Seattle School Board Meeting Oct. 3, 2018 Part 1

Welcome.

This is the October 3rd legislative meeting of the Seattle Public School Board.

As we begin the meeting the board would like to recognize and I believe the staff as well.

Recognize and honor the first peoples of the Puget Sound territories by acknowledging that we are on the land of the Coastal Salish tribes.

I would also like to welcome Marlee Bennett who represents West Seattle High School who's joining the board at the dais to my left this evening.

She will have an opportunity to give voice to students this evening and she's also got the opportunity and the privilege to ask questions when the board is discussing motions and we hope that you exercise that privilege.

Thank you for being here.

Ms. Ramirez roll call please.

Director Burke present.

Director DeWolf present.

Director Geary here.

Director Mack here.

Director Patu here.

Director Pinkham present.

Director Harris here.

Now if everyone would please stand or remain sitting should you so choose for the Pledge of Allegiance.

We do not have a student performance schedule for this evening.

So now I turn the floor over to the superintendent for her comments.

you Madam Chair and board.

It's great to be here and see all of you.

Tonight I am actually ceding my time over to the city department of elementary and early education for a presentation on their upcoming levy.

And so I would just like to call up Dwayne Chappell and his team and he can introduce them and give a little overview of what's happening and a little update.

Thanks Mr. Chappell for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity to be here.

I would like to say good morning or should I say good afternoon Madam Chair and lovely board members as well.

My team right here sitting behind me is our director of education is our early learning director Monica Liang our finance director Tim Wolfe.

We have Austin Miller he's our outreach director and Chris Dr. Christina Galletta she's our K-12 and post-secondary director.

And we have Chris Alejandro here.

He's our education staff for the mayor's in the mayor's office.

So just want to start off by introducing and thanking him for being here with me.

I know my time is limited so I'm going to try to get through this presentation and then so we can have a little time after for me to field some questions.

So just wanted to start off by saying yes we know this has been a long amazing partnership that we've had with the city.

We cherish it and value it and we're looking to continue in our partnership as we transfer the lives of our kids here in Seattle.

Down OK.

All right our goals for today's discussion really is for me just to discuss the key components of our FEPP partnership and review some timelines with you all.

We won't get a chance to dive deep into our programmatic or budget discussions but at a later opportunity we'd be more than willing to do that or even if some we have to have some small meetings two on two or so forth to dive deeper.

So just want to just set a little bit about the context today.

You know this is a really exciting time for our city.

You know it's the start of the school year.

We have new leadership amazing superintendent and at the school district we have new leadership.

in the mayor's office an amazing mayor and we also have some new initiatives happening here in Seattle that's been super supportive of education in our educators.

But what but just to be honest with some of this excitement little it comes a little uncertainty and speaking specifically of a little bit just just some of the changes to state funding.

And you know to continue lobbying that's happening down in Olympia.

Some of the sun setting levies on both our side the city side as well as the district side.

But how however where we are now speaking about the new leadership with the mayor and new superintendent here we're looking at one department in education early learning that's working collaboratively with Seattle Public Schools.

And thinking about that we know that there are some levies that are sunsetting coming up soon.

Our FEL SPP levy and Seattle Public Schools levy coming up in February.

So what I'll be doing now is really just giving you a little bit details of the FEPP the families and education and preschool and promise levy and I'll go over a little bit of the new investment areas.

And if I get to using some acronyms that you are familiar with please just pause me.

So I can say what they are.

Wanted to.

Start off by showing this slide right here because we think about all the change that's happening here in Seattle and we know that we really want to make sure that we keep our focus on young people here.

And just as you look at this slide I want you to think about our young folks here in Seattle and know that the future of work cabinet at the city of Seattle asks young people about their aspirations and what we learned from there we took it and tied it into the mayor's vision to afford an affordable Seattle.

and expanding her investments to post-secondary.

And so what you'll see right here is this slide that basically breaks down the median income household by race and ethnicity.

And you'll see as as if you didn't know you'll see to the left far left you'll see the average median income for our white families and then the far end of the spectrum you'll see our Native American and our African American population median income.

So we just wanted to share this with you as part of what the vision has been for the mayor around education.

And how that will guide the FEPP levy, you'll see that we have a new opportunity right here, right?

This is just a context of who we serve and who we work with.

You'll see this continue that we are actually providing services from preschool all the way to post-secondary and you will see the nurse down below letting us know that the nursing and health component is a huge and key investment to us.

And we know that SPS is our biggest partner but not our only partner.

So just wanted to just show you an overview of who we serve from the Department of Education and Early Learning.

Here are a few of our values and principles and priorities for the 2018 FEPP.

I won't go through all of them.

These are condensed but I'll just actually highlight a few that we always want to make sure we ground ourself and let people know that one that we are definitely going to continue investing in our historically underserved communities.

We're definitely going to make sure that we're that we establish partnership agreements.

All of our levy proceeds are definitely supplementary and complementary.

Everything that we do will be competitive funding processes and we have performance based contracting and the last one I really wanted to highlight was just us making sure that everything we do is we're going to have a cut.

accountability, and some type of continuous improvement structures within everything that we're investing in.

You all have a copy of this.

I won't go through the rest of them so we can save some time.

All right, so here is an overview of the budget plan.

And so, as I said before, all of these investments are supplementary and complementary.

And I'll just start by talking about the first investment that you'll see that is 54% of the total package, which is our preschool investment.

And just a high I'm just going to give you a few high level things about each of the investments and then we'll move on.

The preschool investment is going to look at expanding preschool 65 percent over seven years.

So we're looking at serving up to about twenty five hundred children by 2025 26. We're also going to expand eligibility to all 3 and 4 all Seattle 3 and 4 year olds.

And we want to improve our streamlined process.

So that's just a high level overview of what is going to be in our preschool portion of the FEPP.

In the K-12 portion of the FEPP, K-12 and community-based, you'll see it's approximately a smaller percentage, I would say roughly 29, 28 to 29 percent.

But you'll see that there are four type of investments in the K-12, and the four are school-based investments, opportunity and access investments, wraparound support services, wraparound services, and then we have a culturally responsive investment.

And just a little bit about each.

The school based investments will definitely continue to offer intensive support for a limited number of our schools and serving high concentration high concentrations of our levy focused populations.

And we're looking at making sure that we provide extended day and year round learning opportunities which will come with academic social emotional support of college readiness and college exploration just to name a few things.

The other bucket that I wanted to speak to was the opportunities and access bucket.

And in that bucket you'll see that our investments will offer supplemental services related to out of school time and programming.

So it'll also focus on college and career readiness and and family engagement, the wraparound support services that will be in the K-12 portion will basically provide family support services, support for youth experiencing homelessness, and other services such as extended day programming.

And the last bucket in K-12 and community is our culturally specific and responsive investments.

And those investments will focus on closing gaps for priority populations through the implementation of high quality community based and culturally specific and responsive programming.

So those will definitely reflect the racial and cultural diversity of the community.

So those are the four buckets in K-12 and community investment.

The other portion, if you can see, is the school K-12 and school health investment, which is about 11% you'll see up there.

What that's going to do, that's really just going to continue our nursing and oral health and mental health support.

We will, of course, have three new school-based clinics, which will be at Lincoln, Meany, Robert Eagle Staff.

And there is some, in this portion right here, right now, there are some, there is some funding, some seed funding for a new health clinic at Nova.

So those are the highlights for the health and just just a quick note that our school based health centers they provide a comprehensive medical and mental health services which include like preventive early screening and some type of integrated treatment to keep students healthy and in school.

So that's the portion of our K-12 and health investments and the last portion which is the smallest slice of the pie up there you'll see is the Seattle promise and ultimately the promise is basically going to focus on tuition wraparound support services for for the kids and will also provide non-tuition and financial support for the students that will be.

Participating in the Seattle promise.

So that's a high level overview of what the budget will look like.

I have just a few more slides that we'll get to and then I'll be really ready to field some questions.

This next slide right here is just a FEP, Levy Implementation and Evaluation Timeline Plan.

So just as you look at this, just know that this is all tentative.

This isn't anything that is etched in stone that can't be changed as far as dates and so forth.

When we were engaging principals and community and so forth throughout the process of putting, prior to putting this together, we know that we were speaking to principals and talking about a hold harmless year and so forth.

And just know that things, decisions really haven't been made whether or not there'll be a transition year, but we do know what was communicated to families and communities.

and so forth.

But this mayor's package does propose some changes which which which may have promoted a transition year but there were some changes implemented in between.

So looking at this my last point on this on this this timeline as you'll see we have it built out all the way through March of 2019 and March of 2019 is probably when we sometime we'll be coming and sharing with you all some of the work that we've done and bringing in front of you again.

But we do anticipate engaging a lot before or should I say more up into March.

And I want to we I wanted to speak to our partnership because right now this FEPP it truly offers an opportunity for us to revisit just our relationship that we have our great relationship that we have with Seattle Public Schools and and the way we're looking at guiding this is knowing that the partnership agreement is going to guide our work and for the next years to come.

Which is why we a few weeks ago reached out to our colleagues in the cabinet Superintendent Juneau and her amazing colleagues basically just to have a retreat to look and say.

OK, we know what what what needs to happen on by March, but we also wanted to make sure we started in some conversations that are going to be core components to our partnership agreement and develop to develop like a work plan between the both of us.

for us to start accomplishing specific shared identified goals and values and so forth.

So we just want to make sure that we build to continue to build upon our strong foundation for our partnership that we have together.

And all of this is definitely some of our drivers are making sure that we focus on race equity community engagement.

transparency and making sure that we are all tasked with closing or eliminating the opportunity gaps and as Superintendent Juneau's team and cabinet talks about Seattle ready.

We want to make sure that our kids have an opportunity to participate and be ready for all of these opportunities that are here in front of them.

So with that said I wanted to just end by saying thank you for giving me this time to speak to you.

But I'm also looking forward to making sure that our marriage continues and and we are working together on behalf of our kids here in Seattle.

So that is the end of my portion and I'm more than willing to field questions that you may have.

Did you want to give five minutes for board questions at this point.

OK.

Who would like to go.

Director Mack.

I am incredibly grateful to the city and the community members that fund this levy and I'm grateful that we have this additional support and the focus that is and the intention of focus around the goals and it's so important.

So I'm really grateful for it.

I'm curious to know a little bit we're talking about the partnership agreement as it comes up and it will be solidifying that and voting on it in March.

Can you clarify what the typical process is for deciding which schools are identified for which types of services and grants.

How does that process work once.

Once this passes and the dollars are there is there a process by which the city and the district central staff first run some data analysis and identify which schools are in the greatest need or do individual school principals have to apply.

How does that process work.

So to kind of to start with your last piece.

So what will happen basically will be some indicators that will be developed on who are eligible for the levy funds and then backwards mapping from there would be as I said in one of the values there will be like a competitive process and and so forth and schools will be selected from there.

And once we get a lot further along the line to figure out like what are those key indicators.

are then we'll be able to say to speak more so to what the key indicators will be for for schools to apply.

But to answer your question yes there will be a competitive process.

Harris.

Other questions comments concerns from my colleagues.

Director Burke.

I want to echo Director Mack's gratitude to the city and the voters for the support on this.

It is really foundational for what we do and I wanted to share maybe a couple of thoughts concerns and also point around alignment.

I really appreciate in the guiding principles The the way you're being really thoughtful about the transparency the accountability and the continuous improvement piece.

That's something that we're working on internally as well constantly.

And I just wanted to to to really emphasize that from my point of view that and I think in terms of a sustainable.

initiative leveraging that money into you know we're investing into something that becomes the new normal.

And so if there's a way to invest that in a very intentional way with the understanding that it's not it's not perpetual we're investing to create change to create a new system that's sustainable at a lower funding level because we we see that problem ourselves.

So that leads into probably my my biggest apprehension and I just want to share publicly that you know my both my enthusiasm around the pre-K program.

But a little bit of a concern that as it grows it's potentially built on a funding model that's not sustainable to grow out further.

So I just want to really encourage that you know to maintain the high quality maintain the high standards but be really diligent about how to deliver those services at a reduced cost so we can provide them to more and more students because I think that's part of the value we offer to our city.

And then finally around the partnership agreement.

I just want to make an intentional connection between the work that's captured in the FEPP levy and our SMART goals.

Essentially our first three SMART goals our first one is MTSS which is. throughout the school based investments.

Our second one is the EOG work and that is also really embedded in here.

And our third one is around college and career readiness the Seattle ready component and the Seattle promise is integral to that.

So the more you can help make those connections between the city and the and the district because I think you as an individual know all too well How easy it is for bureaucracies to go off in their own directions.

So I'm really hoping that you can help us stay on the same track there.

Thank you.

Other comments questions concerns from my colleagues seeing none.

It's me.

I have a couple of questions and then I have a concern as well that will not be unknown to you sir.

First of all thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you to you and your staff to Mayor Durkan and to the Seattle City Council who tweaked the K through 12 portion of this.

Very very grateful.

I am curious how many Seattle preschool plus classrooms we currently have.

I've heard rumors and I'd like to hear from you all whether or not those might be true.

So what we can do is get that information and we'll shoot it over to you in an email and make sure Superintendent Juneau and her cabinet are over there so we can be specific.

I don't want to tell you a number and we have more.

OK I'll just share with you the rumors that I've heard and my concern and I hope these are incorrect rumors.

It was my understanding last year we were up to eight Seattle preschool plus classrooms and I have heard from more than a few sources that we are down to four and I would find I mean I'm seeing.

OK.

OK.

Obviously it's a huge concern.

We did a task force over it.

This board made it very clear that inclusion is front and center next whether or not we will be sharing any of the FEPP funds with charter schools within the city of Seattle.

We have yet to get a clear answer on that.

Now would I suggest.

Voting against such an extraordinary levy.

I absolutely would not.

Let me make that very clear.

Have done so publicly many times.

It is an issue of significant concern and I'm wondering when we might get a solid clear answer.

So to answer your question as and I first of all I just want to thank you for consistently asking and pinging and poking me about that question and the answer as as you know if I said before that that is still within the legal office and I think you and I have connected a couple of times trying to see if we had any updated information.

But to answer your question as soon as I know you will be the first to know how that will shape out.

Might I respectfully ask that you go check in with our Seattle City attorney because what I get is this.

OK.

Yes I will.

Thank you sir.

Any other comments questions concerns.

Thank you very much to you and your team.

Hugely appreciated.

Thank you again.

Superintendent has no further comments.

Holy smokes.

OK.

We are now at board committee reports.

Who would like to start.

Director Pinkham chair of audit and finance.

I was going to volunteer Eden but OK.

Thank you.

And that's the pain.

Thank you everyone for coming out in finance.

Actually our monthly meeting for October won't be until the coming Monday.

But we do have some things coming up for the next actually board meeting.

Our internal auditor Andrew Medina will come up and do his annual presentation on October 17th.

So.

People look at that if you want to see what he has to update us on his annual report.

Other things that we have coming up it looks like state auditor contracts coming up changes some policy numbers getting away from the letters to the number system.

And.

And that's just more the audit side.

But again just for us the finance always going on with the budgets and appreciate the turnout at my last community meeting bringing up concerns and we'll hopefully get those addressed.

And so I opt to go first because it's kind of short and sweet because I have more to share after our next audit meeting on October 8th.

Thank you.

Next up Director Mack chair of operations.

Good evening.

There's lots going on in the operations world with.

Transportation issues and BEX levy coming up.

There were levy community meetings that were held over the last few weeks last couple of them.

I know a number of board directors made it to those meeting myself and Director Geary and Director Burke.

We had a work session last week on BEX V. It was incredibly detailed and really helpful.

We went over the proposed.

Project list talked about the Sophie choices that we've got.

We have well over two point five billion dollars of identified need that we can't put on all onto a levy.

So we're going to we're in this difficult position of figuring out what projects make it on and what don't.

Board directors there asked some really great questions including some questions around our equity score and how detailed they were.

And I know that staff is actually looking at tweaking that to be more detailed and we're going to have a conversation about that score at Ops tomorrow and what that looks like and if it changes any of the rankings and see if the equity looking at the numbers a little bit differently might inform us slightly differently on that measure.

We also talked about the fact that we can't put everything on the levy.

But the board feels it's important to ensure that the most critical needs are met especially around safety security and building conditions.

We don't want rain falling on kids heads that sorts of things.

So we're going to be hearing more about that at the Ops Committee meeting tomorrow.

It's going to be very very full meeting from 430 to 630. You're welcome to come and join.

We're going to have the facilities master plan update draft which is a lot of the background information that goes into informing what will go on the levy.

I will also have the actual levy conversation and we have a couple distressed schools grants that are coming in.

This is where the legislature has granted us some dollars to support needs that aren't being supported by our levy for the Coe elementary school and Magnolia elementary school.

I always want to thank the legislature for helping fill those needs.

And let's see what else we have a work session coming up on student assignment on October 22nd.

We also have ongoing conversations around growth boundaries changes.

I think there's five identified hot spots.

We had a work session a few weeks ago identified those hot spots in the areas that may have some changes coming up in each of those areas and communities are.

on slightly different timelines for how the community is being engaged and conversations are going on.

I know that Magnolia community had a smaller meeting last week and they're planning at the end of this month to have two larger community meetings for those boundary changes.

Maple had a meeting last night with the community and we're going to be getting an update.

Tomorrow at operations about kind of the timeline on all of those processes and we know where communities being engaged and what the what the potential changes could be.

And we're also going to be talking about board policies that intersect with our student assignment and our boundaries and our capacity management and staffing and all of these things that intersect and are really complicated and challenging.

The board policy 3130 which is student assignment.

There's a term in there called space available that isn't very well defined.

So we're we've been on ongoing conversation of how to how to clarify that and support our processes better as well as policy H13 which is around capacity management because every year we have we have to figure out how many kids are going to be going to which schools and how many staff that requires etc.

And.

That policy is old it's an H policy it's a lettered policy not a numbered policy so we need to update that and so we're starting the conversation on how to revise that policy and also ensure that the procedures that go along with it are workable.

So that'll be an interesting discussion about the timeline kind of of what are the touch points along the year and I'm.

I'm a policy wonk I'm really looking forward to that conversation.

Come and join me if you want to hear about it too.

And.

I think that is about it that we're going to be touching on.

There's also landmarking fiscal impact and the oversight committee meeting of the BTA sorry excuse me BEX and BTA oversight committee.

We are under starting recruitment.

There are four open positions on that body.

That's a board advisory committee that supports the BEX and BTA levies going forward and to look for that if you're interested in participating.

And maybe I'll see you tomorrow at 430 right next door.

Mr. Burke chair of teaching and learning.

Curriculum and instruction.

Sorry about that.

So many words and so many ands.

Associate Superintendent Tolley is laughing.

That's his title.

Very good.

So our next C&I meeting I want to make special note that people understand that we have shifted the date.

I'm going to be out of town next week so the C&I meeting is Friday this Friday October 5th.

1130 to 130. So it's actually during the lunch hour on Friday.

And I want to thank my my committee colleagues and staff for their flexibility in shifting that around.

But I want to shout it from the mountaintop that for anyone who would like to attend please note the revised schedule and I apologize if that's an inconvenience.

Coming up it's building on.

I'm going to touch on a couple of topics that are sort of threads that are running through this.

You know I've spoken about policy A02.

We touch on that every meeting.

It's also shared with the executive committee.

That policy is taking a little bit of a longer trajectory because we're going to weave some of that work in with the strategic plan so that they are compatible.

Instruction materials.

The board had a work session last week and I thank everybody for for their their thoughts on that.

In committee we're going to be working on trying to take policy and fill the gaps.

We've identified three major gaps and then a series of kind of editorial and clerical things we want to clean up the gaps relate to digital or electronic materials are not well represented in the adoption process.

There is not a methodology to adopt district wide supplemental materials which would be a great way that we could maybe get some materials into classrooms at a lower cost or fill gaps district wide.

And then we also don't have a method to adopt non-commercial materials things like since time immemorial or components of ethnic studies that may not be available from a publisher.

So we're trying to adapt the policy to our reality.

Great discussions on that.

We have a regular work stream that's going on around the 24 credits and secondary revisioning.

We have a report out at the committee on that and then there is a work session which I want to highlight to my colleagues in the public.

October 10th.

This is when there's going to be more comprehensive discussion around the high school model to support our 24 credit mandate.

Essentially what's being referred to as the modified 7 and how that's being reviewed.

at different schools what that implementation looks like because I know that there's a lot of public interest around what is 24 credits going to look like at any particular high school and how are we maintaining our our budget fidelity our commitment to equity letting kids get classes they need.

And other things coming up.

We have.

The.

Policy 22 55 alternative learning experience schools or programs.

I know this is an important topic for you know many directors that we.

You know identifying.

Which of our.

Alternative learning experience schools are you know how they're being approved how they're being supported how they're being represented.

So that's coming through committee on Friday.

And then we also have a backlog of courses.

The board is supposed to approve courses and there's a backlog of those that are coming through through Caleb Perkins.

Some of them are courses that we are that are new courses.

And some of them are courses where it's just a clerical cleanup.

The course content and the course description did not match and historically not match and that was identified in some internal audit work before.

And I as chair of the committee said no bring them through as a bunch.

We don't want to bring them through onesie twosie.

We need to be able to kind of analyze them as a group.

So that's coming to the committee also on Friday.

Big meeting lots of stuff.

Hope folks can join.

Public is welcome invited because that's where the the magic happens.

Director Geary and Mack legislative.

Director Geary please.

Thank you.

So.

Director Mack and I attended the WSSDA Washington State School Directors Association's legislative assembly last weekend in Spokane with representatives from many of the different school boards around the state.

to discuss and put together our legislative our legislative positions and proposals.

It was a very interesting day and it is an opportunity to hear from and meet all the different school directors and their perspectives from around the state and it's.

Also a great time for us to get together with the other school directors in our district to determine how we are best going to lobby on behalf of schools when we when the legislative session is back in full force in the beginning of the year.

Some of the highlights I think were the discussion around safety within our schools and gun violence prevention.

And we did manage to pass as the association several.

measures and proposals that address that, I think, without any surprise, the more detailed there was about any type of restriction or support of legislation on reasonable restrictions around guns, the more heated the conversation became.

But ultimately even with the difference of opinion comprehensive school safety continued to gain support of the room and that was a really positive thing.

The other big issues of course were ways to make sure that we're fully funding education.

And there was some interesting discussion around holding the districts around the Puget Sound harmless for any shifts in their enrollment.

or their housing prices.

And that also sparked a lot of contention because as we are experiencing now it's not easy to predict the enrollment flows and to make sure that we can use our own levy dollars.

to smooth out those bumps is something that we would advocate very strongly for.

And yet there are districts around the state who do not feel similarly in that.

I believe it's their perspective that they want to make sure that it is a fair playing field when it comes to staffing and attracting teachers and that.

They don't want to see the disparity between the Puget Sound districts and what we're able to offer in salaries versus what they can offer in salaries persist.

Yet that ignores the economic realities of our regions.

So it was interesting.

A lot of great discussion and definitely a great way to get everybody together and start thinking about what we're going to do on behalf of our schools.

I think it was important for us all to remember that what we want is the ability to educate our kids to be prepared for the jobs that our state has to offer and for Eastern Washington.

Those jobs look very different than some of the jobs that they have to offer.

But it's all the more important that their kids be as prepared as our kids to accept those jobs.

And so I think we need to continue to find the commonalities between our different districts.

So that was a really interesting weekend within the within Seattle Public Schools itself.

We are also working on our legislative agenda which will be specific to our needs that will go to executive on.

October 6th and then we will be putting that up for introduction here before the board on October 17th looking for action on November 14th.

So keep your eye on that as we form that and start posting it.

If you want to have input on the formation of our legislative agenda for the year.

That's it.

Thank you.

Anything more.

Director Mack.

Any other liaisons that would like to speak at this time.

Seeing none.

It would be my distinct pleasure to invite the Seattle parent teacher student association special education group up to the box to introduce yourselves your hard work when you meet what your goals are for this year.

You've got 10 minutes.

OK.

Hello.

Thank you for inviting us here today.

We are the special ed PTSA board for this year and we are a group of parents and each of us have a special needs child in the Seattle Public Schools.

We are the new board for this year and we have very happy to hear Leslie that you said inclusion is front and center for you.

My name is Helen Wong.

I think I can speak for the rest of the board here that inclusion is front and center for each and every one of us at the dais.

Thank you.

My name is Helen Wong.

I am the president this year of the board and I have a child who is in grade 4 in special ed at Green Lake Elementary.

I will let the rest of the board introduce themselves.

Good evening.

My name is Hoda Muhammad.

I'm vice president.

I have two children at Seattle Public School one at South Shore and Rainier Beach.

Hello my name is Stacy Sundy.

I am a professional educator myself.

I come to the Seattle Public Schools this year for the first time.

My daughter Sophia Grace is 9 years old in the medically fragile program at Green Lake Elementary School.

I consider myself an advocate for all children.

And I'm Daniela Hall.

This year I am treasurer of the PTSA.

I have two kids at Fairmount Park in West Seattle and a That's all.

Some of you have seen me before.

Hi.

So our goal this year is to connect and to collaborate.

with obviously the parents and teachers and students in the district and also with you.

And that's why we are here.

And I know Jill has come to one of our meet some of our meetings and we are going to be having a listening session with the superintendent next week.

And.

So we basically are here to partner with you and to be a resource for you this coming year.

And we just wanted to start today by introducing ourselves.

We're going to be working hard to build relationships and advocate for parents teachers and students in the district.

And there's a 7000 special needs students in the district who are receiving services.

That's 13 percent of the total enrollment of Seattle Public Schools.

So there are quite a few number of these students.

And so we our role is to take the information from what we hear from the parents and the students and families and inform the special education department staff to just to guide the policies to serve our students.

We are sort of the sounding board and we feed it up to the to the staff district.

And we are changing things up a little bit this year.

So we don't have all the meetings in place.

We are going to be having our first general meeting October 23rd in this building right here.

And we will be having meet and greets.

In communities different regions of the community we will be having presentations that are coupled with what the district is already doing.

And we are going to be doing surveys to see what our parents our families would like us to work on.

So these are some of the initial things we will be doing but there's more to come.

So.

We just really ask that you be mindful in the decisions you make this year and that you include special ed on your radar and.

And because special ed students are in all areas of the district they are in your HCC program the ELL program different races social economic class.

So please just keep these students in mind when you make your decisions and for inclusion.

So I'm the longest serving person so I'll just jump in with a few things.

It's great to see new faces in the leadership here.

And as Helen mentioned our goal this year our focus is really family engagement and I know that that's been of interest to the district as well.

So please do feel free to call on us if you have any questions.

And as Helen mentioned their special ed is an equal opportunity player.

You know this is something that affects lots and lots of families.

There's even preschool kids who are coming in who have not been identified yet but in the future will be.

I think it's estimated about 10 percent of the preschoolers who come in without IEPs will eventually be qualifying under an IEP.

So I cannot stress enough that it is so important that we keep the good work going.

We're finally stabilizing.

in special ed.

Some of you know there's been so much upheaval in special ed over in the past and now we're on a good track.

We've got compliances rolling and now we need to focus more on what's happening in the classrooms for individual kids.

So like Helen mentioned when you're making these decisions please please remember to include special ed in every decision because They are everywhere.

Even from a BEX levy whether or not there's a wheelchair ramp.

My son's a wheelchair user.

So when I hear accessibility I don't think socioeconomic accessibility.

I think physical.

Can my son get in the building.

So it's from buildings to HCC services the students in highly capable they need access services.

They're not being served properly.

Resource rooms aren't staffed enough.

The assistive technology division is not staffed enough.

And these are far reaching programs there.

There are 7000 kids.

13 percent of families.

So like I said and we all said we're here.

We're super knowledgeable.

We've got an incredible background and experience and we would like to partner with you wherever you see fit.

So feel free to call on us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Could you please make sure that you reach out to the board members with invitations to your meetings any trainings that are available and communicate with us.

OK.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

OK.

The executive committee will be meeting at 3 p.m.

next Thursday on October 11th.

These are public meetings are held in the boardroom back here.

Again please keep an eye on the calendar.

Information background is uploaded.

The committee meetings is where a great deal of the work happens.

The give and take and the questions we invite you to come.

We'd love to see more public players at these meetings.

Very much so.

Next I'm going to turn over to our West Seattle High School student.

Tell us who you are where you're going how you're going to get there concerns and hopefully some good news as well.

Hi thank you for having me.

I'll take this off.

That's what you guys were doing.

Hi my name is Marlee Bennett.

I'm excited to be here today.

Thank you for having me.

I've attended only Seattle Public Schools during my 13 years of schooling.

I enjoyed my time at Gatewood Elementary Madison Middle School and now my final year of West Seattle High School.

I'm extremely invested in my schooling and this year I'm taking four AP classes starting a chapter of the best buddies program that pairs a special education student with a general education student to make a close friendship and reintroducing Special Olympics at West Seattle High School.

I am also continuing working three jobs although last night I received a fourth job offer so we'll see how that goes.

I plan an addition I am ASB president.

I plan to attend college next year and major in elementary education and minor in special education.

So you might see me back in a few years.

I'm currently wrapping up my applications for schools and look forward to what the future holds.

My main goal as ASP president is to create a more inclusive community at West Seattle High School.

I believe that every student like you has a place and one small step I have taken towards this is every Friday rain or shine.

I stand outside of the front doors of my school and welcome students with a bag of candy.

Although mostly I receive shy thank yous and an extreme lack of eye contact from the students, every once in a while I get a smile and can tell that my good morning and a fun-sized candy brighten someone's rainy Friday morning.

Through my experience, I have seen that a small action taken by students like me or the board like you can have wonderful results.

As a current student and a future teacher myself I look forward to this meeting to continue brightening the minds of our next generation.

Sam Niedenberger West Seattle's vice president will be discussing the lack of diversity in AP classes and I am doing my senior project on the effects of racial bias on students from teachers.

So I look forward to working with you this evening and in the future to inflict change.

A few weeks ago I was part of a diverse student study group with the University of Washington where I was exposed to the institutional racism that presents itself right here in West Seattle High.

As a white female student I was shocked to hear that this goes on at my school.

I was heartbroken to hear that my peers had felt mistreated and judged based on the color of their skin.

For my senior project I'll be working with the University of Washington to improve teacher trainings on bias and spreading awareness of the effects it has on students.

I'd be interesting to hear what you guys are working with to reduce bias within teachers and the trainings that teachers are currently going through.

Thank you for having me this evening.

I'm excited to witness and learn more about the school board's responsibilities in the public schools.

Do you have any questions for me.

I'm impressed by the multiple jobs and ASB president.

Thank you.

When I was in college I had three different jobs I put myself through so I can relate but take care of yourself and get sleep.

So how do you have fun in all of this work you're doing it sounds like you're doing a lot of service to others.

What do you do for fun.

Well I enjoy what I do.

All four possibly four of the jobs include children which is a huge passion of mine.

I am a ski instructor.

I work at a nursery.

I also babysit about four days a week.

And all of those for me are enjoyable and I have fun doing them.

And in school I do a lot of work through ASB of things that I really enjoy.

Today for example I went to Rite Aid.

I printed a whole bunch of photos of my peers having fun and I made a bulletin board and I put colorful things on it and washi tape and it was very fun for me.

Director DeWolf please.

Thank you again Marlee for joining us today.

My question is in the last month can you share something that you've learned that has been new or interesting from being in senior high school.

Well this last month I've learned a lot about college applications and looking forward to funding college.

My parents have announced how much they will pay for and the rest is up to me.

Thank you mom.

And so I've learned a lot about how to manage my money and how to look forward and look at scholarships to increase funding for my education.

Go ahead.

So my follow up is how can the district support you particularly in that issue around scholarships and finding those and seeking those out learning more about those.

Is there something that we could do better.

I think that currently I have not found any scholarships from Seattle Public Schools although I am aware that there are some nor nearing the end of the school year.

But I think that it would be beneficial to students if there was a.

A way to access scholarships that you guys trust or know of either on the Seattle Public Schools website.

I found some on the West Seattle website.

But if there was a district website that can streamline the scholarship process and make those more accessible to students I feel like that would be very beneficial to seniors and even underclassmen.

Director Patu.

And then Superintendent Juneau.

I just wanted to find out what is your school doing to promote racial equity within your school.

Well in previous years we have held a day called equity day and this was a day where there were no regular scheduled classes.

Instead we had trainings and we had multiple trainings from outside the community whether that be on race or that be on environmental equity or equity with special education students.

And so students would pick what they were interested in.

I believe there were upwards to 20 or more different choices.

They'd pick their top three and then they would attend those classes on equity in the community.

However this past year that this year this has been canceled.

And we will not be holding an equity day this year and I believe that this will decrease the possibility for further helping to solve the institutional racism at the school.

Can you give us a reason that it's been canceled this year please.

I believe it's because of attendance or lack thereof with the students.

I know that the students who who go to equity day enjoy it but there is a large percentage of students who take the day as a day off and do not attend.

Unfortunately.

Superintendent Juneau please.

Well first thank you so much for being here and participating.

It's awesome to see you and awesome to have a student on the dais and to bring that important voice.

I'm going to actually connect you with Dr. Brent Jones over there.

He runs our Department of Racial Equity parts of it and so he'd be a great person to talk to about things that are currently going on in schools to help you with your research.

and to try to get some things going over and on in your school.

So you bet.

So he will make that connection.

Assistant Superintendent of H.R.

given the fact that you want a teaching career and we want you to stay within the district.

Director Pinkham.

Thank you for coming here and sharing your definite values of equity and racial equity and what students are going through because we're seeing like students are coming up here last year saying I never was exposed to civics and all these other things and didn't get it until college.

You're getting it now.

So I appreciate you bringing that and just want to mention that yes your school was formerly had a mascot of the Indians but now they're the Wildcats.

So thank you to your school for making such a change.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Director Burke.

Thank you for joining us.

My microphone may work eventually.

You're amazing.

So just so you know when you're applying for your scholarships this meeting is televised will be posted on YouTube.

You should go to it take the little clip of your testimony and the supporting comments from directors.

and include that in your portfolio and send it out to different places because I think there are folks that are enthusiastic for your enthusiasm and us included.

Thank you.

So I have a question around your high school experience.

One of the things that we're doing is we're trying we're trying to improve you know the the.

College and career readiness and exposure for kids to things that are outside the K-12 system so that you've got you've got a beeline on what you want to do and you've been building towards it.

Your your hobbies your you know your passions align perfectly.

But there's a whole group of students that that haven't found that.

And so we have tools that we're trying to put in place around the high school and beyond tool around Naviance as a software package.

Have you been exposed to any of those.

Have they been of benefit.

Do you have guidance for us on how we can make our our tools and our training for students better so that they can find their their passions and align with them earlier.

Well we recently had a day where our counselors came into us and exposed us to Naviance.

I got to look around on that and it was very helpful.

In addition in the school we have college access now which I believe traditionally helps students of lower income which is wonderful.

As for showing students the opportunities of what can be out there for their future careers.

I think that an important way to do that is just having all possibilities for electives for students to take whether that be baking and cooking or drawing and painting and stuff like that.

I believe that through electives students are able to experience more possibilities for their future.

For my experience with that as a nearly full time AP student I and with student government and a language I did not have a lot of time to do electives.

So I think that if there is a way to increase electives on the side or I'm not sure exactly how to fix that possibly with the more credits.

But I did not take an elective until my junior year.

It was in the first year I had taken drawing and painting because of that my freshman and sophomore year I took French which took up that period.

So I think that through exposing students to more possibilities they can see a brighter future with that.

Thank you very much.

And I look forward to seeing you at the nursery this weekend.

OK we have reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda please.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

Does anyone have any items they would like to take from the consent agenda.

Director Pinkham.

Yeah per our other comments at the meetings when we have public comments and they list items they would like to discuss that are on the consent agenda.

I do see one of our commenters is going to share comments about actually two items at first I thought it was just one but there are two item number two the personnel report and item number six the acceptance of the building commission report for Arbor Heights.

OK number two and number six are removed from the consent agenda.

I'm pausing because I see someone in the audience checking with staff for assistance.

Does the director want to make a suggestion to take item number four off of the consent agenda.

Yes I'd like to go ahead and remove item number four the New England Center for Children contract off the consent agenda for discussion.

Is that the item agenda that you're interested in speaking to.

Thank you.

OK.

So number two number four and number six have been removed from the consent agenda.

Those will be moved to the bottom of the action item as 5 6 and 7. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended.

So moved.

I second the motion.

All those in favor of the consent agenda as amended say aye.

Aye.

OK.

The consent agenda has been moved and approved and those items go to the end of our action items and we will learn something new in public testimony one hopes.

OK.

We are at 5 20. That's 10 minutes before public testimony starts.

It's board comments time.

Who would like to go first.

Director Geary and those folks that have commented can come back and talk about items they heard in public testimony as well.

Director Geary.

Thank you.

Welcome Marley I didn't get a chance to to ask a question.

But the one thing that I wanted to say to you is I really appreciate your passion around inclusive environments and the work that you're actually doing to make that happen.

It continues to be a passion of mine to make sure that we are changing the culture within our schools to recognize the value of every student and that even those who identify as able bodied or typically developing.

have a vision of a world where they see the value in everybody and they take the time to figure that out.

And to that end I'm going to take that opportunity in that segue to let everybody know that tomorrow or on Friday we will be doing the unified kickoff.

at Ingram and that is the program that supports typically developing students and students with disabilities to partner around different types of activities.

Again oftentimes it's around athletics But there are all sorts of programs within the district including theater and other kinds of clubs that are putting together these people just as the club that you said that the program that you are initiating and sponsoring within your own school.

And so anybody who wants to join us at 955 on Friday morning October 5th at Ingram to celebrate that program we invite you to do so.

They're going to be a lot of different middle schools and high schools showing up with their teams and so a great opportunity to celebrate that.

Tomorrow night in Redmond and I don't have as many of the details around this other than it's tomorrow evening.

I'll be at the operations committee meeting so unfortunately I won't be able to go.

But it is the unified robotics kickoff out in Redmond and that's an opportunity for the kids to get together and work on creating a robot.

Then then the competition is actually held the championship is held later in November.

And again a really awesome.

These kickoffs are just really great events for our district for the surrounding communities to get together and see the joy of these partnerships.

So I just wanted to take that opportunity.

It's really going to be a focus of mine this coming year to make sure that we are doing everything we can to change the culture in our schools around these issues and I know a lot of people have the heart for it and the will for it and we just need to see it reach the ground and into our classrooms.

We put a lot of demands on our teachers in terms of performance.

And we have to remember that we have to take the time to remember everybody has a social emotional place even within academic performance and that if we can get really healthy inclusive social emotional environments everybody will be performing better.

And we as a district will be stronger and we as a society will be stronger.

I'll wait and hold any other comments that I have.

I talked about my activities on the ledge agenda and so that kept us really busy.

But my next meeting I'm continuing to hold Tuesday morning coffees at Zoka on Blakely near the university village.

Those are from 8 to 9 30. Once in a while I do have to adjust times based upon meetings and or a sick child.

So if you go to Facebook and look up my page I'll usually post if there's any change to that.

But I'm pretty pretty consistent and a lot of times it's only a few people and sometimes I sit alone so you can really.

have a one on one with a director if you can make that work.

If you can't make that work feel free to call and let the board office know that you'd like to set up a time to talk to me individually because I know some people work and that's a really difficult time and or maybe they're working in our schools and so would like an opportunity to talk as well.

Thank you everybody for being here.

It's great to see so many of you here.

Next up Director Burke.

I will throw a couple of brief comments in before the break.

I want to thank the special education PDSA board for coming out and introducing yourself and and sharing the mission and enthusiasm.

And I have an awkward ask for you that.

We were facing sort of an intractable problem and I think it's it's one of those things that we as a community have to really put our arms around that.

You know we have these conflicts around our commitment to inclusion and serving students based on need and maintaining compliance.

But as we grow enrollment identification we're not funded for it.

And so we have to figure out how to get past that.

We have to figure out how to get more funding.

We have to figure out how to how do we.

We can't in good conscience say we're going to defund a program when it's serving students in need.

And so it's not even really something that we can have conversations about.

So we have to figure out how to create a safe space and put the students in the middle and figure out how to serve them.

And I think that that's a really hard thing for us to grapple with on the board.

And so I'm asking for your support and suggestions on how we can even approach the conversation.

And make sure that we're still putting students in the center and that it doesn't turn into you know a sort of disruption that that you know you mentioned the how things are starting to stabilize.

And we don't want to create disruption but we have to figure out how to how to sustain those services to the students that need them.

couple of other hot topics because I'm just jumping into the hot topics right now.

We've been getting a fair number of emails from Washington Middle School families and I want to reemphasize that you know the the connection between the Washington Middle School scheduling and the governance tools that we have and the continuous school improvement plan.

And from my point of view as a director you know we we don't really see what's going on as much at the building level.

But I'm the way it's being presented to me it really feels like there's a lack of feedback going on and so I'm going to continue to ask staff to help support.

You know really a bidirectional communication because you know we need feedback as a board.

The community needs feedback.

If if we're doing something that we can't justify we shouldn't do it.

But if we're doing something that we can justify we should be communicating it frequently loudly along with that justification because that's how we move places.

The other hot topic I want to touch on is the Robert Eagle Staff middle school and highly capable.

We're getting more feedback from the community around.

Are we going to move it.

Are we going to split it.

What is the critical size for the highly capable cohort.

Know that this is a topic that.

is heavily on a lot of people's minds but we don't have a commitment yet other than we're trying to schedule a meeting.

And as we get towards that meeting we'll try to put more of these things the different options into a cohesive plan that folks can say yeah this sounds like the least worst plan because there really isn't a way to resolve our capacity problems at Robert Eagle Staff without having some impact to the community.

Enclosure I do not have a community meeting scheduled yet.

But as Director Geary mentioned as director maybe I can come to Leslie's have some lasagna.

And as Director Geary mentioned if if folks would like to to meet and I don't have a meeting scheduled please contact the board office and they can help coordinate that.

Thanks again for coming.

OK.

We are right at 430. So excuse me 530. Hello.

So it's public testimony.

Note that we will not be taking testimony at this time for proposed resolution number 2018 19 dash 4. The school board will afford members of the public an opportunity to express a view opposite that embodied in the proposed resolution when the board addresses that item on the agenda.

This is the gun safety initiative responsibility initiative.

We have very specific rules we must follow in terms of pro and con and I'm going to stay out of PDC jail.

A sign up sheet for that public testimony imposing resolution 2018 19 dash 4 is available at the back of the room.

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

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

You will be ruled out of order.

Also note that you have a two minute time limit and with 30 seconds remaining the yellow light will flash.

So please wrap up your comments at that point.

Shek will you read the testimony please.

First up for public testimony we have Sam Niederberger followed by Ellie Capastini and then Aiden Pruitt.

Okay I've got two minutes so I'll just get to it.

The achievement gap in Seattle is no secret.

Ranked as one of the worst in the nation we continue to see little change.

According to Stanford research on average white students in Seattle scored 3.7 years ahead of black students on standardized tests.

We are letting the achievement gap continue to grow.

Few initiatives have been taken due to lack of resources and effort by those who can make change.

How are we going to build a racially equal and diverse city of people of color almost four years behind white students.

Although there has been some measures put into place these have not been effective and we must try a different approach.

Seems as if a lot of resources have been put into been put into early childhood development programs.

But by middle school these kids are forgotten.

I think that the key to fixing this gap lies within honors and AP classes by walking down the halls of West Seattle High and just peeking into a classroom.

It is apparent if the class is AP or regular ed.

Anyone is allowed to take an AP class however minorities are discouraged from taking these hard classes in high school.

Students of color feel pressure from peers and teachers to take the easy route where success is a much higher percentage.

Schools are prioritizing the statistic over the student.

In the defining middle school years all students deserve to be encouraged and challenged so when they come to high school they're ready to take these classes.

There are options out there that need to be taken advantage of.

I spoke to a principal of a Bellevue middle school at Sammamish High School they require all freshmen to take an AP human geography class that administrative thinks is manageable allowing students to see the benefits of AP early on in their high school career.

This has been so successful that high schools from Bellevue have picked up this course.

I also think that a mentorship program would be helpful.

High school students could help struggling minority students with homework after school for much needed community service hours.

Lastly some middle schools offer honors programs but students need to test in.

Why not open an honors curriculum to all and encourage everyone to take an advanced class.

That way when they get to high school it will not be so daunting.

Four year educational difference is unacceptable.

There has to be change and it needs to happen now.

Ellie Aiden.

After Aiden we will have Laurel Glassley followed by Julie Van Arcken and Bao Ng.

Where's the oh it's already switched on.

Hello my name is Aiden.

I believe some of you have met me before.

I am a senior at Nova High School and I have a few things to talk about.

Unfortunately on the schedule it's went in as a.

The enrollment at Nova but that's actually my classmate who's coming up after me who will be talking about that.

I'm mostly going to be focused on focusing on communication with students and also core 24 at Nova High School.

Right now it is. apparent to me that students don't have much knowledge about how we can get information about the district.

How we can get information about the way the district operates the wonderful work you guys do here.

We just don't hear about it and.

From what I've seen it's not that the information is unavailable it's that we are not told it's available at any point.

I've been in Seattle Public Schools my whole life and I didn't know until this year that all the information about how the district runs was publicly available on the website.

Also at Nova in particular.

It is my understanding we are not receiving all the funding that we are supposed to be getting for core 24 among these freshmen and sophomores which is obviously an issue because they have to take additional classes but we as a school are not getting funding to teach them those classes.

So yeah those are issues that I hope you guys will think about.

That's that's about all I have right now.

Thank you.

Laurel.

Hi.

Is it on.

Yes.

OK.

I my name is Laurel.

I'm a student at Nova High School and I may have met a few of you before.

My my sister also went to Nova.

She.

She transferred there from Chief Sealth and I'm here to talk about mostly enrollment and then also some of the issues that Nova especially is having with enrollment.

Now I know that the enrollment process is very very difficult and confusing especially because Nova is now a service model school and as a student and as somebody who wants more people to come to my school because it's amazing.

I are we are us as the students are very concerned with how enrollment is going and it seems that there's been a lot of false information told not in an accusatory way but.

Many people have been told that for example the school is full when it's not.

And I also know that even enrollment at other schools can be very difficult.

I have a friend who last year she went she's been going to Chief Sealth for a long time.

Right.

And she moved out of district and then she had to not she was not allowed to be in school for the first two weeks of school.

because nobody told her that she had to re-enroll because she's out of district and that was super very frustrating process.

And I just believe that especially us as students we would love to work with enrollment and make the process easier.

And it seems that also the service model has been very difficult for Nova.

Our enrollment has just, it's been a big problem and it's something that I would like to address and have further conversations about.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Julie Van Arcken.

I'm a mixed race Southeast Seattle resident.

I'm the daughter of immigrants.

I live in a neighborhood of immigrants.

I'm mom to a Thurgood Marshall fifth grader and my hobby is bugging district staff about racial equity.

First I want to say I'm glad you're getting a grant for the IB program at Rainier Beach.

I've been working with the administrator for that program on the advanced learning task force and he invited me to come visit a classroom and I'm totally going to take him up on that offer and I encourage all of you to do the same as well.

I also wanted to talk about Maple Elementary boundaries.

I'm going to tell you what I said at the meeting last night except for hopefully you guys won't.

You're aware that you need to spend most of your time on what you signed up for.

I signed up for two things and I think everyone who signed up got on the list so I'm not displacing anyone.

Terrific.

Thank you.

OK.

So I'm going to tell you what I said at the meeting last night but hopefully you guys won't boo me off the stage like they did.

The staff has created an alternate boundary for Maple because the 2013 one is not racially equitable.

Please refer to the green stripe packet I gave you guys.

The 2013 boundary displaces 40 percent more African-American students.

It displaces 21 percent more Asian students.

It displaces 9 percent more Latino students.

It displaces 20 percent more multiracial students.

It displaces 20 percent more children of color.

It displaces 20 percent more English language learners and it displaces 9 percent more special education students.

So for those reasons please tell enrollment planning that you want a racially equitable boundary for Maple Elementary.

They've already created it and you guys can vote on it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

After Bao we will have Chris Jackins followed by Liz Black and then Richard Cho.

Hi my name is Ya Bao and I'm humbled to be to be here today and have the opportunity to speak to the board.

Thank you superintendent and board.

I'm happy to show my support for the whole child whole day initiative.

I'm a first generation immigrant.

When I first came here I only knew how to count to 11 in English and thanks to public education I'm 100 percent public educated and I now hold a doctorate and I know a lot more numbers.

And the number that I want to share with you tonight is the number 545 and that's the number of students that are enrolled at Maple Elementary School.

where two of my children attend.

But the right size capacity for this school is four hundred and sixty.

That is a difference of eighty five students in this Title 1 school with eighty seven percent non-white students 40 percent ELL students.

We are bursting at the seams.

Our school has a high population of new immigrant families and families that face challenges of housing insecurity.

I remember how difficult it was for my family when we first came here.

My parents never showed up to any school board meetings because we were too busy just surviving.

But I'm here today because I am privileged and I can use my voice to represent those who cannot be here because they're working at restaurants serving food that you eat and cleaning your hotel sheets.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to show up at the end of this long table that you've set.

But sometimes I wonder gosh it'd be a lot easier to talk to all of you if this were a roundtable with a lazy Susan in the middle.

Nevertheless I'm grateful for the access to share about maple and I'm asking for three things.

Number one please instruct district staff to prioritize finding the best solution for maple.

Number two shifting the boundary in a way that is least disruptive to families many of whom are in survival mode.

And number three include us in the BEX levy.

We're not there.

Maple is a beacon on that hill and a shining example of what can happen when we use resources optimally to form a robust system to support this very diverse population.

You will be so proud of the kids that come out of the school and how they will influence the city.

Thank you.

I would just add that we are very proud of the kids that come out of that school.

You betcha.

My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4 on the Arbor Heights commissioning report.

The report is unclear as to whether two issues were resolved on the grant for international baccalaureate programs.

Four points.

Number one at introduction the report included the following disclaimer quote an accessible version of the document may not be available unquote.

Number two the missing document has since been posted.

Thank you.

Number three with regard to students at South Shore who qualify for free or reduced price lunch a percentage is missing from the application.

Number four the number of students pursuing the IB full diploma at Rainier Beach is 69. How many qualify for free or reduced price lunch of that number.

On the Alliance for Education Gates Foundation grant for the whole child initiative.

Two points.

Number one the grant letter states that the district is forbidden from publicly communicating about the project without first coordinating with the alliance.

Number two the report states that the district uses six racial categories.

The list seems to omit Native Americans.

On the personnel report and staffing issues for points number one schools like Nova and Garfield have expressed concerns about staff transfers.

Number two the board has seemed to argue that it has no direct responsibility.

Number three in fact state law requires the board to approve the personnel report.

If the report is not approved employees are not hired.

Number four the district should stop relying on rote formulas to fund schools and instead aim to provide good programs at all schools.

Thank you very much.

Harris.

Before I start my testimony I want to say gosh how many minutes of P.E.

is a student at Maple getting with four five hundred and forty five kids.

With one educator, I got to see that light.

So, all right.

I didn't know what shirt to wear, so exercise grows brain cells.

Okay.

NECC, New England Center for Children is reported to be a world-class research and residential program.

However, the cost is, excuse me, the cost of $401,000 is excessive.

As exemplified last week at Garfield High School and other impacted schools it seems that Seattle does not have the money.

Now I want to talk about students.

This year during the tri days before the first day with students the district asked teachers to talk about circle and community.

Last year our topic was relationships with students.

Good teaching includes these along with differentiated instruction and formative assessment for all content areas including physical education which I teach.

But what I want to highlight is this, students need to engage with each other over the material, in person, to share it, to watch it, in my case of physical education, to listen and learn from each other.

The teaching strategy is called pair share, or turn and talk, and cannot be replaced with online learning.

On September 18th in this room Superintendent Juneau when speaking about the ORCA cards stated this is a great example of the power of student voice and how students can make a positive change in their community.

Thank you for saying that.

So I say let's allow students to do that.

Specifically what happened in the gym at Garfield High School last week was an unscheduled assembly in order for students to turn and talk asking each other what's going on.

They learned that their health and physical education program was being cut and now there is one PE teacher for over one thousand six hundred students and the sports medicine instructor was moved to take over the health teacher's job without having an endorsement in that content area.

Remembering that building relationships with students is important.

This is how how is changing a teacher four week into school and giving students a new teacher with no health endorsements a good move.

I'm going to conclude.

Can a school principal waive the PE graduation requirements when PE is mandated by state law.

What would Jay Inslee say.

What would parents say.

I appreciate you shedding beautiful light on what is going well in our district.

But I say we are not being truthful if we stay we say that we are in compliance with state law in terms of physical education for students.

After Richard we will have Melissa Westbrook followed by Akhil Sivasan and Dana Robinson-Slow.

I'm going to read this because this is too emotional for me just to speak off the top of my head.

I'm Richard Truax, Department Chair of Social Studies at Garfield, also a parent of an Ingram senior.

There's little in education that is more despicable to me than the systems of an employee in the system saying, I don't care.

Last Thursday afternoon, I was in the most emotionally charged meeting I've ever experienced in my 27 years of teaching.

Our principal was telling us about our two staff members being cut.

There's a lot of crying, confusion.

This scene was repeated across this district multiple times.

That Friday morning, students were going through the same process.

At that time, I saw the superintendent's new email about her weekly letter.

It was full of praise for all the work she's doing.

I scanned it.

I could find no mention of the staff cuts anywhere.

A really ugly reality hit me.

She doesn't care.

I asked myself, why was that a surprise when the board that hired her doesn't care?

I had never encountered such cuts in my entire career until a few years ago in SPS.

They are now a biannual occurrence.

Why?

Nobody here cares enough to fix this system.

That flyer lacked any empathy from our superintendent for the trauma her administration and leadership has just sowed across all levels of our educational system.

No compassion for her staff whose lives have been turned upside down and relationships ripped apart.

No compassion for all the students who are watching their schedules change, seeing people they care about crying and then facing the reality of moving to new classes and building new relationships.

Superintendent Juneau takes no ownership for this mess.

She makes no promise of what action she will take to fix this mess, to make sure it does not happen again.

No mention of holding people accountable or responsible for this mess up.

Silence can be loud and it's deafening, but when you don't care, you don't listen.

We do know when you do care, things change.

When Garfield was in this position a few years ago, we cut our Latin program.

Those classes were packed with HCC students and just like magic we got our FTE back.

This time we cut PE a class with almost zero HCC students.

Instead these classes have many of the other students at Garfield.

Many of those are special ed special need ELL students kids of color.

For years it has been obvious to the Garfield community where this board's priority is at.

My mom always said actions speak louder than words.

We need leadership not excuses.

You have to fix this mess.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I first want to note the issue of the recent teacher transfers which is called leveling in some parts of the country including Philadelphia.

This is no way to start a school year for students or to build a teaching core at a school and to this points to the need for the district to have better forecasting and in particular recognize that competition is growing for students especially with more charter schools in the city.

I also wanted to give you some information about the families and education levy.

There is no language in the levy and I talked to a lawyer knowledgeable about public education issues.

No language that prohibits giving some of the K-12 dollars to charter schools.

Seattle itself voted in a large majority against charter schools.

The mayor and the city council have chosen to have pre-K get the majority of levy dollars.

So the pot of K-12 dollars is smaller.

If charter schools in Seattle get access to that pot of dollars it means fewer dollars to Seattle schools.

The 36 dims endorse this levy but only if language is included to get to only have the money go to Seattle Public Schools.

I hope you would consider a resolution to that effect.

Second while the city council put in family support workers in the resolution I have heard from a couple of sources that they may be off site family support workers not on site.

I volunteer in a Title 1 school and I can't say enough about the need to have someone on site every day who knows the families.

Number three the city wants to greatly expand their pre-K and yet we know to do that they need space.

No one has said will they find it.

It's certainly not in Seattle schools with its capacity issues in most buildings.

Lastly I'll tell you what I'm saying to people about this levy.

Voters need clarity not confusion and this levy is too big and too vague.

I hope if it comes to a choice of a levy to vote for that voters choose to vote for Seattle Public Schools levies and not the cities.

Thank you.

A kill?

Hi my name is Akhil Srinivasan.

I have met many of you and I'm a math physics and programming engineering teacher at Nova.

I'm also coordinator and we serve some of the most bullied fragile trauma surviving youth in Seattle Public Schools and in Seattle.

We have one out of two students with 504s or IEPs many trans non-binary LGBTQ plus youth and.

A very high percentage of students with mental health challenges and these are not reflected in the six groups in the racial and equity lens cited used to justify staffing cuts, staffing displacements.

This is my fourth year at NOVA as a teacher and coordinator after teaching undergraduates and graduate students at Stanford and high school students at Boston Public Schools.

This is the only place where I developed some of the strongest relationships with students.

Nowhere else have I developed these kind of relationships.

And it's because of our coordinating and mentoring model, our core model.

And at the same time, we teach some of the most rigorous and problem-based curriculum that I've seen and that we come up with.

And coordinating is a swirl of being a therapist, a social worker, a listener, a mentor, an advocate, is more than half of my work at NOVA, in addition to teaching four block classes.

And so just a couple weeks ago, I had a long conversation with a student where we talked about almost an hour and a half about mental health, about addiction, about finding a job, all of these things.

The student has an IEP and chronic mental health issues.

Teacher displacements the two 15 percent of our general ed staff have made it impossible for me to meet with my coordinators and mentors and have these kind of relationships which the district professes it really believes in.

NOVA receives its funding as an ALE school receive funding centrally and the rest as a lump sum for secretary assistant principal principal and counselor position.

My ask is that our ask is that we would like the district to give our core 24 funding that other comprehensive schools received and our counselor funding that is centrally funded and cannot be displaced because we are also coordinators as well.

We need these funds immediately in order to bring back our two displaced teachers.

Thank you.

After Dana we will have Kara Golgert followed by Laura Riley and Christine Shigaki.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide input on the scope of the 2019 BEX levy.

My name is Dana Robinson-Sloat and I have a first grader at Sacajawea Elementary.

As you may already be aware Sacajawea is a small but important school in Northeast Seattle.

We have a very diverse community including many different backgrounds ethnicities and income levels.

And while Sacajawea also has a very strong focus on inclusion equity and safety the current condition of our buildings and grounds don't allow us to be as inclusive or as equitable or to keep our children as safe as we would like.

There are some critical projects that we're asking this board to consider while we await future rebuild opportunities.

We have three primary requests for improvements the first of which is ADA compliance.

Our two level school has no ramps and no wheelchair lifts and therefore isn't compliant.

There aren't any safe or convenient ways for people with disabilities to move from upper from the upper floor to the lower floor or to access our lower playground or lower classrooms and very few of our outside access doors are accessible without stairs.

This causes great challenges for our students and our teachers if they're injured and it doesn't allow families with disabilities to attend our events.

Neither of which supports the equitable environment that we strive to create.

Sacajawea has an exceptional special education program that serves a population of differently abled students.

Yet because we have no ramps and no wheelchair lifts our schools had to turn away three students this year alone.

Those students would have otherwise flourished in our community.

I'm convinced of it.

And our two distinct classrooms would also benefit greatly from additional ADA updates like safety glass.

safety glass in the windows and also accessible bathrooms and better temperature control for a variety of reasons.

Sacajawea needs to be ADA accessible in order to allow for true inclusion for every community member.

And next you'll hear from our one of our teachers Ms. Golgart followed by fellow parent Ms. Riley.

Thank you board and superintendent for allowing us to speak to Sacajawea's needs tonight.

I'm here both as a staff person within Seattle schools.

My name is Kara Golgart.

I teach developmental preschool early childhood education special education at Sacajawea.

I'm also a neighbor and a former parent.

So I have been in and around Sacajawea for 19 years and I've seen.

Three PTA funded playgrounds built and but tonight I'm here to focus on the part of Sacagawea's request.

That is our asphalt around those playgrounds.

It is complicating our our desire to provide safe and equal access for our entire school population.

The foundation that's.

under the asphalt is just crumbling.

It's all crumbling.

We need resurfacing.

We want to work together with the district to solve these problems.

We've been told that it's not a quick fix.

We really need the crisis intervention that VEX can provide.

When portables were added several years ago loose gravel was left around that portable up to the edges of of the asphalt that is remaining there.

And kids want to run and play on the playground.

They it it has sunk.

We need proper drainage.

We have asphalt related injuries.

Kids have gone to the emergency room.

We can't hold our our events on our playground because it's not safe.

And as a preschool teacher I'm teaching kids to walk and run and skip.

And unfortunately I spend more time on don't throw gravel than I would like to throw spend time on.

Thank you.

Thank you again for hearing our input on the scope of the 2019 BEX levy.

My name is Laura Riley and I have a fourth and first grader at Sacajawea.

Our final request for Sacajawea improvement funding is focused on building security.

In order for the students and staff and faculty at Sacajawea to move from the portables and the playgrounds into the main building many doors must remain unlocked during the school day.

However some of these doors are also accessible to the general public.

We're requesting the addition of about 18 yards of high fencing and a few gates to include the to enclose the school playground with a fence tall enough to deter climbing.

This small change in fencing would allow for all of our unlocked doors to be behind locked gates leaving only the front entrance of our school open to the public during the school day.

On behalf of more than 250 students and their parents.

Thank you for considering these critical facility needs for our 60 year old building.

ADA compliance upper playground repairs and resurfacing and additional fencing will allow us to provide a safer more equitable environment to our entire school community.

And these improvements are vital in allowing us to fulfill our mission of being a truly inclusive school for all.

We'd like to leave you with a message provided by one of our special education parents.

My son attends Sacajawea Elementary.

We found a home here.

The school is small and filled with heart.

He is flourishing there.

Unfortunately he is also at risk due to their building in disrepair.

The playground badly needs to be resurfaced.

My son has motor delays and chordal vision impairment which means in part for him he has no lower field of vision and what he sees in front of him does not give him enough vision to forecast changes in surface for him to trip and fall on this pavement could mean a serious head injury.

Sacajawea is a wonderful school.

Please consider funding these important projects.

Thank you for your time.

Next up we have Sarah Emily Davis.

Sorry Christine Shigaki and then Sarah Emily Davis and then Sabrina Burr.

I speak for the Washington Middle School community.

We are in desperate need of support and help with no set class schedules for all students for several weeks and last minute change of no world language offerings and sudden changes in school culture.

It has been a very rough start to the school year.

In addition we learned last week at our open house that teacher communication with the principal as well has been minimal class sizes and math ELA and science labs are all way over enrolled with some classes at 37 students making learning and teaching very difficult.

We are concerned that teachers are not getting the support they need and we fear to lose our strong teaching staff.

According to our principal BLT has not been met this year.

They haven't even met this year.

Yet all these changes have occurred.

How can these changes occur without a BLT approval?

CSIPs were approved last board meeting though the CSIP at Washington is not being followed.

The divergent student needs and very little support.

It's been very difficult for the principal to set the master schedule to meet all our students needs.

It's clear these issues increase inequities between the north and south and schools.

What work are you doing to bring our school up to par with the north and middle schools.

How will you bring how we bring down our class sizes to the manageable numbers restore our world language offerings while supporting our lowest achieving kids.

This is an emergency.

Please restore our school by providing much needed mitigation funding.

We are at a crucial tipping point.

Your action is critically needed.

Please do not let Washington fail.

Please act now.

Future focus for next year.

Please consider a boundary change for Washington by alleviating overcrowded Mercer.

We have so many questions with so very little to no communication no answers and no support from principal the principal and administration and the trust has been breached.

With so many changes at Washington why has no one come to help us and where is where is the accountability.

Please keep your promise to serve all kids high quality education no matter where they are on their learning continuum.

Thank you.

Before I begin my students sent you invitations and one of my students she was famous for making macaroon cookies for the homeless.

So there's cookies somewhere your assistant took up.

So anyhow Sarah Emily.

They're like the best cookies in the whole history of cookies.

Sarah Emily Davis again.

I was looking into the sea sips and I found a rabbit hole.

I found a very deep rabbit hole that is horrific.

And no PTSA funds should go for contracting staff no matter if they're general ed sped an IA a CSIP I mean a CSIP not a CSIP a SAP and counselors.

What I found is kind of despicable but I don't want to talk about that.

I want to talk about where it comes from.

And if you see the first picture I had was Kaepernick.

And there's a symbol by Kaepernick that's Nike.

And in my husband's language Nike means love.

So he's coming from love.

And that's where all this problem started from.

The parents love their children and they give the money to their children.

But instead of thinking of a we they think of a I and my child.

We need to start thinking as a we.

I work at a school where we are we.

We look at children in all ways.

We don't call it a walk-a-thon because we have 10 children in wheelchairs so it's a walk and roll-a-thon.

And so we have therapy dogs in the building to help even general ed students and special needs students.

We have parents that constantly volunteer that on Friday there probably be 150 of them out there helping everybody maneuver around.

So my children wanted to invite you and they actually love you Denise because we showed them I showed them I am a native movie and they fell in love with Native American dancing.

So we actually just looked at Navajo crown dancing today.

So if you continue I know you're there for love.

You're there for Nike.

So please continue and change the system that is broken.

Next up we have Sabrina Burr followed by Lindsay Sheldon and Candice Miller.

Good evening.

School boy president before I start my testimony may I comment on what Melissa Westbrook said on the city.

We had a PTSA general meeting where Councilman Rob Johnson was there and I asked the question.

So if it's not going to take away my time.

They do not know if the money will go to charter schools or not.

When I asked about Seattle promise they said Seattle promise goes to all students in Seattle whether their charter or private for our children who have free and reduced lunch and qualify for Pell grants that those resources will go first.

And when I asked about the quick K-12 funding they said they're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide and they will make those decisions at the city level after the levy.

We took a vote to endorse it but I did not vote in favor.

I just want to let you guys know.

Superintendent Juneau this is my first school board testimony since you started so welcome.

I briefly want to talk about policy 0 0 3 0 ensuring education and racial equity.

I keep hearing policy 0 0 3 0 and we need to stop that.

We need to call it all of what it is and honor the name and honor the work the strongest work that is happening.

The most important work that is happening in this district that needs to be the red thread through everything is the work that's happening under.

that department.

I also want to talk about what is going on around safety with our kids.

Two weeks ago I had the most terrifying text when my daughter said we're in lockdown.

The shoot the shooting that happened by Cleveland that affected Rainier Beach.

And that I found out later that evening that also affected Dearborn Park.

We got great responses from principals but sometimes we need to look at a bigger picture because we have parents who have kids in all of those schools and I understand it was an investigation that was active but I think we need to look at a bigger picture and we need to start a task force on safety.

Our kids are frightened.

Our parents don't know what to do and we have very very many gaps.

in the communication the safety and well-being of our kids.

I know I'm out of time but this is very crucial and we need to look beyond buildings and our principals who are in regions need to talk.

They need to evaluate to see if other communication needs to come out because two weeks ago I wish I would have gotten an additional email from the district.

And that would have calmed my nerves later that evening when I thought it was fine.

I heard the fears of my Dearborn Park grandnieces.

We can do better.

And let's really put safety of our kids first because that was very scary for Southeast Seattle.

And there's many other things that we have with shootings and things.

So we need to work with the city the police department but we need to work across buildings as well.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Lindsay Candace.

All right.

Thank you for the time to talk.

My name is Cadence Miller.

I'm a lifelong Seattleite and grew up in Seattle Public Schools.

I have a first grader at Kimball Elementary.

I'm here to talk about the BEX levy specifically Kimball's equity tier ranking.

Kimball was put in the fourth tier for equity priority which meant a 1.25 score on a five point scale.

In other words lower priority equity wise than other schools with higher scores.

This concerns me for a couple of reasons.

Kimball is a Title 1 school and it is the only Title 1 school on the list to receive that ranking.

All the other Title 1 schools on the list have a ranking of 2.5 or higher.

Kimball is also the only Southeast Seattle school to receive a ranking below 2.5.

Southeast Seattle students are underserved by Seattle Public Schools and my understanding is the equity tier ranking was intended to address that gap.

It's unfair to our community and makes me feel uncomfortable to compare our school to others in the community.

However I need to do it in order to illustrate my point as to how different Kimball is from the other schools it is grouped with in this equity.

For the other schools that received a 1.25 score the average free and reduced lunch eligible students is 13 percent.

For Kimball 51 percent of our student body is free and reduced lunch eligible.

For the other schools in that tier the average percent of students of color is 35 percent.

Kimball student body is 77 percent students of color.

English language learners at the other schools there are 5 percent of them.

Kimball over a third of our student body are English language learners.

If you look at how the students are achieving at these schools and the difference is obvious there too.

The average math and ELA proficiency of the other schools is over 70 percent.

Kimball's students are in the 50 50th percentile well below most of the other schools and almost 10 percentage points below the whole SPS average.

I want to believe that the board has the best intentions with equity tier ranking.

If there's not a miscalculation that led to Kimball's ranking then the board needs to rethink the methodology used to determine equity.

Any process that weights the need of Kimball to the need of these other schools in that same ranking is not getting the intended results.

Please revise Kimball's equity tier ranking to a score of 3.75 or higher that more accurately represents our school.

Kimball needs a new school.

It is long overdue.

Thank you for your consideration.

This concludes the sign up list for public testimony this evening.

OK we are going back to board comments and after board comments we'll take a 15 minute break before we start on our action items for the evening.

Who would like to go next.

Director Mack.

I'm finding myself a little speechless here.

I'm after the last couple of weeks of the flood of e-mails and just stress around the displacements changes in schools all of the issues that we're we're hearing about.

I am I didn't actually write my comments down very specifically and I'm going to do this from the fly.

I wish I had written the script like the gentleman earlier had stated.

Because it's it's been a really rough couple of weeks and I want you to know that as a board director I do care and I am listening very carefully.

I think we got somewhere around a thousand different e-mails because what has happened in the past couple of weeks with the staffing displacements was there's 30 different schools that were impacted.

It might have just been one teacher and it might have been relatively minor.

There's there's a lot of disruption that happened in the last couple of weeks and we do not have full funding from the state and we have had an unexpected loss of enrollment further than what we were planning.

And and still I think we can do better in the future around how we plan for those.

in the spring and how we maybe mitigate them in the fall.

And so when I mentioned earlier in my committee comments about policy 31 30 and the capacity management the processes we go through in order to set the budget and decide staffing and change those staffing numbers and enrollment.

These are all very very complicated processes.

That's like a web together and when we make one decision here it impacts other places in the system.

And I'm personally very much looking at that entire process and trying to help weave policy that's going to support improvement in the future so we can reduce the disruption on families.

I want you to know that I hear it and I don't I think we can do better next year and I hope that we can work together to communicate better about it to to not be in that same position.

So please do know that you actually are being heard when you write in and you testify testify and that we as board members we do care and we are incorporating into our thought process.

I wanted to also talk a little bit about the equity equity scoring and I appreciate the testimony that came here tonight.

Part of our process for the BEX levy and deciding what projects end up on it is setting guiding principles.

We did those in May and we for the first time ever set equity as a priority.

The previous board has not done that and we we did that.

The reality of our our capital needs is that we have well over two point five billion dollars of projects identified of critical need critical need across the district.

Every single school that is on that list needs its new school it needs to be renovated and it is incredibly difficult to be sitting in a chair of like well we we cannot go out for a levy for two point five billion dollars.

We can't do that.

We do not we can't we can't do that.

So we have to make hard choices.

And so we want to be thoughtful and objective and actually make sure that what we're doing is meeting our goals which is why we set the equity tiering and actually set up a calculation.

Staff worked on setting up that calculation and using the tiering system to identify so we can actually weight that and see what that is.

And because of the questions that have come forward including in the work session last week about how that calculation was done.

Staff has gone back and looked at the methodology again to identify that there is another way to look at it.

Not that this this one was incorrect but there's another way that can create a little more granularity.

And so we're going to be talking about that tomorrow at Ops and looking at that ranking and what that does to the project list and that'll be incorporated into our our thought process as well.

I'm a data wonky policy person so it does matter that we're right.

And so we are we are checking into that and that will be part of the thought process.

To clarify the project list for BEX has not been decided yet completely.

We're going to have a further conversation tomorrow.

It doesn't actually get fully settled until we vote on it which is still a month and a half away or so.

So.

You know I want you to know that as well as it was really clear I know our work sessions are not televised so you can't watch them.

But it was clear from our board comments that we are very much interested in making sure that critical needs are met in small projects that are not.

You know if a full building renovation can't happen it can't be on the list.

We are we are really focused on wanting to ensure that safety and security projects are on there and we are using the equity lens in terms of how we're making decisions.

So again I really.

I personally kind of had some flashbacks tonight because it was during the growth boundaries conversations that I first got involved in in education advocacy and testifying right there on growth boundaries issues.

And here I am now.

still engaged.

So I know how much time and effort it takes to actually sit down and write those letters to think about it to come down here and that your time is not being wasted.

I appreciate you speaking up and I'm hearing it and I know that staff is also you know we're working to incorporate that.

One of the biggest challenges we have is time.

Time.

Having a thousand emails come in you know I can't physically respond to all of those.

It's impossible.

We are we don't have staff that can do that.

So we so we are challenged to actually get back in time and so I want to apologize profusely.

We can't always be as quick as we'd like to because it's impossible.

It's physically impossible.

To that note in terms of getting community meetings and comments I haven't been able to set up my own because it's been so busy.

But tomorrow Superintendent Juneau is having her listening and learning meeting in my district at Ballard High School at 7 p.m.

I would like to encourage everyone to come out for that.

Looking forward to it.

It's going to be directly after the operations committee meeting.

So.

You can come to both if you like.

Maybe we can carpool.

I have gotten my community meetings scheduled for the future for November 3rd 11 to 1 at the Magnolia library.

December 8th 11 to 1 at Queen Anne and January 12th at Magnolia as well.

And I'd like to extend an invitation that Director Geary extended is if you actually want to reach me personally please do call the board office and state that.

I'm happy to meet.

I am I am definitely reading all of my email even if I don't get a chance to respond and I'm hearing your comments and I think there may have been another topic I wanted to touch base on but at this point I'll leave it there.

Thank you for coming and we can do better and we are going to.

Director DeWolf please.

Thank you President Harris.

Just want to first recognize that we are — I'm going to fix this here.

Just want to first recognize that we are on stolen indigenous land.

I'm honored to live work and serve in the Coast Salish territories in the city of Chief Sealth who is a descendant of the Suquamish Muckleshoot and Duwamish.

Also wanted to say sorry to our staff and Superintendent Juneau on a strongly worded email I sent regards to an issue that has continued to come up and to our LGBTQ students particularly our trans and gender nonconforming students.

I'm deeply sorry for the way the district and our system has further further marginalized you and made you feel unseen.

One thing I am not sorry for is sticking up and speaking up for these students.

I will continue to track and identify the solutions that we can know so that we no longer make you feel unheard invisible and like the other in our SPS family.

Additionally to our students staff and community as someone who has been victimized by sexual assault myself I understand your hurt and the ways in which the national dialogue around sexual assault as it relates to our Supreme Court nominee has triggered trauma and pain.

you have anything to report please talk to your principal or call our Title 1 officer at 2 0 6 2 5 2 0 3 6 7. I want to give a special thanks to our concerned students our passionate educators and our engaged community continuing to advocate for your schools and your teachers.

I've read every email tweet Instagram message and I hear you and hope we can work together to advocate up to the state legislature as many of our funding and resource issues lie at their front door.

We're not fully funded special education ELL student homelessness issues are not even being funded even meaningfully by the state.

So I encourage you to elevate this issue up by ceasing your state legislature when you email us as well.

And to our folks concerned about teachers and moving and disruption.

I believe the moving of our waitlist is set by board policy and I'm interested in moving these earlier maybe in May instead of September and we'll look to work with the board on solutions to that.

Toward Washington Middle School families I'm looking into a boundary change as well to address some of the enrollment issues.

And finally to our Nova community I'm looking into switching Nova from a service school to an option school as opposed to a service school model as a way to address enrollment.

I'll keep you posted on those.

And I wanted to share that I do expect some increased resources from the Pearl Jam show efforts and Glassy Baby Foundation to address some youth homelessness in our region and we'll keep you posted on that.

Last year we reported that 4,280 students experienced homelessness in Seattle in the 16-17 academic year with 708 unaccompanied 125 unsheltered and 404 of those identified as American and Alaskan natives which would be 10 percent of that population.

This is a crisis and I look forward to collaborating with funders and ongoing efforts in Seattle to address this crisis.

Special thanks to our McKinney-Vento student homelessness team for working their butts off to support these vulnerable students.

Finally I'd focus I'd like to focus on something a little bit different as we talk about VEX.

I'd like to focus more on job readiness and what that looks like in Seattle.

We prepare students for college well but are we preparing them for apprenticeships in building and construction trades.

And if we do are we are we ensuring they're successful.

One of the ways we can do that as well as provide economic opportunity for our community is by looking at community workforce agreements.

and priority hire to ensure we are hiring local residents to work on our capital projects particularly as it relates to our planning efforts around our BEX V levy.

I'd like us to host a meeting on that and invite experts to come in and talk us through what that looks like and what the benefits are for our community economically and for our students who are entering the workforce.

And finally I will be joining President Harris at your next community meeting.

Just looked at my calendar so I'll join you there and hope you bring that lasagna.

Thank you.

Next up is.

Director Pinkham.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ and Táˀc kulé-wit thank you and good evening.

Echoing you know what Director Mack said yes we got all those e-mails and I don't think any of us up here don't care.

That's why we are up here.

We do care.

And for me to see what happened this year.

I see it as an anomaly.

It's like this hasn't happened before.

So we do need to look what happened and find out and learn from this.

So it doesn't happen.

What can we do now.

We saw you know fortunately this is all resources what we've got.

We if we had the money are we.

So I got you know I want answers to what what did happen this year.

That didn't happen years before.

Why do we fall so short of our projections.

Where are our students going.

You know if they're not enrolling in our schools as we projected where are they.

So let's take this as definitely something as a learning moment and do better next time.

And the impact that we have right now I would say like so what can we still do.

Can we help alleviate learning that when we make adjustments and staff and then oh now schools are overcrowded we have classrooms of 37 students for science labs whatever we don't have any PE teachers.

How are those choices made and to learn that some of the BLT teams haven't met yet but still cuts are being recommended for certain teachers.

So how can we better do this and work with the schools.

We also don't want to be the micromanagers of schools let the site based be able to do it.

But sounds to me there may be some site based that still haven't been able to provide their input.

So still talk with those schools and we'll see what we can do up here as the board and the superintendent.

and our great staff that we have here.

You know we have no ill intent.

We care.

So just want to share that and appreciate your comments.

Keep coming here and sharing it.

Marley she's stepped out already.

Wanted to thank her for being here sharing her comments.

Thank you to the city of Seattle on their presentations.

But it does sound we need some more clarification on the charter schools and how they'll fall in with the family education levies.

Thank you to the attendees at my community meeting this past Saturday.

Some of you are here today.

Thank you for coming out and sharing your voice.

And thank you Director Harris.

She was there as well at my meeting and was able to provide some valuable input.

And I see that as a value because.

me being there just as one director I can hear those voices and stuff but having another director there with you as well definitely helps you know get this let people know their voices are being heard.

So good to hear that Director DeWolf is going to go to Director Harris's meeting and I invite other directors to come out to my meeting and I'll try to make yours.

My next meeting is actually going to be at the Northeast branch which I believe is in Director Geary's area on October 28th.

So hopefully if you can make that I can't make coffees on Tuesdays morning sorry.

But I'll try.

So again if you have more ears to hear you know we are listening.

Also their announcements looks like we have the Native American PAC meeting coming up next Thursday 5 to 6. So anybody out there listening that are interested in the PAC board meeting come and share your voices and concerns and also continuing in Urban Aid Education Alliance has its meetings Tuesdays and Thursdays as well at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School.

And they have started their native word as athletics for 7 to 19 year olds boys and girls come out and.

Learn some basketball skills teamwork.

We also will.

They will also because I don't play I'm too old.

I don't meet that 7 to 19 year old age.

They'll go and play local tribes and their basketball team so it gives students the opportunity to see other students from other areas and interact.

Other comments that I have.

I think a lot of it came with some stuff that are actually I'm still save those for then as far as the BEX.

Yes we have 4.5 billion is that what you're saying.

2.5 billion dollars worth of stuff and there are some questions that I have.

I wasn't able to make the BEX meeting that they had the work session because I'm still trying to get over a cold.

And there are some items I said yes you know maintenance or safety concerns.

Yes safety is the biggest concern.

So we have schools all of them that need some work.

North Beach I was able to go out there with Director Harris Elementary and saw the needs there and the liquefaction or liquefaction which term is it.

Area just the drainage it hadn't rained there for a while but they still have puddles of water in their playground area.

You know so it's not coming your way.

And I saw on the.

the hillside where they're at.

You see where somebody dug up a little bit and just maybe only three inches below the topsoil was sand.

So how are we going to help build on or help that site.

And one of the people actually emailed and said have you guys ever thought of maybe combining.

that site with a larger site.

So just like Robert Eagle Staff and Cascadia that are co-located on a large site can we co-locate North Beach with the middle school on a larger site and then maybe use the North Beach site for something else.

So thank you for coming up with some ideas and suggestions.

I don't I'm sure we have a billion people here to provide this kind of set as well.

But when you provide solutions as well I thank you.

And they may have thought of it before and had the answers but again your input is very much appreciated.

So again Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ we do care.

We're doing what we can and I know we can do better.

We're going to go forward and do better.

Thank you.

Director Patu and then Director Burke and then Director Geary.

I believe that a board director's job is to make sure that every student in our district is receiving an excellent education.

As I thought about this throughout time as a longtime board director and that's probably the oldest board director up here.

I realize you know that I was actually.

We've come a long way.

And as a South Pacific Islander when I look at that.

Many years ago a lot of our students did not graduate from high school and that was one of the biggest issue that I had as I was going through schools.

I used to ask my parents why aren't our kids graduating from high schools.

But at the time school wasn't a priority for our communities until it became a reality that you have to have a diploma in order for you to get a good job.

And that became a very much of an interest.

To me and that's the reason why I ran for school board.

I realized that every student no matter what race or what background you're from you deserve to have an education so you can do better in life.

And that's always been my.

My model in terms of all my kids I got five kids all graduated from college and that's because I believe that education is the key to open doors as a Pacific Islander who actually you don't see too many of us actually being part of school boards or part of other organizations that actually makes a difference.

We believe that we are here to actually to help support our kids and our family and that is it.

But as someone who actually grew up in the United States I realize there's more to us than just taking care of our family.

And I think it's very important that we as board directors reach out to make sure that every student that we serve receive that excellent education that I myself believe in in order for them to progress.

a step further.

They must have that education in order for them to have knowledge.

I am really privileged to be here tonight and actually be able to be to say that I am actually the longest and the oldest board director sitting up here.

We won't tell you how old I am and realize that.

It takes knowledge to actually to be able to move things forward.

Whether you come from a family that's well educated or a family that actually doesn't believe that education is the key to success.

There are always a way that you can actually be able to make a difference.

And as a person that actually had a father that was very overly educated I realized that it was something that I had to pass on to my children to make sure that they know that education is important.

That's why I'm here sitting here as a board director because I believe that we as board director it's our responsibility to make sure that every student that attends Seattle Public Schools receive that excellent education that we all believe in the dream.

That we all decided that you know if we have that education in our life that things can move forward.

And I believe that that is the reason why I'm sitting up here on this board because I believe that education is very important.

Although with.

With a lot of I have a lot of schools within the southeast and as one person we can't always go to every school like we wanted to.

And the goal this year is actually hopefully to visit.

I have 20. three schools within my district and hopefully that my goal is to be able to visit each one of those schools and be able to go into the classroom and observe what the students are doing.

Watch our teachers teach and be able to pass on the knowledge to our students and be able to come up back here and sit on the board and realize this is a job that's very needed and it's a privilege to be sitting up on this.

days in order for us to make a difference in the lives of our kids.

I think about this all the time but realized today that you know how important it is for us to really provide that excellent education for our students.

Why.

Because knowledge is very important.

Without knowledge we won't be able to know all the things that we need to know.

And as an educator.

It is something that I believe in and something that I would continue on to push forward to make sure that every student that we serve in Seattle Public Schools receive that excellent education.

I am proud to be as a board director and I really appreciate all my colleagues who sits up here.

We hold the key to every student in Seattle Public Schools to make sure that we make the right choice for them to be able to pass through and be able to when they leave high school.

We can say that they've learned and gained knowledge in order for them to move to the next level of their life.

I believe that because I have five children that actually that I raise and each one of them have a college degree because I believe in education and I believe that we as parents it's something that we continue on the push and as board director it's very important that we provide those opportunities for every one of our students at Seattle Public Schools.

So I would like to say thank you for all your support.

Without your support we would not be able to sit up here and do what we do.

Yes we may not always make the right choices and not say the right thing at times but I appreciate all the support that I've been getting from the communities in order for me to move forward.

I thank you for giving me the opportunity to be able to be a school board director.

Because it's a job that's really hard to do and also a job that's very important on behalf of our students.

Thank you and have a good evening.

Director Burke and then Director Geary.

Thank you.

Two follow ups one relating to staffing.

I want to be also clear and echo my my colleagues comments that we do care.

We're passionate about trying to find a way through this challenge and it moves around.

It's a it's like a lump in the carpet or you know one of those sort of systemic challenges that you think you have it here and then you see it pop up over there and it's it's a combination of what model we're using how we're communicating it underfunding a system that's very capacity constrained and all of those things do do manifest in what we've got now.

And I think what I've heard from our leader from our chair of the operations committee is that they're not satisfied with the solutions we've used in the past.

And in the past we said well we can fix it with money.

We could throw a little bit of mitigation on it and this board had said yeah that's important.

Let's put mitigation funding behind it.

Let's set aside two million dollars gone.

So this year I think it was four million dollars gone.

And there's still after putting four million dollars of mitigation into it.

We have the sort of disruption that our schools are experiencing and that is that is an individual pain for schools and teachers and students.

And even if we're not in the schools even if we're not there experiencing that pain we understand we understand it's out there and that our system is not is not.

built well enough to handle it.

We also just can't take our four million dollars and up it to six million dollars to solve the problem next year.

So I've heard a commitment from our leaders that not only do we care but that we're going to look at a sustainable solution moving forward.

On Beck's second topic thanks to the Sacajawea community.

I do support and will continue to advocate for for your three requests.

I think they're extremely reasonable and I appreciate the clarity that you've shared them with us.

I think it really aligns well with our values and so I want to express my gratitude and support.

And then also to publicly share that I'm looking to understand where the Lincoln auditorium and gymnasium fit into our priority queue.

The seismic concerns around that and some of the infrastructure.

You know that that project has not made it to a an actionable level but there are definitely concerns among the community and among myself and other other directors that I've heard about the seismic safety and would like to understand how that fits into our our thinking.

Director Geary.

I don't want to belabor the points that my fellow directors have made other than to say of course we care.

And it's that's why as you all know we sit up here and we work hard to get the position and then are paid very little for it.

And it's difficult.

And so I appreciate all the work that my fellow directors do and I know in our conversations that we care deeply about all these issues.

I've said it before but we are funded as if though kids come to us in packets of 17 or 23 and flow like water to the places where seats are available.

And that doesn't work.

You all know that we have schools where the class sizes are much smaller than 17 because that's what those kids need.

But we don't get funding for the adults that need to be there.

And those schools need even more adults.

They don't have the 400 kids that get the one of this or the point one or the one point of that.

But they need those people.

And so we make hard decisions every day about where the people that we have are going to go to serve the kids.

And it doesn't always feel like we're meeting the kids with the highest need.

But it's hard to to to find the people and fund them.

And so we assign people as if though they're point twos or point threes.

And then we know that the people who are hired for point two or point three how do you live here.

When you're running all over town trying to make a full time job out of a point to hear a point three here.

And so then they go away because it's easier.

And then we're left with holes and people come to us and say why aren't you providing the people we need for our kids.

And that's why it gets back to the funding and it gets back to how we have to assign people as if though kids flow in packets of 17 to 23 to the seats that are available.

And then it's complicated because we as board directors want to do the right things with policy.

But it's hard because in the spring we'll have people coming and say please don't release the waitlist yet because we were hoping hoping that we're going to get into that school.

So we've had times where we were going to say no more waitlist.

We're going to just disband the waitlist by the end of the year so we can plan and give certainty.

And then a lot of people come up.

It's a different room of people but it's another room of people with passion about how that's not fair.

and how we have to keep the wait lists open and keep that uncertainty a little bit longer.

And that's attention that our staff comes to us and looks at us and says well when they're here in the fall I hope you're not you're going to remember this moment.

And I remember that moment and we'll have that same moment when it comes time for us to make hard decisions about the boundaries that you're asking us to make that will help us.

to pretend like kids flow in packets of 17 and 23 to the seats that are available.

But it'll be a whole different room of people and they will be angry and passionate and they will say we don't care and we do care.

And then there's the demographics issue.

And that's another really hard issue because I remember that was one that a few years back I came to the city and said help us with demographics and they said your people have to drill down to every head because every head counts.

We at the city don't have to do that.

We don't have to know where every child lives and try to plan as if though we know whether they were going to show up at our door or they're going to go to a private school or they're going to take some other option.

And yet we're trying to plan all of these things with very little certainty.

And I'm saying this not because I think your requests are unreasonable but just to give you some explanation of the complexity because it's hard.

It's hard to try and manage all these things.

And then when you have a city that appears to be growing by leaps and bounds and yet students aren't here.

And that's because the biggest part of poverty are children.

And we can no longer afford to live in families can't afford to live in this city.

Poor families can't afford to live in this city.

And so they're moving south.

And last year it was into Highline Tukwila Federal Way.

But now we're seeing that it's even moving farther south.

And this is an impact of affluence that I don't think our demographers are prepared to understand.

I don't know where there is a model.

out there that we can use to predict how many of our families are going to be squeezed out of our city.

Some the families of our teachers.

So just an explanation of all the things that are running through our heads.

It's so complex.

It's a huge web and we do feel feel the pain.

And then to put on top of that that as our ability to use the levies the money that are very wealthy city wants to spend on education is going to be taken away from us by our state legislator.

And as I said earlier there are other school directors around our state that don't care.

They don't care that that power is going to be taken away from us and they don't care that we have a city that has such high demands for the education is willing to give us the money to meet those demands and they'll say no.

And it's not our legislators but we don't control what happens in terms of how these funding decisions are made for the whole state.

So it's not great news.

I'm sorry.

And we're all already so emotionally tapped out.

So I'll stop now before I start to cry.

But thank you for coming.

Thank you for coming and just go back to your schools and do everything you can to wrap yourselves around the kids that are there and make them feel safe.

And remember that that's what's going to make them love to learn.

Thank you.

Thank you.

OK.

Last but not least I hope my next community meeting is October 20th 3 to 5 at Delridge library.

Apparently director DeWolf will be there.

I'm hoping that staff will be there.

I'm hoping that other directors will be there and you have a 50 50 chance of getting lasagna because we do lasagna one out of every three meetings and this is number two.

Busy busy busy heavy heavy lifts extraordinarily taxing mind bending mind blowing.

work that's been done collaboratively with directors with staff with parents and more and more often with students and I'm beyond thrilled to see more and more students coming in.

including the ones that came to my last community meeting including the ones that put my cell phone number on a hot pink flyer and gave it to my child on Capitol Hill on her way home.

And then I found out that's why your phone blew up.

But you know what they apologized and said you owe me no apologies.

I'd like to think that I've created a little havoc in my past life and will continue to do so.

And I applaud community organizing.

A great many of those fine young people and their friends and their family showed up at North Seattle College.

It was a very emotional night and frankly I'm glad it was.

It is time to work together to solve these problems.

These are not the other person's problems.

We all own them.

And until we figure out a way to work together we're going to get nowhere.

End of rant.

Listening lure learning listening learning tours have been really outstanding.

Superintendent Juneau has got frequent flyer miles on her sneakers as does special assistant Sherry Cox and the entirety of the comms team.

You need to be at one of these.

The conversation is good.

You meet new people.

You need to have your voice heard.

This is the first step of the strategic planning process the strategic plan process is going to be critical as to whether we become one of the best school districts in the nation or whether we muddle along and muddling along to me is not an option for anyone in this room.

are 53000 students.

So get counted please.

My colleagues have talked about we hear you.

Boy ever do we hear you.

And and again it is welcomed.

It is appreciated.

Transportation.

We are absolutely keeping track of your late buses your missing buses etc.

There are contractual provisions.

This question has come up a great deal.

Folks are counting this up and to the extent that we can enforce portions of our contract we will in fact do so.

Would I be outraged.

Would I be terrified if the buses didn't show for my child.

Young.

Absolutely.

But please don't beat up the people that answer the phones.

It's not nice and it's not appreciated and it's not appropriate.

If we are in fact modeling good behavior for our students.

Let's again work together and quit throwing rocks.

Washington Middle School is very much on the top of my mind and I believe I said with the CSIPs last time that the board has some leverage here because the CSIPs are the planning document and I am quite confident that the superintendent and the senior staff are very aware of these issues and are working through them.

We have asked very recently and I can't recall which meeting because sometimes they blend together for a list of the high schools and all schools that do not have parents on the BLT.

Still waiting for that list.

Putting out fires right now we're doing triage.

Parents need to step forward and join the BLTs.

In the contract it says should it doesn't say must but oftentimes folks don't step forward.

So again put your effort and your time to the extent that you have it where your concerns are.

Teacher transfers given the.

Difference between what we expected and student enrollment and who showed up in our district this month.

We went through that four million dollars four million dollars was weighted with a race and equity lens.

This is in addition and above and beyond.

There's still a one point five million dollar bandwidth there.

So it's fine and good to say we made the wrong decisions.

Those that know me well know that I'd like to have baselines for administrative oversight so that the quality of your education is not different based on which school you go to in your zip code and blend the building based management and a baseline with administrative oversight so that these decisions don't fall below that baseline.

But that one point five million dollars has got to have to come from somewhere.

And next year we face the levy cliff and we don't have it.

We don't have the money.

What do you want to take away.

And it's it's distressing.

It's depressing.

Would we like to spend more on paying our teachers.

You bet we would.

But we don't have it.

And we have a one year contract and here we go again and we'll have even less a year from now.

So you heard the song.

Call your legislators but more importantly call your friends and your family in eastern Washington and make them feel your pain because doing deals in the middle of night to fund schools on the last few days of the legislature has brought you to this very door.

A couple of other announcements.

Delridge Neighborhood Development Authority DNDA my proud community.

We'll be having race and equity training on the American education system from 1 to 6 this Saturday at the Youngstown Cultural Center formerly known as the original Cooper School.

They do a great job and I hope I see you there dnda.org backslash what's the backslash race series backslash.

It was a delight to go with Director Pinkham to his community meeting.

It was a delight to meet and actually have thoughtful conversation with many of you here in this room and that came to my community meeting.

And thank you to the North Beach elementary school teachers and administrators that gave us the grand tour including the attic room where they test children because it's the only quiet place in the room in the in the whole school and for showing us the flooding playground when it hadn't rained in two weeks.

It is 655 we're going to take a 20 minute break.

It's an honor and a privilege to do this work with such great people.

Truly thank you for coming out.

Give us constructive criticism please and help us think out of the box to solve these huge needs.

Thank you.