reached 530 and we have a quorum if we could go now to public testimony and I will read the rules and please follow the rules.
The last thing I want to do is rule anybody out of order or cut folks off.
I truly don't like that part of my job.
So in accordance with policy number 1430 and 1430 board procedures one person speaks at a time.
Comments should be addressed to the board.
Please adhere to the time limit on the testimony.
You will see a yellow light on the podium there that says that you have 30 more seconds to speak.
When the red light comes on please finish your remarks.
Majority of the time should be on the topic that you have indicated you wish to speak about.
The focus of the comment should be on the issues and solutions.
No racial slurs personal insults ridicule or threats will be allowed.
No comments regarding personnel matters or naming personnel and all signs brought to the meeting.
Hi my name is Abigail Levin.
I'm the parent of a kindergartner and a third grader who attends Seattle Public Schools.
I'm also a teacher librarian at Cedar Park Elementary and I'll be opening the library at Magnolia Elementary this fall.
On behalf of SPS librarians I want to express gratitude that you've been hearing the many voices speaking out in favor of full time libraries.
We know that these decisions require much thought and time and effort and it's not easy.
So we're grateful and for your continued ear.
Thank you so much.
To collect more voices on the impact of our school libraries I launched a zine project called library love letters in which we invited students and families to respond to the prompt.
What does your school library mean to you.
Since February we received over 150 submissions and they keep coming in.
We're releasing issue one just today in honor of school library month.
You are among the very first and the few to own a printed copy of these limited run publications.
When you find yourself with some free time, or maybe even now, feel free to check it out.
In it, you'll notice some of the themes that we've already been presenting here, reading advocacy, social emotional safety, community, equity.
You'll also see how libraries are becoming ever more dynamic learning hubs, with librarians taking advantage of new technologies and strengthening community connections to make learning engaging, relevant, and inspiring.
What we're hoping you'll continue to notice is that libraries are not what they used to be.
There's still a safe space in the school and a place to fall in love with books but they've become much more.
We hope you'll continue a path toward full time restoration not just for the 24 that are currently in question but for elementary who's been waiting for over a decade.
We love our jobs.
We believe in libraries we believe in students.
Please help us serve them completely.
Thank you.
Christina Reckland.
After Christina we will have Chris Jackins followed by Alex Zimmerman and then Tuesday Chambers.
Hello we are 7th graders from Washington Middle School here to talk about issues at our school.
First of all our passing periods are only three and a half to four minutes to get between classes at our school.
This is not nearly enough time to either use the bathroom or even get across the school in some cases.
If not in class, students may be locked out of their classrooms and given detention later at either lunch or after school.
People who are locked out of their classrooms may also be left out of activities throughout the school.
School on Friday or lunchtime.
Yeah.
OK.
Along with this, yeah, bathroom time is very limited.
Bathroom time is limited very much during first, third, and sixth period during advisory.
During the first and last 15 minutes of class and during teacher presentations, students are not allowed to go to the bathroom.
Also, teachers are given limited passes to give out, and when they're used, students have three minutes to get to the bathroom and back and need a security escort.
While they're in the bathroom, there may be security bathroom sweeps, which are very distracting and scary to students.
where the security guard comes into the bathroom and asks for name and all things like that.
Also, Muslim and menstruating girls need privacy of a girls' bathroom at lunch, where we used to only be able to use a multi-stall, gender-neutral bathroom.
So when there were complaints made about that, the gender-neutral bathroom got changed into a single-stall, very out-of-the-way location, which discriminates against the genderqueer community.
Along with this, our 7th grade science class has been very limited.
We've gone through several midterm subs and uncountable temporary subs, plus our 6th grade science teacher, who is helping out with grading and teaching.
Along with this, we have zero syllabus to go off of, and we do not know what is going to be happening in class.
Instructional.
We've also lost instructional time to unqualified and inconsistent subs.
They've also been talking of a summer school.
But if they can't hire a teacher during the year how are they going to hire a teacher for summer school.
Our students just don't have enough time.
Excuse me.
I'm sorry.
The red light is on and one person at a time.
Are you all on the sign up list.
Chris Jackins is next.
I apologize folks but we got to keep the rules rolling for everybody.
Thank you.
My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4. Nice job Washington.
On the personnel report the report notes the retirement of Peggy McEvoy executive director of operations.
I wish to thank Peggy McEvoy for her service for handling difficult situations for the district and for her efforts to improve Seattle Public Schools.
On the resolution on U.S. government contracts, two points.
Number one, this resolution is only required if the district wishes to purchase supplies from the U.S. government without calling for bids.
Number two, waiving requirements for bidding could affect small, minority, and women-owned businesses.
Please vote no.
On the Eckstein project what qualifies the project for this grant.
On the Garfield field lighting contract virtually all use from 7 p.m.
to 10 p.m.
is non-school use which impacts school neighborhoods.
Please amend this action to prohibit non-scholastic use after 7 p.m.
On the thirty one million dollar wing Luke construction contract two points.
Number one the district already demolished a six point four million dollar addition that was only 13 years old was flushing six point four million dollars down the toilet part of supposedly being on budget.
Number two.
Wing Luke bids previously came in well over budget.
The district said that there was no need for the proposed capacity for the next 10 years.
Please vote no.
Consult with neighbors not just the district bureaucracy that lost the six point four million dollars on the loss of trees at Queen Anne Elementary.
The district appears to be violating the law.
Please intervene.
Thank you very much.
Alex Zimmerman.
Mr. Zimmerman.
Yeah.
OK.
Part of our public testimony rules 1 4 3 0 and 1 4 3 0 board procedure.
No racial slurs personal insults ridicule or threats will be allowed.
The Heil Hitler salute and your star with the word Jew on it could be considered that.
Would you be willing to take that off and cease giving us the Hitler salute.
Thank you very much.
When you give me time I explain to you.
It's exactly what is I come — You have two minutes.
Yeah.
What is exactly what is I come and you right now.
won a discussion, I explained to you, this is not Hitler's salute.
This is an old Romano salute that has come from the Romano Empire.
And everybody knows this.
You want to qualify like a Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, or President Trump?
It's up to you.
I don't care about this.
But this is exactly what I come here in talking to you, because look to me, very low class people, very low educated people, and you are a teacher.
It's exactly what I come in talking.
Guys, salute or not salute is your opinion.
Nothing to do with freedom of speech, hundred court decision, and everything.
You want limit this, write this here.
So no Hitler salute.
It's look what idiotic, but it's up to you.
You can be idiot any time what is you want.
It's exactly what is I come.
Guys.
My name Alex Zimmerman and I can do that for district 5. Why I come here in talking about this because you look to me very dangerous part of battalion what is I call a Nazi social democratic mafia.
For 30 year what is I live here.
I try understand how — Excuse me sir that is an insult.
And your.
breaking the rules.
I don't understand what this means.
So Nazi, socialist, communist, democrat, and republican is not equal?
I'm totally confused.
It's exactly what is I come in talking to you because you're very primitive.
It's insult?
Yes.
Your IQ very low.
What is I can do?
I explain to you.
Nazi, socialist, democrat, republican, communist, anarchist is a civilized conversation.
You don't...
taught with in 1998.
That was the Fox kids and the Carolina school kids as well.
I was very surprised to be receiving curriculum that was 16 years old.
Fortunately we have an opportunity to have new curriculum for our students.
There was a process through the science curriculum adoption team.
They did a very great process over a year.
They presented to you.
I know that Superintendent Juneau endorsed this process.
They had lots of community members involved.
They did the process with fidelity and they made a recommendation to you.
I am imploring you.
to make a decision on the science curriculum moving forward.
But we cannot go back to the curriculum that we have.
We've we used before and that's what we will possibly fall back with the new curriculum that is aligned to the next generation science standards is valuable.
It's going to prove its equity driven.
It's going to reach all students.
It's really important that you make a decision and follow follow the advice of that committee.
Thank you.
After Christy Schapkot we will have Erin McIntyre followed by Annie Roberts and then Lauren Graham.
Hi my name is Christy Schapkot.
Thank you for your attention.
Dearborn Park International School resides in one of the most diverse zip codes in the country.
Our family was part of the inaugural class of the dual language immersion program during the 2014 2015 school year.
Those kindergartners will be fifth graders next year and the immersion program will finally have rolled up to include all the grades at the school.
During our time at the school we've seen a steady decline in enrollment.
Some of this is attributed to students moving out of town or switching to private schools.
However Dearborn Park's attendance area boundaries are quite small in comparison to neighboring schools.
We would like for SPS to consider creating a geo zone around our school small boundaries that would allow heritage speakers living near our school the chance to attend Dearborn Park.
In addition, families seek out Dearborn Park because being multilingual is critical in today's global economy.
Our school has historically had a lengthy wait list.
Allowing families off of our wait list would give an immediate boost to our student enrollment, which stands at just under 300 students for the 2019-2020 school year.
Our declining enrollment has families worried for the future of our school and the future of the language immersion program.
Several of our community members are here to testify tonight.
Some other parents and I co-authored an op ed piece for the South Seattle Emerald which we are told will be published by end of day tomorrow.
Thank you so much for your time and attention.
We truly appreciate the work the school board is doing to help make our school stronger.
Dearborn Park is a very special place.
We know that Superintendent Juneau is going to see this firsthand during her visit to our school next week.
Thank you.
I'm Erin McIntyre.
I yield my time to Lul Abshir.
Good evening.
My name's Lul.
I would like to bring to your attention that I am representing the Somali families and I would like to set up a time with Ms. Juneau next time.
I have a seventh grade daughter and I really appreciate these two young children, the points that they talked about.
So I'm not going to talk about the bathroom because they already did that.
I want to let you know I have one child and I care about her just like you care all of them.
I wanted my daughter, she had no advisor and it's really challenging.
So I feel the climate and the administration at Washington needs a great leader.
It needs to move forward.
It needs to wake up.
It has the money.
What are we doing?
Why are the teachers suffering?
Why are the parents not welcome to do any activities or parent volunteer allowed?
It's really challenging.
We have a multicultural night tomorrow night and I have not received a phone call.
There's an email, yes, I understand, but the email is not here yet.
It's covered under this table.
Can you see if I put this pencil here?
No, you can't.
So it's really important that we are represented, people who speak different languages.
I have an accent, but I do speak English, and I understand.
I am wearing a hijab.
I understand that.
It's welcome.
And I understand that there's a lot of new faces.
But those new faces, they have the teachers.
They have the parents.
They have the students.
And that's all we need to take care of.
And I'm not going to take about the bathroom.
I have a parent who told me, my daughter has an infection.
My daughter just got her period a month ago.
And she can't even use the bathroom.
She has to go to where the boys are.
It's really challenging.
It's not good for my culture.
It's not good for my thing.
Just to go to the bathroom and change her pads.
And she's even new to this.
So I hope you can make a difference.
Ready?
Okay.
Hi thank you for your time today.
My name is Annie Roberts.
I am also a parent of students at Dearborn Park International School.
My daughters are here.
Aiden Tensai is in first grade and Maya is here.
She's in third grade.
I also share the concerns that Christy has about our declining enrollment.
This is affecting staffing plans for next year and I have concern that it could also affect the sustainability of the international program that our school provides.
My family is blessed to live within two blocks of our school.
We're also really saddened by the loss of many neighbors loved neighbors that have needed to move south or elsewhere as gentrification has made more and more of our city inaccessible for many of our families.
Dearborn Park enriches our community not only by supporting children in becoming multilingual but also by offering a learning environment where students' cultures are seen and valued and celebrated.
All of us appreciate your attention to this issue.
We want to offer a few ideas and you may hear them repeated.
The first is to allow for enrollment of more families from our wait list.
We have families who are strongly desiring to access this program and have gone through struggles to be able to do that.
The second is to allow our voices to be included in discussions around boundary changes that are upcoming.
And the third is to consider the creation of a geo zone for our school.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Lauren Graham.
I'm going to cede my time to Paul Martin.
Thank you.
I'm a parent of an African American in second grade at Dearborn Park International School.
He's learning Mandarin Chinese because I think it will create more opportunities for him when he's an adult.
And we know that young African-American men need as many opportunities as they can get.
We feel we want to keep him there.
We don't have to keep him there because he's also qualified as highly capable this year and could go to Thurgood Marshall.
But we feel the learning Mandarin Chinese will give him more opportunities in life than going to participating in the Highly Capable program.
And we've been very happy with all the teachers we've had at Dearborn Park.
I want to describe also a long term problem that's going to occur in South Seattle because there's only two elementary schools that have language immersion programs Beacon Hill International and Dearborn Park.
And if our program doesn't survive there's going to be fewer students fed into the Mercer International Middle School and the newly designated Rainier Beach High School.
Both these schools are going to be torn down and replaced with brand new buildings in the next five years.
It's part of the budget that passed.
And I would hate to see the AP language programs at those schools not have enough people, enough students in their Spanish and Mandarin Chinese classes because that's where those students are going to come from, from Beacon Hill and Dearborn Park.
So we want our international program in South Seattle to be just as strong as it is up north and in West Seattle.
Thank you.
Next up for public testimony we have Paul Hupert followed by Christine Shigaki and then Emily Wheeler.
Good afternoon.
I'm Paul Hupert.
When my 10-year-old was, when we were looking at schools, we were thrilled to learn that Dearborn Park International was becoming a dual language program five years ago.
It we're very happy to have been there.
Now we have a second student there who's in first grade now.
It's a wonderful school a wonderful community.
And I wanted to quote from the district's website.
about the international program.
Seattle's international schools provide students with linguistic skills, higher order thinking skills, and a global perspective that will help them contribute to and succeed in a 21st century world.
Those are the goals that is why the district and the board has established these programs.
And it's a wonderful place and we all appreciate it.
It's a wonderful community.
I hope you have all had a chance to visit or see our multicultural night which is an amazing event.
It seems through the years, five years now, that there have been challenges for Dearborn Park International in regards to our enrollment.
And I wanted to finish by, again, quoting the website, which says, international schools help students engage in intellectually rigorous schoolwork and prepare them for college, career, and life.
International schools help close both the academic achievement gap as well as the global achievement gap.
And I'd like you to consider that and think about the ways that you can support our school in our enrollment problems that are ongoing and keep our program strong.
Thank you.
Short Christine Shigaki.
The district now is more segregated than it was when I attended Cleveland during the deseg busing era.
It's alarming that central south end curriculum options and course rigor are vastly different than those north.
The disparity is evident in the offerings and participation in world languages as the numbers are staggering when comparing south versus north.
Cunning language offerings and quality at Washington is unacceptable.
How is this supporting graduation and college entrance requirements for Washington students who are people of color and furthest from the educational justice.
Regarding advanced learning I applaud the district's efforts in identifying more minorities and low income families but are you offering those newly identified students curriculum and coursework that is on par with those offered to the North End students.
The opening of Lincoln and challenges at Washington offerings at Garfield where most kids of color and HCC pathway to high school will further be affected.
How is this moving towards racial equity.
Closing the gap should not be achieved by lowering the expectations of those that are high achieving as this is happening at Washington.
Seventh grade science this year at Washington.
What would the reaction be if a north end class received so little instruction that the district had to offer summer school to make up for it.
In addition, Washington's music program is threatened by further cuts, creating more inequities for people of color.
With limiting funding and low enrollment numbers, creative solutions need to be considered to serve all kids at Washington.
Why hasn't the PTSA, Friends of Washington Music, and philanthropic support been welcomed?
Lastly what are we teaching our kids when no authentic outward public apology was given to the community for the mistake of public shaming of those on detention?
In my few conversations with SPS staff and administrators I was advised to lower my expectations and to just worry about my own child.
This is unacceptable.
If the district is serious about achieving equity opportunities of course offerings and rigor need to be calibrated across all schools.
What will it take for the board and the district to help all students reach their full potential especially those south of the ship canal where most students of color reside.
Thank you.
After Emily Wheeler we will have Brian Terry followed by Rebecca Winecoop and Jennifer Villanova.
Hi Emily Wheeler.
My seventh grader was denied foreign language world language this year and that led us to look into the budget and the schedule.
Why is this being cut.
Our concern at Washington Middle School is that there are repeated decisions being made that are not consistent with the quality and education stated in the board and strategic plans.
This international city with over 80 languages and cultures represented from around the world and Seattle school district stated goal of world language instruction.
This is not happening at Washington middle school and this is not fair.
You guys need to fix this.
I've provided to you the schedules.
You also have available the weighting standards.
This weighted standards which I passed out last board meeting showed that we have the exact same allocation last year as this year and yet our principal continues to tell us there are budget cuts.
If you look at the schedules, we've provided Fulmer's schedule.
I don't know if these were the final ones.
These were the ones given to me by a teacher.
You can see that the schedule from last spring kind of made sense.
Teachers had classes.
You could follow it.
7 you know teacher taught 7th grade 8th grade.
It was very clear.
You look at the two schedules and the red notes on there are mine.
I highlighted it.
I've spent some time investigating this because I can't understand it.
There are all sorts of teachers either unassigned to be determined.
There's a teacher this quarter who's only has one social studies class and the rest she's teaching other duties.
It's chaos over there and we need your help.
Superintendent Juneau we need to meet with you.
We really need to figure out what's going on.
This is just completely unacceptable.
You guys are not closing the opportunity gap on the south end.
Washington Middle School is one of your core schools and you are just letting a mess happen over there.
We need your help.
Please look at these schedules.
Look at this is just an example of the chaos.
I don't expect you to understand it.
It's chaos.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Washington teachers families and students continue to suffer from a total communication breakdown.
Please help us.
Belief is powerful.
I have several friends who were the first in their family to graduate from college.
They all credit their academic success to a single teacher who believed in them.
but belief works both ways.
In our schools today, a white student is 20 times more likely than a black student to be identified as highly capable.
This leads to segregated classes, which send a clear message to our underprivileged students.
We do not believe you are capable.
In fact, our identification process rejects almost all underprivileged students because we do not believe they are capable of succeeding in the program.
It is true, relative to their peers, underprivileged students face many more obstacles, perhaps the biggest of which is our failure to believe in them.
This is an obstacle we must eliminate today.
We don't need to wait for a policy change or a task force to tell us to believe in underprivileged students.
If we believe in them we will see the many ways in which they are highly capable why they do deserve our support how our program will benefit them and how we can make it work for them.
Please ask staff to believe in and identify highly capable underprivileged students so we can send a new message.
We believe in all of you.
Thank you.
Rebecca Wynkoop.
Hi, I'm Rebecca Wynkoop, and I'm going to cede my time to Laura McGinty.
Hi thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you.
I've worked at McClure Meany and now Ballard High School.
I have the rare experience and privilege — State your name again for the record please.
Thank you.
Laura McGinty.
I've had the rare privilege to teach students at middle school and then again when they're in high school a few years later.
As a science teacher I know that one of the primary measures of student success is literacy.
It's employed in every subject every day every year of a student's life.
As educators we recognize the gravity of lagging literacy when we see students who struggle daily to even access content.
The expectation for students in middle and high school especially is that they can access and learn that content from informational text at grade level.
For some, this is not possible.
As such, we reach out to librarians and other resources to help us address the issue.
Study after study has shown that the greatest regression is during the summer months when students lose a majority if not all of the academic support network.
When students are not provided access and support over the summer their literacy drops further behind especially their informational literacy.
As I've witnessed this year it is painfully clear that for our most vulnerable students it is not a linear progression but is exponentially compounded.
The compounding factor will affect their potential for future opportunities as jobs become more technically demanding.
As such, the gap continues to widen.
Libraries across our district recognize this and have regularly provided literary sources for students during the summer.
Many schools provided reading lists to guide students and parents.
Other librarians have even ensured that their students have physical books for the summer.
It is arguable that our budget reveals our morals.
The focus is not saving librarians jobs or budgets.
This is a matter of saving access to literacy which we all know is fundamental to opportunity.
If we even want to breathe the word equity we must start here.
It's the debt that we owe our students.
Thank you.
After Jennifer Villanova, we will have Jonathan DeHalo, followed by Jenny Wyatt, and then Hadar Iron.
Hello my name is Jennifer Villanueva.
I'm also a proud parent at Dearborn Park International School.
I think you guys have heard our message that we do need help with our enrollment crisis and we love our school very much.
Just want to say two other things.
I've read the strategic plan and I think that our language immersion programs support your plan.
I think that the presence of these programs in our school sends a clear message to the students to the families and the community that it's important to be responsible citizens of the world, to care for one another, and to strive to understand one another regardless of language, ethnicity, race, anything else that may have separated us in the past.
And so I think that these programs support African American males and all other students of color in our school.
It shows them inclusion and acceptance.
and I think it's a vital part of their education which actually at the last board meeting a student from world school talked about these same concepts and how important they were in her education.
And the other thing I wanted to say was that our school.
Our student body is actually 90% of our student body identifies as either Asian, African-American, black, Hispanic, or multiracial, 90%.
So I just want to say that a lot of our faces here tonight are white.
And so I think it's important to acknowledge that this meeting is part of a larger white power structure that does, perpetuate white privilege.
And I really hope that you all will come to our school and speak to our parents because they're there supporting their kids at all of our school functions.
So please come out of the structure power structure and meet with them and talk to them.
Thank you.
Hi my name is Jonathan D'Allure.
I'm a parent for a student at Washington Middle School.
I have two other kids in the Seattle Public Schools.
I'm very grateful for the work of the teachers and the board.
There is no world language offered at the school.
The science class is a complete disaster.
We were told recently that we had to do self-learning and that there will be a summer school for the students that this district has to pay for.
I also learned through the Seattle Times not through the communication of the school that the school was projecting the names of students in detention at the cafeteria for everyone to see.
I was not, I didn't have, I was not educated in the American school system but I have all my kids in there and so I don't understand maybe how it works but how many schools in the Seattle Public Schools do not offer world language in Seattle besides Washington Middle School?
How many schools in the Seattle Public Schools tell families that they basically cannot teach science and they have to self-learn the science?
How many public schools have a detention today practice where students are publicly shamed for being in detention.
The Seattle School responsibility as stated on the website is to do whatever it takes to ensure that every child achieves their highest level.
This is unfortunately not happening at Washington Middle School.
President Harris to borrow your word one of your ships is sinking.
We need your help before it's lost at sea.
President Juneau sorry Superintendent Juneau please visit the school.
Thank you.
Jenny Margaret Montessaro and then Dan Goforth.
Greetings my name's Margaret Montserrat and this is my sixth and final year as a parent of children attending Washington Middle School.
I love the school which has supported my kids through that precarious transition between childhood and adolescence and I'm sorry to leave it in the state that I now find it.
Our family has seen three different administrations each one less optimal than the last.
I am now no longer confident that the school is adequately preparing these kids for the rigors of high school and beyond.
Academically speaking this year specific grade levels lost the opportunity to study a foreign language or others were given only the option to study online.
Language is a living thing needs to be between people.
Mid-year scheduling changes were created without teacher input and were not communicated in advance.
So major science and literature projects had to be scrapped midway with students starting over and losing a month or more of progress.
We've heard about teachers being assigned to subjects they've never taught.
The quantity and rigor of writing.
assignments does not appear to match the same standard as in years past.
Will these students have to start their foreign language all over from beginning in high school so that their middle school class time was wasted.
Will high school science or literature teachers have to dumb down their curriculum to deal with the disparity between Washington students and those from other feeder schools.
Culturally speaking we entered a school with high energy and academic team where teachers and administration jointly made plans and solve problems and help from parents was welcomed.
I'm leaving a school where conversations are whispered behind closed doors where children and adults are punished or ignored for raising their concerns where discipline has moved from restorative to punitive approaches and even to shaming.
Expectations have shifted from holding young adults accountable for their choices to mistrust and prevention of choices.
It's a suboptimal environment.
We would like your help restoring the learning environment to the state that our kids deserve.
Dan.
Hi my name is Dan Goforth.
My daughter's a seventh grader at Washington Middle School.
And everything that you've heard today is true, because she's experienced it, including getting her period and having that problem of, how do I get to the bathroom in time?
For the women on the board, I know you understand this in a very personal way.
I'm here, though, to advocate for the future of the WMS music program, whose history is well known and very special in SPS and in our community.
Thousands of kids have benefited from the many ensembles, jazz, concert band, orchestra, choir, and drumline.
Serving over 425 students currently, it's always been, and it is today, a shining gem of WMS and SPS.
I'm concerned that its future now is at risk.
We've heard there are potential further cutbacks that may be made to the music program next year, notably the loss of the entire jazz program if jazz is moved out of the school day and designated as an after school activity.
The jazz band is a source of pride and joy for WMS, SPS, and the Seattle community at large.
Its national award winning legacy goes back 40 plus years and is an integral part of the SPS community.
As parents we don't know what's happening and thus we have not been able to provide feedback collaboratively on coming up with solutions to address any potential challenges.
Parents have had virtually zero communications.
from our administration despite being asked repeatedly for responses.
I and I know many other parents would be heartbroken to lose these programs and the amazing teachers as a result knowing the study of music has been repeatedly found to produce better learners.
This is not necessarily just a budget issue.
Over the past couple of years, the nonprofit parent group Friends of Washington Music has raised significant funds to support the teachers, buy instruments for students, pay for clinicians, lessons and scholarships for competition trips for every ensemble from beginning to advance so that every student has the opportunity to learn about and play music.
We have over 65% of our 660 student student body being taught music.
That's not that's undone anywhere else in our district.
Superintendent Juneau gratefully acknowledging you have just promoted music month for the month of March.
We need your help now.
We really need your help now and we hope you'll agree to meet with us.
This concludes the sign up list for public testimony this evening.
Thank you.
Again many thanks for taking your time and speaking your truth from your heart and thank you ever so much for making it student centered.
Much much appreciate it.
We go back now to the consent agenda.
Do I have a motion.
I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.
No it's just I'm sorry.
I move ahead of yourself.
I know I move approval of the consent agenda.
There's no amendments here.
Second.
Yet.
The consent agenda has been moved and seconded.
Do directors wish to take any item off the consent agenda at this time.
Do any of my colleagues wish to take any items off the consent agenda at this time.
Seeing none.
All those that wish to pass the consent agenda please signify by saying aye.
Aye.
OK.
We now come to board member reports.
And if you all don't step up I'm going to tag you.
Who would like to go first.
Director Burke.
Yes?
Thank you and good evening.
I also want to share my appreciation for everyone who came out and spending their evening with us.
I will make my comments brief.
First of all, I hope everybody had a wonderful spring break and is relaxed and energized and got to plant some things in the garden and things are starting to sprout now.
Cut back everything that you needed to because it's growing now.
Looking back into some of the work in the past couple of weeks I want to really celebrate.
We had an opportunity as a board on Saturday the 30th to participate in racial equity training.
And this was something that we've talked about for a long time as one of our imperatives.
And really, this work that we do is on the ground racial equity training.
And so this is what I've been telling myself is, well, wow, we're getting trained up as we're doing this work.
We went to this meeting on Saturday, this training on Saturday, and I just want to share publicly and proudly, for anybody that's skeptical of this type of training, it was powerful.
It was enlightening, it was soul-searching, it was trust-building among directors, so I just want to really thank My colleagues for participating and being candid and honest and I want to thank staff for putting that together for us.
It was really made an impact for me.
We also had a had an opportunity to meet with directors Geary and Mack for a presentation on the Seattle World School.
from James Lovell and Dr. Bob Hughes that were involved in some of the advisory work around it.
They shared the theory, the delivery model behind this amazing gem that we have.
I learned a lot about that and the combination of a bilingual orientation center with core academic classes credit earning opportunities and how the the structure of Seattle World School very intentionally tries to to resolve some of the challenges that a that a standalone bilingual orientation center has and provide these great opportunities for students.
So it sounds like we may have drifted a little bit from that core model.
And so I just wanted to ask that staff community and and also looking to Director DeWolf I know you don't have enough to do but that's in your district.
So I'm I'm a fan newfound fan and I just ask that folks rally around and support this gem and embrace the research proven model that it's based on and figure out how to get back to that.
As far as public testimony some of the some of the key themes I want to appreciate the Dearborn Park families for coming out and sharing and being very specific with with your ideas and suggestions and your passion on your school is is is contagious.
Washington families as well.
Thank you for your consistent.
Feedback to us.
This is a really hard conversation when I think of what I aspire to as a director and what I would like for the district to deliver and to aspire to as well.
We want to be a welcoming community.
We want to be a collaborative community.
We want to create engaging learning environments.
And what I'm hearing from the feedback here is that we're falling short on that.
I hope we can rise to that work.
And I, again, thank you for sharing where we're not quite hitting the mark, or not hitting the mark at all.
I have a community meeting that I just set up on May 4th.
Greenwood library 1030 a.m.
and we'll get that posted on the calendar within the next one to two days.
Thank you very much.
Next up director DeWolf.
Thank you President Harris.
First just want to thank our student speakers for being with us tonight.
I think as you'll hear from everyone I think up here on the dais that your voices and your experiences and your stories are critically important to us.
So thank you for coming out tonight on your.
on a school night and being here.
So I appreciate that.
Yes.
Also just want to say really really grateful to have the parents from Washington Middle School come out.
I know that this has been a long arduous process and I appreciate you speaking truth to all this experiences and we certainly do need to fulfill our promise to make sure that we are providing high quality education to every child.
So thank you for keeping us accountable to that.
I wanted to say that before spring break we had a really great opportunity to host a conversation here at one of our work sessions to begin the conversations around community workforce agreements and I was really grateful to Director Burke and Director Mack and President Harris for really being supportive of that work and I hope and really look forward to connecting with and working with the Ops Chair Mack and our Vice President Burke on.
the next steps and so very excited about the conversations we had.
I also wanted to kind of tag a little bit to what you were saying Director Burke when Director Mack and I ran for school board we actually heard in living rooms and homes across the city that our board needed to participate in an intensive racial equity retreat.
And I want to just elevate a little part of the story about that.
One of our one part of three board racial equity retreats.
We had spent a day in this intensive conversations and particularly as a queer native person was really grateful to hear the ways in which my colleagues on this board were diving deep into this conversation being really thoughtful.
But what was even more exciting was at the very end we all went around and shared one word about how we felt about the day.
And because it's an open public meeting because we're a board we could have observers on the outside sitting around.
And one of the folks that was sitting on the wall was one of our students and she is often here keeping us accountable to our racial equity goals.
She she'll probably be at the public comment in the coming weeks.
And she sat and watched us in this board racial equity retreat all day and at the very end we asked her what she thought what she had observed and how she felt.
And she said you know for for a long time I've been coming here and I've been telling you how I feel and I come to public comment and I didn't realize how much work you do behind the scenes.
And she said watching the ways in which you've challenged yourselves thought about this deeply and we're really diving into racial equity and racial justice that she finally for the first time felt hope in her in her schools.
She felt hope for her community and she felt hope that we had grappled enough that day that we were going to be making decisions based on that understanding and I really felt You know it's a lot of work up here and at least having one student particularly somebody that I look look to her critiques of us and her criticism and her accountability of us that she was able to feel some hope that day that was really inspiring.
So I just wanted to thank her for being there with us and.
Yeah.
So the things that I'm tracking are policy 2015 we're continuing to dive into the details about that policy which means that we in order to get to what I'm working towards and I know there's other folks here on the board that are talking about too as ethnic studies as a graduation requirement that policy we still need to refine some of the stuff so that.
is maybe not coming up as quickly as we want but but to let you at least know that in order for that to be there we need to create a runway and that is through policy 2015 and so we'll keep you posted on those.
And I've certainly received a lot of emails in the last two weeks about amplify.
So thanks for everybody for sharing your thoughts about that.
And the last thing was just to say that congratulations to you Superintendent Juneau and the entire staff for the state of the district last night.
It was a really well attended event and it was exciting to see so many people come out and fill the venue in Capitol Hill on a rainy evening.
And finally I wanted to end with a poem.
And this is from one of our students at Middle College High School.
And so, yes, here it is.
Her name is Hassan Almusa.
It's called Human Connections.
It's, if you connect with your heart, will you succeed?
When you succeed, who will you help?
And when you do, and when you help what do, you think you will receive, and when you receive, will you give back and repeat?
This is from one of our one of the books that was created by writers in the schools which is a program of Seattle Arts and Lectures called Tomorrow I Will Whisper Your Name and I'm just trying to put more of our students poems into the record.
So thanks for letting me do that.
Thank you.
Director Geary next up.
Thank you.
Thank you everybody as always for coming out and speaking to us.
I also want to give a special thanks to Superintendent Juneau for continuing to really put students front and center and enjoyed seeing the slides about the student advisory work.
And I want that to be very transparent in terms of how we as a board can hear back their reflections regularly.
especially on the different work that's coming up to us so that we can feel the benefit not just through the work that is being presented to us but making it very transparent.
The voices within that work that are specifically the students voices because that I think we all agree is really important and we enjoy when we hear that and know know that we're on the right track.
I want to thank the Kimball elementary students.
Many of you weren't here for them but they were adorable and sang to us three songs and we always appreciate it when the schools come out.
And they were just they were the first graders so they had all of those adorable little missteps that it's.
Well you know we have some world class music and it does get to the point that we have some of the greatest music in the country if not in the world in our schools and so it is important to me that we protect that aspect of our schools and we continue to make it available and that as we examine our opportunity gaps We realize that that is a huge opportunity and it may not be being utilized as much as it should be by all of our students but we certainly don't want it to go away as we work to close the opportunity gaps and figure out how to make our programs more inviting and relevant to all of our students.
So I believe it's an important part of the equity work and we can't let it disappear because it is a part of our I think it's a part of pride for everybody in our.
city, whether they participate in the program or not.
So I hear you, Washington, about that, and it's very important to me.
Thank you Dearborn Park International for coming out and telling us, and I'll second Director Burke's statement that it's very helpful to come in with specific suggestions.
I think that's important in looking at ways of getting native speakers into your school.
I have to say, I'm just going to throw this out, in thinking about what people look for potentially in charter schools, and why they might want to send their children to charter schools for a very specialized or welcoming environment or a definite academic rigor focus.
It just seems to me that Dearborn Park when I'm hearing from you and I'm not familiar with your school but I'm thinking.
If I had to choose between a charter school or Dearborn Park why wouldn't I choose Dearborn Park.
That's a really cool education that is grounded in research in terms of dual language immersion showing great outcomes for all kids.
So I think we can be creative and think of ways to broaden the message and make sure that everybody knows that that school is available.
But I hear you that we would have to then also be flexible in terms of making sure that kids get are allowed to go into the school.
But we need to be mindful that our students and our families are our customers and we need to make sure that we're offering them the things that they want.
And it sounds to me like Dearborn Park is doing that work so.
Sounds great to me.
Thank you.
Visited Montlake Elementary.
Thanks to principal Julie Pearson and PTA president Vivian Van Gelder for spending time with me talking about their school.
I think there were two main points.
One gets back to PTA fundraising and I am definitely hearing that there is exhaustion on the part of our families.
And.
in terms of being expected to raise money over and over.
And I want to bring everybody's attention to a recent Seattle Council PTA PTSA resolution around PTA fundraising and they're calling it take back our PTA.
And it really is the opportunity to shift PTAs away from fundraising and back to being a parent led organization in support of the learning of their children.
And that when we focus PTAs just on the fundraising, it really excludes those people who don't have the money to donate and perhaps don't have the time during the day to participate in all of the fundraising that goes on.
And they feel excluded by PTA.
And yet it is shown that when parents participate in PTAs around their children's education, that those children do better.
So shifting PTAs away from fundraising and into parent led activities around the support of children in their schools may really get to the heart of what we're all hoping for our kids.
So I invite everybody to go on the Seattle Council PTSA website take a look at that resolution.
Give them their feedback, share it with your school, and really spend some time if you're a member of your PTA or if you want to be part of your PTA, but just don't see a place for you in the fundraising mechanism to approach your community with this message and see if you can rework it so that you can have a stronger PTA that's really supporting the educational growth of all the students in your school.
So I think that's some really cool work and it gets back to why we on Audit and Finance are trying to continue those conversations about if we don't have the PTAs raising that money, Well we know we have a population in Seattle that wants to give money.
We have a levy we can't collect because people are so willing to give money.
So what are the other ways we can set up structures to support our kids and the financial needs across our district.
So we have to continue those conversations and I'm happy to be engaged in them.
And then a final thing that happened this week that I thought was really interesting was a study that came out of Yale and it talks about the best way to address student anxiety or children, childhood anxiety.
And as a person who's worked in special education and as a board member who has read many things about education and has have repeatedly come across this idea that there is an epidemic of anxiety in our children these days.
It was it was a study that gives us hope.
But I think the most interesting thing one interesting thing about it is it also gives us parents some control in that what they have found is that potentially parent training around the issue can be one of the most effective ways to address the issue of childhood anxiety.
So I just want to invite people, because it is epidemic.
It affects our kids.
It affects their learning.
It affects how they participate in school, their willingness to go to school.
And I know any parent who is faced with that often feels unsupported or doesn't know what to do.
I think we'd love to know how to support you.
I think you would love to know how to get support.
So I invite everybody to go and read what you can.
There was an NPR article, and there is a publication out of Yale on it.
And I think that's something that perhaps we can all look at in terms of ways to make that available in our own community, because I know it's something many of you face.
So thank you again, everybody, for coming out.
My next meeting.
Oh I regularly hold meetings on Tuesday morning at Zoka a coffee shop north of the U Village and I posted on Facebook but I'm anticipating being there from 8 to 9 30 Tuesday morning for the rest of the month at least.
Thanks.
Director Mack.
Good evening.
I will echo the thank you for coming out because I know how it actually takes time to try to prepare two minutes.
And your issues are obviously really ongoing and concerning to you enough to come multiple times and over and over and repeat concerning messages that so I appreciate you taking the time because this is how we.
recognize what we need to do in our district to support our students for hearing things that are not working.
We need to address them and so from a policy perspective what brought me into educational advocacy was around operations to start with it was around the growth boundaries issues and recognizing how those you know enrollment issues and where you go to school and what schools you can go to and how all of that actually impacts your access.
As well as so many other things.
And as I peeled back the onion I realized that it was just you know way more complex than I thought at first which made me very interested because I'm interested in challenges challenging puzzles and eventually led me here to the school board chairing operations because at the core of it the basics of the things that we do.
How we get to school.
Are school buildings safe.
How do we assign students.
All of these things are absolutely fundamental to providing a great education to students.
So the policy level decisions that we can make and we can work on are things that this is what our job here is to do and I appreciate hearing the challenges that you're bringing forward because they're directly related to things that we have to vote on and adjust over time.
The wait list conversation and the student assignment conversation is I mean it's a really big challenging one.
We had the new student assignment plan adopted in 2010 and we had the BEX IV levy which brought on more school buildings.
We've had lots of changes since then.
And today we just got the waitlist assignments of like what you know what's happening at our schools how long are our waitlists and I think it's really interesting to note that in terms of demand.
Director Geary was talking about you know why why why do families pick different schools.
John Stanford which is an immersion school as well in the north and McDonald are very close to each other.
One has an 80 student waitlist 80 students and the other has a hundred student waitlist and they're both option schools and they're marketed that way.
Whereas Dearborn Park and Beacon Hill are actually not known because they're not option schools.
They're not I mean they're not necessarily as known but there still is a demand for it for the dual language international immersion aspect and there's a waitlist of some 16 kids on your school and so we have demand and I and and that demand it.
We do great things in these schools and we do it and it is it promotes equity.
And so I want to I want to see how we can actually move more towards serving more students with the things that actually work to promote equity.
So I hear you on that and for the waitlist conversation there's other questions around waitlist movement and so forth and we have a May 8th.
work session coming up where we're going to be talking about capacity enrollment evaluation and wait lists are part of that piece.
So there will be conversations and then there may be additional wait list movements and those sorts of things.
For the longer term, the policies that we're working on with facilities planning and this advisory committee I mentioned earlier, those are the kind of things that will help maybe shift some of the longer term student assignment issues that we've got going on.
And the student assignment transition plan comes up For a vote every year and it's you know in the fall And so as I mentioned earlier, I think we need to have a work session on like what are we doing for the?
2020 year because there's a number of issues that we've already identified.
There's maple.
There's link Licton Springs.
There's a Dearborn Park there's there's all these different issues that we know exist and so how are we going to help resolve this and Washington I think is one of those from an enrollment perspective as well.
So.
Those are the things I spent a lot of time thinking about.
I want to wish everybody hope you had a happy spring break, because I turned my brain off for a week, and so I can't even remember what happened before.
But I'm back, and it's all here, and there's a lot of work in front of us, not the least of which is I want to acknowledge the facility issue that happened at John Muir and the fear that that provided to all of the families and myself as a mother included I was like oh my gosh what happened.
And I know that that staff reacted really really quickly to the issue.
I took care of it.
An email went out yesterday.
There's going to be an email coming out from the board office soon in response to everyone who's been asking.
But in short the liquid that was on the ground is not toxic.
Students were not harmed.
Staff handled and cleaned up the situation as quickly as possible.
And the HVAC system is getting repaired.
So there's a plan to get it fixed, and they're on top of trying to maintain this.
And so I'm sorry that when my water heater broke, It was a big mess the last year and this is this this is the situation that we end up in when we have facilities that we are not able to fund maintaining and that's why we thankfully approved BEX V where we have a bunch of money going into preventative maintenance.
So look for that email and I hope I hope folks can hear the you know apology that this accident happened and that.
know that our staff are working hard to keep students safe and I trust that and that your board is deeply committed to deeply committed to keeping our students safe in our facilities.
I want to shout out to Peggy McEvoy as well.
She has been with this district.
and done some amazing work.
She actually helped facilitate during the new student assignment plan way back in the day.
And she'll be deeply missed from my perspective.
School climate surveys are out.
So I just want everyone to check your inbox.
You get one per family.
And that's really important information for us to get back.
And then tomorrow night is an exciting continuous enrollment option school fair at Nova High School.
So if your student might be interested in an alternative high school experience, that's a good place to check out.
And lastly, I also want to plug the importance of music and the importance of supporting those programs and the reality that most of them are financially supported by private donations across our entire district.
Unfortunately, that's how it works and that those programs actually serve all of the students in the school.
and they're not just service servicing you know individual students they're serving the whole school and they're providing musical instruments so that every student that wants to have an opportunity to play an instrument they can and they provide the music and and I had the opportunity to to be at the Robert Eagle Staff musical concert a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing.
And it was made possible it is made possible by eighteen thousand dollars coming in to help fund all of those the instruments and the sheet music and the and these kids are actually being invited to go national somewhere national for their — I can't even remember what it was but it was amazing.
Last night Nathan Hill jazz band or jazz singers.
Amazing.
They don't need instruments as much as their voices but they were amazing.
The Rainier Beach music is really really important and I just want to underscore the importance of supporting however we can to make sure that every student has access to it.
And I could ramble on for longer but I'll go ahead and stop.
No she can't.
No she can't.
Director Patu you're up.
It's always a privilege to be up here and be able to share.
great things that we see happening in our various schools.
Actually last week I had the opportunity to visit England and the first time I ever visit a different country other than the United States and from my hometown.
So it was amazing to just to be at a place where you've never been and watch the different culture in comparison to what we do here.
And I did not want to come back.
I thought it was wonderful but it's good to be back here in Seattle.
I want to say thank you to the Dearborn Park family for coming and sharing with us your concerns and hopefully that we can work together and be able to look at how we can be able to resolve some of those concerns.
It's always great to be able to.
come and be able to share all the great things that's happening in the various schools as I visit different schools.
It's amazing the work that the teachers and the staffs are doing in various schools because a lot of times we forget without them our schools would not be running the way they are.
And I want to say thank you to all the teachers and staff in the various schools and ourself and schools that I visited.
and still have more to come.
And I think that we don't think.
We'll change.
We can sit up here and talk about policy which we do.
But in terms of effectuating that policy the board's tools frankly are very limited.
I will say that I am beyond impressed and appreciative.
Of Superintendent Juneau's Willingness to collaborate willingness to push back and same with our senior staff.
And unfortunately those are not conversations that the public is privy to and it's a trust exercise.
Please be assured however that the things that people came here to testify about are being discussed and possible solutions being explored and and We can be cynical and we can be sometimes fairly uncivil about how we address these issues.
And I got to tell you if you want good people helping do your work.
Let's figure out nicer ways to communicate some of the things that are said out there in blogosphere on Facebook frankly on e-mails that are sent to the board.
And if you want to do an email campaign at least change your verbiage around please because the cut and paste a little old and also let's make sure that our staff or our teachers aren't suggesting to students to lobby for something a teacher wants because that might not be appropriate.
And I'm speaking in veiled words but having received over 200 emails on the science adoption And every point on the continuum from against to in favor we hear you but but let's keep it civil people because everybody up on this dais and the folks around the room are working their backsides off.
And and I sound like your mother perhaps saying if you can say something nice.
We can take the criticism but please make it more elegant.
We're capable of better and we in this district are capable of better and we must do better and we're trying.
And I thank you very much.
We're going to take 10 minutes and then we're going to rip through the rest of the agenda.
Thank you.