School Board Meeting 2152017 Part 2

Well now for Lieutenant Nyland for let's see where we are.

Oh we have some for his comments.

Nyland All right.

Thank you.

And again wow.

Wish I could play like that.

That was awesome.

The final recognition item I have is one that Director Pinkham brought to our attention I believe a year ago as well as at our last meeting.

Elizabeth Peratrovich was an Alaska nativist, activist, there we go.

and has made some momentous changes in how Alaska recognizes indigenous peoples.

In February 1988, the Alaska legislature established a day in her honor, which coincidentally is tomorrow, February 16. And although it's an Alaska holiday it is another opportunity for us to recognize individuals who have made a marked impact in standing up for rights of others.

I guess my time in Alaska was before that recognition but I was in Alaska from 1976 to 1975 to 1979. One of the things that the community did where I was just before I moved there was they established a high school on their own.

And the governor was tempted to call out the National Guard and he finally allowed them to keep their own high school which was somewhat significant in that the high school students were being bused to a neighboring community in Nenana which was predominantly native.

As a result of that a young lady by the name of Molly Hooch who lived in Galena sued the state of Alaska because Alaska native students were still being sent to boarding schools at that particular point in time in Sitka.

And so during my time in Alaska during that short period of time the state of Alaska spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create high schools and every community in Alaska so that native students would no longer have to be going to boarding schools.

Much later in time than boarding schools in Washington which I think ended in the 50s.

So an important part of history and an important person to recognize and honor for her impact.

So tonight I'll be brief I think we have wider margins, finer print and we're still nine pages so I'll summarize what's here and it's for the board's reading enjoyment later maybe.

As I do always we'll start with our SMART goals educational excellence and equity goal one and two.

And we had a teach-in at Garfield on Saturday inspired by some of the student protests that we've had of late and recognizing the need to create identity safe schools.

So some keynotes in the morning and many many breakouts in the afternoon.

Thank you to Director Harris for being there.

It was inspirational, our founders if you will, a group of office staff here who dreamt up this idea over lunch were a little bit worried when you do an all call and you don't know whether you're going to get a roomful or none at all.

I think they planned on 120 and they had over 150. Dr. Abbe from Seattle Central College reported that he wanted to know about the importance of being culturally responsive and the need to have high engagement activities.

And he did find that both of those were significant but he found Far more significant was teacher-student relationships.

So nice to hear all of those we are working on all three of those and relationships is the one that we have been working on late and I have quite a bit of momentum and energy around that.

The second one is we are blessed tonight is our positive outlier presentation and new news actually Director Burke was here this morning for one of our staff sessions and we saw for the first time some research from research and evaluation.

that takes us up through 2016 and the number of our positive outlier schools I believe has doubled, it's increased significantly.

And so that's the trend that we've been seeing is that I think seven years ago we had one school, Mercer.

and hear from Rainier View which has been on that list for some time and has been recognized frequently by the state.

And so as the board has asked we want to be about the business of recognizing the hard work that the staff have done, the good work that students have done.

And to get at least a teaser as to some of the best practices or emerging practices that we can replicate and share with other schools.

So as we continue in this process we hope to do figure out how to get some of these best practices written down and then to have them shared over the summer in a summer Institute.

So with that I will invite Kelly Aramaki to the podium to say a few words about Rainier View and introduce principal Anitra Pinchback-Jones.

All right good evening Kelly Aramaki executive director of schools for the southeast region.

I'm very pleased to introduce principal Anitra Pinchback-Jones and her team.

In a second they're going to come up and share with you the things that they're doing to get the amazing gap closing results that they're getting at Rainier View.

But knowing that Anitra is not going to talk about herself, I just wanted to make sure that you see clearly what a gap closing principle looks like.

Anitra is laser focused on improving instruction and monitoring learning in her school.

Everything that she does as a school leader relates to improving teaching and learning at Rainier View.

Anitra works really hard to develop tight systems for monitoring student learning, everything from systems in schools, tracking data, monitoring behaviors.

She spends a lot of time making sure that those systems are tight so that the teachers can focus on teaching.

And one thing that is particularly amazing that Anitra does as a school leader is that she is in classrooms all the time.

And every time she goes to classrooms she schedules one-on-one conversations with teachers to talk about how they can improve their instruction in the classroom.

It doesn't matter if they are a brand-new teacher or a teacher who has been teaching for a long time.

She's always working with teachers to improve their practice and the result is stunning.

When you walk into Rainier View Elementary you can feel the results the minute you walk through those doors.

but every single classroom has an outstanding teacher and really outstanding instruction as you're going to see tonight when they present.

And so there's so much more that I could say but I'll let Anitra and her team share the rest of what makes Rainier View an outstanding gap closing school.

Greetings superintendent, Dr. Nyland, school board directors, members of the SPS district leadership team, and audience members.

Before I begin I would like to personally thank Director Patu for your ongoing support of Rainier View Elementary over the last six years.

Your visits to the school on a regular basis, attending our opening school flag raising ceremonies, And a phone call just to check in on the progress to see if we need any support there.

All those things just for me personally as a leader is very much appreciated and so I just appreciate it knowing that I've had a partnership in you and with the school board over the last six years just through your continuous communication with the school.

So thank you again.

It is an honor and a privilege to present to the school board today.

We take this partnership very seriously, we believe at all levels within the system working together benefits student achievement.

I am principal Jones and I am accompanied today by Seattle Public Schools most effective teachers in closing the achievement gap.

And so each teacher here today has demonstrated the ability through quality teaching to positively impact student achievement proficiency and growth rates as measured by annual data review, year-to-year cohort comparisons within their classroom and beyond.

We also use measures from Seattle Public Schools and the state level performance measures as well.

So please help me welcome our fourth and fifth grade teacher Ms. Caitlin Sissel.

Ms. Kimberly Cooper which is a third grade teacher.

Ms. Teresa Moggleson which is a second grade teacher and Mr. Lee who is an ELL teacher.

My hope as a result of this presentation today that Seattle Public Schools will join a partnership with these teachers and so when we are talking about closing the achievement gap, when we are talking about effective teaching and learning practices within classrooms We can start right here with these four individuals that serve within our school district and so I just want to thank you publicly for your willingness to present today but we also want to extend the invitation for the board as well as SPS leadership team to reach out directly to this team and also visit their classrooms, visit their PLC meetings, their collaboration meetings to really learn more about the process that it takes to be successful with students in the classroom.

Today our team members will discuss key strategies that have contributed to significantly closing achievement gaps.

As historical perspective Rainier View reopened six years ago with the vision to become a top performing elementary school in this district, the state of Washington and our nation.

That has been our vision and our mission from day one that's our operating conditions at the school as we focus on teaching and learning.

Our collective commitment at Rainier View is to teach to the highest standards that every child deserves who receives a public education.

We believe in it at Rainier View Elementary.

I also want to add that we teach to high standards in all of our classrooms and not to a zip code that our students reside in.

We have been the recipients of 2016 and 15 school of distinction award, recipient of the 2013 and 2015 Washington achievement award and these are all academic achievement awards that we are happy that the students that are in our classroom are responding to the instructional practices from their teachers.

In closing our overall operating structure at RV aligns with the research of the nine characteristics of high-performing schools and so that's our model that we use provided by the research of Susan Shannon, Pete Blisma, OSPI and a host of others.

At this time I'm going to invite the team to share with you some key strategies used at Rainier View Elementary.

Right so the first one that we use a year we know and understand our responsibility as a staff and we understand that and the students understand the expectations by using rubrics and assessing and reassessing their own learning.

The second one is we have high standards and expectations for all students and we know that students will meet or exceed their grade level standards by meeting weekly with our grade level teams, our tutors, our interventionists and our specialists.

We have effective school leadership, we support teachers by demonstrating teacher observations and we give and accept constructive feedback and we do a lot of teacher shares so we can get feedback and ideas from our teachers.

We have a schoolwide instructional calendar which holds us accountable for our teaching and learning and we have lots of systems in place in the school and also in our classrooms as well and the students are very aware of the systems and expectations.

Our climate at Rainier View is very calm and we have a calm so it's exciting for the students.

and we also have the building leadership team and the school-wide process for budgeting and planning so there's lots of teacher voice within the school.

Other highlights at Rainier View Elementary include the high levels of collaboration and communication that take place every single day within our building.

For example, our PLCs, our professional learning committees, meet twice a month.

During those meetings we perform a data analysis and also review formative assessments that we've had the opportunity to create together.

We offer grade or have grade level team collaborations which take place on a weekly basis so in those meetings teachers get to share and also come up with ideas in order to affect the learning that's happening within each classroom.

And we participate in unit planning days.

Our grade levels are aligned so those unit planning days or release days offer us the opportunity to meet with our grade level teams and plan out the next steps.

Our curriculum instruction and assessments at Rainier View align with the common core state standards.

Our instructional schedule includes a balanced literacy block, two blocks of math which we are fortunate to offer to our students, science, map testing which we participate in three times each year to monitor student progress, Interim assessments which include the smarter balanced assessment and reading interim assessment so again monitoring the student progress as well as exit tickets so we are looking at how our students are responding to the instruction on a daily basis.

We offer frequent monitoring of teaching and learning.

That looks like one on one instructional connection meetings.

Also data analysis meetings so it's not just each teacher looking at that data we do it together.

Thank you.

At Rainier View we have a focused professional development.

We have invited and have all those all those invitations have been accepted.

Rainier or excuse me Seattle Public Schools specialists to come into our building to do professional development on site.

We have had professional development in math, the MTSS process, special education and formative assessment practices in our building and having that professional development in our building has done two things.

It's helped us to stay everyone on the same page rather than a couple of staff members going to an offsite professional development and it also helps us to tailor the professional development to really meeting the needs of Rainier View specifically.

We also are able to pair with our and partner with our star mentors to work with a large number of new staff very effectively.

Our star mentors and our career ladder teachers also work collaboratively to provide a more continuous support system for our new teachers.

Our career ladder teachers meet biweekly with our new teachers as well as other teachers and we focus on teacher initiated areas of focus and we continue to follow the Danielson framework as we meet with those teachers in those meetings.

Rainier View also has a supportive learning environment.

This characteristic is supported by teachers setting yearlong goals but also those incremental goals that happen with their teams, with PLCs and personally.

teachers use data to support their students progress and they use that data to make those instructional decisions.

Our students are also setting goals based on their based on the evidence of their work.

We use rubrics, formative assessment and other areas of data to students, for students to help them to identify their areas of success and their areas of need.

And our students then write written goals along with a plan to reach that goal in areas such as math, reading, writing and science.

Our school also promotes a culture of safety through like you heard the calm assertive discipline throughout our building and clear and consistent behavioral expectations.

Some of our staff have received trauma training and our race and equity team is working to ensure that Our behavior management system throughout the building is effective and equitable.

We have a high level of family and community involvement.

This happens through our goal setting, our intentional creation of trust in our school through buy-in of our school's vision through students, families and staff sharing the same vision for our building.

We have built relationships with our families through conferences, through one-on-one conversations, and carrying through with what we say we will do.

And then we all have a shared belief in our students' college-bound goal for the end of their education career.

I'll just zoom in on what we do for data so I'll start with math.

So a lot of my colleagues have tapped into this so I'll just repeat some of the things.

For example one of the things I noticed that the teachers were fully aware of the math standards in terms of reading and math and we center our teaching around those standards to help our kids.

The second thing is as Ms. Moggleson has mentioned is that the teachers and students will sit together and set goals for the next steps.

You can see that when there's a little index cards and where the students were before and their goal for the next step so the students have a visual.

The third thing that you can see is that students and teachers are always conferring one on one on strengths, weaknesses and next steps.

In terms of our interim smarter balance assessments we meet regularly to discuss our student performance.

We just had we just finished an interim assessment.

For example yesterday while I was there you know with the intermediate team we presented like a sample of a student work on the overhead and I can see you know from being a pullout teacher what this child needs as a next step and that guides my instruction in the classroom.

So again the data guides our next steps.

In terms of the smarter balance what we did was strategically was that we put all the results from all the schools on one spreadsheet in August to see where we stand on each domain, reading, ELA math, science to see what our strengths and weaknesses and we had this conversation with the whole staff and we worked with them on building specific next steps to move our kids even further.

So we you know from a pullout teacher perspective we have our LAP or SPED and ELLs working with the teachers closely to reinforce those standards to help our kids.

So we are consistently paralleling our teachers.

Thank you team thank you.

Now we want to open it up are there any questions?

Director Blanford.

It is very refreshing to see you here again, I remember what was it two years ago with a different board, a presentation where you were talking about, forgive my hoarse throat, but you were talking about how the assessments align very closely with the instruction that's happening in the classroom and I remember a conversation with a board member who is no longer on the board I'm wondering whether or not that was sustainable over time.

And so it's very refreshing to actually see that the results bear out that this approach that you've taken actually is showing results over multiple years.

And I'm really thrilled to be able to hear that and to encourage you to be able to open your school up and share it so that other schools can learn and benefit from the great work that you're doing at Rainier View.

So thank you for being here.

Director Patu.

I too would like to say thank you for all the work that you do at Rainier View.

It's always refreshing when I go through your school and to see kids learning.

I don't see them running around, most of them are engaging and it's amazing when you walk through the building and you see everyone doing things that you are actually talking about today.

So congratulations and thank you for all the work that you do because it's teachers and leadership that makes a school what they are today.

And as long as you continue to do that your school will continue to be successful.

Thank you.

Thank you very much I'll invite the board down to take a picture with you and give you a plaque to add to your collection.

So that's goal one around excellence and equity.

Goal two is around improved systems and as you know budget is huge for us.

The $30 million dollar levy cliff has our attention.

The $40 million dollars that the state should be paying in terms of salary and last week to review The beginning thinking process about how we would bring money back, when and if that time comes and how we might spend an account, I forget what we call it, we are working very hard not to call it mitigation, but it's equity based and recognizing the things that we are not supposed to talk about.

So we appreciate that.

And JoLynn has been out making many many many presentations in the community and testifying before the legislature.

This last weekend Steven Nielsen, Director Geary and principal Mia Williams were at the state legislative conference representing us well.

Director Geary and Mia Williams made the rounds to each of our legislators.

And I think at this point in time I'll ask Deputy Superintendent Stephen Nielsen to comment on kind of what we know what we don't know where we are in the legislative session.

Good afternoon Director Steven Nielsen, Deputy I will start by introducing Erin Bennett and she can give you a bit of an update and then I will speculate.

It's quite an intro.

So this year our legislative involvement has included monitoring bills specific to education as well as the ones that even have limited relationships and there have been over 300 education related bills so far.

The monitoring process then includes replying to legislators, OSPI staff and the superintendent of OSPI about implications for SPS.

In addition we are actively working with members of our delegation on ideas that will fulfill the state's K-12 obligations in a manner that is both constitutional as well as good for all of our students in our state.

We especially appreciate our legislative delegation, their commitment to supporting education for all Washington students as well as their particular attention to SPS needs has been outstanding.

The first cutoff date is this Friday, February 17. It is the last day to pass bills out of committee and read them into the record on the floor in their house of origin.

There are some exceptions for house fiscal committees and the Senate ways and means and transportation committees.

We have also now seen three education funding plans come out of Olympia and while we appreciate the hard work that went into those plans there are some good ideas within them.

Unfortunately none of them meet the requirements of our constitution and thus McCleary.

They do not provide adequate funding to support our state students and do not provide adequate compensation for our staff.

The even harder work begins now as the conversations continue and legislators meet to try to find a workable solution.

And we will continue to analyze budget impacts and other feedback.

I particularly want to thank Director Jill Geary for her efforts as our board legislative liaison.

She has been actively working on our behalf and so I wanted to thank her in particular as well as thank our partners and our advocates including the Seattle Council PTSA which we heard earlier as well as Paramount duty for their work on behalf of our students.

I would like to thank Erin and a number of other staff members who shall now go unnamed that it takes a lot of effort to read all of the bills that come through and not just read them but to understand them and to translate them into what do we need to do or not and we have had about 300 plus bills that are very specific to education some of them very long and complicated And every single one of those has been digested and translated into what action is necessary.

So now we jump to where are we in the legislature and one can only go by clues.

Here's a clue.

On the floor of the Senate today a member of the Senate passed out sunscreen.

And the intent was to make a point that it could be a very long session.

And back to the reference to we have three of the four caucuses now that would be the Senate and the house each have two caucuses.

Three of the four have given us a sense of direction around McCleary, the house Republicans have not and they may or may not come out with a plan we will see.

And the governor also released a budget and as Erin mentioned all of those plans fall far short of full support from McCleary.

And that's actually rational given that they have been talking about doing something for five years and have yet to achieve a lot.

And the legislative process is slow, it is tedious and our public has to come alongside the legislature and support whatever actions are necessary.

So now is the speculation.

It's likely that our information around actual development around McCleary will go dark for some time.

There will be a tremendous amount of work and there will be a lot of contact made between legislators and the part that will be less transparent to the public is what's really happening.

And that's pretty typical of legislative process and they need that time.

There's an awful lot of difference between the different views of the solution and a lot of negotiation will have to take place.

So our job is to carefully come alongside them and offer help and support and not poke them too hard but poke them enough.

And that is a delicate process and the rules change every day so we will see how that goes.

I believe that we will get some relief on the levy.

It's pretty obvious that that's a simple solution compared to the more difficult one.

How much is a question.

And I believe that it's based on the three proposals we've seen so far that we will see entry-level teacher salaries increase.

And so those are new dollars for us however sometimes when you get new dollars from the legislature for staff funding it actually costs us more than the dollars arriving in the district which is a difficult concept to explain.

Thank you for this added money but oh by the way we are not happy because it actually costs us $1.30 for every dollar.

If they go to 45,000 it might only cost us 20 cents on the dollar we will see.

So my speculation is that we will get some relief.

We will not get enough to meet our 74 million dollar gap.

And I think it's going to be a long summer.

Any questions?

It didn't even say June long summer.

All right.

All right.

Director Burke has a question.

I actually do have a question before you sit down and get comfortable.

Along with the speculation which recognizing that this is all speculative and I think I heard it in the message but do you anticipate that this potential levy relief is there a time horizon with that that is earlier than summer or is that do you care to speculate on that as well?

Well I don't have any inside information so let's begin with that.

We know this that our delegation is pushing very hard to get something solved by the end of this month.

And they have been more than helpful so that is an outstanding effort on their part.

And that's part of the backroom negotiation that's going on right now.

The Senate Republican plan includes addressing the levy cliff for one year.

And a part of their plan holds the rest of McCleary solution hostage to the levee cliff.

So if that succeeds then we won't see any relief on the levee cliff until whenever.

If other people are able to convince that group that this isn't necessarily the best solution for our state I actually think we might see something sooner than later which would be very very good for us.

And we certainly hope for action by the end of February.

Kind of the next marker is that four places in law they promised that they would address this issue in April.

So at least from a moral standing that's another point in time when we can put pressure on them.

All right I have to rush now to get done before 530 here.

Community engagement, we are being creative with community engagement.

I can read these words but I don't know what they mean.

I do have a Facebook account but I never check it.

Yesterday in partnership with Southeast Seattle education coalition SPS conducted a Facebook chat with Seattle education association with some input by our other labor partners.

As do most districts we agree that if there is a snow day we make it up by extending the last day of school and fortunately the last day of school was a Friday the 23rd so that moves it to Director Geary, Director Harris, Director Pinkham, Director Blanford and Director Peters so thank you for attending to that.

Civic engagement aka student walkouts continue to be kind of a part of our times so staff have taken our one at a time memos and have turned them into what are standard operating principles are and have posted those and we'll just keep them posted on the website for whatever issues come up come up next.

And we recognize that we're trying to walk a middle ground the radical middle.

We certainly want students to enjoy and I don't know I was going to say exercise I don't know that we want them to exercise their free speech rights during the school day but that is their right to do with some consequences attached to that.

We are required to obviously hold school and provide a safe place for students to be and that would be many of our parents expectation.

So we strive to find that middle ground.

The NAACP resolution that we alluded to at the last board meeting has come forward along with some other partners who have signed on with that.

The C&I committee did have an opportunity on Monday to talk with Rita Green and others about that resolution and staff will be looking into that and coming back with some ideas about how much of that we already do.

and what a plan might look like to do more recognizing that we do have a challenging budget crisis.

School visits are always a highlight for me.

Wedgwood elementary as I walked into the building greeted by multicultural art flags and displays and they turned over their foyer to their race and equity team who had actually partnered with the art teacher who had done projects in each of the classrooms.

So interesting way to engage everyone across the building.

As I visited Sacagawea, they have an art project, they are doing Adere cloths, a southwest Nigerian craft and then they are working with one of their parents to turn that cloth into lampshades that they will be selling at their auction.

At Olympic View they had a brick wall up, a student made paper bricks with their reflections on courage as demonstrated by Martin Luther King or by some of their fellow students.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to be part of the family and education levy oversight visit to Bailey Gatzert.

They are on our list of outlier schools and extremely heartwarming to have the opportunity to showcase that work for many many many people in our community.

They have 30 partners that help them do amazing things there and Jim Senegal from Costco is one of their benefactors, is that the word they want?

Anyway, gives money.

And similar to Nesholm's is they are ready to listen and acknowledge needs and at least provide some support in meeting those needs.

So it's just amazing what they've been able to do.

Also had an opportunity to visit Garfield high school for their report card conferencing and wow what an incredible young lady in terms of I guess social entrepreneurism in terms of I guess using the social media to reach out and find parents from throughout the district who would come and talk with students about how they are progressing and where they want to go.

I sat in with one young lady that her parents had graduated barely her sister had dropped out and she had mostly B's but one C in algebra and as I talked about it the young lady wasn't exactly sure why she had a C in algebra and thought maybe it was a missing assignment and after a little bit of give and take it was kind of like Uh huh.

Oh I could talk to the teacher about that.

So it was and I think they're finding that out time after time after time things that are just so apparent.

It's kind of like well why would we teach students to go talk to their teacher.

But for some that's really an important life skill as well as a great skill for while they're in high school.

And I talked to some of the parents between visits with students, they thought it was incredible and wanted to know when it was going to come to their school.

And I mentioned the power justice freedom event at Franklin this afternoon.

And I think North Aurora homeless encampment we mentioned in the last set of news.

Moving on to good news the special education work we've been under a memorandum of understanding with OSPI last year we got back or I guess through the fall we got back five, one for each of our region.

Sets of $500,000 each for meeting those important milestones and as we reported to you last we had met all of the district milestones except for three or four.

We've now met those milestones and that check is forthcoming as well as further discussions maybe for one more federal visit to talk about how we get removed from the high-risk status.

Ummm...

I guess the other item that I did not put in here but another one of those visits was I did have an opportunity to be at the Metro championship game at Chief Sealth on Friday.

Turning into quite the rivalry between Nathan Hale and Garfield they get to play each other, they played each other three times I think and they may be, I guess we hope that they have two more opportunities to do that.

Basketball is big right now always in Seattle and tomorrow night Eric McCurdy will kick off the Hall of Fame athletic Hall of Fame and I believe the governor will be there along with lots of other people to help launch that exciting work.

I'm skipping a lot of things.

There is on the back table and at the end of the comments here many upcoming engagement opportunities and those are posted on our website.

So lots of opportunities for parents to participate in our work.

And with that I will end my remarks.

Thank you.

Thank you Superintendent Nyland.

So I also want to thank Vice President Harris for having started the meeting.

I arrived a bit late due to traffic and I also want to welcome Director Blanford who also arrived a little bit after the start time.

So we are now going to go to our student guest and I would like to again welcome Asher who is a senior at Ingram high school who will be attending Temple University in the fall.

He is very active in golf, tennis and student leadership and has received a varsity letter in puns.

Thank you Asher.

Well thanks for having me today.

As you said my name is Asher Baden I'm the student body president at Ingraham high school and I'll start by thanking the board for their support in the addition of a new building to Ingraham's campus.

We're very excited for the work to get underway and the new addition is reflective of Ingraham's growing student population and also a growing interest in the international baccalaureate program.

Ingram has always fostered a welcoming and inclusive learning environment and we pride ourselves in our dedication to serving our community.

Since September we've taken on multiple service projects within our community and the greater Ingram community including a diabetes walk-a-thon and two toiletry drives for Seattle's homeless population.

As a student council we work to engage the student body and we recently organized an event called make a difference week in which students were encouraged to reach out to their peers with compliments and supportive comments and also show appreciation for teachers and other staff.

Service projects like these are what embody the Ingram way.

Also part of the Ingram way is our dedication to fostering an inclusive environment for every student.

As such we are proud to be among the first schools in Seattle to designate a gender-neutral bathroom.

In the athletics department we are very proud of our scholar-athletes.

With 15 sports and four club sports we continue to receive the WIAA scholar-athlete award.

This year our cross-country team of 104 runners finished the season with a 3.7 cumulative GPA.

We are also very proud of our unified teams in basketball and soccer as well as track.

Thank you very much.

So now we have reached, let's see it's a couple minutes before 530 we have almost reached the public comment section of the meeting.

Okay we're going to try and do the consent agenda in two minutes.

All right here we go.

We have now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move we pass the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

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

Aye.

Those opposed?

The consent agenda has passed.

All right we are just one minute before the 530 time when we start when we invite our public guests to come and speak to us.

I will remind everybody that let's see.

the rules for public testimony.

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

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

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

When the two minutes have ended please conclude your remarks.

Ms. Ritchie will read off the testimony speakers and we usually do it with like three names at a time.

Okay we have

All right.

Good evening school board.

This is really official.

My name is Tessa Ilgenfritz.

I'm here on behalf of the Ingraham High School.

I'm here to talk about some current issues and overall personal experience with this school.

For the three years that I have been attending this school I've been amazed by the acceptance and inclusivity of this community.

An example of this is our recently added gender neutral bathroom as my friend Asher has previously mentioned.

And Ingraham high school was one of the first schools in Seattle to accomplish this because of our amazing student body who is driven to provide a safe environment for all Ingraham students and this motivation for change is constantly reflected in much of the work we do here at Ingraham high school.

Alright and moving on to back to my personal experience I have been participating in the international baccalaureate program or the IB program so far this year and I've had a great personal experience with this and it's definitely providing a growing interest in this school but it's also creating a certain divide between the students participating in the international baccalaureate program and the students who are participating in the general education course.

And as kind of the IB program grows the divide is kind of significantly more.

it's more noticeable.

And as a part of our student government it is very important that we advocate for all students no matter academic or economic background and integrating this program and making it known that anyone can take these classes.

and receive these opportunities is absolutely crucial to the flourishing of our students and our community.

Also on the issue of support and inclusivity specifically catering to the needs of our free and reduced lunch and homeless populations at our school is really important so we can ensure to everyone the same acceptance and inclusivity that I've felt for these past two years.

And this can be achieved by doing everything we can to meet their basic needs and support them because that's just the Ingram way.

Our associated student body has been very active in organizing and participating in various service projects this year such as toiletry drives and we actually as a body volunteered at Mary's place homeless shelter which is our local homeless shelter.

We cooked Thanksgiving dinner so everyone had a full belly on Thanksgiving dinner which is very nice.

And a couple of weeks ago as Asher also mentioned we had a whole week just promoted to service and appreciation of our students and staff and continuing this type of work and supporting every aspect of our community is very important to further the strengthening of this body.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello my name is Twitney Vo and I'm an eighth grader.

Hello my name is Twitney Vo and I'm a ninth grader at Rainier Beach High School.

Through all of the pictures that we've sent the board members of Rainier Beach High School you can clearly see it's deteriorating.

Recently middle schoolers toured our building.

They asked why is the building so damaged?

Why are there so many holes in the wall?

Why do some of the sinks in the bathroom not work?

How do we appeal to eighth graders and get our student population to increase when we have a poor presentation that's not suitable for learning.

I'm a student so I know that motivate that motivated that students need to feel inspired and motivated to have pride in their educational environment.

Why was our BEX levy stripped from us in the first place?

The Department of Education states that the importance of physical environment of a school.

Experts stress that school grounds is the key to overall health and safety of students and staff.

Studies have shown that the physical environment of a school has the direct impact on students achievements.

If the board is serious about closing the achievement gap then one of the first steps must be to provide a campus that is conducive to the goal.

for the goal to happen.

Especially in a school that is majority students of color.

It is time for Rainier Beach High School not to get the short end of the stick.

We deserve a renovation now.

Thank you.

Good evening school board members my name is Gian Rosario and I'm a student at Rainier Beach High School.

I'm here tonight to talk about the needed renovation for Rainier Beach High School.

A couple of years ago the district launched its close the gaps campaign.

The Seattle Public Schools committed to ending racial disparities, opportunity and achievement gaps.

However, you the district leadership are not living up to your commitment to Rainier Beach high school students and parents by not providing the same quality environment to Rainier Beach high school that you are providing to other high schools.

I would like to end by reading this statement from the Seattle school website on closing opportunity gaps.

At Seattle Public Schools our fundamental aim is to ensure that each and every student entrusted to us attains High levels of academic achievement.

While this is already a reality for some of our students it remains a dream deferred for many others.

That is why our top priority is to eliminate opportunity gaps and accelerate achievement for all students without exception.

For many years our school system has not lived up to its commitment to a significant proportion of our students.

especially our African-American males and other students of color.

We can do better.

We must do better.

This draft action plan expresses our community wide recommitment to improving educational experiences excuse me and learning outcomes for our traditionally underserved and underperforming students.

We are committed to closing opportunity and achievement gaps for each and every student.

And so I'd like to end with a question.

How can we hold you accountable to your prior commitments?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Imani Johnson, Sadio Moore, Naj Ali.

Almani Johnson isn't here but I'm Saeeda Noor and I will be speaking.

Hi my name is Saeeda Noor and I'm a student as well as an advocate for Rainier Beach high school and I'm here today to fight for our school.

Rainier Beach high school getting a renovation would have a lasting impact on the students.

Because of the fact that Rainier Beach high school is a small populated school compared to all other schools in the district and the way we are treated because of that we are convinced that our voices are not being heard.

Our school lives by the mantra that everybody is a somebody but because of the continuous reallocation of funds promised to our school we feel that everybody is a somebody but Beach.

If our campaign were to be a success and we received a renovation the Rainier Beach high school students would be in a better environment and have more pride in ourselves.

We would have a better reputation which would make our kids my peers strive to live up to be a Viking and everything we want to be.

Rainier Beach High School is filled with students that have overcome adversity.

We know how to fight and in terms of our school we shouldn't have to fight for a quality environment and decent learning space.

The renovation would give us more hope and drive to fulfill expectations.

With a new school that isn't broken down like ours is now we would want to build more on ourselves and would make us more confident in our future.

I am here today to tell you the school board that giving Rainier Beach high school renovation would better our students' quality of education in a safe and wanting environment.

This is one out of the many board meetings we will be speaking at if our school isn't made a priority.

Thank you for your time.

Good evening my name is Naj Ali and I am a junior at Rainier Beach high school.

First of all I would like to say I am honored and privileged to be speaking in front of Ms. Betty Patu.

As Rainier Beach students we are treated as second-class citizens but we are being forced to learn in third world conditions.

Are we a priority in the district?

As the famous Nelson Mandela once said, education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

With that being said, these are our demands.

They should begin the renovation in Rainier Beach High School by the fall of 2017. We need a plan and progress must be followed.

Monthly meetings, communication is key.

This should include students, faculties and parents.

Students must be a huge part of this.

No relocation.

Occupy renovation.

With this being said Nathan Hale done this before and in the past and the reason why that we want it to be an occupied renovation is because we don't want to be like Garfield.

We don't end up like them.

And our development plan is by the fall of 2017 and the fall of 2018 we want an active process taking place in Rainier Beach High School.

With that all being said I'd like to close with Nelson Mandela's quote once again, it always seems impossible until it's done.

Thank you very much and I hope at the end of this that all school boards are behind us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay we have Nari, Patty, Diego Reyes-Fothberg and Chris Jackins.

Hi I'm Brea Hammond I'm filling in for Nyree because she's on the Brock City basketball team and you know we got to keep that reputation up.

Okay so honestly Rainier Beach was opened in 1960 and the last time it had a renovation was in 2008 which was like nine years ago.

Our school quite frankly When kids come they see sometimes paint peeling off the walls, sometimes the ceilings have little issues and what not.

And I came here to Rainier Beach from Kennedy so which was kind of like a huge change cultural wise just in every type of wise.

Our school has given us some safety scares quite frankly last year.

Near our summer break there was an incident where there was a threat against our school and we didn't have the proper means to keep our students safe and to me that's really the most important thing about it is me and my peers.

The scare was something about a gun related incident and we weren't able to one communicate with each and everybody to try to figure out how to keep our students safe and two to lock the doors because At Rainier Beach we are like a family fun loving everybody knows everybody so if somebody is at the door students are going to let them in and taking in someone's uncle or aunt or I mean everybody knows everybody so it's kind of like oh family.

But that being said we've had a meeting last year with the police district boards people of higher power and we were promised to have these things by the fall.

Followers around and they literally had a team like I kid you not a metal chain on the door And they said that's your chain.

That's your lock door Good Well there was issues that nobody knew where the key was so there was that issue.

Also our heat system on certain days it does turn off at 230 and I myself have sickle cell anemia and so I have to stay warm or I can't overheat and that causes a problem for me and my cousin who also has sickle cell anemia.

So there's just health risks because I know other kids have other things that deal in heat and cold they don't really trap in our school.

I just think if Rainier Beach were to get just a little bit of renovation any tiny bit would help the students be more focused.

I know when I'm cold I can't focus.

If I'm warm I fall asleep so that and then balancing everything out.

And then Rainier Beach is just known for its basketball team, it's not known for the IB programs, it's not known for all this.

And I think we are looked past because we are, I'm not going to lie, we are kind of in the poor community and our school kind of fits that.

I feel like if we had a big school that's standing out against the crowd, people would be like oh, what's that building?

I want to go look at that.

But thank you.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, officers of the school board.

It is with great honor to talk directly with you while increasing awareness to the injustice RBHS is facing.

It is our hope that you have heard the concerns and that you share these concerns and that you urgently want to see them corrected.

So far the message we feel that we have received by the board is that we are not worthy of a 21st century quality learning environment that is up to par with every other high school in this district.

Are we not your students too?

If the answer to that question is yes we are.

Then prove it by one providing a commitment that we will have renovations as planned starting in fall of 2017 to provide school leadership with a timeline and three commit to us the students family and faculty that we will be involved in the renovation process.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on policies 6101 and 6201. The documents incorrectly state that not passing the policies would quote put the district in jeopardy of receiving future federal awards unquote.

On the school bus contract the district says that it cannot afford health care coverage for people driving 20 to 30 hours per week.

But the district is seeking external funding to support two tiers.

Please seek such funding to also cover health care.

on the Loyal Heights resolution.

District enrollment has not been increasing as much as expected.

Please vote no on this item.

On the $315,000 purchase of projectors two points.

Number one the board's own new projector was not working very well last week.

Are the proposed projectors the same brand?

Number two please consider using this money to buy textbooks instead.

On the three EC Hughes items please stop the plans to close Roxhill and move it to EC Hughes please vote no.

On the $18 million Webster construction contract The district still does not know how it intends to use the site.

This sounds a little crazy.

Please vote no.

On the highly capable program or HCC last week statistics were cited that of 570 HCC eligible students 236 were eligible by appeal.

This would be some 41 percent.

This makes it sound like the selection process was wrong a lot of the time.

On Rainier View, years ago I went to court with Rose Sanders and her great-grandson Jasani to try to stop the closure of Rainier View.

The school district promised to check in on displaced students.

Please check in on Jasani.

Thank you.

And we have one more late sign up for Mary Howie.

Hi my name is Mary Hoy I'm a school bus driver for Seattle for over 25 years.

Right now we do not have enough bus drivers to drive the routes we have.

I have covered routes and doubled up on routes days which ends up making both routes late.

There's no extra people out there, the management and all the safety people are driving routes too.

So if there's something that goes on, there's nobody out to help a driver because they're busy driving routes too.

And we are training all the other drivers for all the other districts in Metro because as soon as they find out they have they can make more money at all the other districts and have health insurance and a retirement they leave us.

So the people that been there for a long time are still there.

But the people that come in leave.

So we keep having a rotating door of people leaving and no new people staying.

Eventually it's going to catch up on you guys.

I know you don't want to pay for the health insurance but Seattle school students deserve to have enough safe bus drivers.

Check out how many routes are late or missed in a week.

And as far as the 30 hours, a driver that drives 30 hours gets health insurance, I drive 40 plus hours last year because they do it 30 hours times 52 weeks and we don't work in the summer so I don't even qualify for the health insurance.

And I worked 42 hours last year.

So this 30 hours is ridiculous.

Most of the drivers don't qualify.

Please please think about us.

We've let you guys off the hook and keep driving.

Thank you.

Peters Thank you.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak this evening?

Okay if not to the students who spoke earlier thank you very much for coming.

For those of you who spoke who might not have been on the list could you please go over to Anya Ritchie and let her know your name so for the record we can know who spoke tonight.

All right so now that brings us to the director comments section of the evening.

So would anybody like to begin?

Director Patu.

A lot of congratulations tonight.

First of all I want to say congratulations to our partners PTSA and Sabrina Burr for her dedication in leading the charge of actually getting more PTSA situated in various schools because there are schools that don't have PTSA And I know that she's really out there reaching out to a lot of those schools and thank you Suprena for your continued work.

I also wanted to say thank you to our student speaker representative from Ingram for being here tonight and sharing with us all the great things that are happening at Ingram high school.

It's always refreshing to hear our students tell us what's happening at their school because who knows better what's going on than the student does.

So thank you very much for our representative that came from Ingram.

Also I want to do a shout out to the Rainier Beach high school students.

for their passion about their school.

It's it's really refreshing to see kids fight for what they believe in.

And education is very important.

You're very right.

Without a good education especially if you're a child of color you can't make it too far.

So thank you.

Keep up the great work and continue the fight.

I would also like to recognize our amazing jazz band from Washington middle school.

Very talented, have never really seen so many young people who have so much talent and the jazz music was actually, I don't listen to much jazz but I really actually didn't mind listening to theirs today.

So it was quite amazing.

I also want to say thank you to to those who also came tonight and share your story and you're also let us know your views of what's happening and we hear you loud and clear in terms of the bus drivers yes we see exactly what's going on and I know that you guys work hard so these are hard times but we're you know we're Don't give up.

We're still looking for ways for how we can be able to come up with something.

So there's still hope for that to continue on.

I also want to give a shout out.

Thank you to Franklin High School for a amazing program as Dr. Nyland had said that we were down there today to actually to observe their event and never seen so many talent.

As a matter of fact I've even seen dances that I've never seen before.

So it was amazing to see the many variety of different talent that was showcased at Franklin high school and also congratulations to Brent for the award that he received and you know well-deserved.

It's always amazing to go out to the various schools and see all the different things that they are doing.

I was at Dearborn Park a couple of days ago, I was at South Shore for their national black parents workshop and also I was at Martin Luther King for their lunar celebration and I've watched a lot of multicultural show in my time when I was with the district and I've never seen first and second graders in kindergarten just perform their little hearts out down there at MLK so I really immensely enjoyed myself down there just to watch the variety of different talents of different ethnic groups sharing their culture.

within their school.

So I just want to say to all the schools that I actually I visit this week and last week.

Congratulations for the continued success and work that you're doing in our school.

I also want to say congratulations to Rainier View and their continued success and to their principal who continue on to encourage her staff to be the best that they can be.

And then also at Rainier Beach is the old saying is somebody What is this?

Everybody is a somebody.

And that's always something that we you know when we talk to kids you know you can be anyone you want to be.

If someone is there to give you that helping hand to make sure that you're successful.

So thank you to all the teachers and everyone that actually supporting our kids.

And I always say continue the work because there's so much for us to do.

Director Pinkham.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ and Táˀc kulé-wit.

Thank you and good evening.

Just kind of go down my list here that I have written.

First thank you to Asher for coming and being our student speaker today and sharing progress that's going on with Ingraham high school.

And also acknowledge that yes this is black history month so get out there and support all different you know all groups.

I don't want to say different but we're all have unique skills and abilities that we need to share with one another.

And today let's honor the African-American culture.

Thank you to the Seattle Council PTSA for their contributions.

James Bush, Sabrina Brewer, Eden Mack.

Let's continue this partnership you know We here at the district level and the schools, we are serving the parents and teachers and students and we need their input and we value their collaboration.

I do want to look at Elizabeth Peratrovich, can I clarify too, thank you to Dr. Superintendent Nyland to bring this up and let me share this with the audience and the people that are watching.

Elizabeth Peratovich was a Tlingit woman back in the 1940s her and her husband Roy Peratovich were both leaders of the Alaskan Native Brotherhood and Alaskan Native Sisterhood.

The Alaskan Native Brotherhood is actually the oldest regional American Indian group in the Americas.

And they saw the injustice that was happening because they too faced the signs where you know natives not allowed to enter certain buildings or their native only sections in theaters.

And they joined actually then the territorial Governor Ernest Gruning to propose an anti-discrimination act.

It initially failed but then it came back up in 1945 and at the hearing at the Senate hearing This territorial Alaska, Liz Peradovich stood up and shared with the audience that were there why this should be passed.

People were saying we don't need a law to tell people they must interact with each other.

And if we do pass this law it's not going to stop discrimination.

And she said it so adequately but we also passed laws against you know larceny and murder but it's not going to stop it.

It just shows what we value.

And with her input it did pass that time and again it was the first comprehensive anti-discrimination act in the United States in 1945. 15, 20 years before what we see here in the 1960s with the civil rights movement.

So I want to thank you for allowing us to have time to honor her and what they've done.

So tomorrow the state of Alaska will have their Elizabeth Peratrovich day.

Thank you to the Washington municipal jazz band for their performance and for Rainier View thank you for your presentation.

You know that we need to see that we set high expectations for our students.

The collaboration of everyone that's involved in the education of those students, professional development on site for our educators, the teacher support and the support and learning environment and data that's measurable and can help us see progress being made.

You know that is what I see is what they presented what's making them a great school so let's continue and redo this at other schools as well.

Thank you to the staff here for the budget work.

Yes we've got a lot to do and what you do and what you've done so far keep it up.

And I think as we go through this we're definitely seeing truly what are our priorities here.

What's a priority issue versus what's a budget issue.

I also wanted to share upcoming a journal that's going to be published for ethnic and cultural diversity and social work.

The title of the article should be coming out here shortly as our kids aren't dropping out they're being pushed out.

Native American students and racial microaggressions in schools.

I'll share that with the board as well.

It's a recent article that was just brought to my attention and I wanted to make sure that the board got to see it and pass it down to the district level as well.

Rainier Beach high school students, thank you for being here.

Student voices is also so amazing to hear and I welcome it.

So keep it up, don't let it go by and I will be there to hopefully support you as well to see what we can do to make sure all schools are equitable for our students.

I also want to give a thank you to Adams elementary school and third grade teacher Bobbie Windus she actually invited me out there and I got to go and talk to her third grade students.

They are actually doing a piece on the Nez Perce tribe and they asked if I could be there so students can see.

that no we're not just stuck in the past we are contemporary people and I appreciate her effort in reaching out to me.

Thank you to the University of Washington the equity summit on gifted education.

Definitely worthwhile I was only able to be there on Friday morning but appreciate it.

And finally I want to say that I myself do stand with Standing Rock.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you.

Peters Director Burke.

Good evening.

I want to just start also by saying that we were rendered speechless and foot tapping by the Washington middle school jazz band it was amazing.

You close your eyes and you can envision yourself anywhere with you know extremely talented high level musicians and potentially a drink in hand.

Non-alcoholic of course.

I want to put out a thanks to Sabrina Burr and Eden Mack for sharing a little time with us this evening and the very brief conversation that I had with Sabrina this afternoon before the meeting I'd like to follow up and learn more about that.

Your passion and advocacy is critical and contagious in a good way.

To our Ingram guests Mr. Baden and Ms. Ilgenfritz as an Ingram parent my oldest when we were originally looking at Ingram high school and we visited the school on a school tour We felt the inclusion and welcoming culture just as part of the tour from principal flow from the students that were giving the presentations and knew that it was an amazing place and so now I have two students that have graduated from Ingram and a third that is most of the way through so my hat is off to them for their work and the entire school community.

To the Rainier Beach students I also echo my colleagues gratitude for coming down and sharing your concerns.

I ask you as you're thinking about your advocacy to target it.

I appreciate the focus that you have around specific things.

I want to make sure you recognize that we are working on the BEX V the next levy and so think about what projects in your school are short term.

that could have impact and what projects in your school are long-term that have long-term lasting impact.

And think big and let us know.

To principal Jones and her team from Rainier View I appreciated hearing about the laser focus on instruction, the intentionality of it.

Many of the things that were discussed there really resonated with me based on what I've seen from my own experience with my students, the teachers that I feel like have had the most impact on them.

And I'm really excited at the opportunity for the board to hear from our success stories personally and I think it's a great way to celebrate and to try to replicate our successes.

There have been multiple comments that have come from the board and the superintendent about recognitions.

So February is not just about Valentine's Day, we have the work in the black history month, all of the enthusiasm around that and the activities which is absolutely amazing.

Director Pinkham, I'm not even sure if I can pronounce it can you help me out?

Buratovich, okay I'll have to work on that one.

And then one other that I wanted to add is that February is also CTE month, career and technical education.

And highlighting that the district has several work streams going on this that are going to be coming before the board in upcoming months.

Trying to knit together the different funding streams the different resources we have at skill center Rainier Beach and some of our other sites.

There's some really really amazing opportunities that we have.

And the.

Keeping the career and technical education as part of our long-term vision, part of our Seattle ready theme is super important work.

Along the theme of super important work I want to echo Dr. Nyland's comment about the NAACP ethnic studies resolution this was brought to the curriculum and instruction committee earlier this week on Monday.

And that is a really exciting and innovative body of work and the committee was unanimous directing staff how can this this resolution and this the themes that are embodied in that how can we integrate that with our current processes around eliminating opportunity gaps culturally relevant instructional materials and practices and we look forward to seeing more work on that in the next month coming back to the curriculum instruction meeting.

I want to put a personal thanks to Superintendent Nyland and district staff for inviting me to the coherence framework review that took place this morning.

That is also an exciting body of work.

We have our work in MTSS.

We have our smart goals we have all of these things that we talk about that seem like they are isolated and the board has consistently said how does this relate?

How does this tie together?

What are the sight lines to student learning?

And staff is really doing some great work around explaining that and leveraging the alignment between it.

And I want to really emphasize that that is a team effort.

That's board goals aligned with superintendent goals, board initiatives and board enthusiasm aligned with staff efforts.

In closing a couple of meetings coming up.

One of my favorite topics Lincoln High School.

There is a public meeting on Friday this Friday at Hamilton Middle School 630 to 830 p.m.

in the commons.

And I invite any of my colleagues that would like to kick off their midwinter break with a healthy meeting talking about a new high school.

If it looks like multiples are coming please let someone know so that we could put out a notice for a potential quorum.

And I want to say on the record that when we were looking at dates I want to apologize for Friday but I want to say that unapologetically that it was either Friday or Valentine's Day and dead man walking.

It would not be a pretty sight if we asked families to you know give up their quality time.

And it was really important to me to hold this meeting prior to the end of open enrollment.

That was a commitment I had made to a variety of families and so to emphasize if folks want to attend and can't this is not the end this is just another step along the way and we will keep notes and put them up on the website so people can follow along.

In case you can't hit Friday my regularly scheduled community meeting is the following day Saturday the 18th in case there's folks that still want to talk.

Thank you very much.

Peters Director Blanford and then Director Geary.

I will also congratulate the Washington Jazz Band for performing today as I was listening to them I was thinking about my own middle school jazz band career and reflecting on how good they sounded and how poorly we sounded.

My sister was the trombone player and she did a solo one time and so as the trombonist was doing their solo I found myself reflecting back and it wasn't a pretty sight.

So I would like to congratulate the Washington jazz band for inspiring us with their performance today.

And then also to appreciate both Eden Mack and Sabrina Burr for their ongoing leadership of Seattle Council PTSA.

I know that work is tough work And transforming that organization to one that represents all of our students is the real work of the leadership of Seattle Council so I appreciate your leadership and your advocacy for all of our students.

I noticed in the packet of materials that we got that one recognition that didn't get enough time and I think it's a relevant one.

One of our principals Chris Cronus recently was awarded the association of Washington state principals principal of the year award.

And I've come to know Chris a little bit in his work at one of our schools in West Seattle and found him to be just a strong advocate for equity and for improving achievement for all of our students.

So I wanted to on record publicly acknowledge his award.

And also I'm thinking a little bit about where we were not very long ago, two and a half, three years ago with our special ed department.

And how far we have come to where we are at a place now where we no longer have to deal with the feds in the way that we have had to deal with in the past.

that the money that they held up from us for years is finally flowing again and I just want to give an appreciation to all of the folks in our special ed department and the folks that are in our schools that are doing the hard work to get us to a place where we are no longer on the types of lists that we don't want to be on.

And so I want to appreciate Wyeth Jesse and his team for that work as well as I said before all the folks that are in schools that are actually implementing it.

Thanks also to Asher from Ingram sharing the Ingram way.

I thought that was a great presentation and the students who just happened to leave just as I started my presentation.

from Rainier Beach but appreciating their advocacy for their individual school.

You can't, we can't get to every school as quickly as we need.

I think their advocacy has made it clear to us that Rainier Beach should be high on our list and the sooner we can get there the sooner our students will be able to move forward.

And then I did have the pleasure of going to the African-American parents involvement day at South Shore which is the second year that it's been held at South Shore among other schools.

And it is just a fabulous opportunity to see a number of African-American men all dressed to the nines or the tens I don't know what you call it these days.

but dressed up and demonstrating their support for our students.

Whether they be African-Americans or of any other racial or ethnic group we were giving high fives and you could see the look on kids faces and after they got over the shock of seeing this many African-American men lined up with big smiles on their faces they were very appreciative.

I had the opportunity to talk with many parents who were so appreciative of the fact that this was happening and then I was at a meeting at a school earlier today and had a number of parents share with me their hope that this could be expanded so that it covered all of our schools because all of our kids I need that kind of reinforcement so my hope is that it will expand at a rate that can accommodate all of our 97 schools.

And I'll end my comments by just noting the fact that I have a community meeting I had one this month already I have my next one scheduled for the 25th of March 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock unfortunately I cannot indicate the location because we are doing a little bit of work to try to find a spot to host us but the last few meetings have been robust conversations that have gone the entire two hours and so I encourage folks to come and share their thoughts with me and hear what I'm thinking and what I'm learning about issues going on in Seattle Public Schools.

Thank you.

Okay I also want to extend my thanks to the students from Ingraham high school both Asher Baden and Tessa Ilgenfritz for coming and telling us about their school.

I have to as I was sitting and listening to them thinking how poised they were and how they were so proud of the steps that their schools were taking to be inclusive of all the students there.

I just I'm proud of our school district for that.

That is the hard work of our teachers and of our staff and continuing to emphasize the culture change that we want to see and so while we as adults are living in a world of polarization our children are showing us how to look out for one another and come together and that it isn't a big deal to make sure that you're making everybody feel comfortable and welcome within an environment.

So much to learn from them.

Couldn't be prouder.

And the same would go of our students from Rainier Beach.

So happy that they came to talk to us.

I hope that all of our students will continue to come talk to us.

I wish I could write the check tomorrow to make Rainier Beach the kind of welcoming place that they want it to be.

They want to be proud of their school.

They want middle schoolers to come in and be excited about coming.

I again wow I mean that's that's awesome.

They want to be there.

They want other people to be there.

It's our job to make those environments welcoming to all of our kids.

High wire no net Washington Middle School.

I don't need to say more.

That was amazing.

Those kids so full of personality just while they're playing their instruments.

So so awesome.

Rainier view and principal Jones love to hear about our outlier schools and had the opportunity in my advocacy in Olympia on Sunday and Monday, Monday morning and particularly to spend time with principal Williams, Mia Williams who is also one of our outstanding principals.

I don't know Ms. Jones as well but I certainly say that we have some principals who are just amazing and that they are able to get such amazing work out of their schools is commendable and it was so much fun to spend time with Ms. Williams in Capitol Hill I felt like I was with a rock star.

It was amazing being in Olympia with somebody who everybody seemed to know.

It was basking in her light as we walked from different legislators offices and to see how warmly she was received and how they are all so concerned about the future of our schools.

But I want to take a moment to share some of the other things that we did.

We sat on Sunday and we listened to a number of speakers including Governor Inslee and Superintendent Chris Reichtel.

I'm sitting in a room with a whole lot of board directors from all over the state and It's hard to actually fathom that there are a lot of school districts in this state that have fewer students than we have students who are coming to our school in tents, from tents.

And our homeless population of students eclipses many of our state school districts.

And yet these tiny school districts still have the obligation to provide a well-rounded education to each and every one of their kids as well.

And we know what it's like to try and teach kids in a small school and give a small school with a distinct population a well-rounded opportunity for education.

And they've got a tinier number of kids that they have to teach across the full spectrum of grades.

And we have to be looking at their representatives to protect their ability to serve their kids.

And it's hard to have those conversations about our needs and our kids that are coming to school from tents and their needs of trying to provide K through 12 on a very small allowance of money just because of the numbers of their kids.

So again, it's taking the time to talk to people, taking the time to be sympathetic, not assuming, making assumptions that everybody is working from the worst motivations, though there appear to be some people in Olympia that perhaps that is true.

They can easily turn around anything we say that isn't measured and well thought out and spoken from an equity for the whole state.

They can take those sound bites and take them back to their constituents and point the finger at us and say they don't care about you.

So we need to be very very careful in our conversations as we move forward because the bottom line is that we just need more money in public education.

And we as we talk about in our conversations within our district we can't pit the populations that want to do the good work for our kids against each other.

So let's go out there, let's reach out beyond the borders of Seattle, beyond the borders of the Puget Sound, let's call up our family, let's make sure that everybody across this state is making this the issue that they bring to their representatives.

We have to support the public education of our students.

So there is that.

I will thank Steve Nielsen, Erin Bennett, JoLynn Berge, all the team that is working on processing all of these budget proposals that are coming out of Olympia as they come out to have information that we can turn around and send back to our legislative delegation in a heartbeat.

We help them in terms of the advocacy, we are catching mistakes that they've made before they do.

in terms of their budgeting but the amount of work that our team has been putting in trying to process down to the dollar what the what these budget proposals means is amazing and so thank you so much.

It makes my job so much easier when I'm out talking to people to know that if they have a question for it I know that I can point with confidence to our team to get that information to them and I am sure it helps everybody across the state in terms of processing this what it means to our kids.

I also wanted to congratulate Chief Wyeth Jesse and our special education staff for the work that they did and are being cleared of the MOU.

That was our smart goal last year and that was just the one little bit that we needed done and they did it and it was with so much hard work so many long days.

My hats off to you.

I wanted to mention.

to Director Burke's comment about it being CTE month that I would say that both for Governor Inslee and Superintendent Reykdal that they both made mention of the importance of CTE and I really felt that amongst the directors all over the state that we want to see supporting our kids in a breadth of opportunities that will lead to bright futures for them.

So we have support out there and so we need to continue to make sure that we are doing the work and partnering up with people.

I want to thank Sabrina Burr and Eden Mack as well and I just want to make sure that everybody knows that their work here on the Seattle Council PTSA is just the culmination of years and years of hard work that those two ladies have been doing for our district.

And so they are doing that work now through the auspices of the PTSA and that's great but they've been doing great work like many of our parents for so many years so thank you for that.

At my community meeting one of the things that was brought up was a question from a parent and I thought it was a really good question very sincerely put about when we as a district have decided to give power to our buildings to be a little less decentralized and have the leadership do a lot of that work.

How do the parents know that those individual schools are following the board policies when we are not having a sort of broader, you know that broader centralized push?

And so that's something I think we need to continue to look at in terms of identifying the policies that we have from the board that we have now sort of said principles we are going to give you flexibility and leeway in terms of what you are going to do with these policies to make sure that they are doing something with them.

So the example I was given was the homework policy that each of the schools can develop a homework policy but unless a parent is asking about it how do we know whether or not the principals have done it?

And with the turnover of principals how do we know that it's on their radar?

I'm not saying it necessarily should be.

I know why you walk through the door as a principal you immediately start answering the issues in front of you.

So I think we as a centralized agency need to make sure that we're giving them a tool so that they know which of the policies they are responsible for implementing to make sure that they are doing that work.

And so I'd like us to identify what those topics are and start working on that tool for our principals so that our parents can go with confidence to our principals and say what is the policy around X.

And the principals with confidence not being taken off guard can point them to it.

It is black history month so within that context I thought the timing of Rita Green and the NAACP bringing their ethnic studies resolution was awesome I won't say anything more about that other than I think it's a great idea and I think it will really bring to life a lot of different areas of study and I think that we should really look at somehow tying in civics.

into that because I think our students ability to participate in our system is the one that will most empower them and I think we will be able to show a lot of examples of when that has happened and the gains that have been made for lots of different groups of people.

It is also Valentine's Day and along with black history month I will say that my daughter serenaded me with we shall overcome for Valentine's Day as part of her black history month studies I guess at school.

And my only thought is and so we shall.

We shall overcome all the things that are happening today in this world and we will continue to work.

So thank you everybody for your hard work.

Happy Valentine's and happy black history month.

And my next meeting will be on March 2nd it's a coffee so it will be at Zoka at 730 to 9 AM and I am looking to put my monthly meeting on March 25th as well but we will get those details posted.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

The number for today is 54,900.

$1,000 of McCleary fines at $100,000 a day.

To me that is most profound and most distressing that the state legislature can tell the state Supreme Court to pound sand.

I'm not going to go through the list of thank you's but but I will say that I agree with every thank you that has been made tonight and couldn't agree more and I was disappointed not to make the South Shore event because I went last year and it was a thing of beauty and wonderfulness and it was bigger and better this year I understand.

So I intend and hope to be there next year.

I did make the teach in on Saturday and there have been very few times I've been more proud of this district than seeing folks there on Saturday on their own time and their own dime.

learning and having powerful conversations and exchanging information and I got just an immense amount out of it and I just wish we had had 15 times more folks.

And Veronica Gallardo and other folks in this building that put their shoulder to it.

Thank you ever so much and I hope that we can figure out a way to pay people to be there on weekends to where we can really get that nucleus of folks.

And remember that the folks that presented in the breakout sessions were there on their own time and their own dime as well which it really says an enormous amount of the commitment of folks in this district.

Issues on my plate presently are the overwhelming enrollment at Genesee Hill elementary school We will be hanging children from the rafters because we will not have seats for them.

Flip Herndon other folks are working on it.

It's it's an issue.

It's a big problem.

That school the day it opened last September was well full and it's looking to be even more full with as many as six kindergarten.

Now we know we have the Schmitz building down the street.

We know we have a child care center that the parks and recreation folks run and one hopes that perhaps we could do something exciting and creative and maybe put oh I know an inclusion preschool in there while we are at it.

So that we can meet even more needs.

But the issue again is money.

And we're in the middle of a terrible terrible budget crisis.

So stay tuned for that.

Difficult topic to bring up and hearing from a great many folks in the community that our HCC pathway high school Garfield will be limiting advanced placement classes.

And that this again haven't seen it officially.

Rumors.

There's a meeting tonight.

This is the week of open enrollment.

If we don't do community engagement that we've worked so very very hard on this last year and we don't let our communities and students know if we are changing the rules of the game then I don't think we are doing the best that we can.

Now do I appreciate that Garfield has huge capacity issues?

Do I appreciate that Garfield has a great many challenges?

I absolutely do.

But I don't understand how this district can change the rules of the game the week of enrollment and I'm very concerned about it and have reached out to senior staff regarding the same.

Was pretty concerned when I heard about the chain doors at Rainier Beach High School during testimony tonight and I trust that And she said so, that assistant superintendent Peggy McEvoy will be investigating that post-haste given the fact that that's a life code issue.

And we certainly care about our children's safety.

My next community meetings will be Saturday March 18 at the Delridge library 3 to 5. and tax day April 15 3 to 5 Delridge library and I'm here at this building in the boardroom at 7 a.m.

on Wednesdays and can be available at 7 a.m.

on Thursdays as well just need to work through the board office to make that happen.

I appreciate that's early.

I bring treats.

I make coffee and I'll work with you and my schedule to the best of my ability.

And again it's really an honor to do this work and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the folks in this building and the folks in the schools that work every day for our 53000 kids.

Thank you.

So I would also like to thank all the students who spoke tonight and performed tonight from Washington middle school, from Ingram we had Asher and Tessa, we also had the students who came and spoke from Rainier Beach high school.

You know Rainier Beach high school did undergo a little bit of a renovation it had a theater that was built there but that was a while ago.

And it's true it is one of our buildings that has not had the attention that some of our other buildings have.

It is slated to be on BEX V which is going to be in I believe 2019 but then there's always a delay from when it's on the levy to when we get the money and then when we start a project.

So I really do appreciate the students explaining to us what the reality is and I want to assure them that the state of their building in no way reflects on how much we value them as students and as people.

I am sorry that we do have buildings that are falling apart and I agree that students are happier and healthier in buildings that are in better care.

So I would also like to follow up on what Director Burke had suggested and that is let's start a short list of some short-term long-term projects and maybe there's some things we can do before we get to the major renovation.

to help make that school a more pleasant place for these students to be and to better reflect our values and how much we value those students.

I also want to acknowledge black history month as it said every year a month is never enough to acknowledge any particular race and the contributions of people but it is an excuse for us to at least highlight something and remind everybody how much we value the many different people who make up this country.

We will be discussing that a little bit later on tonight when we talk about a resolution that we brought before.

to vote on tonight having to do with safe zones for our students who come from different countries.

My last community meeting was actually earlier this week and the topic that everyone was interested in was the opening of Magnolia elementary school.

The district is going to be reopening that and I think it's next year to help relieve some of the capacity challenges there are in the Queen Anne and Magnolia area especially Queen Anne.

Families are concerned about potential boundaries that are going to redraw them away from the schools that currently are within walking distance to a school that will now be down a hill, up a hill and past railroad tracks.

So I do want to encourage all families involved in this particular discussion to come to the meeting on March 15 to discuss the Magnolia elementary project.

and to bring any questions they have and any concerns they have to Flip Herndon and Ashley Davies and those who are involved with this project so we can devise a way to open this school in a positive constructive manner that doesn't move families away from the schools that are within walking distance.

And let's come up with some more creative ways to handle these capacity issues.

It's a real dilemma because we are a growing district and when we open schools we need students to be in there.

But again as I've stated in the past I would like us to be able to do this in the least disruptive way possible.

And so please now is the time for families in Queen Anne and Magnolia who will be affected by the new school to speak up and give us your input on those issues.

I also want to thank our staff who gave us the updates from Olympia, Steven Nielsen, Erin Bennett and Jill Geary for being a tireless advocate for the district and it sounds like there might be a tiny glimmer of hope regarding some of the funding but there's still a lot of work to do and so it's good to be updated on those issues.

I had the opportunity to attend the equity summit on gifted education that was hosted by the Robinson Center for young scholars and I want to thank Dr. Nancy Hertzig for organizing that.

You know it was an interesting conversation, there were some topics brought up that I would love for us as a district to talk some more about.

Some of them we've already started upon and that is how can we reach out and understand how to identify gifted learners who are not being identified and that's typically children of color and one of the speakers there brought up the fact that in her district they have identify what the traits are of gifted learners and they have taught their teachers and their parents how to recognize these traits and that helps them identify these children and make the necessary referrals that start these children in the process of being identified and brought into the services and programs that they need.

Because that is the weak point for us at this point is that our referral system is where the disproportionality is starting.

We are simply not referring enough students of color into our highly capable and our spectrum programs.

I think it's also important for us to understand as a community as a district what gifted looks like.

I think there's some misperceptions about that and so anything we can do to help teach people more about how to recognize those characteristics.

Not always what you think.

That will keep us all in a better understanding of why these students need the help they do and again I've said it before it's an intervention it's not a privilege it's an intervention is what we are doing for them.

For the bus drivers thank you to the speaker who brought up the issue of healthcare.

It's absolutely important that we treat our bus drivers fairly and make sure that they are healthy.

that will be coming to us later on tonight as well.

Renier View Elementary School thank you to them for the staff for bringing their presentation to us.

I would like to take them up on their offer to visit the school.

I think Betty and I have already had plans to go visit the school and I'm very interested in knowing how the balance is done between teaching and data analysis because it seems like we're asking our teachers to be data analysts now.

And I'd like to know how the balance is and how how that works out.

And so I'm very interested in visiting the school.

Let's see what else is on my list.

Both directors Geary and Harris brought up a very important issue that I think we are grappling with right now and that is the issue of autonomy of our schools and how that works within the framework of the policies that we set as a district.

How do we reconcile having a districtwide vision and expectations for schools and yet allowing our schools to be individual communities and principals to have a certain amount of authority.

I think we've run into a number of instances where it's not clear that the amount of autonomy that the principals have is in sync with our expectations as a district or our policies as a board.

My understanding is if we set a policy it applies to everybody and it's expected that everybody will adhere to it.

So I don't see a lot of wiggle room there.

So if something is going to be changed during the year or something needs to go through a public community engagement process that should be applicable to every issue and every school.

And so I share the concerns of Director Harris that at Garfield there's an idea to change something And I understand there are some potentially some really honest good motivations behind it.

And that is the idea of advising students not to take too many AP classes because it can be overwhelming.

It can be too much work and too much stress I completely understand that especially in the 11th grade year which is already very stressful.

But to limit them to make an absolute cap and to require a waiver to avoid that.

It creates a new burden and I don't know if that exists in our other high schools and so we have to take a look at that and see whether we are being consistent and this is again something that needs community outreach.

It shouldn't be something that is done spontaneously.

My next community meeting will be probably fairly early in March because I know families are very eager again to talk about the Magnolia elementary school issue and we're running into some holiday time in the next couple weeks so that won't work so well.

So I will post that up on the district's website as soon as I get a location secured.

We are running into tax time and so the library spaces tend to get booked up pretty quickly.

I'm just trying to make sure I covered everything on my list.

Okay I believe I have and now I know Director Patu had one more thing to add.

I just want to also announce my community meeting.

Normally I have my community meeting on the last Saturday of the month but this month I'm going to be out of town for the last week so my community meeting is moved to the 18th of this month at the same place and invite everyone to come.

It's from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock.

Thank you.

So the board will now take a 10 minute break and we will reconvene at 652. Thank you.