one.

It is both introduction and action and that is the approval of the 2015 through 18 collective bargaining agreement with the Seattle Education Association.

And so this is coming out of exec.

And I will look for, there we go.

Okay.

I move that the Seattle School Board approve the 2015-18 certificated non-supervisory employees, the 2015-18 paraprofessional employees, and the 2015-2018 Seattle Association of Educational Office personnel collective bargaining agreements with the Seattle Education Association and authorize the superintendent to execute the agreements in the form attached to the board action report and to create salary schedules in conformance with the salary increases listed in the financial impact section with any minor additions, deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary action to implement the terms of these agreements.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

I second the motion.

All right thank you.

And I will note that this item came through the executive committee and it comes forward with a recommendation for approval by the full board.

And since this is both introduction and action we will look to someone to step to the microphone and speak to the collective bargaining agreement.

Board of Directors Dr. Nyland, I'm pleased to introduce Jeffrey Miller and he didn't know I was going to do this but Jeffrey Miller is our chief negotiator for the collective bargaining agreement and he brought his lovely family who he spent a lot of time away from so I'd like to have them wave to us.

Thank you.

And we're really proud of the work that has been accomplished by both our labor partners, some to my left over here and to my right our district negotiating teams.

It was a long journey to get there but I'm going to let Jeffrey Miller, again our director for labor relations, tell you a little bit about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

First I want to point out that that would be my daughter in the yellow rain slicker on the Seattle Public Schools slide number one which is ironic because I never noticed that before.

But she did point it out to me tonight.

Thank you.

I'm going to try to get through the bulk of the highlights here in about 15 minutes, leaving five minutes for Linda Sebring to talk about finance.

I'm Jeff Miller.

I'm the Director of Labor and Employee Relations and the Chief Negotiator for Bargaining.

I'm excited to talk about these three collective bargaining agreements that have been tentatively approved.

are awaiting your approval or rejection.

Because now we've got 20 minutes of instructional time, we have key wins with equity on partnership and the partnership agreement with recess.

We have the opportunity to use IBB in small doses, hopefully to help us improve our working relationship with the SCA.

We've established a pathway to PAR, and I believe we've approved assignments of IAs.

We've got a calendar that's stable and predictable, and we have K-8 alignment.

Now I will talk about all this as we go through the slides.

Okay, so we would like to share the bargaining events, the process for ratification that led up to today, the highlight and summary of the tentative agreements, and finally Linda will talk about the financial costs.

We started bargaining on May 20th for three different collective bargaining agreements.

One was the certificated unit, one was the paraprofessional, one was SEOP.

Certificated employees include teachers, nurses, OT, PT, SLPs, librarians, school psychs, and others, school counselors.

Paraprofessionals include instructional assistants, including special ed assistants, and SEOPs are the backbone of the district, the office staff.

The process today, how we got here on the 15th we reached a tentative agreement with the Seattle Education Association.

On the 17th the Seattle Public School Board Executive Committee gave direction to staff to prepare all materials for Ontario in action on the October 7th board meeting.

On the 20th the Seattle Education Association ratified all three agreements.

On October 1st, after receiving the full three CVAs with supporting documents, the board executive committee approved for the agenda intro and action on October 7th today.

So today the board will vote on ratification of the three agreements.

What are you specifically voting on today?

Board policy number 5020 requires that collective bargaining agreements be approved by the school board.

There are three collective bargaining agreements as I mentioned.

You'll be voting on the 2015-16 salary schedules as well as the modified 2015-16 calendar with makeup days.

I'm now going to review the highlights.

These are not all the changes in the agreement but those which are major in substance or the most material.

Or I can come back to compensation.

The contract term.

The three agreements each have a term of three years.

They each expire on August 31, 2018. Equity was really the frame for all of bargaining.

As I think I spoke with the board about some months ago, I understand this is the district's major commitment.

My opening remarks at bargaining focused on the achievement gap and making sure equity was built into or considered in each proposal we offered.

To be clear, the district offered the first substantive proposal on equity and the parties in the end achieved an alignment of interests.

So we created a partnership committee that includes the SPS, the SEA, and significantly community members who will oversee equity teams focused on disproportionate discipline in the first two years of the contract.

The committees will focus district resources and support work in buildings to address not just disproportionate discipline but also opportunity gap concerns over the life of the contract.

Should note that this committee while it's been in the contract hasn't met since at least 2013 and the district was determined at the outset to reinstate this Moorabund committee.

The instructional day.

Student instructional day will be increased by 20 minutes in 2017-18 as I'm sure you're aware.

The teacher day will remain seven and a half hours.

We will use interest-based bargaining over the implementation impact of these changes starting in 2016. We hope that by working more closely on these matters, such as implementation of the 20 minutes and the 24 credit, by the use of interest-based bargaining, that the parties will build a better, more productive relationship.

This is because interest-based bargaining requires mutual cooperation and collaboration.

And we're very optimistic.

With respect to recess, all students in K-5 will receive at least 30 minutes of recess during the school day.

The contract clarifies that certified non-supervisory employees may be required by their building to provide some recess supervision.

The district embraced the idea of getting a minimum for recess.

In the end, we believe that the agreement will allow schools to have more coverage as some schools may be able to choose to use teachers to supervise at recess, which some have not done in the past.

Let's make it clear, one of the duties listed for teachers in the CBA is recess supervision.

That provision hadn't necessarily been enforced and we've made it more clear, we've reiterated that as one of the duties in this new agreement.

District determined student growth ratings have been placed in advance for the life of the contract and are being supplanted by the peer assistance and review program.

on that we're going to be bargaining.

In fact, that process, according to the contract, will start in the next 60 days.

We at least have to give notice and then lay down a foundation.

Bargaining will be interest based.

We will be hopefully looking at the Montgomery County model as a road map and the National Education Association has offered to assist us in setting up this program.

So we will collaborate and develop this program and it's aimed at elevating and supporting teacher practice for certificated non-supervisory employees.

I tried to say that three times fast.

A peer mentor program for paraprofessionals and SEOPs, again embracing the idea of a growth mindset, the district agreed to peer mentoring for those paraprofessionals or SEOPs who are struggling.

Moving on to the K-8 schedule alignment.

This is an issue that has been plaguing the district for years.

No agreement had been reached by the parties despite efforts.

In 2012, an agreement was drafted but never signed.

And the district team in this cycle managed to finally get this changed, which will take effect in 2017-18.

We have a new school calendar process with a predictable school year.

Start for the first time based on a formula written into the agreement.

School will start the first Wednesday of September each year regardless of when Labor Day falls.

It has specific rules for how we design the contract and it provides certainty for families, employees, the district and the board.

with the district agreed to an assessment committee.

It's a joint committee created to review and make recommendations to the superintendent regarding testing and solutions to creating a balanced assessment calendar.

Special education ratios.

Preschool ratios have been lowered to 10 to 1 to 2, 10 being student one being teacher and two being instructional assistant.

Distinct ratios are now at 7-1-2, but with overage pay at one over.

We have secondary access ratios now at 13-1-3.

I think most importantly, the most important change to special ed is instructional assistant assignment, which is another first for the district.

Special education instructional assistants will be assigned to a principal that says on here, I think it's misspelled, it says P-A-L, it should say P-L-E.

principal classroom with the ability of the building, the special ed team, to utilize them in other classrooms where a given IA lacks work in the principal PLE assignment.

I think in the past, if you were an IA and the students were moved from one area to another for a short course of time and you were the IA and they didn't need you in the other room, you didn't have anything to do.

Now we can reassign you and you know with every penny counts and it seems to me to make sense.

And so we gladly, we're very happy to get that agreement with the union.

Education staff associates caseload limits have been established.

Physical therapist caseloads are at 1 to 35 for the life of the contract.

Occupational therapists are at 1 to 40 this year and 1 to 36 next year.

Speech language pathologists will be at 1 to 49 this year, 1 to 47 next year.

Psychologists at 1 to 1,050.

Audiologists at 1 to 15,000.

These numbers are important for us for two reasons.

We have to manage these caseloads which have been incredibly high.

And we have a large turnover and a hard time attracting staff as the union has reported to us and as we found ourselves.

So we want to make sure that we are meeting IEP minutes and making sure that people aren't worked so much that they are overtaxed and leave or don't want to come to this district at all.

In that same vein, we had lots of complaints and still do about SEOP workload.

We agreed to a SEOP peak load fund.

Building budgets will be allocated a fund of $2,500 to be used to address peak load issues subject to the pre-approval by the building principal.

It would pay for extra help or overtime where work demands it.

We have, I think we heard, Many, many, many days of people talking about how much work the office staff has in these schools and how much more work they continue to get.

So this was a necessary move.

Let me sneak back now.

To compensation.

Certificated non-supervising employees, paraprofessionals, and SEOP bargaining unit members will receive a 9.5% base salary increase over the life of the contract from the district.

That's 3% in the first year, 2% in the second year, and 4.5% in the third year.

In addition, they will receive a 4.8% state funded increase, that's 3% in the current year, 1.8% next year, for a total of 14.3%, excluding any total they may receive from the state in the third year, or any increase in funding.

It was a contentious issue, one that, if I might remind you, the union sought seven, seven, and seven.

In the end, we managed to reach an agreement that allowed our children to go back to school, our teachers to go back to work, and which put an end to bargaining.

So with that, I will bring you Linda Sebring to talk about how we're going to do this.

Thanks, Jeff.

So where's the funding coming from?

We built some assumptions into the 15-16 budget.

The final agreement did not live within those assumptions.

We had planned about a 2% increase for our staff across the board in all unions as a potential increase above what the cost of living adjustment would be from the state.

We looked at what other districts were doing and thought that was a reasonable number at the time.

That was back in May.

So it obviously didn't hold up.

It was a little higher than that is where we ended up.

So what you should see on the screen right now is the estimate of the contract for the three years of the contract.

A total of a $68.63 million general fund cost.

There's also some funding that will be set aside in the capital fund for teacher training.

But if the teachers don't choose to take advantage of the training, then it won't be expended.

So that's why that number's below the line.

The bulk of the contract costs, as Mr. Miller pointed out, come in the compensation agreements.

We have a lot of staff, so of course any increases in compensation have a significant financial cost with them.

Teacher pay increase, the 3 to 4.5%.

The SUB substitute pay increase because substitutes also received an increase above COLA.

Special education program changes.

In the third year there is a secondary collaboration stipend which is similar to what you may be familiar with of our K-8 stipend and this was to be more equitable as we aligned the school day across the grades.

that is equivalent to one day, one hour per week of pay for all of our middle and high school teachers.

So annual costs at the bottom $11.66 million in 15-16, $18.96 additional in 16-17, 3801 in 17-18.

There is, of course, the cumulative impact each year because you're paying the 3% plus the 2%, so the impact for 16-17 would be a 5%, roughly.

So what does that do to our current budget plans?

Well, as was mentioned a little earlier, we are going into some less than robust financial times based on our assumptions of how McCleary funding is being discussed in the legislature.

What we have benefited from for 15-16 and 14-15 has been increases in what's called maintenance supplies and operating costs and also, you know, the funding of all day kindergarten.

Those are things that come to us with additional revenues where the expenditure doesn't exceed the revenue.

Going forward as they tackle compensation, If they just swap with our levies, it may be a neutral cost.

It may be that it continues as class size reduction is coming to us.

There's a cost that comes when they reduce class size because right now the state isn't funding full compensation.

So as I mentioned in 15-16, our original budget estimate was for about a 2% cost of living adjustment and a little bit of money, about a million dollars for other things we thought might come up in the bargain.

And we went over that by about 3.5 million.

So that's why it's showing that 15-16 is out of balance by 3.5 million.

16-17, there's a slide after this one to get into more detail and we have a board work session on October 28th.

We'll talk more about what's happening in 16-17.

The collective bargaining agreement, you know, contributes to some of this cost but it is not by any means the full cost of what's coming towards the district.

And solutions, we do not have them all identified yet.

We're still evaluating different alternatives.

So on the next slide, again, I won't get into a lot of details on this.

I know we've discussed a little bit of this before, and we'll discuss it in more detail on October 28th.

But these are some of the drivers behind what we're looking at as we go into the 16-17 budget development.

Roughly, when we get cost of living adjustments from the state, it costs us funds from our local levy.

So it does not come just as money we can pass through to all of our employees without adding from our levy funds.

I'll just point out a few things.

The operations levy, number three, there was a drop in how the legislature provides our access to our local property taxes.

It's called a levy inflator that reduced our potential revenue that we didn't quite see coming and we hope to encourage our legislators to change that rule.

As we go into this next session, The one-time funds, we use salary savings and reserves to balance 15-16, so we'll again be looking at other one-time funds that we can bring forward into 16-17.

And again, I'm not gonna go into a lot of details on this.

This is 16-17, this is the planning process, and I know we're all right now in the middle of 15-16 and our enrollment and staffing adjustments and what else we're doing.

So that's the financial information tied to the contract and to other factors going on.

The last slide here is potential solutions.

This is by no means a finalized list.

These are just some ideas that we have been floating out as to trying to be the least impactful for our schools, the services to students.

and where we might be able to find some areas to adjust the budget so that it will be balanced.

This doesn't get us to the bottom line.

We're still about five million short and not all these ideas may be possible.

So again, as we go through the budget development process in October and into the fall here, we'll continue to look at this, work with our legislators and then see what might come out of the legislature starting at the end of December with the governor's budget.

So that's all we have for you.

Thank you Linda and Jeff.

Did you have closing remarks before you open it up?

No I'm ready for you to fire away.

Can I ask a question just to start with a logistical question.

I didn't see this attached to the agenda so I'm wondering how this piece is going to be made available to the public if it's not linked to the agenda or was it at the end of the BAR?

You're going to add it now.

So it will be made available if people want to take a look at it.

Yes.

All right.

That's good.

Thank you.

I have to, I was laughing, Linda, because I was a finance manager for years and I couldn't see this font.

It was very small and I used to tease my employees that I knew it was bad news when it was too small for me to read it.

So, okay, so with that, why don't we go ahead and open it up to directors.

I've already indicated that this came through the executive committee.

I know we had extensive discussions about it as the process was ongoing, but let's go ahead and open it up.

So I'll start with Director Peasley.

I have two questions.

When does the recess kick in?

upon ratification of the contract.

Okay good.

And my second question first of all I just want to say that I'm really thrilled that we got the the peer assistance and review part of the agreement that we reached agreement with SEA on that.

It's something that I think both sides really wanted and it moves us in all the right directions I think it puts us on the leading edge of teacher evaluation and I hope that our state legislators take note.

My question about this is how does it conflict or not with the requirements of Washington state law?

It doesn't.

We have separate measures in the evaluation system that are dictated by state law.

This just removes the district determined student growth rating from the agreement.

It doesn't remove the state requirements and so PAR is in alignment with state law as far as it goes.

At least it doesn't conflict with it.

Okay then my ask is that we keep our state legislators very aware of where we are going with this because if the SEA is reauthorized it will give the state a lot of latitude to do a reset on teacher evaluation so I would just like to ask that we notify our delegation that this is part of the CBA and keep them informed as we make our way through the process.

Once we have finished the interest-based bargaining portion of this, I will be as excited as you.

We have to get through that.

I want to say, though, that, again, interest-based bargaining is really, in these small doses, is really being engaged in our part because we really want to build a relationship with the union of trust so that, hopefully, in the next bargaining cycle, we can do IBB and avoid positional bargaining.

Other questions from directors?

Director McLaren.

So on the potential solutions page it talks about fiscal year 15-16 salary savings.

Is that the money that might be left over if we are not able to fill positions or if positions are unfilled for unexpected reasons?

That is correct.

We have a history when we have a significant amount of staff that shift through the system that there's vacancies at any time.

We've looked back through an eight-year trend line and we don't want to be hyper conservative.

We have not generated that savings yet.

I mean this is the second month of the school year.

but we are highly confident that we will have a level of savings similar to this that we could put towards 16-17.

We may choose to invest it in this year but then that would make 16-17 more challenging.

So we wanted to put a pin in it right now and explore whether that's a good option for 16-17.

That see that would be money that we save this year that we could put I mean at this point the idea is that it's this year's savings that would be put towards next year's budget.

Correct because if you look back at the previous slide part of the challenge that has been created for 16-17 is number four where it says one time funds to balance 15-16 so in building the 15-16 budget we used savings from the 14-15 school year to fund this.

It was salary savings and other one-time things that we did not expend.

We know when we have a budget that is $753 million that there are going to be a few million here or there that because of timing issues may not be spent and we just want to incorporate that as quickly as we can into services to students.

Other directors with questions?

Why don't we go to Director Peters and then to Director Blanford.

I'll start off with a couple technical questions.

So why is this intro and action tonight rather than just intro?

Brent Jones, assistant superintendent for HR.

Traditionally we do intro and action when we come to this point.

We want to make sure that we can get this into people's paychecks frankly as soon as possible.

We also don't want to lag time between when the union ratifies and when we ratify it.

So it's really just trying to be responsive to the process.

I would just like to add to that that the board has been versed on what is in the contract so we are very familiar with it at this point.

And having a two-week delay between introduction and action for public input wouldn't really be relevant here because the public does not have a chance to change this at this point.

I mean this is determined, is that correct?

I understand you are correct.

Question correctly you are correct.

I am just doing that by way of explanation because we are often asked why whenever something is introduced and voted on the same night the public often asks us why is that and I just wanted to explain why that is.

I think that has been the experience since I have been here and just to echo what Brent We want to make sure people get paid quickly, as quickly as possible.

It took a long time to get it in front of you because we had to exchange multiple iterations of the contract with the union, drafts of the contract to make sure that we could agree on the language.

And then to double check it and do all of our due diligence before we could get it to you.

And the longer we wait, the more money we owe people going backwards.

Okay great and then Jeff while you are still here could you answer the question about Appendix T, what the waiver request form is about, what purpose it serves because that was brought up in public testimony.

Appendix T. It used to be O and now it is T.

It is the SESD contract waiver request form.

I'd have to have it in front of me to look at it.

I can answer that for you.

I'm going to take a look and see what it is.

I'm sure it had been there before.

It had been moved to a different appendix.

Look at him.

God bless you, Chris.

So does it allow some.

This is a process that the buildings use in order to have a waiver for the way the contract is applied in the schools.

This is not new it's just been moved as we put other things in the appendices or in the appendix.

And so Yeah, we see it every year during budget development, Linda says.

It's nothing that we bargained this time.

Nothing I even considered in bargaining.

Okay.

All right.

And then who signs off on this?

It looks like.

The SCA has to sign off on it and then Larry would have to approve it.

Okay, so the superintendent.

Excuse me, the superintendent.

Larry Nyland, excuse me.

And then, all right, thank you.

Those were my questions and just a couple of comments.

I also agree with Director Peasley that the peer assistance and review is a good element.

I'm glad to see it in here.

I'm also glad to see the student growth ratings eliminated.

I think that created ill will.

I also think the research doesn't support the use of student test scores in terms of evaluating teachers.

It simply doesn't really support it.

I'm also glad to see assessments being addressed and a partnership being developed between the union and the district to evaluate how we should be assessing our students and when and bringing some predictability and some sense to what we're doing.

So overall I thank you all for your work on this.

I know there's a lot of people at the table.

I'd like to say for the record that the school board was not at the table.

I know there was a public perception that we were, we were not.

We had an able bargaining team many of whom are sitting out here tonight and they gave us some updates but we were not at the table.

So overall I appreciate all the issues that were brought forth in this discussion.

I know it was a long difficult summer but I think ultimately I think in a way I think our district is better for having had this discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you let's go to Director Blanford.

I'll start off with a technical question and I guess I should preface that by saying going through this experience was I realized that this is my first time at this rodeo and it was eye opening in lots and lots of ways.

I want to celebrate the staff and all the hard work that was done.

As I review the agreement I have some concerns and I will articulate some of those I will ask questions and hopefully you can resolve some of those concerns but I hope that particularly the points that you were making about interest-based bargaining in the future.

I hope we can get there because I was pretty shocked at how acrimonious it became and it was just surprising and disappointing.

I think that people of goodwill have differences in opinion and we need to work together to figure those out and I think more rational thought processes work better than some of the stuff that we as board members got as a result.

taking my editorial hat off I will first ask about the bar and at the bottom of the bar there is a statement where there is a conflict between the terms of the collective bargaining agreement and the district's policy.

The law provides that the terms of the collective bargaining agreement shall prevail in regard to the staff covered by that agreement.

Is that standard language?

Yes.

That is standard language and it is the law.

And it has been in prior contracts?

Yes.

Okay.

It just seems to me that the supremacy of the contract is well the priority of the contract is higher than district policy.

Is that the way I could interpret that statement?

I think that's a fair way to look at it to describe it but what I would say is I'm not supposed to be bargaining anything that's outside of what the board parameters are and unless the board directs me to bargain something that's in contravention to one of their policies I wouldn't do it.

Okay.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

I am wondering if you can talk a little bit about the equity teams.

Because it appears to me that that is the primary gap closing strategy that we have embedded in the contract.

Okay, so I want to be not too pithy about this, but let me just give you some background.

On the first day of bargaining, I gave a 30-minute opening remarks about the importance of closing the achievement gap.

I described to the union the district's failures in 1986, 1991, 2001, another instantiation of another committee in 2011, I believe we're trying to address it now, and that we needed the union's partnership to work together.

And so we were serious from the beginning that we wanted to address this.

And in the end, as I said earlier, our interests aligned and we got something that really was largely designed by the union, which was the idea that we create committees that address a very narrow set of issues.

The opportunity gap and disparate discipline.

The way that it will work is through the auspices of these committees they will go into these few schools over the I think it's 16 this year but 30 overall and try to determine strategies for addressing these issues.

There will be guidance from race and equity who already have 10 committees instantiated which are going to be part of this group.

And they will work to develop a plan to move forward to address for the first two years disparate discipline and overall disparate discipline and helping to address issues around the opportunity gap.

So that is also helpful as a follow-up question around that issue I wonder.

Discipline is obviously a component of the achievement and opportunity gaps but it's not the sole, it doesn't undergird, it's not the only thing that is a part of achievement and opportunity gaps.

Was there any consideration or opportunity for there to be a conversation about improving instruction or any of the other elements of our achievement and opportunity gaps?

We put other proposals on the table that address specific issues around attendance, around looking at ways to improve the achievement gap and to address how we engage in hiring and those were rejected.

And are there any accountability measures built into this component of the bargain?

By accountability you mean how do we know it's going, how are we going to make sure that it's going to work?

These 30 equity teams.

We have oversight here at the district by Clover Codd and Bernardo Ruiz.

In terms of accountability there's nothing that specifically says if you don't do X then Y will happen but the race and equity committee of which I sit, will be overseeing the work.

I would be reviewing the work and trying to figure out which committee is working, what committees are doing things that work, and which are doing things that could be improved or have opportunities for improvement.

My question is not a critique of the mechanism it's just trying to understand I wouldn't want the 30 committees or the 30 teams to be doing their work without someone checking in on the progress and also hopefully getting best practices that they identify and spreading those across the district.

And that is the goal by the way, the goal is to have these committees, we actually asked for a smaller group, we ended up with a bigger group of 30 but we wanted a group to try to establish best practices and then roll it out more widely across the district over time.

But this was a compromise and I'm faithful that even though I think 30 is a rather large number that we can make it work.

How are the 30 schools chosen?

Well I think ten of them exist we have to still choose the others so that will be a conversation between the union and the district.

Do you have any thoughts about what criteria would be put forth?

My boss is saying you're walking into the education turf.

What I would say is I have lots of thoughts.

You know my background.

I'm staying out of it.

But I will certainly advocate strongly to make sure that we pick a selective representative sample.

I know that Deputy Superintendent Wright has pointed out to me that we have a lot of struggling students in very successful schools and we can't just focus on schools that are struggling.

And then my, I guess my last question would be around the budget.

Is there, I probably should have sent this question to you in advance and if you, Linda if you can't answer it then I apologize for, but hopefully it will be clear.

Is there a way for you to tell us what the three year history would be with our deficits?

I'm looking at the $3 million and then a pretty significant increase of order of magnitude in $33 million and then a $66 million deficit in the third year of the contract and wondering what is our history around deficits and then how we've been able to resolve them.

I can definitely look into some details for you.

One of the challenges is how you define deficit and we have started to change our budgeting methodology over the last couple years to become more Well, let me put it this way, less conservative.

So at the last collective bargaining agreement, there was no reserve set aside for bargaining.

There was no money identified for it.

They were very fortunate that the legislature gave some MSOC money that had not yet been spent that covered the cost of the contract to some extent.

and we had salary savings.

So it was not well planned out.

So even if we had identified a deficit, I don't know that it was complete.

I also know that when Mr. Gottsch and I joined the district again a couple years ago, we were told there was a very large deficit and that we were gonna be cutting from the schools.

And when we started looking through the budget and looking at how some of the revenues were being calculated and some of the expenditures, We came to the conclusion that the deficit that was perceived was not as large as it potentially was, people thought it to be.

So we really didn't need to do that to schools.

So the methodology changing makes it very difficult.

I could try to go back through and try to streamline some things with some staff who have been here the full time.

I will see what we can do and put in a Friday report for you.

That would be helpful.

My memory just from being on the board for a couple of years I am remembering what $18 million two years ago.

Is that about right?

I believe it was, but again, when we started looking at some of the revenues, it really wasn't $18 million that we had to have a real discussion about.

And there's been, you know, some infusions with McCleary that have been very helpful.

There were some changes to the levy that the legislature did, the 4% increase that had not been anticipated at the time that helped us get through some of those.

equalize the gaps over time.

I would agree that what we're going into, what we believe we're going into in 16-17 and 17-18 are numbers that I have one staff member who's been here for 21 years has not seen before.

So we do have some challenges ahead.

And I appreciate that last comment because that's my understanding of it too.

A $66 million deficit, you know, is a pretty sobering number, is pretty large, is a heavy lift.

And whereas I know our teachers deserve it, ultimately we can't end the year with a deficit.

And so that pretty significantly limits what we'll be able to do.

And I just want to emphasize that the collective bargaining with the teachers is not the main source of some of these deficits coming forward.

So the 66 million you discuss is the legislature taking back that 4% levy, which is a very significant part of what we're seeing there.

So this is not Yes, anything we choose to fund does contribute to our overall costs, but this is not a sole source of our challenges going forward.

If I remember correctly from what Ken Gotch and Kevin Kent told us, it was the levy cliff assumption as well as there was some factor that you were going to have to renegotiate because there was a technical error that needed to be fixed for that year as well.

Without jumping ahead too far of the October 28th work session, we'll try to cover more of this in detail.

Yes, the levy cliff is the 17-18 challenges.

The per pupil inflator, we may, legislatures may think of it as a technical fix, but for us it prevents us from being able to access local funds the taxpayers may provide for us.

So there's several things that are contributing to what we perceive as the future.

But what I remember, and I couldn't see it because the print was really small, was that it was about, this contract was about a quarter of that.

That would probably be fair.

Yes.

All right.

Let's go to Director Peasley and then to Director Patu.

Just so we're really clear here, if those two items were to be fixed at the state level, what would that number be in year three?

That I don't have right with me.

I will bring that on October 28th.

As we pointed out, it was a very long summer and we're a little behind on some things like our five-year financial forecast, but we'll bring hopefully to you a three-year financial forecast at the October 28th that will give you some of the more specific details of what we anticipate based on what we're seeing in the legislature, what McCleary's doing, and help you understand what some of our assumptions are at the same time.

Thank you.

Director Patu.

So this is for Jeff.

So thank you for bringing back the 30 minutes.

Now my question is, is this 30 minute going to be an alignment to all the elementary schools?

You're talking about recess?

Yes.

It's a minimum of 30 minutes for each elementary.

Yes.

Is that, because I know that not every school does the same amount of minutes.

That's right.

So my question is because it's part of our bargaining agreement is every school required to give 30 minutes for each of the recess for the kids?

Yes as a minimum they could do more but a minimum of 30 minutes is the expectation set forth in the agreement.

So how does that monitor?

Because right now there is a lot of inconsistency and my concern is how do we monitor that every school is actually being consistent in terms of implementing 30 minutes or more.

I think that would probably be a question for associate superintendent Tolley.

What I can tell you is it will be monitored.

This was much like the additional 20 minutes that we're going to put into the contract.

These are things that were very important to everybody in this building that was working on getting barney done but not in a small way the associate superintendent.

I just want to speak to one other thing which is about I would say that Linda was the MVP on the team for finance but she was the only person on the team for finance.

So Michael Tolley associate superintendent for teaching and learning so far we have asked of course all schools to report their daily schedules so we have a record of how much time is being spent for not only recess but also for instructional, instruction as well as lunch.

So we have that record and of course we do regular visits to schools and we can put that within our monitoring practices.

But currently we have that information available.

Thank you.

Alright are there any other questions or comments?

Okay let's go to Director McLaren.

So many thanks to all of you who work so hard to make this happen and I really appreciate the partnership aspects of it.

And I just want to say that going forward I I would love to see us find more ways for teachers to communicate not only with the board but district leadership.

And I don't know, the partnership committee is a great idea but I think that.

Only channeling teacher comments through the union or via the occasional letter to board directors is limiting us and prohibiting us from engaging in being thought partners with the teachers in the district.

I know that teachers don't have much time to be involved in that kind of dialogue but it's an important aspiration and we've got a lot of clever people in this district and we should be able to figure out ways that teachers and leadership are more in conversation with each other.

I guess I'm saying that to my fellow directors and the superintendent and all of our district leadership.

Other questions or comments?

I'm gonna get ready to go to a vote here.

Can I just offer two more things before you vote?

Yes One is I want to make sure that you understand how important transparency was to this process for our side I think that in the last bargain my understanding is that the month that some of the numbers weren't exactly Clear and as described we had to do way to look at the numbers and figure out how to do that I wanted to make sure and I pressed Linda from the beginning and she pressed me back To make sure we kept pushing each other to make sure that the numbers were right.

I didn't want to put I didn't want to put a best case scenario up there I wanted to put what the real world looked like and my team struggled with bargaining but we never struggled with the idea that we wanted to make sure what you have in front of you is what you are voting on is actually accurate and what we bargained.

The second thing I want to say is I have a whole team here who gave their summer up to work on this.

John Halfacre, Wyeth, Jesse, Shawna Heath, Barbara, Nahari, Erin Bennett, Erin Bennett and my children are pointing at my lovely assistant.

Alexa Goodman.

Thank you.

It's gone.

I'm a little under the weather tonight.

I apologize.

But I've been in a lot of bargaining.

a lot of bargaining, a lot of bargains.

I bargained another 6,000-member bargain last year at the University of Washington, but I've never seen anything like the level of professionalism our people put in to this, especially in the last weeks.

If it wasn't for Shauna and John and Kevin Wynkoop, who's not here, and their amazing efforts, I think that this could have gone on longer.

So I want to thank them.

Thank you.

All right so about an hour and 15 minutes ago I made my remarks and I'm not going to repeat them again here so if someone wants to hear them back the tape up an hour and 15 minutes but this is all about funding funding funding from the state legislature.

We need their assistance.

So with that why don't we go ahead and if we could have the roll call please Ms. Fodey.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Martin Morris.

Aye.

Director McLaren.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peasley.

Aye.

Director Carr.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

All right.

Item two of seven of the action items.

Adopting board policy number 3405. This is coming out of C&I.

So if we could have it read into the motion into the record please.

I move that the school board adopt policy number 3405 as attached to the board action report.

I second the motion.

All right.

And if we could hear from our committee if we have a recommendation coming out of committee on this item.

from C&I.

I'm sorry.

That's okay.

I was checking to see if this one went through exec because of all the disruption of the meeting.

It did go through curriculum and instruction on August 10 and was recommended for approval by the committee.

Thank you.

Alright so I'll ask you Ms. McEvoy to speak to any of the changes since introduction.

Thank you very much.

We have had some changes since introduction.

It has been a while since we introduced this both to the C&I committee as well as to the school board.

After introduction we had some extended conversations with the task force, looked at the regulations, worked with our legal partners so I want to make sure that I highlight the work of Pat Sander, Lori Dunn, Ronald Boy but in particular also Carolyn Kramer from the task force who helped build I think a stronger policy before you.

What you will see is that we have removed some of the words that the task force felt like weakened the policy for the board so we have taken out the shoulds out of the bullets.

One of the bullets we left the should in but we added the word incorporate as opposed to include.

We changed portable water to potable water which is the language in the legislation and then finally in the last paragraph we have added language about the importance of having the community and general public be involved in the periodic review implementation and update of this policy.

And as you know policy 4110 gives the superintendent the authority to establish task force and committees in order to do that work.

Thank you.

All right so any questions from directors?

Questions or comments?

I know there was a fair amount of community interest in this and I appreciate the fact that you have worked with everyone to address some of those concerns.

I'm not seeing anyone raise their hand so Director Blanford.

I'm very curious about the semantic choice of going from.

could to should or may or whatever.

I'm wondering if you can share why one word was chosen at first and why it was changed and if there was anything gained or lost as a result.

I think that it's actually stronger language.

When we were talking about should it was really a directive and more aspirational that schools should do it.

The way it's worded now it is, although it's a core belief of the board, it is that each school shall do these things or the district shall do these things.

So we think it's a strengthened language.

And as a follow-up, my understanding of some of the challenges of implementation of this policy had to do with principals feeling like there were too many pressures being put on and them articulating a need for some measure of flexibility.

Is that accommodated in the policy change?

Yes it is and if you look at the final bullet one of the things that we have done is we have left the word should in there but we're talking about should incorporate some of this wellness work within their C SIP plans because we wanted to respect what we were hearing from the principals in order to give them the opportunity to determine how best to fit that into their C SIP plans.

Director McLaren.

And people were asking that the task force be reauthorized.

Is there any plan or thinking about that at this point?

So the task force is correct.

We have a lot of work to do.

We need to go ahead and make sure that we are creating a superintendent's procedures and I'm not sure that we will have the exact same task force but we do want community input as we do move this work forward.

All right I'm not seeing anyone else looking to ask questions or say anything so Ms. Fote if we could have the roll call please.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Martin-Morris.

Aye.

Director McLaren.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peasley.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Karr.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

All right, item three, middle school social studies instructional materials adoption coming out of CNI.

If we could have that read into the record, please.

I move that the school board adopt the following instructional materials for middle school social studies courses as follows.

1, 6th grade world history, discovering our past, a history of the world, early ages published by McGraw-Hill.

2, 7th grade world history, world history ancient civilizations through the Renaissance published by Holt McDougall.

And 3 eighth grade United States history, United States history beginnings to 1914 published by Holt MacDougall.

I second the motion.

All right and if we could hear from our committee chair from C&I on this item.

This item was also heard on August the 10th and moved forward to the board for full approval.

With the recommendation for approval.

Thank you.

And I'm looking at it I'm not seeing any changes since introduction.

So is that correct.

All right.

So they've confirmed that there's been no changes so I'll open it up if there are directors that have questions or comments on this item.

Director Peters.

I just basically have a few comments.

First of all, thank you for your work on this.

I think I mentioned before in our curriculum and instruction committee meeting that I know that this was, the way this was done and the community input that was taken into this I think was done in a very clear, clear and sensible manner and everything seemed to work very smoothly and I think consensus was even reached on what was chosen.

fairly early on.

As a parent who has a middle schooler I'm thrilled and I'll be able to give you feedback, direct feedback on how well the books are working with our students.

And I know that my oldest child, when he went through middle school, there weren't the books there for him.

And at one point, they used a book that was very difficult.

I think it was like a college level one.

And I'm very pleased that that's no longer in the mix.

That can wait for college.

So thank you all very much.

My question is, when will these books get into the classrooms?

Well we had a January timeline and then that probably is pushed back by two weeks because of the the change in the board date.

But we hope that our professional development will begin as early as November.

If you recall teachers will have the resources online.

So they'll have full access to prepping for the spring semester.

So we'll have resources for them online and begin professional development.

We expect the materials to come in sometime in January.

And your name for the record.

I apologize.

Kathleen Vasquez, literacy and social studies program manager.

Thank you.

Thank you Kathleen.

Director Blanford.

As the chair of curriculum and instruction I just want to say thank you to your staff and particularly to the committee that was responsible for it sounds like there was a huge amount of work that was involved in coming up with these recommendations which I'm proud to support.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Well I'll just echo the thanks for your work and for the result of that work.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

All right.

Ms. Votie may we have the roll call please.

Director Martin Morris.

Aye.

Director McLaren.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peasley.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Carr.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

All right action item number four of seven special education memorandum of understanding with the office of superintendent of public instruction.

Coming out of exec.

I move that the superintendent be authorized to enter into a contract with the Seneca family of agencies.

Seneca for $500,000 to act as a special education educational consultant to perform the scope of work described in the request for proposal.

RFP06584 in order to support the Seattle Public Schools special education department in meeting the goals of the MOU with OSPI with any minor additions, deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the contracts.

I second the motion.

All right and this item did come through the executive committee and that happened as a result of the meeting cancellations and reschedules due to the strike.

Otherwise it normally would have gone through CNI and it was discussed on September 17th.

We reviewed it and moved it forward to the full board with a recommendation for approval.

All right and again this is another item that does not look as though it has been changed since introduction and I'm getting an acknowledgment that that is indeed a fact.

And so we will open it up to questions or comments from directors.

Director Patu.

I wanted to find out is this actually a.

a ongoing thing that we do in terms of actually hiring a special ed consultant or is this something that we are doing just for this time frame?

Good evening Wyatt Jesse Executive Director for special education.

And this is just for in relations to the memorandum of understanding with OSPI.

There's already a set date on this MOU and in relations to this contract with Seneca family of agencies set for June 30, 2016.

So are you saying that this is a requirement by OSPI?

Not this particular contract related to the scope of work that OSPI is, we've entered into.

Since it is a memorandum of understanding, we are looking to get services and support from an external source.

So that's why we entered into a contract with Seneca Family Agencies.

Just for example, they're going to be out doing the site visits, OSPI that is, on October 19th and 20th and so we're right there, we're making changes on 65 IEPs that they've already identified for us through a random selection so the scope of work is amazing and so one of the things that you heard This evening is just around how much work there is going on in the schools and just not enough resources and so if we didn't go out and get some assistance outside of our current staffing we would have to pull additional staff into doing even more work that would be incredibly taxing and frankly I just think it would be impossible actually to do.

I have one more follow-up question.

Go ahead.

Is $500,000 is that a normal fee for consultants?

Or is that because of a special situation?

I think that's based on the scope of work so you can see through the RFP process and what we put out there for the work that had to be done in this particular relations, yeah we're having to get school psychologists, special education teachers, we have a project manager in association with this and there's also a data management component.

having to switch on how, again, we're managing some of the data for some of these changes and how our reporting structures are with the state, so that's also a slice, like about a hundred and, up to around $140,000 is related to the data management side to this, which they're gonna be subcontracting through with PCG.

Thank you.

And if I can add to that because Mr. Jesse went through that, this item, executive committee at length, this is linked to our ability to recover some of the money that has been withheld that I mentioned earlier that has been withheld I believe by the, it was federal money wasn't it?

It's federal money held by the state.

The state is the one that does, and it's all the monies are actually tied to this MOU, all three million.

Other questions?

Director Peters.

I have a question about that $3 million.

Wasn't that resolved?

Did we not receive that money?

Or is it every year we have to, so we are still waiting to qualify for that?

The money is being held, now becoming two years old.

I think on Seattle Public Schools side I think there is a degree of frustration but as the mandates are there for us we met those agreements that we had in the revised comprehensive correction action plan.

Now we move to an MOU to further demonstrate so one part of that RC cap was around demonstrating evidence that you built systems.

The other part was evidence that it is changing services directly in schools.

So the portion of the RC cap did not cover, I mean it listed it in that corrective action But it didn't have the details to talk about how you'd have evidence of change inside schools and the services directly for students.

And so that's why we entered the MOU.

This time, within the MOU, it clearly identifies What which monies would be returned how much related to specific activities listed in the MOU and so there are $500,000 tied to each element for each region for the site visits as well as one for central office.

So it's 500 for the five regions that's 2.5 million plus the $500,000 for a central office site visit as well.

So how much total have we spent trying to qualify for this $3 million?

I think that is also a great question as well.

I think we are getting over a million.

At a certain point do we have to stop and say is this the best way to be spending our money?

What if it costs us $3 million to get the $3 million?

The 3 million is just, they could do more.

The 3 million is just a beginning.

There's just a lot of number of things that the federal government and OSPI could do.

They have some other specific districts under consent decree they have taken on particular portions of departments within school districts, LA unified is one of them for example.

Just one more point perhaps I'm asking this incorrectly perhaps this is work we need to do because it's legally and ethically mandated and so once we do it then we qualify for the $3 million regardless however much it takes us to get to that point is that correct?

Yeah and I think that last part, I think Director Peters, I think DeCapture, I think I got it, let's see if I got this right, and I think I agree with it, is to say the work that we're doing is transformative.

It's changing not only to some simple systems, policies, and procedures, but it's ultimately changing the culture in the services that we're providing students with disabilities and I feel very passionate about that because you can see it going on.

There are staff out there in schools working tirelessly to revise IEPs and evaluations that are in turn allowing us to fulfill our promises not only in a legal standpoint But it's the promises that we've made to each one of these families about what we're going to provide their students with special needs.

And they are desperately asking for that.

And I think the work that's related to the RC cap, as well as this MOU, is really assisting in that.

I think the system stuff was done, a lot of it was done last year.

We'll continue to do this this year.

This year is really around a culture piece to see, wow, that is what we have to do, how we have to operate our work around supporting students with special needs.

Thank you.

And if I can sort of pile on to that, the punchline is that these are the resources that are required to actually be able to make that transformation happen because the load is too great on our existing staff to try to get it all done.

Yeah, in many ways it's gonna create efficiencies so that we can turn our work instead of just being reactive to being a lot more proactive where staff can come in and know what the policy procedures are instead of having to search for it or calling external sources like OSPI and buy them.

They don't want all those things and parents get frustrated when they don't get a straight answer or a consistent answer.

And then that's why they file administrative complaints that are due process.

And so those are also very costly as well.

And so we are down in citizens complaints.

We have six this year.

We had 16 last year.

So it's already starting to see some changes that we want.

Other questions, comments?

All right.

Well, I will say thank you to you and to your team for the work.

Lots of it.

And thank you for staying the course with it because it's important and we've got to make this right.

I think if you're out in schools you can thank the special education teachers, ESA, IA's, and school psychologists.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right so with that why don't we go ahead and go to the roll call please Ms. Votey.

Director McLaren.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peasley.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Martin-Morris.

Aye.

Director Karr.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

All right so we move to the BTA and BEX items.

Item 5 is BTA 3, BEX 4, Meany Middle School Renovation Project and Specs.

Coming from Ops.

I move that the board approve the educational specifications dated July 29, 2015 for the Meany Middle School Renovation Project as attached to the board action report.

I second the motion.

All right and let's look to our committee chair for operations to speak to the recommendation from the committee.

This motion was discussed at the operations committee meeting on August 20. The committee moved the item forward to the full board with the recommendation for approval.

Thank you.

All right and this one does not look like it has changed since introduction.

And I'm getting confirmation that that's correct.

So we'll look to questions and comments and I'll go to Director Peasley.

What is the status of the part of Meany Middle School that belonged to the city I believe and there was some discussion as to whether or not the district was going to try to buy it.

Lucy Morello, Senior Project Manager, Capital Department.

At this point the school district is working with the Parks Department to see if they are willing to sign an MOU to do substantial alterations in their part of the building.

I don't know of any discussions about purchasing that piece of property.

Flip Herndon associate superintendent for facilities and operations.

The last conversation I had with parks department is they are actually interested in using that particular portion of the building that they own for an early learning center.

So they have not expressed an interest to sell that portion of the building to us.

Thank you.

Other questions or comments?

All right I'm seeing none so let's go ahead and call the roll on this one please.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peasley.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Martin-Morris.

Aye.

Director McLaren.

Aye.

Director Karr.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Item 6 of 7 BTA III and BEX IV Meany Middle School school renovation project budget transfer of funds from program contingency to the project budget coming out of Ops.

I move that the school board approve the transfer of $4,863,621 from the BEX IV program contingency account to the Meany middle school project budget.

I second the motion.

And if we could hear from our ops committee chair please on the recommendation.

This motion was discussed at the August 20th operations committee meeting and the committee recommended to move the item for consideration.

All right.

All right.

And this one does have a change to the action report since introduction.

So if you would like to speak to that, that would be great.

Thank you.

Yes, it was introduced on September 23rd and Director Richard Best introduced it and he actually spoke to the change.

He did use the correct dollar amount that was being transferred.

However, it was not reflected in the board action.

The dollar amount change is actually to include a new income system in the school as well as to do the substantial alterations that the rest of the budget transfer funds are for.

This came out of a recommendation from the operations committee to the staff.

Thank you.

If I could ask Director Patu, the reason it came forward without a recommendation for approval, was that because you didn't have all the information or was there some controversy?

No, we didn't have all the information which he actually put it in afterwards.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you for that clarification.

Questions or comments?

Director Martin-Morris.

Just a finer point to that.

Because we knew we were doing the substantial alterations and the intercom was not in the original, we said, well, since we're already ripping out walls and hanging conduit to put the intercom in then, that changed the dollar amount.

So therefore, that's why that was there.

Thank you for that.

Other questions or comments on this item?

All right I'm seeing none so if we could have the roll call please Ms. Fodey.

Director Peasley.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Martin-Morris.

Aye.

Director McLaren.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Karr.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

And our last action item, BEX IV, Cascadia Elementary School and Robert Eagle Staff Middle School approval of the GCCM negotiated total contract cost coming out of ops.

And I see the project manager moving forward.

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to execute amendment number one to the general contract construction manager GCCM contract P5034 on the Cascadia Elementary and Robert Eagle Staff middle schools project previously known as the Wilson Pacific project in the amount of $81,587,147.84 in the form of the amendment attached to the board action report with any minor additions, deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary action to implement the contract.

I second the motion.

All right and if we could hear from our ops committee chair please.

This motion was discussed at the operation committee meeting and the committee recommended moving the item forward to the full board approval.

Thank you.

And this item looks as though it has changed since introduction so we will look to Dr. Herndon to speak to that.

That's correct and these are the kind of changes we actually like so you can see the modified numbers reduced by $200,000 and that was with continued due diligence and negotiations with the general contractor in this case.

Thank you.

All right so with that are there questions or comments from the directors on this contract?

This motion?

Director Blanford.

Just thanks for finding that $200,000.

We like that.

That's a good number.

Every little bit helps and we have a great team that helps with that here tonight if there are any more particular questions we have Justine Kim with us but I know it's a team that's really dedicated to try and get the most out of the resources that we have available.

Director Peaslee.

In the interest of accuracy it's 16 cents less than 200,000.

Very very accurate and astute observation.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Director McLaren.

This is just a good time to say we are proud of you guys and thank you.

Thank you we appreciate that and I will pass that on to the rest of the team.

You know I'll echo that remark.

My whole family we keep driving by multiple times a week.

I love to see the progress that's being made.

I know the neighbors are thrilled with the work that's being done on the flood control project.

This is going to be a terrific complex of schools and I would just say thank you to Ms. Kim.

Every time this conversation happens she's here.

You know she's been at all the events.

Appreciate the diligence that you've shown on behalf of Seattle Public Schools.

and to our own team as well.

It's good work being done here.

Director Peasley.

I just have to say the same thing about Pinehurst because that's right down the street from me and every time I drive by it it's getting closer and closer to being recognizable as a school.

So yeah thanks for that one too.

All right so with no other comments or questions we'll go ahead and call the roll on this one as well please.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Martin-Morris.

Aye.

Director McLaren.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peasley.

Aye.

Director Carr.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

All right, we have seven introduction items, and we're at 10 after 8. So let's go ahead and start with the very first item, which is the 2015-16 state legislative agenda that's coming out of the executive committee.

Ken Gotch, Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance.

This is the introduction of this year's state legislative agenda.

We did start with a much longer version initially based on last year's agenda but Superintendent Nyland did a nice job kind of summarizing it in this simple one-page format which essentially addresses the fully funding of McCleary but really highlights the two most important pieces of work that weren't accomplished in the last session that is making sure that we're amply funding compensation and addressing levy reform and not only addressing levy reform but making sure we address levy reform without harming the Seattle Public Schools you know levy capacity in the process and in addition we focus on education and focusing on strategies for closing an achievement gap So, that's basically the suggested agenda at a high level.

If there's any questions or suggestions.

Alright, thank you.

So, I'll start because this came out of the executive committee and we did recommend it to the full board for approval.

And so, with that, I saw some hands up over here.

Why don't we go to Director Peasley and then to Director Blanford.

So does this, do our priorities reflect the two items that we were discussing within the context of the CBA that land us $65 million in the hole in 2017?

They're addressed below the surface meaning that these are broad goals but we know as we work with our lobbyists we'll be addressing the specific issues of the personal student PPI formula issue and we'll be working on the levy cliff issue as a part of this agenda.

Do you have a follow-up?

I do.

When we were discussing this I guess last week in a two-by-two, or no I guess it was in executive committee, right.

I raised the issue of the cost, our transportation costs resulting from the longer school day.

with the very late third tier and so that's kind of buried in here but I just want to be sure that it doesn't remain buried.

That it gets included in discussions with the legislature around the real and complete costs of state mandates having to do with longer school day and increased graduation credits.

We can make sure that's more visible.

If you notice down below in the closing, the opportunity gap section, we're addressing components of MSOCS that really aren't fully funded as a part of the existing formula.

For example, technology, the current MSOCS formula we say is fully funded under McCleary, but it doesn't really fully address technology costs.

So this agenda kind of is highlighting some of those areas where we would like additional funding beyond what the state has kind of set a target for and I think transportation could be an example of that.

Can that be called out in here?

Sure.

Okay thanks.

Director Blanford.

I have been around, this is my second time around the rodeo on this one in that I remember last year I think we had a conversation about the philosophy undergirding fewer number of items that we are asking for.

Can you articulate that?

The longer version that I initially brought forward we were talking with our legislative team I know flip or cliff our lobbyists was excited that we've kind of kind of just boiled down to a nice simple statement Knowing full well that there's more details that we're managing to but I know our lobby lobbying team loves the simplicity of this approach So so so the strategy would be is the fewer things that you're working on There's a better chance that you can accomplish it as opposed to trying to spread yourself a little bit too thin I

And I ask that question primarily because I know there are lots of issues that you know our constituents we individually have but the idea is that having fewer things that we can be very specific on is more likely to result in us actually getting those agendas or legislative items approved at some point right?

And then the second piece is the superintendent will work with our colleagues at the Puget Sound ESD to make sure that we're kind of coordinating our agendas with our fellow districts whether they're large districts or within our region so that we're kind of on the same page as we're approaching the state.

Great.

I think it's important to daylight that for the public just because they're very interested in what we're going to be asking for during the course of the year and if they don't get their favorite thing it's good to know that there's a strategy that undergirds all of this.

Director Peters.

Okay well I actually have a number of things that I would like to bring up and I don't know whether right now is the best time to do it so I will try and just sort of skim over them and perhaps follow up.

With you Ken is that the right way to do it?

Sure.

Okay.

What I would like to see with this is I would have liked to have seen a few more specifics related to initiatives that we are trying to do as a district.

You know requests for funding to implement the bell times changes we want to make.

For example if we wanted to do the two tiers or funding to implement our suspension moratorium because I know we had something like an $800,000 amount attached to that.

And so I would have liked to have seen those elements in here that are specific to our district.

Closing the opportunity gap, I wonder if we should have, some of the things that are under here I think are simply fulfilling state mandates.

And I almost think that we should be very direct about that and say, look, you have mandated these things and you haven't given us the money for it, which includes the 24 credits and all of those.

Because under opportunity gaps, I define that a little bit differently.

So for example, the last two items there, the professional development to implement college and career standards, well that is, again, a state mandate.

The technology to implement the Smarter Balanced Assessment, again, that's a state mandate.

So I feel like that's something that we're required to do, it's not something that we're aspiring to do.

And I would also question whether either one of those actually closes the opportunity gap.

I think the jury's out on both of those having that effect.

So I would categorize them differently.

So these are the sorts of things that are crossing my mind and so I can send you my notes on this.

The one other thing I want us to be careful with is how we talk about the Smarter Balanced Assessment.

I mean I know there have been some some results that have come in that have showed our district performing a little bit higher than some of the state results.

But we need to be careful with how we say all of that because for starters we don't have the 10th grade results yet and those are the only ones that are really going to matter for graduation.

The State Board of Education actually lowered the passing rate for Smarter Balanced down to 2.5 from 3 and 4 and so they lowered the bar basically and so what was predicted by the field tests and what we see now is not an apples to apples comparison.

So I don't think we should overstate how our students have done on that because we don't want to sound like we're not being completely accurate on that.

So, let me just see.

Is there anything in here that addresses capital needs and capacity?

No, in fact, I know our lobbyists had suggested maybe we consider including the component.

When we discussed this amongst ourselves, though we know this is a short-term session, we were being told that there's not likely to be a capital bill in this second session.

So I think when we did this draft, we may have used that as our thinking.

But it's not to say that we couldn't put that back in.

Okay it seems to me that that should almost be a refrain of our school district you know just as a constant reminder and then I guess I'll finish with one more thought.

An underground bargain I really would urge us to be even more forceful in our language in terms of.

A little more heat.

Yeah, instead of being politely saying please stay in touch we should demand that they keep us, well maybe not demand but we should expect them to engage with us and I think we can be more forceful.

We are the largest school district in the state with a lot of needs and demands.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Others?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for that introduction item.

Let's go on to item number two, which is the resolution of the 2015-16-8, supporting the Supreme Court's orders in McCleary v. State of Washington.

Coming through exec, and it's obviously related to the previous item.

So good evening John Cerqui, Acting General Counsel.

What I'm introducing tonight is the board action report and attached resolution that supports a resolution that was adopted by NEWS.

And just I want to clarify that the Seattle School District is a member of NEWS and NEWS is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

So I just wanted to clarify that there is some confusion.

Is the Seattle School District a plaintiff?

We are a member of NEWS and NEWS is a plaintiff in the organization so this resolution was drafted by NEWS and sent out to all member school districts.

What I find exciting about this resolution is that we were asked by community groups and our constituents to adopt it.

So previously we've adopted resolutions and they were to fund NEWS on three prior occasions.

We've been a member of NEWS since 2006. We were very early in becoming a member in the Seattle School which is from the General Counsel Office was asked to be on the Board of Trustees.

So we've been a member of NEWS for quite a long time and it's been a long journey.

But I'm proud to bring this forward to you tonight for your consideration and for your action in two weeks.

If I can answer any questions.

All right, before you do that, this item did come through the executive committee, and we recommend it for approval by the full board.

As was noted, this is, I think, the fourth such resolution that we've brought forward, and we'll keep right on doing it till they start taking the action that they need to take.

All right, so Director Blanford.

I think it's important for the community to know what NEWS stands for.

Network for Excellence in Washington Schools.

Thank you for that.

Other comments?

Questions?

All right.

I think it's fairly self-explanatory and, again, similar to work we've already done.

So we'll look forward to that coming up at action the next meeting.

All right.

Next item three, approval of student assignment plan coming out of Ops.

And are we?

I'm not sure who is speaking to this.

I'm going to do a quick introduction because we didn't have a board meeting but didn't have an item.

So we have hired somebody for director of enrollment planning and that's this young woman with us tonight and her name is Ashley Davies so she's our new director of enrollment planning and she'll be speaking to the student assignment plan changes tonight.

As you're coming to the podium why don't we go ahead and let Director Patu speak to the committee recommendation.

This came to the committee and it was recommended by the full committee to move it forward for full board approval.

Thank you.

Well welcome.

We're glad you're here.

Thank you.

I'm very glad to be here as well.

So tonight I'm just going to speak with you about the updates to the student assignment plan that we are proposing.

So what we're ultimately looking to do is streamline the student assignment plan for the 2016-17 school year and beyond and implement the final state of the student assignment plan as approved by the board in 2009. So at that point in time in 2009 We had transitioned to what was called the new student assignment plan and the purpose of that was to provide greater predictability for families allowing them that attendance area option while still providing options for choice.

And one of the major goals of that new plan as well was to make the process more clear for families.

And so at this point we're here again to try to streamline that document and those communications and make that process easier for families.

With this update, we're looking to standardize tiebreakers, which we'll talk about as well.

And then, again, we're bringing it to the board now so that we can begin to prepare families for open enrollment in February of 2016. So there is a lot of documents that we'll need to prepare for open enrollment.

So we would like to have this change happen sooner rather than later so we can prepare for that.

So tonight we're here at the introduction to the school board.

We were at the ops committee on September 17th where we brought it to that committee and over the past few weeks we've been out in the communities talking about these proposed updates to the student assignment plan.

On October 1st we were at Thornton Creek, on the 5th we were at Smiths Park and last night we were at Meany.

So why are these updates necessary?

As I mentioned we are looking to provide a single standardized document that really streamlines communications, resolves conflicting languages that live in the different documents.

So we have that 2009 student assignment plan and then we have had transition plans since then.

up until the last one, which was from 1314. And there is language in those documents that don't quite align.

So we want to have one ultimate document, which would be the document moving forward that families would refer to.

We are eliminating outdated information about programs and services.

Within that document, it also lists information about programs that change from year to year.

So we will reference the fact that check the website and check with respective program offices for updated information.

But this document will be six pages, as you have in the BAR, and will point families to the most up-to-date information on the website as it becomes available.

Again, all this will enhance clarity, communication to families, and allow families to prepare for the start of school year with these updates.

So I mentioned the standardization of the tiebreakers.

One of the biggest things we're looking to do is eliminate the distance tiebreaker.

The original student assignment plan in 2009 didn't have the distance tiebreaker among attendance area schools.

The last transition plan from 13-14 includes a distance tiebreaker.

So that is one of the pieces of information that we're speaking to that can be challenging for families when they're comparing different documents and resources that live online.

So again, we're restoring the tiebreakers back to that original document in 2009 that eliminates that distance tiebreaker.

Additionally, as I mentioned, we'll be streamlining it to take away the information on programs and services, which is often changing.

Then this last part that I'd like to mention, we're ultimately looking to dissolve the waitlist prior to the start of school.

The student assignment plan as it currently lives references the waitlist being active until September 30th.

And at that point in time, school's already started, schools are beginning to plan, families are planning, and changes are still happening.

So in order to provide greater predictability for schools and families, we're ultimately looking to move that period up in which we dissolve the wait list.

So this next slide just talks about the distance tiebreakers and other tiebreakers that existed throughout the different iterations of the student assignment plan.

Then this last slide here talks about the fact that families are increasingly enrolling in their attendance area school which is one reason why we feel like removing the distance tiebreaker, really streamlining that process will result in actions that families are already taking.

The distance tiebreaker is actually being used less and less at this point in time so it just kind of removes one element of consideration as families are thinking about the process and thinking about the criteria for applying to different schools.

And then additionally, not included in this chart, but when we think about choice, it should really be free such that students and families, regardless of where they live, if they're not choosing their attendance area school, have the same opportunity and access to a school if they're choosing it through that choice process.

All right, thank you.

Let's go ahead and open it up to questions or comments and I'll go to Director Peasley.

I'm sorry I missed the first part of this.

You may have covered the response to my question so you may have to repeat yourself.

I apologize.

First of all, it's come to our attention over and over again the issue of international schools as neighborhood assignment schools versus option schools.

So has there been any change in the status of international schools or are they still neighborhood assignment schools?

So these updates do not involve any changes to the international schools.

So there are still discrepancies?

So currently we are having a conversation in conjunction with teaching and learning department about the different models of international schools and what they offer.

I know as new international schools have come online so the latest one was Dearborn Park and there was a good amount of conversation about the differences between what an attendance area school and an option school would do in that particular area.

So ultimately we landed on it being an attendance area school.

But we have had some of those conversations because the choice of it being whether it's an attendance area school or an option school does have an impact on how we're trying to predict for attendance and enrollment in those particular schools.

So we are trying to look for some consistency and we are analyzing that so in the coming months we actually have conversations set about international schools that we'll be having.

I want to piggyback a question on that one.

Since you're having those conversations, could I also ask you to look at the whole, and I know that they'll be, I'll probably get hate mail for saying this, but we've got two schools right next to each other, same geo zone.

And they both offer two languages.

And there are so many inefficiencies around that structure.

And it makes me wonder if it can be explored and tested with them, of course, about having one be the Spanish school and the other one be the Japanese.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

You're talking about McDonald and John Stanford International School.

Exactly.

The struggles with getting the staffing just right and every grade level all the way up and trying to balance two languages in a building.

It just seems like there's a better structure there.

And I just wish someone would look at that and again, engage them in the conversation.

But I just want to put my little marker on that one.

We can certainly explore that.

Thank you.

My second question has to do with the sibling tiebreaker, which we've always messaged as being the first tiebreaker.

Earlier this year, or maybe it was last year, there were some issues around program coming before sibling in some schools.

So I'm wondering if that's been resolved.

So the sibling tiebreaker will still be the first tiebreaker and it should still be the first tiebreaker regardless of whether we're talking about for a program or for a general education seat within an attendance area or within an option school.

So sibling will always be the first tiebreaker.

Was there a specific situation?

Yes there were a few specific situations but it had to do with spectrum and students who were ahead because of siblings were placed behind other students because of the spectrum program available in the school.

And I believe that the one school that, wait a second, I think there were two schools, but the one school that I was most aware of was Hazel Wolf.

But I believe there was a second school.

So maybe if you could, if you think about it and can give them the particulars, they could respond to that specifically.

Yeah, well it was resolved, but I'm not quite sure how it was resolved or why it was resolved or who resolved it.

And the question I'm asking now is, because I was really confused, because I was acting under the assumption that we always, that sibling was always the number one tiebreaker no matter what.

But I was told that no in fact there was this program tiebreaker which came ahead of siblings under certain circumstances.

All right so we will look for you guys to do some follow-up.

We can follow-up on that specifically.

Director Blanford.

There were a couple of questions about the international school, and I was trying to get my hand up to piggyback on to the piggybacking.

I'm curious, and this is probably not the appropriate venue for the conversation, but I know that there are a number of parents, and I count myself among them, who have children that are enrolled in the international programs that are particularly interested in what is happening at the high school level in Southeast.

Wanting to know if there is a school that has been chosen, what the criteria are for making that choice, so on and so forth.

So I would suggest that at some point there be some clarity about that.

That would be really helpful.

And then secondly, regarding the conversation about wait lists prior to the start of, dissolving those prior to the start of school, I didn't get the implications of that.

Is it that we have wait lists currently before school starts and we would get rid of those and have them continue for one month after?

So currently, the wait list is active until September 30th.

So currently, so for this school year, wait list moves were still being made up until September 30th.

So there were families in schools who didn't ultimately know who was going to be sitting in seats and where up until September 30th.

Because if seats became available, families got calls that they could have a seat if they were still on the waitlist.

The suggestion here is to dissolve the waitlist prior to the start of school.

Ultimately, at the end of the school year that's in effect at that point in time so say for 2015-16 the suggestion would be to dissolve the wait list at the end of June in 2015 so that by the end of school families know where they're going to school, schools have an understanding of how many students will be getting through those choice seats and they can begin to prepare class configurations.

Again, families don't have to, can go to their orientations on time and do all that preparation for the start of school.

But given that those seats are priced by people in the community, and my understanding is there's a fair amount of churn.

Folks who sign up for an international program and then for one reason or another opt not to enroll their students in that program, how would those seats get allocated if there's no wait list?

So if we were to dissolve the waitlist prior to the start of school, it would resort to the process that currently exists once the waitlist is dissolved, that any additional seats that exist if a new student came in, they would still have that as an option.

So there wouldn't necessarily be a waitlist in which students are being called off of but if a new student came to the school and they wanted a choice other than their attendance area school they could still have that option pending their space at those schools.

So I mean that is one thing that we do want to get your feedback on in terms of that timing and when we you know dissolve the waitlist.

Yeah I think there may be the opportunity to get some community feedback as well on that just because that is a hot hot issue and there are people who are you know I thought what I heard you say was that we would not have a wait list before school started but once school started then you would have people standing at the doors waiting to get get their student enrolled in one of the international programs and that to me seems like a car wreck in that school starting and so there's a lot of energy already there and then you've got people who are trying to get their kids into the school.

That's not what you're telling me, right?

Correct?

Correct the idea here is that there is some finality to the waitlist before school starts so families know I was on the waitlist I know by the end of June I'm not getting into X school so I've been assigned to my attendance area school or I've got my second choice of school so we can move through all those machinations.

It helps in several ways.

One is that But as we do some balancing, you've heard a little bit today about enrollment numbers being a little bit off and staffing.

Well if you continue to move sometimes staff or students, they're coming from somewhere else.

These aren't new students.

So you're actually taking students from one school to another and that's very challenging to do once school starts anyway so in some ways We often hear from people hey move my waitlist because I want to backfill I lost students and I don't want to lose a staff person so move my waitlist.

Well those students are coming from another school so if we do that that just means we've shifted the staffing issue to another school and that's not what we're trying to do.

So it allows more predictability.

before the start of school year and then once we hopefully we have fewer adjustments and less pressure as well from people saying hey hey really backfill and let's not lose our staff people.

I just fear that there's an assumption built into that that a parent who who wants their child to get into international program X when they discover on June 30th or whatever that they can't get their child in that that desire will go away.

It won't go away and I will say in

Every district I've worked in previously, which have been six, five in the state of Washington, I haven't seen any wait lists that go beyond the start of school.

They're mostly resolved in the spring or at least by the end of the previous school year so that families do know where they're going.

So we're going to go to Director McLaren next.

So I'm interested in knowing the process that happened in district leadership to come to this recommendation.

Was this something that an idea that you had in enrollment planning and you're just floating it or did other staff have a chance to weigh in on it?

Yes so I think it comes from a couple of places.

One is that as we have been looking at several of our processes around getting more accurate in capacity enrollment predictions for schools.

These waitlist have an impact on that.

It's sometimes a challenge if you were to go back and look at historical trends of some of our schools and our numbers.

How far off are you?

Are we close?

Are we not close?

It's hard to disentangle the manual manipulations that we've done on wait lists that can alter those numbers.

So given the other processes that we have to say well we predict X number of students who were born five years ago will start in kindergarten and X number of new students who have moved into the attendance area or X number of students who are in a new boundary, those are some of the pieces that we have.

And if we let all those go, it might be very close to some of the projections that we had for the school the following year.

It's not to say that waitlists don't have a purpose, they do.

And they can be very useful and I think they are helpful in continuing to offer choice to families and the option as capacity is available.

But when we do some of these manipulations at the end or after school started, it really does tax the system.

It's a challenge.

And it's one less variable that we have to balance at this time of year that's already fairly chaotic.

So if we know those pieces before the school year is done then the staffing issues hopefully will be, have a few less variables pressing down on them.

So that was part of the idea was it's a conversation we've been having with the superintendent about being more efficient and moving things up, having greater predictability.

and this was one of the pieces that we're looking at.

We have others as well that we're working on but we felt this was one area that could be very helpful and quite honestly when we've had some of the conversations even out in the community meetings both this year and last year around boundary changes even though we weren't talking about student assignment plan pieces some of the feedback was well you've got a lot of information it seems to be conflicting on the website so I'm looking at the new student assignment plan Or I'm looking at the transition plan which one do I follow?

And several have said you know it would be great if we just knew before the end of the school year.

If I knew before summer came where my child was going to school.

Did you have a follow-up?

Just a comment.

What I'm hearing is some breaking down of silos and people talking to each other in order to make the system more coherent.

Absolutely.

That is fantastic.

Director Peaslee.

So I am very much in favor of getting rid of wait lists before school starts.

However, Director Blanford made a very good point which is that parents will not lose their desire to get their kids into the schools of choice and therefore they will basically work the system like crazy and they will show up and fill those seats that have become empty over the summer because inevitably there will be some people moving in and out of the district or of the area or whatever.

So how would you deal with that?

So in terms of seats that became available after the waitlist was dissolved, you know for new students that come in they still have those options.

So we do see students you know coming into the district later on and they still have the opportunity to participate in our choice process just through a different mechanism if there are still seats available.

You know that is a good point that we are you know working with enrollment services to think a little bit more about the implications of that.

For students who may or families may say well why don't I just wait until wait lists are dissolved and then see if there are seats available.

So you know that is one thing that we'll have to look a little bit further into.

I will say in most of the other districts where I have been and they have a waitlist issue, it pretty much is this was the final decision.

There is no appeal, you didn't get in, the waitlist dissolved so you can try again next year.

Is there someone who is going to try and game the system?

They can try but if they are already an SPS student, we know they are already in the system so we are not going to reassign them after the wait lists are done.

I think what Ashley is talking about is for a new student who moves into Seattle, they just moved into this area, we still want to be able to provide options or at least have them know that there are options out there and available.

And there may or may not be spaces available.

Chances are if we have dissolved the wait list, there's no capacity there.

So even someone new who's moved in is not really going to be able to get ahead of anyone else because chances are there aren't going to be spaces available.

So I wanted to jump in with a couple of comments and I'll start by saying I'm thrilled that we are looking at this wait list situation that we have because I think September 30th is way too late.

If you go back to when we implemented the student assignment plan in 2009 and the two or three people that are here in the room that were there at the time.

Peggy and Michael and Harriam and I, I remember it being at that date because early on, we were struggling to get families in the same school together, so we needed a lot of time.

But as time has passed and more and more students are going to their neighborhood schools, the need for running it that late is, in my view, unnecessary.

And it won't surprise you that the next thing out of my mouth is going to be that I'm hearing All over the last two weeks, I'm hearing from schools like Jams, BF Day, Green Lake, where they're on the other end of this.

They start the school year with a certain number of teachers, we keep processing the wait list, and it's like watching the tide go out for them.

I mean, they're trying to have a critical mass of programs, and it's just all lose on their end.

And so, I get that it's the desire for every parent to have their very first choice, but at some point, it's up to us to snap the line and say, okay, that's where we draw this process to a close, and, you know, you're welcome to try it again next year.

This is what's contributing to some of these staffing shiftings and so on and so forth.

And it's it's it's a puzzle of our own making.

So I think it's up to us to fix it.

And I know that schools like jams like Green Lake like BF Day that are experiencing you know the loss of an instructor that it matters to them if they can make the connection.

Other questions or comments?

Oh I would just add though, the end of June, the end of school seems pretty sporty.

I think I heard you say the idea would be to accelerate it all the way back to the end of school.

That seems pretty sporty.

I almost think it has to be late August, early September before school starts.

So we are looking at a couple of those pieces.

One is that.

we're just looking at the processes and the information that's available to us.

So for instance our student information system shuts down for a little while in July and like the first week of August.

August is actually one of our more volatile months so getting reliable data out of there is not necessarily a really high reliability month for us.

And part of that is just because we get a lot of people who register right before school starts or right as school is starting.

So it can be a little bit of a challenge because you'll have some late registration that comes.

There's not a lot that changes as far as the numbers that we know between the end of June and the beginning of September.

So that's why we're taking a look at that.

I think we are looking at June kind of before summer so that families know and then that way they can make whatever plans they have to ahead of time so it's not just a week before school starts.

They've known two months before school starts.

All right fair enough.

Other questions or comments?

Director Blanford.

I just want to say welcome Ms. Davies.

Hopefully this was a good first meeting for you.

Director Martin Morris.

I too want to join Director Blanford in welcoming you as a fellow Bronx person.

She knows my elementary school very well.

What she informed me is still the only K-6 school in the entire city of New York still.

And it was that way.

We were outlanders back in 1965 so it's amazing it's still there.

So welcome aboard.

I know it feels like drinking from a fire hose sometimes but you handled it well.

Okay Director McLaren.

I just want to make one more comment just sort of for the record and that is to point out that an unintended consequence of the new student assignment plan has been that because of gentrification and the economic dispersion of people in our city our schools are becoming largely more segregated as they were before the Seattle plan in the 70s.

Can I make a comment.

Director Patu.

I just want to make sure that since you're going on the wait list I think it's a good thing.

But you know we have the southeast problem between the three high schools and it's for quite a while we've been trying to stabilize one of the high schools enrollment and some reason or other it feeds within those three and hopefully this new way of doing it would actually would really be helpful.

All right, so we're at almost five minutes to nine.

We still have a couple of other items.

So are there any other questions that can't wait for tonight?

While I reopen my agenda because I just closed it.

Sorry.

All right, so with that, why don't we, we'll say thank you and again, welcome.

We're pleased that you're here.

And let's move to the next introduction item which is, I'm almost there.

Approval of King County and Seattle Public Schools agreement on the purchase of ORCA business passport products with Metro Transportation coming from Ops.

Peggy McEvoy, Assistant Superintendent for Operations.

This is a proposed one-year agreement for just shy of $3 million.

It is to provide ARCA cards for about 8500 of our students.

This is an increase in costs from last year.

Last year was about $32 per card for our students.

This year it is $35.

That's about a 10% increase.

We have noted that also generally the metro cards have gone up by or metro rider fares have gone up by $0.25 per rider fare, which is again about a 10% increase.

So we're consistent with that.

But I also want to highlight to the board that a comparable monthly pass for peak fare is $99.

So Metro has been a good partner to us and we certainly do appreciate all the work that they have done to make sure that our students can get on in a reasonable fare that we can afford.

Thank you.

If we could hear from our Ops Committee Chair on this item.

This item came to the operation committee and it was discussed and reviewed and they made a motion to move the item forward for board approval.

Thank you.

Questions or comments from directors?

This is sort of a perennial item that we see every year.

All right.

I'm not seeing questions.

So of course, directors are welcome to ask them over the coming two weeks.

So with that, we'll say thank you.

You're off the hook easily here tonight.

All right.

Item number five, BEX IV, BTA III, Meany Middle.

I bet I'm on the right one.

Yeah.

Sorry, too many Meany items between the two different agendas.

BEX IV, BTA III, Meany Middle School Renovation Project Constructability Review Report coming out of Ops.

Yes, all three of the items are for Meany renovation projects.

The Meany Middle School Constructability Report was completed by Rowan Associates.

Board acceptance of the Meany Constructability Review Report is a requirement for state assistance from OSPI.

Board approval helps secure up to 4.5 in state funding assistance.

The intent of the constructability review process is part of a systematic approach for design quality assurance and reduces the risk of change orders or claims during construction.

Each constructability comment was reviewed and responded by Miller Hayachi Architects.

The recommended corrections and revisions are being incorporated into the bid documents.

The fee for the constructability report was $28,235.

Are there any questions?

All right before we go to questions let's hear from Director Patu please.

This item also came to the office committee and it was recommended by the full committee to move forward for full board approval.

Thank you.

Questions from directors?

We're down to five at the moment.

So, all right.

So, I think that, again, you know, if there are questions that come up, directors, we'll be able to direct them to you as the two weeks here go by.

So, we'll say thank you on that one.

and I'm betting you're staying on for the next two.

The next one being certifying resolution 2015-16-1, Meany Middle School Renovation Project, five-year use, 30-year building life, also for MOPS.

Yes, school board acceptance of the five-year use 30-year building life resolution 2015-16-1 is also a requirement by OSPI as part of state assistance funding.

It also secures up to 4.5 in state funding assistance.

In order to receive state assistance, the RAC requires school facilities that are modernized to be used as a school for at least five years and that the building life is extended for at least 30 years.

And again this is for the Meany middle school renovation.

Any questions?

All right let's go to Director Patu please.

This also came to us and it was recommended by the committee to move it forward for board approval.

Thank you.

Questions on this item from directors?

I'm seeing none.

We're on a roll here.

So let's go to the last introduction item.

BEX IV BTA III Certifying Resolution 2015-16-4 Meany Middle School Renovation Project.

Intent to construct.

Also from Ops.

Yes.

Board approval of Resolution 2015-16-4 is a requirement by state as part of the deformed process as received for state fund assistance.

Again, it secures up to 4.5 in state funding assistance.

It's basically committing that the school district is intending to construct and is basically part of the OSPI requirements.

Any questions?

Director Patu.

I actually want to go back to number 6. It was supposed to be for consideration because there was missing documents at the time it was presented.

Item 6?

Yeah, 6.

Basically it is a 30-year extension of the building life and what Director Patu is pointing out that the WAC actually says 20 years.

And so we questioned OSPI on that.

And their response to us is that WAC was amended by meeting minutes that actually says 30 years.

So there is an attachment to the bar explaining that.

So can I can I ask a clarifying question?

You're referring to item number six.

Okay, so we went back for a second.

So Director Patu, I'm looking at it and it says the committee reviewed the motion moved it forward to the full board with a recommendation for approval.

So if that needs to be fixed on number six then let's be sure we edit the bar.

Actually I read that out of my notes I had to go back and look at it.

Mine says consideration even though it says on here full board approval.

So if you could work with our staff to make sure whichever is correct.

I mean I understand that sometimes those conversations.

Go a couple of different directions.

Okay, so are we clear on six?

You'll take that action and then let's go to number seven.

So at number seven, what was the committee recommendation?

Move it forward for full board approval.

Thank you.

All right.

So on number seven, are there any questions?

All right.

I'm seeing none.

I'm hearing none.

So I think with that, we will say thank you.

We'll see you at action time.

And that brings us to the bottom of the agenda.

And so we will adjourn.

Thank you.