Seattle Schools Board Meeting Jan. 21, 2026

Good afternoon, we will call the meeting to order momentarily and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

All right, the January 21st, 2026 regular board meeting is called to order at 4 42 p.m.

We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

The roll call, please.

Vice President Briggs.

Here.

Director Lavallee.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Here.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Smith.

Here.

Director Song.

Here.

President Topp.

Here.

All right.

Thank you.

We're going to get right on into it and I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Podesta for his comments.

Thank you President Topp.

I want to apologize to directors for not being present at the special meeting on January 14th and want to thank my colleagues Dr. Torres Morales and Mr. Howard for presenting progress monitoring on our life ready goal.

I understand the conversation went well and I hope our efforts to think about how we do progress monitoring or bearing some fruit and I just appreciate your all attention to that matter.

I also want to thank school leaders in general our return from in my time at Seattle Public Schools so my seventh anniversary at Seattle Public Schools is tomorrow and I've seen ups and downs on what the return to school from winter break is.

This year I think overall has been very smooth with with regard to staffing and school operations.

And I think our principal core and staff deserve a lot of credit that we started school like we'd never been gone, which isn't always the case.

We did face some operational challenges yesterday that have gotten a lot of attention with regard to concerns about immigration enforcement in our community.

I want to make sure that everyone is aware that we have very strong practices about if there is immigration enforcement that directly affects a school building and that we don't allow that enforcement on our property without a warrant, a lot of process and principals been trained.

The responding to unconfirmed reports is a place where we need to serve principals better who have been left making decisions at the building level and that has always served us well in the past for other law enforcement activity that occurs in neighborhoods because usually there are hard facts and we're working with law enforcement agencies.

In this case there's just a lot of information flying around and folks having to make decisions without kind of consensus building and risk assessment.

As of now we really have no confirmation of any reports of activity near any of our buildings.

but the word was out and I don't think we've given school leaders all the tools they need for dealing with that ambiguity.

So we are going to work hard to correct that to make sure that there's a bit more centralized decision making and consensus building before we take action building with buildings leaders.

I want to commend they did what they felt they needed to do with the information they have.

They need some more support from us to have that information.

We previewing a few things tonight we have a briefing about work that our team has done about how we're offering highly capable services to students and how that impacts our student assignment.

policies, we'll talk later about that.

We are renewing, one of my favorite things at Seattle Public Schools we're proposing to renew is our student community workforce agreement, which is a partnership with our construction labor partners and trades labor partners where we're really leveraging the investments we make in the community and in capital construction and it's served us really well.

And I'm glad we're able to and continue that.

Our team is getting ready for a transition to doing leadership.

This is the last regular meeting.

I'll be joining you all on the dais and I won't let the door hit me on the way out, but I really very much appreciated this opportunity and the support I've gotten from the school community and the board has been really helpful and I appreciate it.

Another, thank you.

Another item on the agenda tonight is a proclamation about Black Lives Matter at school.

We have been gearing up for this as we always do curating curriculum and resources for schools that will work with school leaders to roll out the first week of February.

We have a proclamation which I think we were going to ask as has become our practice our student directors to read so I would and we'll turn it over to Director Yoon if you're first up.

Thank you.

Okay.

A proclamation of Seattle School District Number One, King County, Seattle, Washington, declaring the lives of black students matter and recognizing and encouraging participation district-wide in a national 2026 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action February 2nd to 6th, 2026 and year of purpose 2025 to 2026. whereas the Black Lives Matter at School movement began in Seattle in the fall of 2016 through the leadership of educators and whereas the Seattle School Board has repeatedly recognized and encouraged participation in Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action and the Year of Purpose.

and whereas the Seattle School Board has also recognized that throughout our nation's history, institutional and structural racism and injustice have led to deepening of racial disparities across all sectors of society and have lasting negative consequences for our communities, cities and nation.

and whereas as a public school district we are facilitators of limitless growth potential of human beings with a charge to guide our youth in finding and achieving their purpose with a belief that every human being deserves to live with dignity and whereas in board policy number 0030 ensuring educational and racial equity Seattle Public Schools makes a commitment to the success of every student in each of our schools and charges district staff, administrators, instructors, communities, and families with this broadly shared responsibility.

And whereas in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and countless black named and unnamed victims, the Seattle School Board adopted resolution number 2019 2020-38 to affirm Seattle Public Schools is committed to the safety of black students and resolves that black lives don't just matter, they are worthy, beloved, and needed.

And therefore, Seattle Public Schools has declared that the lives of black students matter and hereby proclaims February 2nd to 6th, 2026 as Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action and encourages participation district-wide through discussions in classrooms and in homes throughout this week of action in the 2025 to 26 year of purpose.

Thank you Director Yoon and with that I'll turn it back to President Ta.

I'll turn it back to Director Yoon as we go to student board director comments.

Thank you.

So our first update is in December.

We had our final meeting with the NAACP Youth Council.

Thank you, President Taub, Director Rankin, and Director Smith for joining us.

We also, a few weeks ago, met with the AIC rank committee.

So thank you, Dr. Strausky and Mr. Deval Yates for setting up that meeting.

and we also met with a comms team to continue working on our student board member website.

We received lots of feedback and we'll be working for the next few months to finalize the content and deliverable with the goal of hopefully publishing it at the start of third quarter of the school year.

we will be seeking student feedback for the website and also our overall media outreach including our Instagram page through a survey which we will have available to students on a quarterly letter we're also working on that will be sent out hopefully at the start of second semester.

This quarterly letter will go through a lot of content student board members have worked on this year and share updates and how students could stay involved.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Yoon.

So, and I just want to echo something Superintendent Podesta said.

This is our last regular board meeting with you at the helm, and just want to take a moment of thank you and embarrass you as much as possible for your steady leadership and for guiding the district through this period of transition.

Your commitment and professionalism have been so appreciated.

And your seventh anniversary here at Seattle Public Schools is something that should be celebrated.

So I want to give board directors also a quick opportunity, but we have just a small token of gratitude for all that you do for us.

But other directors have a few words they would like to share real, very quick, 30 seconds or less.

Director Mizrahi.

Thank you very much for stepping up in a challenging time and I think that you did a great job with the beginning of the school year and getting things set up really well as we went through our superintendent search and really it was a pleasure to have you at the helm and excited to work with you for many more years hopefully in your current role.

Vice President Briggs.

I just wanted to second Joe's comments.

Director Song.

Thank you so much Interim Superintendent Podesta for your service.

It's just been seven years at Seattle Public Schools but you have really a very long career in public service and I feel like I have learned a lot from you and I really look forward to our continued work together.

Thank you, Superintendent Podesta.

But with that, Superintendent Shouldner will officially begin on February 2nd, and we look forward to welcoming him into this new role.

A few sort of housekeeping items.

I want to remind directors that we have a special meeting on January 28th to focus on the budget.

followed by our board retreat on Saturday, February 7th.

In addition, we will have progress monitoring on February 4th.

So thank you all for that sort of time and preparation as we head into a busy and important stretch of meetings.

Before we move into committee and liaison reports, I do want to briefly acknowledge something I think has been weighing heavy on me and many families and staff this week as Superintendent Podesta alluded to yesterday's events, including reports of immigration and enforcement activity near our schools.

and several of our schools going into shelter-in-place protocols.

I think created fear and uncertainty in our community and I want to be clear that we as Seattle Public Schools are committed to being a place of safety and belonging to all students.

and I want to thank the district staff for communications that have gone out to families with resources and information.

But I also want to continue to ask that this communication continue an increase in these sort of uncertain times.

Moments like this feel overwhelming.

and the question kind of always goes into my mind, well, what can we do to continue working to ensure our schools remain welcoming and supportive places for children?

So this is also a call to action for those community members who have policy ideas of how the district can continue to strengthen our commitment.

We want to hear them and we are listening and want to keep working alongside you to make sure that our schools support students' wellbeing and their right to an education.

So we're going to move now onto our committee and liaison reports.

So we do have new liaison positions.

The Head Start, I'll just list them off really quickly.

The Head Start program liaison will be Director Song.

The Tribal Nations liaison will be Vice President Briggs.

The WIAA representative will be Director Mizorahi.

We'll have the BECCS and BTA capital programs are Director Song and Director Lavallee.

Legislative Liaison Director Song, City of Seattle Feb, Deel King County Director Mizrahi, Council of Great City Schools Director Rankin, and Scholarship Liaison Committee Liaison Director Smith.

As I said previously, board staff are ready to support the liaisons in their roles and walk through responsibilities, expectations, near-term timelines.

So please coordinate with Carrie to schedule time to get oriented in your assigned role.

Superintendent Schuldner also offered to meet on any of the roles to help support in these positions.

And it's kind of exciting to see in the week and a half since these roles were put into place, directors already stepping into the work.

Director Mizrahi has been actively engaging around the theft levy.

I know that Director Song with the legislative session underway has already been busy on that front.

So with that, do board liaisons have any reports for the board?

Director Song.

I have not had a chance yet to, I don't have a head start report.

I haven't had a chance to connect with the early learning team, but I hope to do that soon.

In terms of a legislative update, the Washington State Legislature is currently on day 10 of the 60-day 2026 legislative session.

Seattle Public Schools contract lobbyists Cliff Traceman and Julia Worth from our board office presented to us last week on Wednesdays.

And since Cliff and Julia covered already much in their presentation, I will just focus on two key updates.

The first one is Senate Bill 5906, an act relating to establishing data on personal safety protections within areas of public accommodation for all Washington residents.

Clift has signed in pro on this bill for us.

The Senate Committee on Law and Justice held a public hearing yesterday, and given that so many schools went into shelter in place yesterday, I think this moment really underscores the importance of this legislation, even though Seattle Public Schools already has many of the procedures outlined in the bill in place.

The second bill is Senate Bill 5858. That's the transportation safety net funding.

Cliff testified pro last week.

This would provide additional transportation funding for districts serving high-need student populations, including students experiencing homelessness.

That's our McKinney-Vento students.

and students receiving special education services.

This has passed out of committee and transportation continues to be a significant driver of our budget deficit, so looking forward to how this bill progresses.

And I just have a few additional comments after my legislative update to comment on items within the consent agenda, so I'll just take this opportunity to do that.

I want to thank the capital projects team for including the cumulative sum of the change orders for Alki Elementary.

That added transparency is helpful and appreciated.

Second, I noticed that the NOVAC contract item was removed from tonight's agenda and I'm still doing some follow-up on this but I think this is an example of the kind of contract cleanup and process work that this board needs to do.

That might be something appropriate for a standing finance and audit committee and I think we'll discuss that later.

I wanted to express my enthusiasm from the community workforce agreement for the community labor and district benefit it brings and to clarify this two-year extension is supported by all parties and it lines us up with the capital levy Finally, I want to know an issue on the school year calendar item.

I did submit a question to the staff, which was included in our weekly forecast email.

It doesn't appear on this calendar document, but for clarity, the kindergarten start dates for the 26-27 school year are September 8th and the 27-28 school year is September 7. I won't be pulling this item for the consent agenda, but I want to state for the record that I think they should be.

The calendar approval has increasingly taken on the character of labor negotiations instead of being centered on students and families.

Other liaison reports, Director Rankin.

Thank you.

This year's, the Council of Great City Schools meets monthly with representatives from other urban districts across the country.

And I think the first one for this year is maybe next week or the week after.

but as far as the previous work of the Ad Hoc Policy Committee, I just wanted to note for folks that I provided a kind of summary overview of the work done so far that I'm not gonna go over now, but it's attached to meeting minutes as an information item.

So, and we had...

kind of one final closeout meeting to do that hasn't been scheduled, and I'm not sure, given what we're talking about with committees, if that still will be scheduled or not, but just so that it's sort of available for everyone to see kind of where we got to in writing so that we can work together on whatever next steps are that is there.

And then since Director Song kind of opened opened the door because I had the same, kind of the same comment about the calendar, that I wasn't planning to pull it, but I did bring up an introduction that exactly what you said, that that's in state law, the board is responsible for approving the calendar.

And we do technically by accepting the item, but it is a labor contract conversation that I think is something that belongs to the board and that community should have a bigger say in.

I know the value of people having those dates for two years.

So similar to Director Song, I'm not gonna pull it and I'm not gonna recommend we don't approve it, but that's a really important place that we should look at how those dates come about and how we set that calendar.

So thanks for bringing that up.

We're going to move to public testimony since it's 5, but we can come back to liaison reports after public testimony.

So board policy 1400 provides our rules for public testimony.

The board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as it expects of itself.

As Board President, I have the right to and I will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by our procedure.

A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave the meeting.

I'm going to pass it now to staff to summarize a few additional points and to read off the testimony of speakers.

Thank you, President Topp.

The Board will take testimony from those on the testimony list and will go to the waiting list if we are missing speakers.

Please wait until called to approach the podium or unmute and only one person may speak at a time.

The Board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak to.

Speakers may cede their time to another person, but this must be done when the listed speaker is called.

Time isn't restarted and the total time remains two minutes.

The timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for speakers here in person.

When the light is red and a beep sounds, it means that your time has been exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

For those joining by phone, the beep will be the indication that time has been exhausted.

Moving into our list now, for those joining by phone, please press star six to unmute on the conference line.

And for everyone, please do reintroduce yourself when called, as I may miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list.

The first speaker is Adam Gish.

It should be good to go.

It should be on, but staff will check here.

Good afternoon.

My name is Adam Gish.

I'm a 30-year Seattle School District employee.

I'm going to read to you directly the letter that I sent to Ms. Song a week and a half ago.

I teach at Garfield, and after last summer's day-long Novac PD, I was informed that the contract was up for a renewal.

I then did a public records request and just this last Saturday, after four months, received a 600 plus page document showing the timelines and expenditures.

I am not a numbers person, yet even my rudimentary understanding of them left me in shock after reviewing some of the document.

The evidence as to why Seattle schools should not renew its contract is merely anecdotal.

I sat in Garfield Commons that day along with my colleagues and suffered through a textbook example of bad pedagogy.

After a perfunctory grace period, teachers got to work, their work, meaningful work.

In fairness, the Novak UDL concept is great.

To plan lessons in units with those farthest from educational justice is admirable, and many of us do that already.

but the time to differentiate and deliver lessons that truly show improvement for that population is a task those not in the classroom don't truly understand.

And to implement it well takes time, resources, two things teachers covet as they are always out of reach.

The part of the document that stood out most was how disorganized the system seemed to be.

The amount of back and forth about payments received, not received, owed was astonishing.

And in one exchange, a district employee says, and I paraphrase, that even though the project is over budget, it should be continued as we are just beginning to gain the teacher's trust.

That took my breath away.

I work with great teachers and I know what trust means.

That statement reeks of ignorance and hubris.

That said, I would like to use the remainder of my time to say the 24, the attendance policy, there is none, and the 50% rule is hurting those we purport to serve the most.

The black, the brown, the poor kids swept under the rug and pushed away.

Look at that.

The next speaker is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins, box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the weed killer roundup and on plastic grass which is contaminated with forever chemicals, PFAS.

Four points.

Number one, a landmark study that claimed that the weed killer roundup was not a human health risk has now been retracted.

by the scientific journal that published it.

Number two, a leading researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai referred to the previous study as a harmful scientific fraud.

Does Seattle Public Schools use Roundup?

Number three, separately, Mount Sinai has studied artificial turf and forever chemicals .

Mount Sinai, quote, recommends against the installation of artificial turf playing surfaces, unquote.

Number four, district staff prefer to take the word of those who sell the turf and continue to install this material at schools.

On artificial intelligence, or AI, a recent article cited risks to young people's development and well-being and that unguided use of AI systems may actively de-skill students and teachers.

On school closures, the school district has changed how students will be assigned to schools in a way that will shrink enrollment at many schools.

Fixes are needed to avoid harmful school closures.

On four construction budget items.

These items together involve a quarter billion dollars.

Please pull these items for a public discussion with staff.

Vote no on Alki.

Don't give the contractor an extra million dollars for failing to timely estimate impacts on park property.

I've also attached a sheet of a few questions in case you have some extra time to look at it.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Sabrina Burr.

Sabrina Burr.

If you are online, you'll have to press star six to unmute.

Okay, we are going to move on and we will come back to you.

The next speaker is Manuela Sly.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Manuela Sly.

I serve as Seattle Council PTSA Student Safety Chair.

I'm here to share a letter written on behalf of the South Park community by Shauna Murphy, SPS parent and South Park resident.

Yesterday, I was contacted by a group of moms in my South Park neighborhood to let me know that several schools in nearby Southeast Seattle were sheltering in place because of credible ICE sightings near schools.

Our informal networks sprung into action to keep an eye out for ICE in our neighborhood as well.

I would like to see the district take a stronger stance against ICE enforcement activity near our schools and for each school to provide clear and direct communication to families as soon as possible about what plans they have in place regarding ICE activity, particularly at drop-off or pick-up time.

I have heard that some families in my neighborhood are also very worried about what will happen to their children if they, the parents, are kidnapped by ICE during the school day.

I firmly believe the schools have a role to play right now to work with families to make emergency plans.

I ask that SPS center children and families of color and especially those with disabilities in their planning in case of future ICE enforcement activities in or near our schools.

Please provide the leadership to train staff, educate students, and families so we'll be ready for the next such emergency.

I believe that the district needs to put an alert system into place for all the stakeholders now.

And thank you to all the educators in the six buildings that sheltered in place yesterday.

I appreciate how you keep our kids safe every day, and especially in these troubling times.

Thank you, Shana Murphy, SPS parent and South Park resident.

We received orders Shannon Crowley will not be providing testimony.

The next speaker is June Ivers.

June, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, SPS school board and community.

For the record, my name is Juno Ivers, community co-treasurer of CPTSA, and I'd like to thank Fred Protesta for your support and curiosity in the past couple of months.

We really appreciate your leadership.

Once again, safety means different things for different folks.

We are living in unprecedented times, and seeing our communities targeted and harassed regardless of our status in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles feels near and present to our beautiful diversity of Seattle.

Yesterday was a temperature check of anxiety and fear of the community, and as the community struggled to find concrete procedures, policy, and training, our fears were escalating.

We understand the district can't sit and play whack-a-mole with all communication, but we can as community partners and schools and families to help share resources, support training, create co-layering spaces, but a lot of it is opaque because we're so siloed.

Our kids are scared and they want support.

There's so much grief, anxiety, increased hate speech and powerlessness.

They're asking for counseling and support.

This is not a moment for ego, power hoarding, or gatekeeping.

This is a moment for co-learning, building sustainable relationships, and sharing capacity with our partners across the state like WASDA, EOGOAC, OSPI, and Washington State PTSA.

We're all building coalitions and support and create systems based on love and respect, not fear.

We're not a sila school district but part of a greater state and we need to be aware of the voices that are state legislators or state legislature.

And there are people on the other side who are organized to maintain the status quo and close their fists.

Once again, what voices are present?

What do we hear?

What doesn't have the capacity to be in the space?

And what barriers do they have?

These are questions that we should ask ourselves, whether financially is a barrier, language access, emotionally or physically.

Let's create a work session centering the needs, questions and concerns for immigrant families and see how we can support the local, state and federal levels because we're here for the children and as a community, we all belong here.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Megan Dixon.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

My name is Megan Dixon.

I am a parent at John Muir Elementary, and I want to thank you for this opportunity to talk.

Similar to the moms who've spoken before me, I want to start off by naming something that is happening and that is that families in our community are organizing, coming together mostly organically to think about how to support our most vulnerable students and families in the face of potential ICE activity.

This work is happening because we care deeply about our schools and our communities and we don't want to wait until a crisis to respond.

After yesterday's events there's even more interest from families across the district who want to help to share accurate information to reduce panic and to make sure students feel safe.

But right now this work is largely happening informally unevenly and on a school by school basis.

That means that school administrators are being asked to partner with these local family teams without clear district guidance.

Everyone's just trying to do the right thing, but we're also, it feels like reinventing the wheel.

And so my question to you all is, how can the district step into a leadership role here to ensure our families are safe?

What are clear protocols you can set in place for responding to reports of ICE activity, guidance, clear guidance on how schools can engage with these organized family groups?

and importantly, what is your communication strategy for communicating with families and distinguishing between unverified reports and confirmed information so that we don't unintentionally spread fear.

I also want clarity on the district's relationship with SPD during these times.

If ICE presence does develop in your schools, what is the role of SBD?

How are you engaging them?

Are they expected to show up and support our families and students or not?

I think that's an important thing for all families within SPF to understand.

Administrators and families need to know this now before a crisis, not during one.

And then I just finally with my time I want to briefly name the work that you're doing on the FEP levy with the City Council.

Our ability as a district to respond calmly and effectively to moments like this depends on the people who are in our staff, the counselors, family support workers, and trusted staff who have these relationships with families.

If we were to shift away from funding these positions with the upcoming STEP levy, then this would cause a disproportionate impact on families.

And so STEP planning should reflect this reality.

families across the district are ready as a partner.

We're just asking for your leadership, clear expectations and communication so that we know you have a plan that we can trust.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Amanda Thornwell.

Amanda, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hi.

I would like to talk about this policy on law enforcement, policies 4310 and 4311. I'm the parent of a former Godfield student who was harmed by Godfield administrators through the use of law enforcement.

I understand the feeling unsafe.

at school and my heart goes out to the parents, the students feeling unsafe by the ICE activities.

I have read over policy 4311 which has the procedure B which spells out some of the safe that they have against ICE activity at school.

And in addition, policy 4311 also put the principal in charge of security personnel when they are called to assist.

The principal can use those personnel at their disposal, but there's no consequences for misusing law enforcement.

The principal only has power over the students.

If you were going to give the principal control of law enforcement, there must be safeguard and consequences for misuse.

but it doesn't matter how many safeguards and guardrails are built into those policies.

What matters is how the violation of those policies are addressed.

Are there any enforcement of the policies?

And what is to prevent abuse of the policies by the district staff?

I have a video of a student being renderized by a police officer at Garfield High School with no other adult presence.

Policy 4310 dictates that the principal or a designated person must be present during the police interview of the students.

This clear violation 4310 has no consequence.

In fact, the district has no record of the encounter that students and the police officer.

Is that acceptable?

The district thinks so because no one has ever been held accountable for that incident.

Can you imagine the implication that the school principal bringing police into similar randomized students and leaving them alone with the police with or without cause?

So this would relate to ICE.

For example, if the principal doesn't like the student, what is to stop the principal from bringing ICE to deport the student?

Nothing.

Not policy 4311, 4310, or anything else, because there are no consequences for lack of compliance.

If students could be memorandarized at school for no cost, then students could face ICE agents at school too.

You could argue that ICE isn't allowed in school due to the 4211 SP.B, but Garfield School admin suffered no consequences.

In fact, after being memorandarized, that student immediately carried out actions that align with the Garfield admin wishes.

I hope that the district can take steps to make the students safe physically and emotionally at school.

And that means stopping protecting the people abusing their powers for their personal agenda.

The district needs to enforce the policy and penalize the blatant non-compliance by district staff.

Your time has been exhausted.

Can you please conclude your remarks?

We received word that Allison Vogel will not be able to provide testimony tonight.

The next speaker is Manuel Perez.

And we do have translation, correct?

Yes, we have interpretation available.

Manuel Perez, you'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference line.

We're going to move on to our next speaker but we will come back to the people we missed.

The next speaker is Gloria Ramirez and we do have an interpreter available.

Gloria Ramírez, ¿está usted ahí?

Puede presionar estrella 6 para que se pueda escuchar.

¿Me escucha?

Sí, se la escucha.

Adelante, por favor.

Gloria you'll need to press star six to unmute.

I can hear you now.

Hello, my name is Gloria.

Tonight I want to share a little bit of the situation that is happening right now.

About immigration.

what the community is doing and also the support that we're not getting.

The situation with immigration is impacting the little ones and the families despite their race.

There is a confusion in the spaces with the kids and families because sometimes they just don't know what's going on or why they cannot go out.

The community is helping out in community.

They're providing information, they're providing workshops.

There's a lot of work being done by community.

of being able to teach children that they don't have to speak until their parents are present.

And that kind of support that we should have from the institutions, we are not having.

But we're not getting that kind of support from the institutions, from the school system, from the district system.

We're not getting that kind of support that we need.

Support that means giving information to families, what their rights are, organizing informational nights, organizing workshops, and places where we can even have the kids understand what their rights are and what they can say and what they can answer.

There needs to be bigger support for our communities so we can understand what our rights are and feel safe in spaces.

In terms of mental health, the problems that we're seeing right now, they're big and they're going to be bigger down the road.

That's all from me.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Yasmine Chavez.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

Okay.

Good evening.

My name is Jazza Chavez and I'm a community partner at South Shore PK through 8 in the Reindeer Beach neighborhood.

I'm here to share what has been happening in our school community related to immigration concerns and to ask whether there are ways we can approach this more collectively at a larger scale.

Over the past several weeks, we've seen an increase in families navigating immigration-related challenges, including ICE activity and deportation orders.

As a result, some students have already withdrawn and others are at risk of leaving in the coming weeks or months.

These are students who have built strong relationships and a sense of belonging at our school, and it has been heartbreaking to see that stability disrupted so suddenly.

Yesterday we had a school shelter in place amid rumors of ice activity in the south end and fear escalated pretty quickly.

Parents were understandably scared to come to school to pick up their kids and thankfully our PTSA families stepped in immediately to help make sure that those students got home safely.

While the situation was handled with care it also highlighted how vulnerable families are during moments of uncertainty.

and how unprepared schools might be when fear spreads faster than accurate information.

At South Shore, we're doing the best that we can.

Staff, families, and our PTSA have mobilized to provide support, connect families with community resources, and respond case by case when families do reach out.

There is a strong desire in our community to help with staff, families, and partners reaching out in different ways.

in different ways.

That level of care is very encouraging, but without clear structures, it has made coordination and collective action that much more difficult.

And it also makes me reflect on those schools that might not have the resources to show up for families like how they wish to.

This lack of clarity also has a significant impact on staff, particularly those who have close relationships with families.

Members of our support team, for example, often carry on emotional toll as we navigate these conversations, wanting to support, but feeling helpless when we don't have clear answers or concrete next steps to offer families who turn to us for guidance.

The reason we're bringing this forward is because we don't always know what the right thing is to do, and we're not asking the district to solve all of these challenges, but our district serves a large population of families impacted by immigration policies, too many to ignore or treat as isolated cases larger scale partnerships clear guidance or even a policy level stance that advocates for our communities could help schools navigate these moments more thoughtfully and consistently having shared direction would also make a meaningful difference for students and families and staff who are trying their best to respond with your time has run please conclude your remarks

The next speaker is Aimee Ahmed Shukri.

And you'll have to press star six to unmute.

Don't see their number online.

So we're going to move to Gayla Simpson.

Hello, it's Jella.

I am a special educator at Aki Kurose Middle School.

I'm also an SPS parent.

My son goes to Aki and my daughter goes to Maple Elementary.

Yesterday morning, I got a text message from an IA at my daughter's school saying that ice was spotted around Cleveland and St. George and that they were in a shelter in place.

Soon after that, another staff member who has a relationship with somebody at Maple let our administrator know and we had a shelter in place.

There was a huge fracture within the communication and the training that we have as educators in order to know how to respond appropriately to also, and most importantly, we can have the tools to know what legal rights are, but as educators, Our job is to show up for our students with their hearts, with their value, with their safety, and safety transcends just being removed from your family.

It's how you feel every day that you show up and try and participate in learning.

It is the reflection of the people and the educators around you that care about you as a human being.

and I feel like that we have not prioritized this part of the conversation, that there has not been any type of district curriculum or suggestions of how you could develop conversations with your students, how they can ask about what their rights are, teaching special ed, a lot of my students, the majority of the students at my school are, anyway, at the end of the day, I don't wanna see my student running down the hallway screaming, Ms. Jella, I don't wanna be killed.

I don't wanna lose my family.

We have to do better.

and I really hope that we can invest in our students' trust, value, and have conversations that are important and hard to make sure that people can show up every day because the majority of students in my class today did not come to school.

Thank you.

We're going to go back to people we missed the first time around, Sabrina Burr.

Okay, we're gonna move on to Manuel Perez.

Manuel Perez.

Okay, and then we're gonna go, sorry.

Let me just tell him in Spanish what he needs to do in case he cannot unmute.

My name is Manuel Perez.

I am part of the Seattle community.

I want to talk about the warnings of increased violence around schools are causing harm among families.

And this harm is not only on families, but not only on parents, but also the children.

Ellos están siendo traumatizados por los rumores que llegan hasta sus oídos.

Ellos están siendo traumatizados por los rumores que llegan hasta sus oídos.

They're being traumatized by the rumors that they hear.

And also by some safety protocols implemented by the schools for their safety.

These protocols make the children feel threatened without really understanding the situation.

And then children go and talk about what happened to their parents and then the parents become frightened.

And there's a case that we recently supported a mother parent that was frightened and came into a panic attack because of what happened.

Thank you.

and she just didn't want to go pick up her kids so we had to go and pick up her kids and bring them to her.

And this is what's happening.

Some families, some parents don't want to bring their kids to school or they don't want to pick them up and this is very scary.

Also, this type of stress is significantly affecting a child's development and their academic performance.

and this also impacts the proper functioning of family dynamics at home and the way or the parents' ability to provide adequate care in terms of nutrition and health for their children.

I think there needs to be more communication from the schools to families to avoid chaos.

And then also that staff could go around the perimeter of the school to make sure that it's safe for families and students, to make sure that it's a safe place for them.

Thank you.

And we're going to go back to Sabrina Burr.

Sabrina press star six to unmute.

Sabrina, I see you've unmuted.

Star six one more time.

She's not getting through.

Yeah, we can see the unmute.

You're unmuted now.

Gonna leave and come back.

I'm going to move on to the next speaker, but I'll come back.

Aimee Ahmed Shukri, press star six to unmute.

Hello.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

There have been several speakers prior to me talking about the shelter in place yesterday and the ICE activities, so I just wanted to reiterate that I have a neighbour but her kid goes to a different school than my kids and after the incident yesterday, she's afraid to walk a child to school and I was just crushed because we've come to this point where school and home are probably the two safe spaces for families and we no longer feel that safety.

Some PTSA are coming together to try to make this work, but I'm not sure that the district and individual schools have a really good plan to give us the support that we need through these very difficult times.

So again, I just want to make sure that in the next few days, it's so critical for families to be able to feel safe again, safe for themselves and for their children.

Thank you.

and we don't see Sabrina online so that will conclude public testimony.

Alright, that concludes public testimony for this evening.

Appreciate everyone giving their time this evening to come and testify before the board.

I appreciate it.

We're going to continue on for a little bit.

We're going to finish our liaison reports.

We're going to go through our consent agenda and then we're going to take a break.

So further liaison reports from board directors.

Director Lavallee.

I don't have a liaison report.

Is that all right if I make a statement?

Or does it need to be on the topic of liaison reporting?

Generally it needs to be on the topic.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yep.

Others?

All right, then we're gonna move on to the consent agenda.

And I'm going to proactively here just pull item number 10, insurance reimbursement and capital eligible program funds from the consent agenda for the fiscal note in the bar is incorrect, but it is correct in the motion.

So we'll pull up Dr. Buddleman here later to talk us through that.

But anyone else wanna pull anything from the consent agenda?

I do.

Vice President Briggs.

Item number two.

Can you read that one off real fast just so we're tracking the personnel report.

All right.

Anyone else?

Okay, now may I have a revised motion for the consent agenda as amended.

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

Approval of the consent agenda as amended has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, please say nay.

All right, the consent agenda has passed unanimously.

We're going to now move to items removed from the consent agenda.

We'll start with item number two.

May I have a motion for this item?

I move approval of the Human Resources Personnel Report.

Second.

Okay, Vice President Briggs has made the motion.

Director Mizrahi is seconded.

Vice President Briggs removed the item.

So would you like to speak to that?

Yes, I am gonna need to abstain on this vote because I don't have sufficient confidence that required procedures were followed for all actions on this report.

That's all I have to say.

Do you have any questions or other board directors have any questions to ask for Vice President Briggs or staff?

Okay, gonna call for Ms. Worth for the vote on the item then.

Director Mizrahi?

Aye.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Smith.

Aye.

Director Song.

Aye.

Vice President Briggs.

Abstain.

Director Lavallee.

Abstain for the same reasons as Director Briggs.

President Topp.

Aye.

This motion has passed with a vote of five yeses and two abstentions.

All right, moving on to the next item pulled from the consent agenda, item number 10. May I have a motion?

Yes, I move that the school board ratify emergency public works, small works roster 3286WO683428, purchase order number 7800002390 to service master restore for the Emerson Elementary School waterline remediation in the amount of $153,386.50.

and an additional purchase order and contract for the restoration project has been awarded to McBride Construction in the amount of $446,040.90 plus Washington State sales tax with any minor additions, deletions, modifications, and actions deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement the contracts.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Okay, try one more time.

Second.

There we go.

We have Vice President Briggs made the motion and Director Mizrahi second.

As I said, I think there's just an error and we're gonna call, it looks like, Mr. Best instead of Dr. Buddleman up to help clarify.

Thank you, Director Tops.

Richard Best, Executive Director of Capital Projects Planning and Facilities Operations for Seattle Public Schools.

Director Tops is correct.

There is a financial misstatement in both the paragraph 2 purpose and in paragraph 5 fiscal impact revenue source.

The recommended motion that Director Briggs read is correct for those financial amounts.

The amount in paragraph two noted as $504,660.90 should have actually been $446,040.90 as Director Briggs read in the recommended motion.

and then adding the two of those items together, both the service master purchase order and the contract with McBride Construction in paragraph five.

Those two total $599,427.40 and not the $658,017.40 noted in paragraph five.

So I brought this to the attention of Assistant Superintendent Dr. Buddleman this afternoon seeing these errors and asked that this be pulled to the consent agenda so we could get the correct amounts written into the record.

Open it up for questions.

Questions from board directors.

Thank you, Mr. Best.

Thank you.

All right, we will move to the vote on the item, please.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

Director Smith.

Aye.

Director Song.

Aye.

Vice President Briggs.

Aye.

Director Lavallee.

Aye.

Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

President Topp.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Alright, thank you.

So before we move into the action items, we are going to take a break.

We will take a recess here and we will reconvene at 6 p.m.

Thank you everyone.

Alright, I'm going to call board directors back to the podium.

Alright.

There are four of us.

Director Song, Director Rankin, We're gonna move on to the action items on today's agenda.

The first one is amendment to board policy number 4311, school safety, security, and services program.

We have a motion.

Sorry, Vice President Briggs.

Okay, wait, sorry, where are we here?

Wait, sorry.

Yeah, we are action items, the first one, the amendment to board policy.

Oh, okay, yes, got it, thank you.

I move that the school board approve the amendment to board policy number 4311, School Safety and Security Services Program as attached to this board action report.

Second.

Okay, this item has been moved by Vice President Briggs and has been seconded by Director Mizrahi.

Director Mizrahi, as the sponsor, would you like to speak to this item?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I had a chance to speak to this now quite a few times because we talked about it a little bit as an amendment, as then something that passed the amendment, but the underlying motion didn't pass.

And then at introduction last time, so this change to 4311 is really specifically around trying to clear up some confusion that we heard around the conversation we were having around the school resource officers and hearing that there was maybe community confusion, maybe even some staff confusion, and certainly maybe some officer confusion as well around our policies around police officers being able to access the building, not as SROs, but just in an ancillary way, whether that's an officer who's stationed outside the building, being able to use the restroom inside, or come in if there needs to be some coordination, or just like a police officer would in the normal circumstances of their day or their work, like if they need to take a statement or something like that.

So this is just clarifying the policy that we, I think, believe already exists, which is that whatever moratorium exists was specific to SROs and that it really does nothing else to impede police access to our buildings.

And this is just clarifying that in a very clear way in policy so that we're hopefully making sure that there's no ambiguity about the fact that we want to be in partnership with police to keep our buildings safe, not specifically with an SRO program, but with certainly having access to the building.

So I think it's relatively minor change.

It's not really changing anything underlying.

It's just clarifying our current practice.

Questions from board directors?

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

When we talked about this at introduction, we were discussing how we can work to clarify this to the police department, if there needed to be a letter, some other statement, something, and I was wondering if we had any more information about that or if this helps to do that.

helps certainly that we can point to a basis in policy.

I think this is also there are other policies about our overall relationship with law enforcement that also contain this same point.

I think we're teeing up discussions with the police department and incoming Superintendent Schuldiner so we're not having this discussion and then kind of having to re-up in a general relationship but you know we want to talk about this and then working with the mayor's office on what their policy approach to public safety is.

So we're kind of having pre-discussions, but we want Ben to be part of them.

Okay.

Great.

And I think, I mean, on the one hand, I appreciate the clarification.

On the other hand, it feels like we've been having the same conversation for six years and have clearly stated again and again.

And I think, you know, sometimes misunderstandings are in good faith and sometimes they're not on all parties.

And so whatever we can do to, just I don't you know I don't know if with Superintendent Schuldner if you know we may need to think about just having a community town hall about safety with the city with the police department where you know obviously everyone wouldn't have access to that but just to sort of be really super clear and that's obviously would be up to the superintendent but especially in light of what happened yesterday, misinformation causes so much more anxiety and sort of is sending this continual message to our students and our communities that they're not safe, even if there are things in place and they are safe.

Yeah, I'm glad that that's happening.

I'm going to support this.

But the words on paper are just one little part of it.

I think our intent has been clear from the beginning, and I think we need to be more proactive at interrupting when like, hey, this is being misunderstood, and here is a statement to clarify, generally would be really helpful.

And for some of our testifiers about slightly different issue, just the policy is one thing, but how then could we send out to buildings?

Hey, here's a one pager or here's a poster in multiple languages.

No ambiguity.

This is OK.

This is not OK.

Yeah, would be helpful.

Director Lavallee I think too what Director Rankin was just saying I think though both things can be true we can improve the wording in a policy to add clarity to it at the same time work in partnership to improve relationships that are needed for our district and the success of our students Other directors

Then I will call the vote.

Ms. Worth.

Director Smith.

Aye.

Director Song.

Aye.

Vice President Briggs.

Aye.

Director Lavallee.

Aye.

Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

President Topp.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you and thank you Director Mizrahi for all the work you put in here for this minor thing that's taken a while to get through.

We're going to now move to the introduction items on today's agenda.

The first introduction item is amendment to policy number 1250 student board school board student members.

I want to thank our student board directors for their thoughtful work on this and Director Rankin and for engaging with other students to make sure their voices were I'm gonna pass it over to Director Yoon, Director Mangelson and Director Rankin to speak to the introduced item.

I'm then going to go to staff to walk us through some of the technical aspects of things and then we'll go to questions at the end.

Director Yoon?

I'm just going to outline a couple of the main revisions we are making.

So the first thing is terminology clarification.

Student board members will be called student representatives.

We thought it was just more appropriate given that our role is appointed, not elected, and we don't have an actual vote.

so we just thought it was more appropriate that we were called representative because that's what we are when we're speaking here, we're representing the student voice.

So that was the first thing.

The second thing is the term length.

Currently in the original policy, there are three student board members serving on a one-year term.

Our revision says that there will be two-year term roles for just to ensure that there's continuity within the role and that there's institutional knowledge being passed on.

This means, again, only two juniors will be eligible to apply going forward with a special exception this year because there are two outgoing seniors and Director Mangelson is a junior so there would be three positions open, two for juniors and one for senior.

And every year there would be four student representatives in total instead of three.

and the third thing is student representatives will have an advisory position and this will take place before the official board votes.

So the options include pro which means like you support the agenda item, con, opposing the agenda item and no position taken and this is just to advise the board on the student perspective before they vote on agenda items.

and the fourth thing is the student representative handbook.

It is just briefly mentioned in the policy and the actual contents of it will be a separate thing later available to the public once we're done with that.

But this provides kind of the guidance, expectation structures and the very specifics of what a student board member actually does.

The policy is, I think it's purposely left vague so that student board members could be to be creative with their role and what to do, but this handbook ensures that they have some sort of guidance and firsthand, I guess, experience from a student board member previously because the handbook will be constantly revised by outgoing student representatives.

and a couple other minor just language changes.

Student reps will be provided with board agenda and materials ahead of time to prepare.

The language before in the policy kind of just said you have it available but then it was kind of vague so then There was no like protocols there saying we had them to be like emailed to us.

So that just ensures that we're included in kind of that communication loop and also for us to be prepared by reviewing the materials ahead of time.

The other change I forgot to mention was attending all board meetings, including special board meetings, not just regular board meetings.

And yeah, I'll pass it to Director Rankin if she wants to add on.

Oh, Director Mangelson first and then Director Rankin.

Hi I'm online so let me know if you can't hear me or anything but I just have one really thing to say I just want to say like how much I admire Director Yoon's like incredibly hard work on this it's been really amazing to watch and learn and with that I just I really want to emphasize just the importance of all of the amendments but especially now having four to the board members and to those being juniors who will move up and have a second term their senior year.

Just because I've seen how useful it has been to have Director Yoon kind of mentor Isabelle and I and help us navigate this role.

And I'm just so grateful and I'm so excited.

So that's all I have to say.

Yeah, I'll just echo that.

Sabi and the student members have put in an incredible amount of work into this and led this work, and I feel lucky that they allowed me to collaborate with them and offer whatever support I could.

Some things like having four members and having that continuity was something that we've sort of thought about for a while and also the advisory vote.

And so I'm really excited that those are coming before the board.

The student handbook is something that's not only going to be valuable for students, but is a model for us also as elected board members to look at.

It's really a user manual of all these policies and this role.

Here's how we at this moment in time have agreed to do this role.

It's something that I think we could use as well.

And the amount of time and really passion and care that our student members have put into this is going to support our student members and our board as a whole for many, many years.

I also want to thank past student members and NAACP Youth Council for their work and effort.

You know, this position began with advocacy from the NAACP Youth Council, and so it was both great work provided, but also special for me personally to have been there when they came to advocate and get to circle back with them on some of the same folks on these improvements and get their input and their blessing really moving forward.

So, yeah, I'm really excited.

And this is, I hope that we'll move it forward next time it comes before us.

Staff, do you have any other technical, Director Yoon did a great job sort of going through the changes, but seeing if there's any additional.

Yes, the only thing that I would add is around the student selection committee, and so the policy now calls out that there will be a student-led selection process for the student representatives.

whereas previous iterations of the policy had left that kind of vague.

So it is now formalized in the policy and additional detail was also added to the vacancy section and how the board may fill a vacancy.

So those are two other technical changes and would just echo Director Rankin's gratitude to our student members and other students who put in years of work on this program and really excited to see it growing.

Director Rankin.

Sorry.

Thanks, Julia.

Thank you.

Sorry.

One thing I forgot.

One thing that we talked about that's not here right now that I just wanted to flag so that we can all talk about it together with incoming Superintendent Schuldner and when we discuss more about role and committee assignments and whatnot is what the kind of official connection is between the elected board members and the students.

We had at some point, or when it started, it was like a mentorship connected to committees, but students weren't really included in attending the committees.

It was a little bit I would say it wasn't super sustainable and then in 2024 we had I think I sort of asked the board what what do we want to do and as a temporary solution we assigned a liaison but it wasn't it wasn't liaison to the students but we didn't really define does that mean meeting with them once a week what does that mean and so on the in the conversation about roles and liaisons and whatever, we should have a conversation about what the direct relationship is.

I mean, we all have a relationship with the student members, but if we want to have a liaison that meets with them and goes over the agenda, if we want to have more of a mentorship role or just what that looks like, that's just something that I wanted to flag for folks to think about so we can talk about it later.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

Questions from board directors?

Director Song.

I guess I have a question about the selection committee.

Like how will that kind of come together?

I know it's been informal.

I think having some more information in this policy is helpful but what can we expect?

So in years past there has been a recruitment process for students that are interested in joining the committee and the selection committee reviews all of the written applications, makes determinations on who to move forward for the interview process and then makes final recommendations on the three, now it will be two juniors to move forward to the board for recommendation of the board's approval and appointment as the student representatives and the selection committee in the beginning also helped design that selection process so it's kind of been iterative and with the board liaison as well.

Director Song.

but I just want to comment that we have been informally lucky that we've had student directors in the past that have been willing to serve multiple years.

I think the very first one was Director Luna Cronvaron and I think speaking from personal experience it does take up some time to ramp up.

and it feels exciting that we're formalizing that for our students and that our student representatives will also have an additional leadership opportunity to mentor the subsequent directors.

So I'm excited to see that as part of the policy.

and I'll just echo a thank you to Director Yoon, Director Mangelson and Masoodi.

I saw throughout this last year sort of wrestling with some very difficult questions, you know, for directors, how does that work?

How does the two years work?

What does the cycle look like?

What does the advisory vote look like?

How is that actually going to function?

And really impressed with the policy that we have here and ready for this sort of next version of the student representative.

So excited for this updated policy.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add on that this is kind of the first step towards making this position for students.

This isn't the end.

We want to keep revising it.

I will be outgoing.

I won't be in this role.

But I'm glad this is the first step towards the next year's student board members to continue to revise it, including the selection of it because that has been a big topic of our discussion.

And yeah, we just want to keep revisiting it because there's always things to change.

So I just wanted to make that clear that we're happy this is happening, but we don't want this conversation to kind of just dissolve.

All right, there's no vote tonight.

This is just an item to be introduced, but we will vote next month.

But with that, we will move to the second item for introduction, Amendment to Board Policy 1240. Committees, just as I will sort of start off here and then go to my co-sponsors Director Mizrahi and Director Lavallee and then to staff to go through some of the just nuts and bolts of what is proposed here but just at a high level this is a proposal about bringing more structure and clarity and transparency to the work I think the board is already doing over the last two years we've relied sort of on these ad hoc committees or informal processes around sort of ad hoc policy committee, safety, budget, and this effort was to create a clearer, shared understanding of where that work lives, how it moves forward, and how it comes to the full board.

Board staff solicited feedback from directors about committees, and this proposal sort of reflects an attempt to pull input together from that.

it's not to suggest that this is the only or right approach but rather to kind of provide a clear and transparent starting point for discussion again this is just being introduced this evening this proposal is co-sponsored by Directors Lavallee and Mizrahi and myself and we work closely with staff and Superintendent Schuldner on the draft of policy changes and the charters that you see posted.

The plan is introduction tonight.

We'll continue the conversation at our upcoming retreat and dig more into the substance there and then my hope would be for a board vote in February.

just sort of in brief, but I'm going to let Julia do the bulk of this work.

The proposal establishes three standing committees, operations focused on facilities, capital, enrollment, safety, and our core systems, policy focused on board governance and policy development and review, and finance and audit focused on budget development, financial oversight, audit responsibilities that are required under state law.

Part of the goal of this structure is to increase clarity and transparency while using our board director and staff time efficiently.

Under this proposal, these three standing committees would replace and absorb work that our current ad hoc safety budget and policy committees are doing and continue the work of the standing audit committee and shift the work of the BECCS and BTA liaison role.

I wanna be clear, this is not about shifting responsibility or authority from the full board.

Committees make recommendations and the board decides.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Worth to kind of go over the policy changes and the charters for each of the committees.

Great.

Thank you, President Topp.

Oh, wait, sorry, I was gonna let my co-sponsor speak first.

Sorry about that.

Wanna go or?

Yeah, I didn't know if you wanted me to wait.

It's fine.

I think it was a very nice summary.

You know, I would just say that particularly around these three specific areas, you know, finance and audit, continuing to look at our policy to make sure that we're in accordance with the best practices, particularly about how we get our work done, and then operations, making sure that we're being thoughtful about safety and enrollment.

And I think that we've seen several times, well, I'll say two things.

One is that we've seen several times where there are issues that we want to dig in deeper on as a board, but there's not a ton of time in these meetings.

We're sort of limited to one question or two questions, because we're trying to get things done in a timely manner.

But there are things that we need to just delve into a little bit more, and of course we can always do that in a two-by-two meeting where there's not a quorum, but that's not in the public.

So people can't see the sort of way that we're thinking about things and the questions that we're asking.

So I think that these committees will give space for us to not have that decision-making power there, obviously, but to have just more information and to be able to dig in deeper on some of these topics in a less time-compressed way.

The second thing I'll say is that as you said, these are taking some committee work and some things we're already doing, so we already have this ad hoc policy committee, we already have a budget committee, and we already have an established ad hoc safety committee, which I don't know how often that met, but it's taking those three concepts and saying there's not really going to be a time we don't need to be looking at our policies and making sure that we're There's not going to be a time we don't want to be digging deep on our budget or a time we're not going to be wanting to make sure that we're operating at a high level.

So taking these three ideas and saying, look, we should just be honest that we're going to always need to be doing this work.

So that's why I like this approach.

Director Lavallee.

Yeah, plus one to what both of my co-authors on this said.

I'm really hopeful that this is a good starting place to really do, you know, more refinements if necessary with input from other board members.

and really get to a place where these can be productive places that we can become more informed and start to get more information from the district in very transparent ways.

So looking forward to working more on this.

Julia.

Great.

Thank you all.

So quickly on the policy language itself.

So some of the changes in addition to the creation of the standing committees.

There's some additional detail in the committee appointments and operations sections around if a chair is absent from a committee meeting.

So again, formalizing a process that I think has kind of been informally used.

And then just also wanted to call folks' attention to the retention of ad hoc committees as an option.

So if there is another topic that the board determines that you need a committee to work through, that is still an option in addition to the three standing committees that are created under this policy.

So going to the standing committees themselves, the first being Finance and Audit Committee.

This committee will combine some of the audit functions, particularly those required under state law and the review of warrants and payments going out from the district, as well as some of the internal audit reports to the Audit Committee currently, such as those conducted by the Washington State Auditor's Office or Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

in addition to some of the functions previously held by the ad hoc budget committee.

So recommendations to the board on budget timeline, community engagement in the budget, and providing oversight of the budget development process.

So getting updates from staff and kind of workshopping the budget presentations that come to the full board during your board work sessions on budget.

The public advisor is also still retained and would be part of the finance and audit committee as they are part of the current audit committee.

The policy committee would be a new committee, new standing committee for the district and is continuing the work of the ad hoc policy manual committee.

So putting into practice the recommendations that are coming out of that committee around policy review process and timeline.

So this committee would be charged with drafting revisions or new policies within the 0 and 1000 series, so the board's governance policies, and then would also be charged with reviewing staff recommendations for policy revisions, adoptions or repeals in the 2000 through 6000 series, so the operational policies in our policy manual.

Again, this would be kind of a working committee, an opportunity for board directors to workshop policy language together before bringing it to the full board, and similarly with staff, workshopping language as needed on the 2000 through 6000 series.

and finally the operations committee would be charged with reviewing facilities, capital plans and programs and external agency audits that are related to operations, capital programs and facilities.

So in the current draft of this policy there is a bifurcation of previous audits that came to the Audit Committee.

Now some of those audits that are related to operational topics and the corrective action plans associated with those would come to the Operations Committee for some streamlining of discussion.

The committee would also provide the guiding principles for capital levies and recommend those to the board, which the board is then responsible for adopting.

And as President Topp already mentioned, this would replace the liaison role on the current BECCS and BTA oversight committee.

So part of this board action potentially will be to amend the charter for the BEX BTA committee.

That liaison role was created by the board in the committee's charter, not in policy.

So there will be an additional motion necessary to remove that liaison role.

and as noted there are draft more detailed committee charters attached to the board action report.

The policy would be the language that the board is actually adopting regarding these committees and then the charters provide a bit more detail.

but these charters would be agreed to by the committee chair and the board president once the committees were actually established.

And so some of that detail would be updated or changed at the discretion of the board president and the chair of that committee.

So the board would not be adopting these charters.

The board will adopt the policy language that provides kind of the box and then the charter is the details of what goes into that box.

So what I would like to do tonight is have as many questions about the language in the policies for staff as it currently sits, get all of our answers there, and then between now and the retreat, send edits or things you'd like to see change to the policy to staff so they can start collecting it so we can have a robust conversation about that at our retreat.

I think that seemed like a fair way to sort of make sure we all have have the same information, same understanding, and then we can kind of collect information, collect changes we want to see to allow for a conversation.

Does that sound roughly fair to folks?

So the charters, the issue with the charters would be the president and the chair that agree upon the charter.

These are what we are recommending, but I would say if you have questions on the current charters, yeah, let's collect this, let's do the same process.

Why wouldn't we do the same process?

So if there are questions, we have what they're currently saying, and then we'll have staff collect changes that we wanna see to charters so we can have that discussion at the retreat.

Does that work?

If I may interrupt, I did forget to mention that also attached to this Board Action Report are amendments to Policy 6550 and Board Procedure 6550 dealing with internal audit.

The bulk of those changes are just to update where the Office of Internal Audit reports to, that it would be the Finance and Audit Committee, and some other minor tweaks to align with the proposed language in 1240 and the audit function and where the corrective action plans go, so I forgot to mention that.

All right, questions?

Director Rankin.

Thank you so much and thank you to the sponsors.

I'm really excited that I think this is a good timing to introduce it so we can kind of prepare to have a good conversation in the retreat and then focus on like how do we, what is our work and how do we do it?

So I'm super excited about this.

I have, So one, and I don't necessarily expect answers right now, but I just wanted to put out the questions.

On the bar, this action is not anticipated to have an equity impact and not anticipated to have student benefit which my question is like then why are we doing it and what I would say is I think this does have equity impact and student benefit and so I would encourage us to or the sponsors I guess to rethink that because if there's truly no impact what are we doing it for?

I think there probably is impact and benefit that we should think through a little bit more.

Something in terms that I've thought of before in terms of committee charters that I would be interested in looking at if there's precedent or maybe how other districts do it is why a charter would be approved by the chair and the president and not the board.

If it's work that the board agrees needs to be done, I wonder if it's more appropriate to have the board approve the charter to say like, yes, this is work that we believe should be done.

Again, that's just a question, something I'm interested in looking at.

So the other thing that I would love to consider adding to the policy is something that I have seen other districts do with even quote unquote standing committees is that in the policy it says that every two years or every however long the board reviews the charter of the committee and looks back on the outcomes or the effectiveness of the committee and makes the conscious decision whether or not to continue another two years or to pivot the work.

And I think that would be a good mechanism to ensure that, first of all, every two years there's typically new board members.

So it'd be a good mechanism to take a pause and sort of to help new board members understand, here's why we've done this, here's how this has worked, what are your thoughts on that, but also to make sure that we don't end up with my interpretation of what we used to have, which is committees exist, to shove work from staff in front of the board and that's just a machine that goes on and we don't actually ever stop and talk about, is this a good use of time?

Is this the information that we need?

It just sort of drives itself.

So I would like to see something in there that says every two years the board will review the charter, make any necessary changes, and then decide, like affirmatively vote to, yes, we're going to maintain this, as opposed to just kind of existing, if that makes sense.

And I know North Shore had some good phrasing in that, and I bet some other districts do too, but that seems like something we should think about.

In the charters, There's a lot in the charters in the operations committee.

Some of it to me feels very much like work of the superintendent.

not work of the board committee, then could obviously come to the board, but provide guidance on staff work is a red flag to me.

What does that mean?

So I think we just have to, as we develop these more, think really, really clearly about what work actually comes through the committee and make sure that we're not creating a situation where three board directors are giving their opinions, to staff without the superintendent present.

And again, to harken back to the old committees, you can see in our capital projects and regions across the city, you can really see like, oh, well, 15 years ago, this district had a really strong advocate for capital projects and all of those buildings have been maintained and this other district didn't.

And that's just, not a good place to be now.

So how can we make sure that it's not opinions and people directing staff, but that we're really focused on board work?

And then also with, oh no, that's, yeah, just board work versus superintendent work.

And when would the superintendent be present or not too?

just the clarity on what comes through.

With the Audit and Finance Committee, I'm wondering, we were having discussions in the Audit Committee about potentially expanding the public advisor role and even making that more of a community expert-driven thing with some board members as opposed to a board committee, so I have questions about are we kind of ending that direction?

Is this something that we'd still want to think about?

And then in the scope of work for that committee, some of it feels like could be a one-time recommendation for policy, like the budget process, and some of it would be ongoing, so clarifying like what...

and what's like a one-time recommendation that would maybe impact policy versus what is the ongoing iterative work of the committee.

And then kind of similar for policy committee, I feel like we almost closed out and that committee may either want to start with here's what we were almost done with, or I'm open to also, if we want, like, I know Gina had offered to be the third when we were looking to schedule that meeting for January, we could do one final ad hoc committee meeting and kind of have the full recommended package to pick up with that committee.

Doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't get lost.

And then, My overarching, not concern, but I guess flag is that we have a shared understanding of what our role is and how these committees will be really helpful to the board.

And I think we have such a, we're all coming onto this work at different times with different understandings that I'm excited that somebody from WASDA is coming to our retreat and that we have an incoming superintendent where we can really have these conversations about how do we do this job effectively and how do we share the understanding of what's coming through the committees so that we're not like, wait, what?

I didn't know about that and all that kind of stuff.

So I'm sure I have more, but I'll write it down and email it or save it for the retreat.

But those are just my initial, but again, thank you guys, because I'm really excited for us together.

flush this out and give more access to our community and to ourselves, too, for making sure that we're doing this job well and with a new district leader.

Thank you.

Director Smith.

Thank you.

I have two hopefully pretty quick questions and then one more like a comment.

In the board action report, it does say that there was research done on the WASDA model policies.

So I would just like a quick check of like, does this bring us more in line with the WASDA model policies compared to where we were?

The WASDA model for committees is very high level and just says that the board may establish committees with some more language around it.

So this goes beyond.

So it was useful, but we go well beyond that.

OK, I was curious about that, seeing that it was said.

And then for the student roles on the committees, just having heard the new student representative policy and the students having the positions of pro-con or not taking a position, It would be nice to see room for that in the committees as well.

And then the last thing, looking at the draft of the policy, the three committees, they have the set of bullet points, which in the charters, it seems like that is the bulk of how the committees are defined in the charter.

So if we're going to be changing or talking about discussing and approving the charters later, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of wiggle room if the policy has already been approved because that, I don't know, maybe...

If we're saying that this policy establishing the committees is different than the charters for the committees, but it seems like most of the information from the charters is already in that policy.

That's a comment, not really a question.

And I think, yeah, I think that's a good thing to think about.

I think also the committee then is responsible for the work plan as well for the year, how they're going to actually accomplish that work.

So that then, I think the committee votes on that.

Question mark?

In previous iterations of committees, yes, they have voted on the work plan.

In some of the ad hoc committees, they did.

Some they did not.

So there's been a mix.

It would be up to the board to determine that.

Great place to create some clarity.

Other directors?

Director Song.

I'd like to understand a bit more about why the BACS BTA liaison positions would be eliminated with the addition of a standing operations committee.

I can speak a little bit to what my thinking was.

I might also let Superintendent Podesta do it.

But it's the oversight committee, I think the goal would be that that oversight body comes and presents to that committee as sort of in our work as the board.

But Superintendent Podesta, I don't know.

goal is just to be streamlined and clarify roles that the oversight committee is a public committee obviously directors can attend if they want to but that the kind of official touch with the board on matters related to the execution of the levies would be in charge of the operations committee while we're standing it up.

not while it's a board oversight committee the board doesn't really administer it management.

And so we think it would be more appropriate for kind of the ownership of this oversight to be in a committee that the board is actually running not that staff are running.

and so just and most of the advice of the oversight committee you know a lot of it is really directed towards staff and kind of you know how that work is accomplished which we think is staff work and superintendent work and that you know and again it's a public meeting members of the public are welcome to join as our directors if they have general interest and curiosity but to try to get the board work happening at board committees.

and obviously these are all decisions for the board.

I think that it would be and I hear your points there.

I think it would be a pretty significant change to the levy in terms of like what voters are expecting having a board presence at the oversight committee.

So I Okay, I think I just need to process that a little bit.

My second question I think is a broader topic that we should probably, maybe the retreat is a good time to talk about it.

When I served on the finance and audit committee, something that I kind of struggled with was I think we would have individual conversations about audits that board directors would like to do, but where in the budget does the board have the financial resources to pay for such an audit?

There is a line item in the district's budget for board office, so is that where that should come from?

and the broader conversation we should be having is like what is the board's budget and do we have funding for audits, do we have funding for us to go to conferences and trips like that and who makes that kind of decision.

That has traditionally in the past I think been sort of quite opaque to me.

So I would like for us to have a conversation of kind of the work that I believe that the Audit and Finance Committee would like to do is to have some board-directed audits, but where would that budget come from?

and broadly, what is the board's budget?

Thank you.

If you're looking for my recommendation, I mean, we have an Office of Internal Audit.

It has a budget, has a discretionary budget to do work.

That office works under the oversight of the board.

So at least with regard to your question of what would be the appropriate place to finance board-directed audits, it seems to me it would be within the Office of Internal Audit.

Other questions?

All right so just to kind of recap a little bit between now and our retreat on February 7th we're going to be collecting sort of the questions that we've sort of we've raised a little bit tonight I've wrote I've written them down but also it'd be helpful if you if you did have some questions or comments if you got them to staff so that way we can and put them all in one place so we can continue this conversation as a full board at our retreat.

And I think that is included for both the policy changes as well as the charters, knowing that there are similarities in the language in them.

All right, I don't know what's next on the agenda here.

Hang on just a sec.

Yeah, so we are going to be moving to the tables for our work session.

We are done with the introduction items and moving to work session.

All right the last portion of our agendas this is a work session this did not make it on to our agenda for introduction this evening but my understanding and I'll let Superintendent Podesta clarify is that we will have the student assignment transition plan for introduction and action at our next board meeting and so some of the significant changes to that are enrollment and the highly capable services so I think that that was why a lot of this or the title of this is highly capable services or community engagement findings but that means between now and then if there are questions about that student assignment transition plan that hopefully staff are able to answer them so we are able for both introduction and action at our next meeting is that correct?

Absolutely, the most substantive change to the student assignment transition plan is we're gonna update, the team will update you about highly capable offerings.

There are some other changes as well, a little bit, some of them are kind of catch up in nature.

Another substantive change is the open enrollment timeline schedule, but we've talked about that a lot over the last year.

and it's in practice as we speak.

So we're going to let Dr. Montgomery talk about the most substantive piece with regard to highly capable services and then we'll close with a discussion about what the student assignment transition plan is. that is probably a subject in itself of discussion.

Is this an artifact of doing things because we've been doing them for 15 years?

That is probably a discussion I want to have at some point.

But since there are a lot of moving parts, we'd like to defer that conversation and muscle through it one more time and address the changes with these service offerings and a few other changes as well.

And we'd be happy to take questions about it up and hopefully we can finalize that.

Depending on how effective all that is, maybe it'll be an action item on the agenda, so there'll be an opportunity to discuss it again on the 11th as well.

So this is a little bit of a mini introduction to the student assignment transition plan, because that's where affecting the recommendations for highly capable services, that's where those will land in terms of, okay, so if we're gonna do these things, that in our current practice, that's a function of the student assignment transition plan.

So that's how these things are connected.

And with that, I'll let the team introduce themselves and turn it over to Dr. Montgomery.

Good evening, Director Manu and I am the Enrollment and Planning Services Director.

Good evening and thank you for, Good evening, Marnie Campbell, assistant of school operations.

And tonight.

There we go.

All right, thank you.

Okay, I think mine's working.

Good evening.

I'm Paula Montgomery.

I'm the Director of Highly Capable Services.

And I'll go ahead and kick us off, okay?

This evening, as Superintendent Podesta said, we are really here.

We're sharing the community engagement findings.

We felt like that was an important piece to share publicly and to share with the board.

We do have some recommendations at the end that are an attempt to be responsive to the community.

things that we heard throughout the fall.

And at the same time as Superintendent Podesta said, this has policy implications, student assignment transition plan implications as well.

Alright, let's see if the clicker works.

Alright, so we started as early, I believe, as September with engagement around highly capable services.

I took this position in July, officially July 1. It was announced in April, so I kind of did a hybrid up until July 1. And then when September came around, we were committed to getting out to the community.

So we held seven community engagement sessions in all regions of the city.

We held additionally one here at the John Stanford Center on a Saturday morning.

We also had an online version.

In all we had over a thousand attendees in person or online at these engagement sessions.

We had over 500 online exit ticket responses.

We had access in our top five languages and ASL and then additionally we had a thought exchange live at the same time that had over 1,700 responses about highly capable services.

And I'll just give you a little glimpse here That picture previously, that was at Eaglestaff.

You can see we're all over the city.

We're at Garfield High School there, Chief Self and Denny, Nathan Hale, and then that final picture is here at the John Stanford Center on a Saturday morning.

So we had Wide variety of people who came.

We had current family members.

We had potential family members.

We actually had some alum.

We had grandparents come.

And we asked two key questions.

And really, we didn't know what we were gonna hear initially.

We had some ideas, but we asked two key questions.

We asked, what has been your experience with highly capable services?

And how can we improve?

What are your suggestions?

And what have been your experiences with highly capable identification and identification processes?

we had multiple modes of collecting information you can see in these pictures small groups wrote down their ideas they shared out their ideas we had sticky notes we had templates and we had an electronic exit ticket and all that information was compiled and we had a data team transcribe every single scrap of handwritten feedback we got and we compiled it and we are about to show you some themes that came up that we heard from our community So you can see here some of the top themes, the very top themes talked about services and curriculum.

Even when we asked the question, we started with identification.

What has been your experience with the identification process?

And right away we heard families across the district talk about services.

So parents and families talked about lack of clear pathways.

We heard a lot about limited subject acceleration, especially around math.

and just inconsistencies across schools, especially the neighborhood schools.

Families continued to emphasize that they wanted consistent math acceleration options, and we heard this pretty strongly in southeast and southwest regions, over 2,000 mentions of that.

We heard a lot of advocacy for our teachers.

We heard quite a lot of beautiful stories about things that teachers were doing throughout the district to meet the needs of highly capable students.

And at the same time we heard families and educators advocate that they needed more support, they needed more training, they needed more resources.

This quote here is just one of many quotes, but I think it captures it.

A deep belief that all of our teachers can be HC teachers may not be true without long-term training.

So I think there's a belief and a desire that all of our educators can meet the needs of every single student but I think that folks are being pragmatic about where we are right now and they were honest during these community engagement sessions too.

We heard a lot about cohort versus neighborhood models.

There was concerns about the shift away from cohorts.

There were many, many comments and conversations about the benefits of grouping HC students together, be it in a neighborhood school or in a cohort setting.

There was talk about students who might have been one or two students in a classroom and concerns about what does that mean for that student not to have students at similar academic levels.

There was a lot of conversation about the identification process, general confusion about what Universal Screener is or was.

There was a lot of conversation about how heavily reliant we are on the map, which is achievement test data, not necessarily measuring potential for students.

And there was perceived subjectivity from year to year.

How did some students qualify?

Why did other students qualify?

And really a request for some transparency in those processes.

And then we also heard about access and equity.

Families, especially in our sessions in Southeast Southwest, but we heard it all over the city as well, talked about the desire for services that were similar throughout the city, very specifically pointing out that Southeast and Southwest did not have HC elementary sites that were similar to sites in other regions.

And we heard that very strongly in Southwest and Southeast.

So this slide here, first of all, are there questions about the feedback or the sessions?

I ran through that pretty quickly.

We wanted to share with you the reason for us meeting tonight and the reason to start to talk about some future recommendations.

This slide here is our current HC Students Elementary.

These are students' grades currently in grades two through five who currently currently have a highly capable designation.

That is a little over 14% of our population.

You can see this by region.

That's just the shared numbers.

We have an enormous number of students who are currently identified as highly capable.

You can also see in our Central Region, if you look at Central, Southeast, Southwest, the entirety of that population are funneled specifically to our Central Region or Thurgood Marshall right now.

And we wanted to give you those numbers just so you had a sense.

At this point in time, our current policy is that any student with an HC identification can choose their neighborhood school or they could choose one of the HC sites.

You can also see the percentage of the region currently.

So to read this chart, an example would be in the central region, just under 16% of students at that grade level are designated as highly capable.

You go to say Northwest, you can see 24% of our students as of today in Northwest have highly capable designation.

And then you can see the overall percentage on the far right of total HC.

Director Rankin.

Sorry, just really quick, have to be this person.

What's in the water in the Northwest?

I think that there's a correlation with the metrics we're using where income and education levels are directly correlating to high achievement on the map.

And so we have taken some steps with this identification cycle to try and find our talented students who might not have the benefit of preschool education or wealth or for college-educated parents at home.

We're not quite there yet.

We are very reliant on the MAP test.

We use multiple measures for identification.

But the biggest measure we're using right now is the MAP test.

And what we know about academic measures, especially for first graders, is we don't always find the students with high potential.

We often find early achievers.

and sometimes those early achievers are extremely gifted.

Sometimes those early achievers have had opportunities that other kids haven't.

And I think, I mean, I'm not gonna say a direct correlation, but there's something there in terms of income in our different regions of the city.

No, I really appreciate that answer and sorry that I put I don't think you were expecting a question.

But I think that it's really helpful for all of us to think about that if a kid qualifies, they qualify.

And it's not on us to make any kind of judgment about anything.

But it also is worth noting that I have a hard time believing that there are not just as many, there's an equal likelihood of children being gifted in all parts of the city, and so I do think that it's on us to not say, well, you got the designation and maybe you shouldn't have it.

That's not, if you have it, you have it, but for us to constantly be thinking about making sure that we're supporting students and, I mean, to some extent, the qualification for me, every kid should have access and opportunity, but I just think, especially as we look at our top line goals being second grade reading and then sixth grade math, are we, and I'm not suggesting we reach our goals, but is second grade, what are we seeing at second grade and then beyond second grade where students may be missing support or opportunity because they were either identified or not identified early and then their ability or their performance changes as they get a little bit older.

So just how do we kind of think about that and make sure that we're not narrowing our scope and eliminating students is kind of why I ask.

But yeah, thank you for the response.

So just put a pause here.

We've got lots of people now with questions and comments, but we're going to get through the material, and then we're going to go around just so we keep it fair for everyone.

Sorry, Director Reagan.

We'll go back to you, Dr. Montgomery.

You want to answer that, and then you can continue on.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, I appreciate that.

And I also would just like to point out during that identification processes through the years, so these 2,287 students, you know, this is COVID.

These are COVID years as well.

And so there are definitely some dynamics that came into play.

And when we see the discrepancies between the regions, it gives us, you know, reason to go deeper and to understand who are we missing?

in this identification processes and how do our identification processes need to shift to find the students who maybe aren't showing up in these numbers.

But from a practical operational school capacity point of view, these are our second graders through fifth graders who at this point in time do have the option to go to one of our three HC sites during this open enrollment timeframe.

And so this is why we're bringing forth some recommendations.

So if we were to look ahead a little bit, this is potential, we're still finalizing our eligibility processes, but if we were to look ahead to next year, we are seeing, you can see newly eligible plus currently eligible students, we're looking at 2,307 students and there's the breakup by region as well again, okay?

and this is about 15% of our second graders through fifth graders next year will be identified as highly capable.

So our data coupled with what we heard from community, our department has been working rapidly to be responsive to community, to be thoughtful to community, to think about the future at the same time.

So some of our initial steps and we started our improvements as soon as we heard in those first engagement sessions, we started to revise our communication about identification and services.

We were attempting to keep our language simple, to be to be clear, to make sure it gets out in multiple languages, and to make sure it gets out to families often.

We have already expanded access to accelerated math at the middle school level.

We heard very loud from families that they loved their neighborhood schools, but they felt like they needed to go to an AHC site in order for their students to be on an accelerated track.

so we created a couple different options so that students can stay in their neighborhood elementary schools and then transition into the pathway at the middle level and get onto an accelerated math track if they desire.

We also heard two things.

We heard from families who left Seattle, especially during COVID.

They left Seattle, they did private school and they want to come back to Seattle.

and at the time the process was they needed to re-enroll, they needed to wait a year and re-refer their children to highly capable services.

When we heard that and we felt like that was inconsistent, so for example if a student transfers to us from say Bellevue School District and they're highly capable in Bellevue, we review their file we then designate them as highly capable and so my goal was we want to welcome our families back so we we have revised our process if Seattle Public Schools gave a family a highly capable designation under our guidelines we feel like if they're going to come back to us we need to reinstate that because we do not that take away that highly capable designation.

We also have a process underway for new to Seattle families, so home school families and private school families that want to join us here in Seattle Public Schools.

And that came from the engagement sessions.

families at actually all corners of the city.

It was surprising, but they talked about how they wanted to return to Seattle, services their students were getting out of private school, and how they just wanted to see if their students would be eligible for highly capable services inside our district.

We've been doing tremendous work with training teachers to the best of our ability.

We've had institutes during the summer.

We've had institutes in July.

We are just today, I was at an elementary school, Thurgood Marshall.

We were training teachers on twice exceptionality.

So big focus of our department, a big shift of our department has been from a department of identification to a department of professional development and really training teachers and meeting teachers where they are.

That's one of the reasons we took universal screening from all grade levels to just two grade levels.

That's new this year, it's in alignment with state law and in my mind it was really we need to focus on training our teachers, supporting our teachers so that at every school students can be served.

One of our current work, we are exploring a variety of different culturally responsive tools in the identification process.

So this round of identification for the 26-27 school year, we're seeing some promising practices.

We've revised our teacher feedback tool.

We are using something called local norms.

When I come back in the spring and talk to you about HC for the year, I can talk more about how we use local norms.

to find students who would have previously maybe not qualified for services.

And then the biggest recommendation that's most important for tonight is we do recommend expanding access in underserved regions.

Very specifically, I and my department were recommending that we open HC sites in Southeast Southwest.

And some of that is from an equity point of view.

Thanks.

We see the numbers, we see that the North End has Cascadia, they have Decatur, there's Thurgood Marshall in the central area, yet we see a large number of students, actually more than Northeast has in Southeast Southwest, and we're funneling all those students into Thurgood Marshall.

So we do feel that we need to kind of right size our HC site's throughout the region.

And that's our recommendation.

We'll be bringing it to you as part of the student assignment transition plan at the February 11th board meeting.

And then the recommended new sites are Rainier View Elementary School in Southeast and then Alki Elementary in Southwest.

and I'm going to turn this over to Dr. Campbell and Director Manu.

Let's pause there and let's take our questions there and then we'll go, sorry.

So now we'll go questions and we're just gonna go around, we're gonna start this way and folks have two questions but there is a little bit more of the presentation.

So two questions and then if we want to we can go around again.

So Director Song.

I have a clarifying question.

The regions, is that based on where the students live or where they go to school?

Where their neighborhood school is.

Yes, their home address.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

So something that I'm kind of getting outreach from community members, I guess posted to the highly capable website, there are some kind of thresholds on the map scores for the identification process.

Now, this kind of projected, is that based on that criteria?

That is based on our rubric that we did just post last week.

Okay, because I think it's,

not quite maybe what I expected but the 14.8% identified is pretty consistent with the 14.9% so is your observation that even with the change in criteria is consistent with identification rates that have happened in the past?

Consistent with identification rates in the past, but I will say we're definitely looking at outlier students.

It's varied from year to year, and as I said before, there's an over-reliance on the map.

I don't want to get too far into the weeds, but the MAP company, NWEA, re-normed all of their data.

They went five years back this fall.

And so families in Seattle are used to that 95% percentile threshold.

That has, the whole landscape has changed with the data that's even in our system right now.

So we're using what's called RIT scores, so it's really the raw scores on the math exam which map onto a learning continuum with Common Core standards.

And I know families, I've heard from many families that are concerned because they were expecting, based on old data, that their children might have qualified.

That rubric, we have hundreds of kids who fall completely on that rubric.

They're going to qualify based on what's posted.

Then we had about 300 students.

We called it a deep dive.

We had a committee of about 20 teachers who were looking very closely at another subset of students.

And it's important to remember we don't just use the map, but the map is is a little heavy in the process.

So we, for special education qualified students, for example, we went down to the evaluation level and looked at that data.

We looked at, for our multilingual learners, we were looking at something called the WIDA, and their language progression.

For students who don't fall completely on the rubric with those threshold scores, we look at mapped growth.

So how quickly, you know, you think about maybe a third grader, they might not hit that benchmark that's posted, but they might be accelerating their learning at such a level.

So that comes into play too.

That rubric as posted, there's over 70 different combinations for which a student can qualify.

and I know families in their mind right now are still thinking about 98th percentile on the map and I'd like us to get out of talking about percentiles on the map and start talking about what does this map score mean in terms of the instructional needs of the child and that's what we're attempting to do but I think it's going to take our, actually our entire system to stop talking about percentiles on the map.

I was just going to say, Paula, thank you so much for taking on a lot of work in a very short amount of time.

And my next comment is, you are absolutely not responsible because you have not been in this role.

I think what parents are processing is the fact that the identifying criteria that has been used has changed pretty much every single year.

And I can speak from personal experience with my four kids.

and so it feels very frustrating.

Having that added clarity around the kind of you're using raw data is helpful but we really need to be communicating why those changes have happened to our families.

Thank you for that.

Director Lavallee.

Yeah, so your first question was my question as well.

So going to a little bit further, you said you didn't necessarily want to get into the weeds in it too much right now.

And with your second question, you started to get into that a little bit.

We do need, you know our community really needs to go into this at some point in more detail and when we're trying to find out exactly how many students this affects this change affects we really need to kind of find out who this affects and what that choice is and if it's 300 students that are going to be not identified anymore then we need to kind of be like, okay, this might be the identification process for these reasons and really look at how that impacts those 300 students.

And so there does need to be, I know in a previous slide as well, and I can't see where I wrote it down, you had said that you had gone to community for some of this and it does need to be a continued effort and a continually engaged conversation with the people who are showing up as well as the people that are not to make sure that we're identifying what these issues are and how they are impacting families' decisions and their kids' learning abilities.

So I know that was not necessarily a question, but a request for us to go a little bit deeper and to go into the weeds with some of the questions that Director Song started this conversation off with.

Yeah, I would be happy to come back and have further conversation with the board, especially, you know, we're through our identification process and we could start to really look at the numbers and what did we learn?

What do we see differently?

we can have multiple conversations.

At this point in the year, I think the most important data right now is to look at the numbers of students who potentially could go to our HC sites and to make a decision about whether or not we need to open new elementary sites.

But I do think we need to engage the board and the community with some deep analysis and understanding of, you know, our identification processes at this point in time, and then moving forward, how do we continue to improve?

And, you know, I appreciate the comments and the feedback.

Yeah.

My next point within that as well, just going into that this When we're looking at new sites on top of this, kind of getting a little bit of clarity around what you're thinking timeline for these things, as well as when we're making changes to the selection process, when that's taking effect.

because parents right now are so often in this thing where they don't know if their kids are going to be identified, how it pertains to school selection, and it's more complex than just whether they go to a student in my area of South Seattle goes to Thurgood Marshall, but it's also their neighborhood school might not be able to meet their needs and they might be selecting an option school that might be able to better meet their needs just because there's a few more students there or some additional element.

But if they're not getting into that choice system at the right time and all the timelines are rearranged, it makes it really difficult for parents to be able to, you know, advocate for their students to possibly remain closer to their community and not be so separated while still doing that.

So can you answer a little bit about kind of timelines for parents and how that works both within selection and potential new openings?

Yeah, I can answer it to the best of my ability.

You know, it's a recent change to the open enrollment timeline and for very good reason.

I understand why it moved up.

And at the same time, as an HC department, we were unable to shift our timeline.

we are committed to making sure that our timeline matches next year's open enrollment timeline.

We're a few weeks off and that is part of the reasons why our HC families have an extended open enrollment timeline at this point through February 28th with late applications offered through or accepted through March 31st because it's disjointed.

We're smarter than we were in September and we're pretty committed to making sure we're lining up operationally with the two departments in the future.

Yeah I know only two questions so but it does put families at a little bit of a disadvantage if they're trying to you know go somewhere that might not be an HC pathway but might be able to better serve their child because they have to make the decision before they get the designation potentially or do something so it creates this really weird feedback loop for some families that are in this situation.

Yeah, and does Dr. Campbell, Director, do you want to speak to that a little bit?

Can you hear me?

Thank you for the question and yes that's more of the student transition plan actually and regardless that open enrollment has already started and yes it is a little disjointed but the HC timeline it is what it is and so anytime that there is a boundary change and in this case it will be for an HC pathway if we're adding new sites and so that is gonna go along with the board action report.

We are going to have all of that breaking down with those impacted students and you actually get to vote on, for example, grandfathering.

We now call it continuation assignment, All of that will be embedded in the student assignment transition plan and we will be able to answer more questions like this when we have that and introduced to you with action because it does impact student assignment.

And so while students are waiting for their identification process, we encourage families as they came to us through our information sessions with this very question.

and we tell them that they need to participate in open enrollment if they're looking at a choice outside of the pathway, not knowing.

It's better to possibly get on the wait list and get into that choice seat regardless.

And then once they get the identification, there still is time because we've extended that timeline recognizing that that is going to be the conundrum for our families.

And so we're giving every opportunity for them to make those decisions and then there's always an opportunity for case-by-case situations where we still review those situations as an enrollment department.

But more to come with the Student Assignment Transition Plan.

I could keep talking, but it's Director Smith.

Thank you.

So in the two by two we had on the highly capable program, highly capable engagement sessions, I remember hearing about more of a balance between the desire from the community for neighborhood options and cohort options.

so I do feel a little concerned that in the report here there was a focus on the cohort options which there are voices in the community that want that and I don't want to diminish that but I kind of was surprised not to hear that there's also a desire for services available in neighborhood schools and so I My bias as a parent is that I don't want to have to send my kids to a different school if they're identified as highly capable.

I would prefer being able to access services nearby.

So can you maybe speak to that sort of change in the presentation?

And what does it indicate about the direction of where the services are headed?

Yeah, so there's not a change in the presentation.

It could be a change in the delivery of the information.

We did hear both.

The written comments really speak to the discrepancy between math, really, between the neighborhood schools and the HC sites, the two-year acceleration math.

in the HC sites and the on grade level math at the neighborhood sites.

We heard beautiful things about what's happening in neighborhood schools and we also heard perception and fear of not having option to a cohort.

At this point in time, I'm not prepared to say one or the other.

When I think about Seattle Public Schools at this point in time, I think about a portfolio of schools.

I do believe that there is work to do throughout our neighborhood schools to get consistent.

The sheer size numbers of schools that we have, 64 elementary schools getting consistent, HC services in those schools is complex.

we heard it's teacher dependent.

We're doing deep work with our academics division which that's where curriculum decisions happen.

And at the same time I do think we might be a district that will need to continue to have HC specific sites.

My hope is that we can get clearer with families about what's happening in the neighborhood schools, regardless of the school and regardless of the teacher.

And our teachers are doing tremendous work, but with 64 elementary schools and however many teachers that are in those elementary schools, we're not consistent throughout our system.

At our HC sites, we can be very consistent with regards to what is happening, math, for example, two years accelerated, and language arts is one year accelerated.

And that's something that families can point to.

it's vague at the neighborhood school and that's not to say things aren't happening there's beautiful things happening but much of that is tailored to the individual child and my work our system work is to make that a coherent system of instruction for all kids and when we think about MTSS, you know, the MTSS system, really getting to the point of what are we doing for kids at grade level and beyond throughout our system.

Likewise, an MTSS system is what kinds of scaffolds and acceleration are we putting in for kids who are not quite at grade level.

And we have work to do on both sides of that core instruction.

And I look forward to that work and at the same time I want to honor the fact that we do have consistency in our three HC elementary sites that we can point to and I heard really clearly that families in Southeast Southwest would like a similar option.

Thank you.

I'm not advocating for less focus on the cohort options, but I don't want the neighborhood options to get neglected.

And then my other question, since we get to...

So I think you described kind of shifting the highly capable department from a department of identification to a department of professional development, which I think is very valuable that professional development will make a big difference in being able to give students better options.

And I think you said that the identification is only happening in two grades now, which does make me wonder how For students that might want to move into a highly capable program in between those grades, how do we support those options to make different choices and have different pathways available at different points in time?

Yeah, let me clarify.

So universal screening is when we look at data for every child at that grade level.

And about five years ago, state law changed and said school districts have to do universal screening once before second grade and once before fifth grade.

Seattle decided let's do it every grade.

Let's do it first grade through eighth grade.

We made the decision at this at the start of the school year to shift to alignment with other districts and with state law.

One, so we could tighten up our processes.

And like I said, two, focus more on services.

Students at all other grade levels can still be referred by family members and by educators as well.

Doing that universal screening right now, first graders, we looked at data for every single first grader in the city.

We looked at data for every fourth grader.

And then we still had, I believe, close to 2,000 referrals at other grade levels that were family referrals and educator referrals.

And, you know, when we, can take a deep breath and reflect on this identification season, we may decide to go back to more universal screening at all grade levels, but I really wanted to get things pretty tight.

And with this year's identification processes for the first time in a long time, we had educators at the table, both the neighborhood educators, and cohort or HCE educators.

We had central office folks, we had psychologists at the table.

And it was a tremendous undertaking with just two grade levels, first grade and fourth grade, but it's good work, you know, and good conversation that I think will just make us smarter in future years.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, so we got to ask a lot of questions in our preview of this presentation.

So I won't duplicate those questions, and a lot of the explanations that we asked about were embedded into the presentation.

But just appreciate all the work here, especially the engagement, which I think many of us got a lot of positive feedback about these engagement sessions.

So I wanted to just say that in a public meeting.

I do want to ask about the two recommended new sites, because that is the new information here for us.

So my questions about that is, One, just maybe generally how these two sites were selected.

What, just for my own, I don't really know how this works, for students who are currently there, how does that work?

Who are not highly capable and then I guess also for students who are highly capable but still in their neighborhood classrooms and have opted for that, how does that work for them if they happen to be one of these sites?

And then how does it also work for students who might be at Thurgood Marshall but live closer to one of these schools but they chose to go there?

because it wasn't close by or there wasn't an option close by.

So how does that transition work?

I think that's three questions.

One topic.

I counted three.

There's a bunch of questions.

So the first one, I'm going to look at my colleagues over here.

The question was, how were these sites selected?

Maybe Superintendent Podesta.

Yeah, I would send that to Superintendent Podesta.

Thank you.

We really wanted to focus on the long-term capacity and the building condition of these sites and make sure we're locating new programs, at least in the Southwest, making programs where we made investment.

And we continually ask the public to support our capital investment, so if we have capacity coming online in a modern building that gave great weight to a beautiful school that we're opening.

And then in Southeast, again, we had capacity in Rainier View, we think it would be and easy to integrate into the overall services that they have there.

So it's really just making sure that we're in a sustainable site for the long haul where this program can exist.

And then your other questions.

This will come forward in the student assignment transition plan.

Director Manu talked about grandfathering.

So at this point in time, the plan is not to have Thurgood Marshall students.

Students currently going to Thurgood Marshall have to move.

You know, we've had that practice when we've opened, I think about middle schools, we made kids move.

I don't believe we're in that conversation right now, but they would certainly have the option to opt in to Southeast or Southwest.

We are in conversations though about the families that are newly identified.

Will they still have Thurgood Marshall as an option or will they have their Southeast or Southwest?

and that's internal conversation.

And then the question about classroom configuration.

In your region, you just have Cascadia, there's no neighborhood students there.

Thurgood Marshall has a model where they have neighborhood students and HC students.

There's some blending at times and then there's very specific grouping for HC, specifically around math and language arts.

and so we would be looking at a model that looks closer to Thurgood Marshall at those two sites.

You know, we want to embrace the community.

We want to work with the community.

The building leaders of both those sites are excited over the possibility and we're prepared to, you know, we really want to make it one school and at the same time we want to make sure that students' needs are being met in alignment with what's happening at Cascadia Thurgood Marshall and Decatur in terms of math acceleration and language arts acceleration.

The recommendation would be for grandfathering and then we will have the data to show you the impact for grandfathering and you would vote on that and you would see the difference if there is no grandfathering and the impact to those students and we'll provide that data for you on February 11th.

Director Rankin.

Okay.

You brought something up about, you know, the experience of one identified student in a neighborhood school and what that looks like, and I will tell you from personal experience, at Laurelhurst Elementary in the 80s, I was a reading group of one and a spelling group of one until I think fourth grade, and then there were a couple other kids.

I was asked to be a...

assist with kids that needed help with reading during reading.

So I would try to get my book out to read like everybody else was.

And I distinctly remember the first grade teacher saying, and if you need help with such and such, you can come to me.

Or if I'm busy, you can go to Liza.

And I was also a year younger.

I started kindergarten when I was four, so I was also a year younger than everybody.

So being the only one is not a great experience.

This is also not the 80s anymore.

So I also had my own desk against the wall while everybody else sat in clusters of four.

Again, not super great.

But I don't think that's how we treat kids now.

So...

broad strokes, people pick the cohort because we don't offer advanced math at all schools, even though we could, but we don't, or because their kid has been made to feel different and weird.

And they're looking for a place where they don't have to go and feel like that every day.

And so I'm wondering if we're looking at Sometimes those are the same kids.

But sometimes people leave their neighborhood school because they feel like their kid's not treated well by other kids and other families.

And that's not something that advanced math is gonna fix.

So I'm just kind of, I'm holding all of those things and I just wanted to sort of state them out loud that people don't pick a cohort or the neighborhood school for all one reason.

and it matters, I mean I've had families say, I wanted to stay at my neighborhood school, I don't care about the advanced math part but my kid was totally miserable and we went to Cascadia and they found friends.

And that really matters no matter what our math offerings are.

So I don't know what the solution to that is but I just wanted to state that, that this is not all high achieving families that just want You know, more whatever.

People are looking for a place to belong.

So how do we not lose sight of that?

My question about the new sites, I think just as the last several years have been so...

miscommunicated or not communicated about what is or isn't actually available, I think we need to be very, very, very clear for families so they know what they're choosing when they choose that.

And I also want to understand, and here's a question, I promise, is this a forever approach or is this a we're doing this now and we're gonna continue to evolve other things?

So I think that really matters for families when they're making that choice.

I would love to see a sort of five year projection of where we're going and maybe even a 10 year of just is this, and I'm not making a judgment on good or bad, but is this a sort of too late response to the fact that so many families and kids have not had a site near them that we're offering while we move to something else, or is this what we're moving to and we're done?

and I also want to note we have a much stronger instructional leader coming in as superintendent that we have had in quite some time who understands pedagogy, who has been in the classroom, has been a principal and so this conversation might look a little bit different with an incoming superintendent than it has over the past 10 years just because he's going to have real expertise as an instructional leader not just on the operations side.

So yeah, I guess that's my first question is, is this a right now or is this a, this is where we're headed?

I think the one question there I might be qualified to answer is this is not the forever plan.

And how long right now is a little bit fluid, but this is a response to current circumstances.

We have heard already from incoming superintendents that Maybe there would be a sustainable need for the cohort model that it seems like this level of capacity might be more than we need in the long run as we look at how we do identification, look at more services in neighborhood schools.

So I'm sure this will evolve.

That much I am completely confident in.

I would also invite Dr. Montgomery to say what that evolution might look like, but this is not or done.

I just think again as clear as we can be that people understand what they're choosing and that if we approve this in the transition plan some kind of assurance for the families that select that that they're not going to be moved again in two years or that we're not going to say oh sorry this isn't the site anymore but but it's your assignment so you don't get to you know what I mean like I think People expect there to be changes.

Nobody expects everything to be frozen in amber.

But we just have to give families the information so that they can make the choice and not be blindsided.

As Director Manu said, that would be a conscious decision about continuing assignments.

But I think we would all agree that there needs to be stability, even other plans and other iterations.

We've always talked about winding things down, not pulling the rug out from under people.

I think that's kind of built into this.

Once you start something, you have to honor the commitments you've already made.

But that doesn't mean there won't be any evolution overall.

And then isn't Rainier Review only like 200 or 220 capacity?

Yes.

But there's space?

We think there'll be space to handle this.

Okay.

Yeah.

I would like clarity on what it means to go to that site.

And then my other question, and this is really more of a suggestion, not really a board director question, but we focus a lot on the qualification and the sites and the service, but especially in that transition from elementary school to middle school, there are a lot of kids that discover their aptitude for math or haven't wanted to go to a cohort school but then by the time they get to fifth grade are really like, oh my gosh, this is really, I need more.

Can we just do an exit test in fifth grade and assign kids to middle school classes?

Hey, you've qualified for math seven, you've qualified for algebra and kind of, I mean, like we don't have, kids don't have to get the designation to have access to that, especially at a comprehensive middle school or high school when there is the capacity to do that.

I know, and this is, my son was at, my younger son was at a neighborhood, you were his principal, he was at a neighborhood elementary school and his teachers, he had a lot of reasons for, that was the right choice for him.

And when he was entering sixth grade and then was assigned to sixth grade math because he had come from fifth grade.

That was like the beginning of the end.

And then he did do seven, eight compressed, but it was kind of Anyway, I think we can, and I think already, he's only in eighth grade now, and I think already that system has changed somewhat.

But I just, if a kid wants to and can, there's no reason to say, well, you're this old, so this is what you have, when I know we can provide it at our larger schools.

I would definitely say you said a lot and I want to respond to so much of it.

I think both things can be true.

I think that we have work to do to build a beautiful neighborhood model and we also have work to do to continue our HC sites.

As Superintendent Podesta said, this is at this moment in time.

But I do believe we may be a district.

Maybe we won't need five HC sites in the future, but we might be a district that does need one site or two sites or three sites in the future.

What I know to be true right now is we have so much work to do at the neighborhood schools to support our educators, to support kids.

I absolutely hear what you're saying about that middle school transition.

We haven't fixed it completely.

I call them triage moves.

So we have two triage moves for those fifth to sixth graders.

The complexity of my position is I work closely with the academic side of the house.

So you're talking about math pathways, math curriculum.

And I also work really closely with the operations side of the house, which is boundaries.

And there's some reasons why some of our decisions on that fifth to sixth grade transition have to do with just the five pathway schools.

And I think we internally can start to examine, you know, maybe we can get to a system where all of our comprehensive middle schools can offer this accelerated math.

Maybe we can get there.

I actually think we're pretty close, but there's some complexity when we start talking about geometry at every middle school.

And there's budget implications and there's enrollment implications.

but I look forward to that work because I do think we're really close and I 100% hear what you're saying.

Many of our kids and families make decisions to stay at their local schools for all the good reasons.

I also just want to acknowledge as well we hear really loudly math What I know to be true, though, is what kids are getting when they either are cluster grouped in a neighborhood classroom with two or three other HC identified or not kids, or at a school like Cascadia, it is so much more than math.

The social-emotional piece, the friendship, the belonging of what you're talking about is the most important.

But sometimes it gets communicated to, I need harder math, when really it could be a child just saying, I just need somebody who likes who loves math as much as I do.

I need a buddy.

And I think our HC sites are doing a beautiful job with that.

Many of our neighborhood sites do a beautiful job, too, helping those students find that friendship.

Vice President Briggs.

No additional questions for me.

All right, then let's continue on with the presentation here.

Thank you so much, Dr. Montgomery.

I'll just echo some of what I heard here.

Thank you for the engagement that went into this.

I know it was a lot in a compressed time, and I heard a lot of positive feedback from community members about what that engagement looks like, and I hope we can replicate that in other areas throughout the district.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will turn the time over to Director Manu.

Well, sure, I can read through.

So right here, so.

I can do it.

Go for it, my friend, yes.

We were just practicing, yeah.

We were practicing.

Anyway, yeah.

Yeah, so the proposed 2025-26 revisions are technical and just clarifying and just in what we're doing to introduce how we operationalize the changes here.

So we updated the open enrollment timeline.

from February to January, we removed a guaranteed option to return to neighborhood school after choice assignment has been made.

This is very different from what we did in the past.

Families were able to submit multiple school choice even after being awarded a choice to return to their neighborhood school, for example.

and even request another choice school, we're no longer doing that.

So that's something critical that we also engage with families during our information session as well.

And if I can clarify, sorry, that doesn't mean you could choose to go back to your neighborhood school, we would just have to look at capacity.

and we outlined this when we talked about moving the open enrollment timeline and also increasing access to choice seats.

It might mean that once you've requested a choice seat and you receive that choice seat, we may not be able to guarantee you the seat at your neighborhood school just based on, because those neighborhood schools have to enroll students that live in the neighborhood.

They do have to have guaranteed seats.

it's entirely possible you could but it would be as capacity allows.

So we also introduced the transfer appeal process to families if they want to transfer after they've been awarded a seat and that would be subject to availability as Dr. Campbell has stated because we're trying to minimize that disruptions for our schools.

before the start of school, and we recognize that we have multiple families that are moving in and out, and so after even budgets are set, so that could, that is something that is, that we are trying to also right size.

We also updated services and program models and school names, so the extended resource, multilingual learners, we've removed access, for example, social and emotional learning, and moderate intensive.

We changed the names from Northgate to James Baldwin.

That will also be part of the update.

And then Virtual Option Pilot Program to Cascade Virtual Option.

And then we also updated the highly capable assignment language to reflect the updated screening timeline.

All right.

A lot there.

So I guess We're not seeing the full text here.

Do we want to go around and ask questions?

We want to wait until text comes for intro and action at our next meeting.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I don't know if everybody understands what the student assignment plan is.

Transition, sorry.

So I just wanted to make sure.

The word transition got redacted.

And also it's called the student assignment transition plan because it was a transition from one plan to another that I don't think either of them even exist anymore.

So we could probably just call it student assignment plan.

But I wanted to clarify in the update service and program models and school name, those are not programmatic changes that are being made.

You're letting us know we're going to see that language change because those things have already happened.

They've already taken place.

I just wanted to, when I saw the The service models at first was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Are there different service models?

But you're actually just saying that when we see the plan, changes will reflect model changes that were already made.

Correct.

And this is a fairly comprehensive list of the changes aside from the HC changes.

So even though you're not seeing the text of the full student assignment transition plan, this is really a gloss of the main things that you will see redlined.

And yes, you're absolutely right.

Extended resource and the shift from talking about bilingual to multilingual, Those happened a while ago.

It's just that the student assignment transition plan, unlike our annual refresh of our superintendent procedures 3130, which we do every year, just doesn't always, we don't always update it because we don't always have changes and we just didn't, we held off on this one.

Again, it's been a minute since James Baldwin reopened and is no longer Northgate.

and same with Cascade virtual options.

So these are, we're just letting you know that these are some really more technical changes.

They're not, they were substantive at the time, but they're things that are well underway.

All right, yeah, we're gonna do questions.

So Director Mizrahi.

Okay, so I'm trying to limit my questions to new information for me.

Remove the guaranteed option to return to neighborhood school after choice assignment.

You should walk me through like what problem is that solving?

So as we moved the open enrollment timeline up earlier, we were trying to minimize disruptions for our schools and getting our plan projections out earlier and then budgets.

And so we saw that in minimizing that disruption, we saw that also this back and forth with allowing families to just submit multiple applications even after the fact was highly disruptive.

to the point where it impacted us looking at a June revision and also adjustments as a result of that and not just because of school choice results.

And so families are awarded a seat.

Once they're awarded a choice seat, then they would need to wait until June 1st to submit a transfer appeal to appeal that that choice assignment they received, because as they have been receiving a choice assignment, they gave up that seat.

So we're also assigning students to that empty seat that they gave up.

And so as you can imagine, we have some overcrowding that could happen, which does happen a lot.

And so that's kind of the context and why we changed that.

So you're talking about within one, Choice cycle, right?

Correct.

Choice cycle, sorry.

Yes.

So if it's a student who goes to an option school, it's not for them for whatever myriad of reason, and then the following year they say, I'd like to return to my neighborhood school, that is still guaranteed?

That is still guaranteed, yes, to open enrollment.

Thank you for the clarity.

And that was really the trade-off in attempting to move open enrollment earlier, and really the aim was to settle enrollment to see what the desires and choices are for families, prior to then doing budget and staffing.

So that was the whole goal, is to align budget and staffing and to avoid the constant shift and adjustments that we have to make.

And that one of the trade-offs is, as Val said, we can't necessarily, you know, we will go ahead and fill those neighborhood seats.

So within that cycle, you might not have that guaranteed opportunity.

So that was really, I think we talked about it, but it probably didn't highlight until it became pretty stark here.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Director Lavallee.

Yeah, within that, removing the guaranteed option to return to your neighborhood school, I'm really concerned because that's a huge change from what has happened previously and we have a very poor history at communicating some of those changes and the implications of them with parents.

So it's just a huge shift when the system is already so opaque and people already are confused by how this process works.

Can we get some clarification as to what we think the impact of this is going to be and how we plan to manage some of the frustrations that people are going to have around this.

Because I have frustration reading it.

Well, I was going to ask, is this your frustration or you heard feedback from families?

Because in our information session, this was very clear and right up front.

And so parents did ask questions and they understood the disruption because we talked about that disruption.

And so they were very clear, those who showed up Now, are we going to be very clear, Ken, with communication?

Absolutely.

What we want to take away from this is, I know your frustration personally, but, you know, if I haven't heard anything from our families really about this rule change, they're more concerned about how is this going to be with the changes with HC.

as far as their multiple options that they have and also the timeline change.

And so I appreciate that question and yes, we will have clear communication.

We've already been fielding those questions as well.

Parents are calling us 24-7.

They got Let's Talk.

We got emails and by phone and providing this very thing.

And so a lot of questions concerned with this change is, oh, I do have an option which is a transfer appeal and we're calling it now the appeal process versus multiple choice options that they can do over and over before May 31st.

Sure.

I'm not going to lie, I do have personal frustration with that and you're aware of it.

Thank you.

That being said, I hear you saying that the people that you have talked to and explained it to have understood it, and I believe that.

I think there are a lot of people who do not understand how fully the system works.

I feel a lot of questions of like, well, what am I supposed to do?

I don't understand.

And so I think that there's going to be a a lot of frustration over this and I'm just kind of trying to figure out if we have a plan in how to manage that and answer those questions appropriately and get that information out there in a substantive way.

Director Manu, I hate to make promises on your behalf, so this is a question.

We should have some history on this issue.

How many people make a choice, get an assignment, and then want to revert that choice?

What is our history with that that would give us some idea of and we can certainly imagine that circumstance, it'd just be good to know how big a problem.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, Superintendent Podesta, we will get that data for you and provide it through the Student Assignment Transition Plan on February 11th.

That would be more concrete and so you'll have the data.

Absolutely.

That would be wonderful, thank you.

And we do, just to add too, I mean, an awareness that these are folks that have really submitted a choice request, received their top choice, and typically that is good news for people and it's something that they want.

And so again, it doesn't mean that you can't still return to your neighborhood school, it's just that we're saying that's no longer guaranteed.

And that is a little bit of the trade-off, but absolutely we'll get that data to you so that you know the implications of that for sure.

Director Smith?

Another question along the same lines with removing the guaranteed option.

But I think I was really relieved to hear your response to Director Mizrahi.

And so I just want to kind of walk through if a parent, and yeah, parents are doing the enrollment, requests a choice school, maybe several, and there's room for them, are they then automatically enrolled?

And how does that work?

Say you have your top three choices for an option school, and maybe there's room in your third choice.

Would that happen automatically, or is there some more?

How does the process look as a parent experiencing them?

Yeah, it's a very common question in our information session.

So the application form actually you can request up to five during open enrollment and that's through January 31st.

So you have five choices and we look at your top choice and your number one choice is the only school that you can be wait listed for.

but we will look at the other schools and you could be assigned to your other school, another school and still be wait-listed for your number one choice.

So if there is no availability in the other four then your assignment, your default assignment is your current assignment and that most likely is your neighborhood school and wait-listed for your number one choice.

Okay, so during the open enrollment, when parents are putting down the choices for schools, that is a commitment?

Yes.

OK.

I think it makes sense, but just wanting to have clarity on that.

And I think I just have one other comment, which, I mean, you said this is the high level of glossing over things, but just the last bullet on the update highly capable assignment language to reflect updated screening timeline does feel like a bit of an understatement on the amount of communication that we need to have with parents.

So I'll leave that.

We can revisit it on February 11th if needed.

To be clear, what that is referring to is removing first grade.

So it still had the holdover from when we were moving to those services starting in second grade.

So it's not about this particular change.

It's that we still had first grade listed, and we are now screening students in first grade for beginning and second grade.

So I don't know if that's helps clarify that.

Yeah, that does, absolutely.

This is just updating to reflect a change that's actually already happened.

Correct, absolutely.

Yeah, thank you, and I'm glad you pointed that out, and I maybe undersolved that a little bit, but just most of these are, as we said, reflecting things that have happened, and that's exactly what that is.

So the last year that the student assignment transition plan was approved was February 9th, 2022. And so since then there's been a change of guard in leadership and then conversations around kind of right sizing both of these plans, 3130 and 3130 SP, the superintendent procedures, and consolidating them into a unified one file, one policy assignment framework.

So as Director Rankin referred to, the transition plan refers to quite some time ago, although I was an administrator in the district at the time when we moved from that control choice system with the prior superintendent to a neighborhood school model.

And so the transition plan was intended as the transition from that control choice to that neighborhood school model.

but along the way there were lots of different specialty decisions and desires and things so there was a continued need for transition so I do think at some point the sort of technical pieces of the transition plan likely could be something that no longer, it is confusing to have it and it might make things much simpler as Val said to simply have the procedure and the policy that we are focusing on.

which is a good place to wrap up because I would like to try to do a vote on the student assignment transition plan at our February 11th meeting and then pick up that further conversation because it is a much larger piece than what we currently are looking at moving forward, which is a larger chunk of work.

So thank you, Director Manu, Dr. Campbell, Dr. Montgomery, and Superintendent Podesta for the presentation.

I appreciate it and that is the last item on our agenda this evening.

We will be back here next Wednesday for a budget work session.

I'm very excited for this budget work session and I think Superintendent Podesta previewed a little bit about how it hopefully will look different than previous budget work sessions that we've had and just want to thank directors because it's been a series of meetings we've had Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday with three meetings this month plus the first February we have a work session first Wednesday in February we have a work session plus our retreat so it's quite yes it just keeps going so thank you all for all of your commitment here to all that we are trying to do but there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 8.04 p.m.

have a good evening everyone thank you