Seattle Schools Board Meeting July 2, 2025

Alright the July 20 the July 2nd 2025 regular board meeting is now called to order at 4 17 p.m.

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

Miss Worth the roll call please.

Vice President Briggs.

Director Clark.

Present.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Present.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Oh, sorry, that was loud.

Here.

Director Sarju.

President Taup.

Here.

All right, thank you.

We are gonna start this evening with our superintendent comments, so I'm going to turn it over to Acting Superintendent Podesta for his comments.

Thank you President Topp.

I'm happy to join you on the dais today.

I want to convey how much the senior team here in the district is supporting me and I support I appreciate the support from the board.

Just want to make sure that everyone knows we're all working together as the board works through a transition to new leadership at Seattle Public Schools.

And speaking of transitions June is a great month now that we've wrapped up a school year at Seattle Public Schools and I want to really congratulate the class of 2025. Those of us who participated in graduation ceremonies and families see the most joyous time of the school year.

And I just want to thank every teacher every custodian every school leader every family member that contributed to the success of students in the class of 2025. We celebrated also here at the John Stanford Center we raised the Juneteenth flag and had a great opportunity to celebrate and reflect on what we've done and the growth we still need to do as Seattle Public Schools evolves into an anti-racist organization and think about our past and how to include everyone in that.

Another hallmark of graduations this year is our last opportunity to celebrate in Memorial Stadium which we will be on hiatus for a couple of years as we build a new facility to support students in partnership with the city and a private partner to develop a new facility in the center of our city that again will be a hallmark and focus on our commitment to students for hopefully the next 70 years.

MANY STAFF IN THE CENTRAL OFFICE AND LEADERSHIP HERE HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE EFFECTIVE TEACHING INSTITUTE AT THE MUCKLESHU TRIBAL COLLEGE LAST WEEK AND I THINK IT WAS A GREAT EXPERIENCE BOTH FOR STAFF AND I KNOW PRESIDENT TOP ATTENDED I DON'T KNOW IF OTHER DIRECTORS WERE ABLE TO GET THERE BUT I would like to invite Shawna Brown to come speak to a little bit about the great work that her team and Native N does.

How are you?

There we go.

I guess you have to use the on button.

Hello and good afternoon.

Thank you for inviting me to speak about the efforts of the Native Ed program here at SPS.

My name is Shanna Brown.

I am Muckleshoot, Yakima, and Puyallup.

I am currently the Native American Education Curriculum Specialist for Seattle Public Schools and a PhD candidate at the University of Washington for the Native Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Program.

This past June, a cadre of SPS teachers, leaders, specialists, central office staff, and urban native parents attended the Muckleshoot Tribal Colleges Effective Teaching Institute.

It's a three-day institute where we learned about tribal partnerships, history, and culture.

Chief of Staff Beverly Redmond, School Board President Gina Topp, and Deputy Chief of Staff Eric Wersey each joined us for one day, and for that we are very grateful.

At ETI, I presented 2019 through 2024 data on SPS's John McCoy Lutlielash since time immemorial curriculum implementation.

That data collected and analyzed under the supervision of then program manager Gail Morris.

I don't have time to summarize the report, but that's why I provided it for you for your reading pleasure.

The data showed that SPS is out of compliance with RCW 28A 410-277.

And at the time of the report, SPS had about a 30% implementation rate.

The report calls for SPS to prioritize JML STI implementation by building district leadership professional development, accountability, visibility, awareness and communication.

Despite Native Ed's lack of access to principal professional development opportunities and unanswered requests to conduct a formal survey of principals, I have been able to get some data this year, 2025. Respondents to my informal principal data gathering overwhelmingly advocated for district-wide communication, professional development for buildings and principals, and prioritization of JMLSTI district-wide.

This data is consistent with the data in the report.

Native Ed has also initiated responsive efforts that I will outline.

Number one, provide principal training.

One request was approved.

This past August, our optional session at SPS School Leader Institute was attended by 13 principals.

Number two, continue to provide in-building professional development.

Currently, we are able to train about 12 to 13 buildings per school year.

Number three, build a robust JML STI implementation model, which we are starting with Lowell Elementary this fall.

In fact, 15 of the participants at ETI were from Lowell, not only the teachers the specialists the principals and the principal interns and i can't wait to share what that is going to what that is going to do for us this school year and last but not least number four rebuild our relationships with our muckleshoot and suquamish tribal partners.

Native Ed has secured Suquamish collaboration with the Lowell Project, and we are working with Muckleshoot Tribal College to further define Muckleshoot's role.

These are, of course, informal overtures, so something more official and visible might be in order.

I am very excited about our work ahead, and I hope that we can gain momentum through active district support of upper leadership and our new superintendent and our school board.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much Shauna for your leadership within your team and for joining us here tonight.

And lastly in the context of celebrations where I want to celebrate the leaders in our district some that have been awarded with our newly initiated All-Star program where we're projected on the screen list of most valuable educators.

These are folks who have been nominated by their peers.

As being key contributors, we're trying to make sure that we continually remind ourselves of the roles of educators and those that go above and beyond.

So many do and often get described as unsung heroes.

We need them to be sung heroes as much as possible.

We have a consequential meeting tonight.

We're adopting our budget where hopefully I hope I shouldn't say we the board will or will not adopt the budget.

We are bringing some collective bargain agreements with our key labor partners this evening and we're going to move on to the most important work of the board monitoring the success of our district and progress monitoring which I think is next on the agenda or near next on the agenda.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Podesta.

And also just for the record, it looks like we do have Director Sarju on the line.

She's one of the phone numbers.

Director Sarju, are you able to unmute and sit so we know you're here?

I'm here.

Great.

Thank you so much, Director Sarju.

I also want to just quickly thank our staff, students, and families for another great school year at Seattle Public Schools and congratulate our graduated seniors.

My fellow board directors and I were honored to be part of the graduation ceremonies.

It's probably one of the best parts of this job here and we can't wait to see what lies ahead for our newly graduated seniors this evening as Mr. Podesta said we have some very important items to vote on as we close out the school year and plan for the next we will be voting on our budget for 25 26 school year and two collective bargaining agreements Our work will continue over the summer as we work on hiring a new superintendent and we'll have time also in this meeting today to discuss that.

I just also want to thank all of our students staff and families community members that have participated so far in our superintendent search engagement through surveys and meetings.

Your feedback is vital in this process and the board is grateful for your time and insights.

We are going to slightly reorganize the meeting agenda tonight, so we have time for progress monitoring, and we're gonna move committee and liaison reports to the end of the meeting to allow for the progress monitoring.

So we're gonna head to the tables.

Directors, if you could please take your microphones for progress monitoring.

I was not signed up by a number of 25 on the late list.

So I'm leaving .

I'm just curious to see how it works.

Oh, the last week?

I thought it did .

All right, Director Hersey is our progress monitoring lead and will facilitate this portion.

So I'm gonna pass it over to Acting Superintendent Podesta to begin the process in collaboration here with Director Hersey.

Thanks again.

We're here to discuss guardrails three and four from the previous interval of the current governance model.

While these efforts are sunsetting in the structure of the model, the work needs to continue, and so that's one of the things I've asked staff to discuss a little bit how this maps to governance as it's evolving and as the board is continuing to work on this.

We are getting ready to finalize and bring back to the board our view of the interim metrics for the upcoming guardrails.

We'll be talking about those as the board works on the progress monitoring calendar and we have continued discussions.

We've really appreciated the feedback.

In the past years as we've worked with this, guardrails are an interesting concept in terms of how to report progress and really appreciate the back and forth and learning together as we go.

So to keep us moving, I will turn it over to Dr. Pritchett.

All right.

Good evening, directors.

I am here today to provide a brief update on our guardrail three from, as Fred indicated, from our previous iteration of goals and guardrails.

Again, as a reminder.

It feels a little bit here.

Let me try.

Why don't we get you a new mic?

One of them.

One of them will work.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

And then I don't know if this one is.

Okay, we got it.

We got control.

All right.

Guardrail 3, just as a reminder, was created to reflect our community's expectation that all of the adults in our system, whether in classrooms, school buildings, or central office, model the anti-racist views that we aspire to uphold.

And just again, that guardrail read, the superintendent will not allow adult behaviors in central office, school buildings or classrooms that are misaligned with district wide vision, values and anti-racism initiatives.

so this was um past that we'll have two metrics that we're going to talk about the first one really looked at professional development and looking at the number of building leaders who are prepared to implement anti-hate and bias procedures in their school that was a one-time training and so i'll talk a little bit more about some of the things that i think that we've improved upon or that we've evolved But again, just as a reminder, that was a one-time training that we created this metric under.

The other one was around the percentage of staff of color who believe that their school or district department provides a healthy and anti-racist work environment.

And we had set a goal there to move from 73% for our school-based staff and 74% for our central office staff to 80% across the board.

for staff of color believing that their department or their school has that healthy antiracist working environment.

Jumping to the first one, as I said, this first interim metric focused on the anti-hate and bias procedures.

Please report that 100% of our building leaders and staff received that training and those procedures.

That was during a tri-day in August of 2023. That training was collaboratively developed by our senior leadership and SEA.

We had over 2,400 staff earn clock hours, and then the average rating on that professional development was 4.2 out of 5. We've marked that one as blue as that one was delivered and we felt it was done successfully and that metric was met at that time.

For guardrail 3.2, that one again focused on our staff of color and their perception of whether their workspace was healthy and anti-racist.

We set a goal to move to 80% across the board for our staff of color.

We did not, we saw mixed results there.

We got progress, although we did not make it to that 80% or two percentage points below for both school staff and central office staff.

And so again, that was marked as yellow because we know that there's more work that needed to be done.

Again, noting the progress, but again, not meeting that particular goal.

In this particular guardrail, we invested in a range of professional learning and system structures.

We've given a few here.

Our professional growth and educator support department provided foundational training and one-on-one coaching for new teachers and principals, new to profession and new to SPS.

And there was a focus there on our beliefs and values and anti-racist curriculum and behaviors.

We had our Department of Race and Equity, I'm sorry, Department of Racial Equity Advancement supported and continues to support 58 school-based and two central office racial equity teams, again, providing professional development for staff around anti-racism.

We also had our SPS wellness program that offered conflict resolution, trauma support, racial harm and repair, access to employees for assistance and services.

And so we felt like those programs at the time were building capacity and reinforcing the adult behaviors aligned with our anti-racism vision.

This work was also grounded in board policy, especially policy 0030 on racial equity work and policy 5515 on secondary trauma in the workplace.

I want to take a moment to just talk really in closing about guardrail three.

And it really wasn't a checklist, but an opportunity for us to look in the mirror, reflect on whether our adult systems are truly aligned to what we say we value.

Racial equity, safety, and belonging for every student and staff member.

I think that we've made progress in training and structures, but the staff experience data told us that there was more work to do, especially of how our staff of color experience our system.

This work is, we're still committed to this work.

This is ongoing work.

What I mentioned as some of the structures are continuing and have grown in their impact.

As we transition to a new guardrail, we are maintaining SPS's focus and commitment on anti-racist values and practices.

We seek to improve the metrics, one, by expanding those and expanding and to add student-centered outcomes, really wanting to add in student voice, having a clearer theory of change where we're emphasizing the role of adult readiness in the student experience, and then a concentrated effort within our classrooms and our schools.

I believe that this revised guardrail will reflect an evolution from process monitoring really to getting towards outcome accountability, linking professional development directly to the student experience and just sharpening our goals and what we're focused in on.

Again, wanting to integrate student voice, really getting a long-term strategic view of our work, and then providing a clearer link between the adult actions and student experience.

And I know that when we came before you the first time, there was a lot of room to grow even in that guardrail, but it is an evolution, I think, from what we've seen here.

That being said, I expect within the next five years that we're going to continue to evolve our interim metrics that we have aligned to that third guardrail.

And I'll pause there.

All right.

Do we have any questions?

Okay.

I saw it.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Thank you for reminding me to look online.

I don't see any hands up.

So unless Director Sharjee has a question, we'll go to...

No question.

No question.

Thank you.

We'll go to Director Rankin.

just briefly appreciate the second part of what you're talking about, about that evolution because that really is, you know, the guardrails are a tool for us to know are we getting closer or further away from the district that we all envision together.

And so, I just appreciate the thought process there and going more from checking the box of did these activities take place towards is it impacting our students.

So, thanks for that.

Okay, I think we are ready to move on to the next presentation.

So I think we can go directly to Dr. Torres Morales to talk about Gabriel Fork.

So we got rid of the participant screen.

We may need to put it back up because that's the only way we can unmute Director Sarju.

Or see that, yeah.

Okay.

Good evening, board directors.

I'm here to discuss guardrail four on discipline.

And so here is our color indicator key.

And guardrail 4.1 talks about the percentage of African-American males, third through 12th grade, who indicate experiencing fair discipline and culture responsive practices.

And the original intent was for this to increase from 57% in November of 2021 to 70% in September of 2024. We've rated this at orange at this time, stating, which essentially means that we do need to do some significant changes if we want to see that number move.

I'm going to get into that a little bit here in a minute.

Our next one is about the rate of discipline incidents specifically for our students with disabilities.

And we wanted that rate to go from 9.5% to 7.0% in July of 2024. This one we rated as yellow.

Once we get into the data, what I'll show is that we actually, in July of 2024, had it at 7.1%, so we were pretty much on target.

We've rated it yellow, though, because if we look at what's happening this year, we've seen a slight uptick in that number, and so it deserves some interrogation as to what's going on.

Overall, we still see a great decrease from where we were, but that slight uptick does beg the question of we need to have more conversations of what's happening.

And our last one is around the percentage of Seattle Public Schools school leaders who have attended mental health and wellness trainings and incorporated them into the CSIPs.

We rated this as yellow as well.

What we know is that we do have a great majority of our schools who have incorporated these into their CSIPs.

We also know that the leaders have attended trainings.

The question for us is now, what is the actual implementation?

There's a difference between it being written in a CSIP and what's happening at the school, hence why it's written in yellow.

But we do know that 18 out of 20 schools do have the information in their CSIPs.

So our first one here is the culturally responsive practices data.

And so this talks about agree or strongly agree.

So what this means is that when a student takes this survey, they rate these questions as I agree with this or strongly agree.

When we created the metric, we created it off of this.

And so what we see is that we have seen some slight gains.

But if we're going to be honest with ourselves, nothing great so when we think about culturally responsive teaching went from 55 percent to 58 percent which yes we did go up three points but is three points sufficient for what we're actually trying to do for our students i don't think so and then if you think about the positive behavior and safety that was actually flat overall from 57 to 57. So one of the things we wanted to do was dig a little bit deeper in the data, because when students complete the survey, there's also an option to say kind of agree.

That becomes important when we think about this, just because if we can see the number of kind of agree moving, that tells us that some of the things we're doing are working.

Whereas if that number stayed flat as well, then really nothing we're doing is working.

Our kids aren't agreeing at all.

And so when we look at the kind of agree data, what we see is that we also see some slight gains.

So for example, in third to fifth grade, from 75 to 79, which was four percentage points, sixth to eighth grade went up three percentage points, ninth through 12th grade went up three percentage points.

So we are seeing that, and then on the positive behavior side, we see that in third through fifth grade, it went from 82% to 80%, sixth grade, 76% to 75%, and ninth through 12th, 80 to 81%.

So that dip down to the kind of agree is also telling us that what we're doing is not having huge impacts.

Because if it were, even down there, we would see some bigger shifts in the numbers.

So one of the things that we've been working on is through our care coordination, which is a conjunction between a team that works with the curriculum academics and instruction team and coordinated school health.

They're people that actually work out in our school buildings.

We started pulling them into a team to work through some of these issues and some of these questions.

We also have Dr. Mia Williams from the Office of African American Male Achievement consulting with that team now over what are some of the best practices that her and her team have done in the schools where they're located so that they can take those practices to that care coordination team, and we can start getting those spread out across the district.

So that's one of the shifts in strategies that we're currently doing to get these numbers to move moving forward.

Knowing that this is also the end of these guardrails, but the point of these were to get system changes, so that's one of the changes that we've enacted based on some of these data.

Next, these are the incidents, and I touched on this a little bit.

What you'll see here is that at the end of last school year, we were at 7.1 incidents per student for students with disabilities, and we did want to be at seven even, so we were a little bit above, but we are on track to go slightly above that.

Overall, this is still great progress from back in 18, 19, where it was 11 incidents per 100 kids.

We are down on that, but it is concerning that we're seeing the number go up.

In response to that, we've recently had some conversations over what are we gonna do going into next school year?

So going into next school year, in conjunction with some of the work of Dr. Pritchett's team in HR, there were some updates to labor agreements around safety and student discipline.

So we work with the Coordinated School Health team, and we're going to be having trainings with school leaders in August around just discipline, disciplinary practices, how are we coding discipline so we can get more standardized across the system.

That's a two-fold thing.

One, it's going to help us guarantee that when we're getting our data back, it's pretty clean data.

As right now, what we hear from some people is, yeah, it's unbalanced.

It depends on the school you go to, those sort of things.

And so this is an attempt to, one, do that, and then, two, have some really clean data and get people on board with what are the best practices that we're going to be doing.

And so that's going to be taking place in August of this year.

When we think future to the future guardrails, this also helps align with guardrail two for the coming set of guardrails.

And finally, on the last piece here, Hold on.

I don't know.

Thank you.

There we go.

OK, this is around the percentage of SPS school leaders who have attended mental health and wellness training and incorporated them into their CSIPs.

So the graphic on the right basically shows you some of the different strategies that you would see in CSIPs.

If you add the numbers, we're going to say, hey, but this is more than even the number of schools.

That's because some schools have picked multiple strategies.

So they've done different things.

But for example, restorative practices, universal design for learning, culturally responsive practices.

And these are all built into the CSIPs.

So what do we know?

18 out of the 20 schools and programs do have these in their CSIPs.

We also know that we need to do a better job going forward of how we're actually tracking the implementation in the field of what's happening versus what's getting written into the CSIPs.

So recently with Chief Accountability Officer Howard's team, specifically Tasha James and I have been working on this, talking through what is this going to look like with regional executive directors?

What does this look like for CSIP monitoring?

Happy with the progress that yes, this is now in our CSIPs.

Yes, we're doing the trainings.

But the purpose of it is to make sure that it's actually happening in the field.

And so those are some of the next steps that we're working through at this time.

And so this is just talking about some of those things, what our next steps need to be in general.

And then in terms of board support, just to keep validating that the work we're doing in alignment with policy 0010 and 0030 is a direction that we want to go, particularly given our current political landscape.

The more we get the support from you all to just reinforce the vision and values as we're doing these things, it's very helpful.

So thank you.

All right, we will now move to questions, and I see Director Sarju's hand.

Take it away, Michelle.

Thank you, Director Hersey.

My question is related to, I don't think I missed hearing this, but maybe I did.

What are the action steps to ensuring For example, Dr. Rocky, some of the things you said incorporating them into their CSIPs.

And then I saw the slide, but the slide is gone now, so I can't reference back to that.

But what is the them and what is the incorporation of them?

And then how are you holding people accountable to actually implementing what they learned?

Thank you for that.

If we can go back a couple slides.

This remote is not working at the moment.

So there's a couple things.

One, Chief Howard's team, the accountability office, have come forward with a dashboard.

What that dashboard does is allows us to see at any given point in time what schools have put in for their strategies for their CSIP.

So for example, if a school is saying restorative practices, we now have the ability to see all the schools that are doing restorative practices as their strategy.

Part of that involves what schools are allowed to pick now are only the research and evidence-based strategies that we as a district have said, yes, these are the research and evidence-based strategies.

Leaders have been given PD on that.

If they have not, that's also available to make sure that it happens.

And then on the flip side, the conversations that are happening between Chief Howard's office and the regional executive directors of schools and my team is how then, when we do evaluations with school leaders, these come forward as part of the evaluation.

So in your CSIP, if you are a principal and you say, we're doing restorative practices, that now becomes part of your evaluation conversation with your regional executive director during your mid-year and your summative evaluation.

And the expectation is that you're going to bring forward some evidence that demonstrates how you're doing these things in your school.

So it's a multi-tiered process, but one, now we have a dashboard to see it.

Two, schools are picking things that are aligned to research and evidence-based practices.

Three, it's actually getting tracked through the evaluation process with the regional executive directors.

Please let me know if that did not address your question.

Yeah, well, kind of, it did, thank you.

But now that I see the slide, so I'm gonna read this out loud because when I read it out loud to myself, it's not an action.

It says, these include references to SEL, trauma-informed practice, restorative justice, and community-based mental health supports.

So including a reference in a plan is not an action it's just basically putting words on the paper as i read as i read this so when i read that i don't understand what people are like just including a reference to something doesn't mean that they're doing something so help me understand that

Yeah, when this guardrail was written, the intent was for it to go through September of 2024, which it did.

So that was this past fall.

And then based off that, this was the information at the time the guardrail was built off of.

However, we noted almost immediately implementation issues.

And so given it very much aligns with what you're saying now, that yeah, there's a difference between what you write and what you do, hence why moving forward the process has changed where the strategies are specific, we're able to monitor them and see them, and they're gonna actually be tracked.

Whereas in the past, They may have been tracked.

They might not have been tracked.

Yeah, they were in the document, but what was actually happening at the school?

So that's partly where some of the shifts and pivots are coming from.

So yes, duly noted and thank you, but that was one of the gaps that we were seeing as well when we were going through this process.

Thank you.

So I heard you stated for the record, so there will be accountability based on what you said.

Thank you.

somewhat connected to what Director Sargi was just saying and also the comment I made on the previous one is something that you noted Rocky that I was going to ask about is at our last progress monitoring we weren't talking about guardrails we were doing goals but We had a conversation about challenges with our data and wondering, is our data being, does it accurately reflect or rather the noticing that we don't believe that our data is necessarily accurately reflecting.

So I was going to ask about that particularly with discipline, making sure that we're actually, I mean, I know i know of things that don't escalate to actually being reported and they really should be not because we're trying to you know nail somebody but because we need to understand what's happening in our buildings and whether or not students are learning in the environments that that we on behalf of our community expect So I really appreciate that you're thinking now about the training happening in August, and I expect that that will give us just an even better picture, even just from a baseline for the next set of information to understand what's really happening, what's working and what's not working, and how we address it.

I think that's the...

the power in going through this exercise, even though it sometimes seems very dry and divorced from students, but it really is helping us all expose what is and isn't true, what is and isn't happening for students.

So I'm Well, I'm not even going to pretend I'm not a nerd.

I'm really excited about continuing to move this forward because I just think getting an accurate read and providing that support to principals also because we don't There being a discipline incident doesn't necessarily mean that anyone has done something wrong.

It means that there is something happening that needs to be addressed and what we really want to look at is it being addressed appropriately and our students being supported and our building leaders being supported and having safe school environments and if they're not, what do we need to do to get closer to where we want to be.

So I'm looking forward to the next iteration of all of these things and appreciate the work and thoughtfulness.

Thank you very much.

Do we have any other questions in the room or online?

Seeing none I'll hand it back to senior staff.

I think that was the extent of our show.

We can move on to the next item.

Perfect.

And we have four minutes until public testimony.

So directors will head back to the dais and we will begin public testimony at 5 p.m.

But we are going to just head straight there.

No break.

So as painful as this is, we cannot start public testimony until 5 p.m.

So we've got about three minutes, folks, until we will continue.

And we won't do anything else for the next three minutes.

Thank you.

My mom.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It is officially five o'clock, so we are going to begin public testimony.

I'm gonna go through a few rules here.

Board procedure 1430BP provides our rules for testimony.

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

All right, Director Hersey and Director Briggs.

We'll do that again.

All right, we're going into public testimony.

Board procedure 1430BP provides our rules for testimony.

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

As board president, I have the right to and 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 off now to staff to summarize a few additional points and then begin reading off the testimony speakers for this evening.

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 speaker 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 else, please do reintroduce yourself when called, as I will miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list.

The first speaker on today's list is Elise Lambeth.

You'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference line.

Elyse, are you there?

Hi.

Yes, I'm here.

I am feeding my time to Katie Roberts.

Katie Roberts?

Yes.

Thank you.

Hi.

My name is Katie Roberts.

I'm a parent at BFDA elementary, vice president of our PTSA and mom to a neurodiverse advanced learner and extended resource.

I'm here to share a community concerned about the district staffing model, specifically how it fails to fully account for special education students who spend most of their day in general education classrooms.

Like many schools, BF Day was impacted by staffing cuts during the June shakeup, including the loss of one general education position.

This cut hits hard because it doesn't reflect who we're actually serving.

Last year, 15 students in our extended resource pathway spent 80% or more of their day in general education, what's known as LRE1.

Next year, we're projected to have 11. These students are not visitors.

They have desks, cubbies, classrooms, participate in morning meetings, reading groups, and science experiments.

Their general education teachers plan, differentiate, and help meet IEP goals every day.

Yet, under the current staffing formula, these students are not fully accounted for in general education staffing.

That means schools doing the real work of inclusion, like BFDA, are being penalized, while others with fewer inclusion supports receive more general education staffing per student.

This is not just a technical issue, this is an equity issue.

The impact became personal to our community because the teacher who was displaced due to the recent adjustments was core to our inclusion culture.

He's a trusted, neurodiverse-affirming educator with strong relationships and a passion for STEM learning.

His loss isn't just felt on a spreadsheet, it is deeply felt by the students who counted on him.

We know 11 students may not restore a full FTE, but we're asking for something simple.

Start counting these students fully.

They are already here.

They matter.

Their teachers matter and they deserve to be fully counted.

Thank you for your service to our schools.

The next speaker is Lily Lou Lannan.

Good afternoon school board members and everyone.

My name is Lily and I am a second grader at Decatur Elementary School.

I'm here today because I want to tell you how much I love my school and the amazing Decatur community.

I've been at Decatur since first grade and my big sister has been here since her first grade too.

When I first started I was very shy but thanks to my wonderful teacher Ms. Johnson and our kind principal Ms. Miller I've become much more confident.

I enjoy being part of our school clubs like the Knitting Club and Reading Club.

Every year my sister and I join the Math Fair and Science Fair.

One of my favorite events is our Chinese New Year celebration.

I'm half Chinese and this year my sister and I created a table to share Chinese paintings and traditional Chinese food.

We also made boba tea for everyone.

It was so popular that we ran out of supplies so quickly.

Next year, we're planning to make even more.

I also love bingo night and glow in the dark party.

Even though we are in the highly capable program, we're not just smart, we're also good at sports, music, and performing in school assemblies and theater shows.

I have lots of friends from different backgrounds, Asian, black, white, and other places.

This year, we went on a field trip to the Woodman Park Zoo, and I'm excited to go somewhere new next year.

Thank you for supporting the Howdy Capable program for a few more years.

That means I still get to learn, grow, and have reading buddies who are younger than me.

I've learned so much, made many friends, and feel very happy to be part of the Duquesne community.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Elle Lowe.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Elle.

I use she, they pronouns, and I went to Queen Anne Elementary, or QAE for elementary school.

QAE is awesome.

In my six years at QAE, we learned about different cultures and about the indigenous people of our region.

Every Monday morning, we did land acknowledgments.

at our Monday morning meeting.

We also had many lunchtime activities.

My favorite lunchtime activity, other than hanging with my friends, was Rainbow Spectrum.

In Rainbow Spectrum, we eat lunch and discuss LGBTQAIP plus community issues and how we can support LGBTQAIP plus people in our community and around the world.

Since Kauai is an option school, kids from downtown and across the city can come to Kauai.

For me, living downtown, this means a school closer than my assigned school.

When the district began to close schools, many of my friends left Kauai for private school that were closer to their houses sometimes.

Kauai had a school-wide guiding question.

How do we make an impact on the world?

I want to make...

QAE has a school-wide guiding question.

How do we make an impact on the world?

I want to make an impact by making sure that option schools stay open and are available for all kids in our district.

Thank you.

I'll cede the rest of my time to my mom.

The next speaker is Crosby All.

My name is Crosby All.

I'm a student at BFDA Elementary and I'd like to share what I think.

This year I was not challenged enough and Mr. R challenged me more.

In BFDA Creed it says that I deserve the education that I get here but for me and my friends that is not happening.

That is why the highly capable students are leaving yet you take a capable teacher away and think that will help.

I want to have a fair education for the highly capable and the special ed.

This is my sister Henley's work.

She cannot be here though.

This is Henley All, upcoming fifth grader at BFDA.

This is unbelievable.

The students of fourth grade going to fifth grade don't deserve this.

I wanted Mr. R as my homeroom teacher.

I got to go to the EEP.

IEP room, and I deserve to be counted as a regular BFDA student.

All of the other kids that go to the IEP room should be counted also.

If we count these students, we can get Mr. R back.

If you do this, a lot of students and teachers will be on your side.

Don't do anything, then you are taking away a teacher of great potential at BF Day.

A great math teacher, a wonderful science teacher, and robotics club.

Just because a lot of kids are going to Gascadia.

If you counted the IEP room students, then we would get our teacher back.

Do you know many fourth graders No.

Do you know how many fourth graders wanted to be in the robotics?

Like half?

No.

Three-fourths of the grade.

You know what?

You're taking that away from them.

Thank you for letting me speak.

The next speaker is Kathleen Smith.

Good afternoon, school board directors.

I'm Kathleen Smith, a parent of two children with a rising SPS kindergartner and a candidate for school board in District 2. Thank you for all your work on the school board.

I am testifying with concern about the authenticity with which the district is approaching community engagement and making data-driven decisions, particularly related to student safety and security.

From my background in information security, I will briefly mention the concept of security theater.

The term was coined to refer to security measures that increase the feeling of safety without actually making anyone more secure.

As a parent, I know families across the country are desperate to keep our children safe from gun violence, but we must pursue measures that meaningfully increase safety, not just the feeling of it.

And at the request of a Garfield student, I would like to cede the rest of my time to go in.

Hello, my name is Cohen Springer.

I went to Meany Middle School in Garfield High School for my freshman and sophomore year.

And I'm against gun violence.

It took a couple friends for me.

It took a football teammate and a friend I've known since seventh grade.

Yeah.

Where do we want to start?

Why don't we start here?

I want you guys to understand how gun violence takes away from people.

Because it doesn't just take someone's life.

It ripples across everyone.

It's a mom that won't hold their baby again, and it's a dad that won't get to watch their son grow.

It's a brother, or a sister, or someone you lose in the community.

And I thought of ways that I saw help because for me, middle school, that's when I fell through the cracks.

I wish that there was more structure in ways that could help me or people like me.

And I saw why scholars helped a lot of people I knew.

And community passageways helps as well.

Anyway, a big point is that I think that we should reach people at an earlier age rather than just high school.

Because middle school is when people start going downhill, not high school.

That's when we need it.

So I'm asking for support for people from earlier on.

I see my tongue to Rylan.

I'm Rylan.

I'm his big sister.

I've spoken a few times.

I'm just reading his notes.

He was a middle schooler at Meany.

He said that one of the number one things he saw that students needed and his friends and himself needed was more community support.

There weren't resources for them.

Oftentimes, the violence starts in middle school.

That's where the fights are.

That's where people learn that it's OK.

No one stops them.

No one teaches them how to handle anger management.

No one resolves their conflicts.

And there's no support for when students are doing those things that are dangerous and that can completely change their lives.

And so there's a complete neglect of middle schools.

I've watched Washington and Meany lose a lot of their funding, funding that could have helped him and his friends grow.

And they need more community support that we're not seeing right now.

So that is the point I think he wanted.

Also, like with the support with teachers and staff members, there was none, not at all.

At Meany, there was nothing.

We came there, and especially for those of us that don't have much support at home either, We go there hoping to learn something, but all we get is ignorance and ignored by teachers and staff members.

It leaves us with nothing, so.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Emily Cherkin.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Emily Churkin.

I'm an SPS parent and adjunct professor of public policy at the University of Washington and the screen time consultant.

I work with family schools and policymakers around the country to rein in the overreach of big tech into education.

I'm here today to urge you to pull item 11 regarding the power school contract from the consent agenda and vote no on this motion.

First, PowerSchool does not keep our students' data safe.

In December of 2024, PowerSchool was hacked, and the private data of 62 million students and nearly 10 million teachers was stolen.

This is the largest data breach of student data in the United States to date.

As a result, PowerSchool is now the subject of multi-district litigation.

Second, PowerSchool actively monetizes our kids' personal information for profit.

PowerSchool products are not benign administrative tools.

PowerSchool is actually a data collection platform.

The business model of EdTech is no different from the business models of Meta, Snap, and TikTok.

Time on device drives profits.

In fact, EdTech is just big tech in a sweater vest.

PowerSchool collects broad and deep student information ranging from medical and behavior records to family economic data to keystrokes and search words.

Just like Meta, PowerSchool combines this user data with information from third parties to create digital products which it then markets and sells.

Data is valuable.

It is no surprise that PowerSchool is worth over $5 billion.

I do not make these claims lightly.

In May of 2024, I filed a lawsuit alleging that PowerSchool collects and monetizes student information without informed parental consent or proper safeguards.

Our case has survived a motion to dismiss and is an active discovery.

Nowhere in the motion in front of you today are any of these issues addressed.

The proposed renewal contract with PowerSchool goes to great lengths to describe the guarantees that PowerSchool will provide against downtime and outages, but references nothing about how PowerSchool will actively protect our kids most sensitive data from being lost, stolen, or sold.

I urge you to demand that district staff renegotiate this contract to ensure our children's data is safe, secure, and unmonetized.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Yana Parker.

Okay.

Okay, good afternoon, school board directors and SPS staff.

My name is Yana Parker.

I am the immediate past president of the Seattle Special Education PTSA.

We appreciate that the district is working to address the inadequate learning environment for adult students currently served in the Southwest Bridges program.

However, we are concerned about how this process is being handled.

There has been a lack of transparency and meaningful community engagement.

As one parent of a student at the Roxhill Annex said, quote, it's not okay that you're deciding on this move without giving parents and the community a chance to express our concerns.

The district's June 13 letter stated that SPS had, quote, initiated a series of conversations with students, families, and staff, unquote.

Yet the only meeting families are aware of was the one held after the neighborhood shooting in February.

Several families who reached out to the district with concerns report that they received no response.

Our PTSA also submitted questions in mid-June and have yet to hear back.

Where is the meaningful community engagement, especially engagement that centers students' voices?

The name BRIDGES stands for Building Real Life Independent Daily Living and Gainful Employment Skills.

It's our understanding that many students are not in favor of returning to a high school setting.

If that's the case, we must ask, is there truly no other option being considered than the Chief South High School?

location we ask that the district corrects the lack of transparency and it's creative with the spaces available to ensure that the new bridges program space is appropriate for our adult students with disabilities thank you the next speaker is Chris Jackins

MY NAME IS CHRIS JACKINS, BOX 84063, SEATTLE 98124. ON CONSENT AGENDA ITEMS, MORE THAN $44 MILLION IS SCHEDULED FOR APPROVAL WITHOUT PUBLIC DISCUSSION.

THIS IS INCONSISTENT WITH BOARD CLAIMS TO WANT MORE INVOLVEMENT IN BUDGET DEVELOPMENT.

On the June 18th minutes, Mr. 2-in-1, Fred Podesta, acting superintendent and COO, is very talented, but these are big jobs to do at the same time.

My best wishes to the health of Mr. Podesta.

On the $10.7 million risk management pool item, do police officers in schools affect the cost of insurance, and if so, how?

On the $3.9 million power school agreement, please discuss issues related to privacy.

You heard some wonderful information tonight already.

On the Rainier Beach High School construction project budget increases.

The city architect is getting $900,000 more.

THE PROJECT BUDGET HAS TOPPED A QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS AND IS GOING UP ANOTHER $19 MILLION.

BOARD DIRECTORS SHOULD HAVE QUESTIONS.

ON CHANGES PROPOSED BY THE POLICY MANUAL REVIEW COMMITTEE, ONE CHANGE TRIES TO WIDEN A LOOPHOLE FOR QUESTIONABLE BOARD VOTING BROUGHT UP IN A RECENT BOARD RECALL CASE.

PLEASE VOTE NO ON THESE CHANGES.

On school board elections 10 of the 16 board candidates attended the June 15th forum.

Some good candidates clearly stated their opposition to school closures.

Thank you very much.

Just a quick announcement the lights on the podium the timer lights are not working our apologies for that.

The next speaker is Katie or Kima.

Katie, you'll have to press star six to unmute.

We can hear you.

Hi, my name is Katie Arkema.

I am a parent of a sixth grader at Eckstein Middle School and a ninth grader who still doesn't know where she's going to high school.

I'm here to urge district leaders to address the budget deficit by rolling enrollment as families leaving the district worse than the budget crisis.

Along with thousands of SPS families, I want to see the district enroll students in the school of their choice, adjusting resources and staff accordingly, and provide opportunities for all students to access the programs they need to thrive.

The current unfair enrollment in advanced learning practices are affecting students across the district, including my own.

My ninth grader is one of only 22 students out of approximately 358 graders at Eckstein Middle School assigned to Nathan Ayle High School.

Due to a mismatch between middle and high school boundaries in our neighborhood she will be separated from her close friend group and wider peer group all of whom are attending Roosevelt.

to address this my daughter participated in the school choice program she's number five on the roosevelt wait list but we have no idea if she will get in because waitlist processes are opaque and the enrollment planning team has communicated nothing School belonging and close peer groups are critical to teenagers with social emotional stability and academic learning.

For the first time my daughter is anxious and sad about the coming year exhibiting social withdrawal from high school activities and planning.

We want our young people to build independence and show agency but this enrollment process prevents that for youth across the city wanting to attend a middle school or high school that they feel works best for them.

Concurrently my son is being affected by limited access to advanced learning.

The district is offering students who selected an H.C.

pathway school sixth grade math this summer.

But H.C.

students like my son who chose their neighborhood school are not offered the same opportunity.

And looking into the unfair practices affecting my children I realized our family is not alone.

These problems are affecting students in every neighborhood across the city leading to students leaving SPS and reduced resources.

If my daughter could be with her peer group, we'd never consider leaving the district.

But given her anxiety about being separated from friends and our frustration with academic inequalities for our son, our trajectory in Seattle Public Schools isn't clear.

Enrolling students in the school of their choice and providing equal opportunity for HC kids in neighborhood schools is how the district retains our family and others.

Long-term changes are needed, but in the short term, I urge you, keep the waitlists moving, especially for all the schools like Roosevelt with illogical boundaries, and make online summer math programs accessible for all HC students.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Manuel Eslay.

Good afternoon, Acting Superintendent Podesta and members of the school board.

My name is Manuela Sly.

I'm a Seattle Council PTSA board member and a parent of three Seattle Public School graduates.

I'm here to talk about superintendent goals and guardrails and how communities are experiencing the progress highlighted earlier today in the presentations.

Regarding guardrail number three, anti-racism.

Many students and families of color experience racism and discrimination in school buildings.

Without an effective way to report incidents, without a defined reporting process, and without an anti-racism policy in place, our students are unprotected.

Our communities need support that only School leaders can provide when they have a comprehensive training that goes beyond a one-hour lesson.

Also, please, please build a system for language access.

Lack of language access is a form of institutionalized racism.

I know those are strong words, but it's the truth.

Thank you Dr. Pritchett for the presentation and for recognizing there's a lot of work to be done.

I urge the school board to go deep and ask for a detailed plan of what the path forward is to do better by our communities about racism, especially in our current climate.

Regarding guardrail number two, discipline.

Parents continue to reach out to fellow parents and community leaders confused with reports of inappropriate disciplinary action, unanswered questions, and fear of reporting.

Again, a lot of work to be done, including proper training and accountability.

Thank you, Dr. Torres Morales for the presentation and Director Saju for asking what actions are taken to ensure staff is being held accountable to applying what they have been trained to do and to ensure students are safe from being over-disciplined and that their families are given the information of what their rights are.

Training without action and accountability is ineffective.

Again, I urge our school board to ask for a detailed plan of what the path forward is to do better by our communities.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Samantha Fogg.

Hello.

This is Samantha Fogg, a parent in Seattle Public Schools.

And I want to be clear that today I'm speaking in my role as parent.

I have completed my PTA role.

If I were to lift out the number of times my students has experienced discrimination and racism from an educator in a school building this year alone, I wouldn't be able to fit in my testimony within the two minutes.

We need systemic solutions.

People aren't coming to work in our school districts to hurt children, but they need help figuring out what to do when they have hurt them and how to restore relationships and how to provide a counter-narrative and how to stop teaching discrimination.

I'm going to read you a quote by Dr. D.L. Stewart.

It's a long one, but I think it's an important one.

Quote, diversity asks, who is in the room?

Equity responds, who is trying to get in the room but can't?

Whose presence in the room is under constant threat of erasure?

Inclusion asks, has everyone's ideas been heard?

Justice responds, Whose ideas won't be taken as seriously because they aren't in the majority.

Diversity asks, how many more of pick any minoritized identity group do we have this year than last?

Equity responds, what conditions have we created that maintain certain groups as the perpetual majority here?

Inclusion asks, is this environment safe for everyone to feel like they belong?

Justice challenges.

whose safety is being sacrificed and minimized to allow others to be comfortable maintaining dehumanizing views." I want to just stress that my experience has been that it is the safety of children that is sacrificed and minimized to allow adults to be comfortable maintaining dehumanizing views. And I also want to be clear that I'm not asking for retaliation or punishment. I am asking for the ability to support, to heal, and to train our adults to meet the needs of our students. Again, whose safety is being sacrificed and minimized to allow others to be comfortable maintaining dehumanizing views. We see it in our schools every day, and I hope that you will work to make the systemic and structural changes that are necessary A one hour training does essentially nothing. Thank you.

The next speaker is Eli Cortez.

Is Eli Cortez, we do not see their phone number.

Okay, we are gonna move on.

The next speaker is Iris Viveros.

Also not seeing their phone number.

Okay, the next speaker is Dr. Elizabeth Ramirez-Ariola.

Okay, not seeing them.

Oh.

Dr. Elizabeth Ramirez-Ariola, can you unmute, star six to unmute?

Hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Oh, perfect.

Thank you.

Buenas tardes, everyone.

I am Dr. Elizabeth Ramirez-Arreola, and I am a parent to a middle school child currently attending Eckstein Middle School.

I am also a professor in higher education, and my own research work focuses on understanding the intersectional experiences of Latinx communities across various systems of education in the United States.

I am here today to speak about language justice access for non-English speaking families and the direct relation to guardrails, specifically discipline in the Seattle School District.

Language access for non-English speakers is a critical yet often overlooked element in understanding how guardrails ensure a driving learning environment for all students.

Exclusionary discipline has been a persistent concern, particularly as it disproportionately affects racially and ethnically diverse students.

Although the data provided by the district shows some progress, some areas need improvement, such as clear communication.

Experiences of non-English speaking communities tells us a different story, access, to information in other languages is explicitly key for parents to understand the discipline processes and the rights students and their families have.

We must remember that guardrails are policies adopted by schools to maintain focus on equitable student outcomes, but their effectiveness relies heavily on clear communication and inclusive participation.

When families or students face language barriers, they are excluded from essential conversations about any other available resources.

This exclusion undermines the foundation of the guardrails, equity, transparency, and shared responsibility.

Without a robust language access, non-English speaking families are left in the dark about their decisions or that direct impact their children's education.

Taking away the right to advocate for their children, to ask for services, or to engage meaningfully with educators and school leadership.

Ensuring full language access, including interpretation, translation, and culturally responsive communication is essential to the positive impact of the guardrails for every student.

Gracias por su tiempo.

Thank you everyone for your time.

We've received word that Adriana Sly is not going to give public testimony tonight, so we are going to move on to Ariel Wetzel.

I'm Ariel Wetzel.

I'm speaking on behalf of advocating for my daughter, who's starting kindergarten.

She was excited to attend her neighborhood school, McGilver Elementary, with her two brothers.

However, I learned that SBS will not allow her to attend the neighborhood school because she has a disability.

My daughter was successful in learning alongside her non-disabled peers in preschool.

For kindergarten, I requested that she still have access to an inclusive education, receiving her services at the neighborhood school.

I was told this was not possible due to the staffing limitations in the special education pathways.

These service pathways mean that children are bused to services rather than services coming to children in their communities.

This is not a student-centered practice in line with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

While I understand that SPS can't bring every service to every school, my daughter's not been given the opportunity to learn in her least restrictive environment.

She's being preemptively denied the chance to succeed at her neighborhood school alongside with her brothers and non-disabled neighborhood peers.

Moreover, we were not able to equally participate in the school choice process.

I was told that she has to be on two waiting lists, one to get in the school and then one to get a seat in her special ed service.

And I found that this special ed placement is unjustly prioritizing staffing rather than what's best for individual children.

THESE POLICIES SEGREGATE CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES AND ARE NOT IN LINE WITH THE BEST PRACTICES FOR INCLUSION.

NOW, IF I WANT MY DAUGHTER TO ATTEND THE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL WITH HER BROTHERS AND COMMUNITIES, I'M FACED WITH A DIFFICULT CHOICE TO REFUSE HER MUCH NEEDED SERVICES OR UPROOT MY THREE CHILDREN AND MOVE OUT OF THE DISTRICT.

IN OUR REGION, WE HAVE EXCELLENT MODELS OF INCLUSION IN OUR PEER DISTRICTS AND THROUGH UW'S HEARING CENTER, SO I'M REALLY STRUGGLING TO UNDERSTAND WHY SPS IS NOT ABLE TO HAVE INCLUSIVE SPECIAL EDUCATION.

THANK YOU.

The next speaker is John Hildebrandt.

Hi, my name is Janet Hildebrandt and I am the parent of a second grader and a fifth grader at BF Day Elementary.

I'm here to advocate for an enrollment count in August and for enrollment estimates to be done with transparency and on a schedule that is less disruptive to schools.

At BF Day, our school enrollment for this past year was 359. Our February projections were for 330 students, so the staff made a plan and we said goodbye to a beloved teacher.

The Friday before the end of the school year, our school was told that our projected enrollment for fall was 285 students.

That is a 20% decrease from this year.

That means that our students lost an art specialist, an additional classroom teacher, and a resource teacher.

Two days before the last day of school, the teachers voted if music or art should be cut for fall and not offered to our students.

We lost some amazing teachers, and if the pattern holds, when the count is done in October, we will have more students than projected, and it will be too late to get back the seasoned teachers who have been a part of our community for many years.

In 2023, we were projected to have 363 students, and in fall, we actually enrolled 382. In 2004, we were projected to have 330 students and we enrolled 359. This also does not take into account the students on the extended resource pathway who are in the classroom but not included in these counts.

We are one of at least 14 elementary schools who received last minute projections that are significantly lower than our current enrollment.

On behalf of these schools and the students of BF Day Elementary, I ask that you consider doing an enrollment count in August instead of October.

Doing enrollment counts in October means hiring after the school year begins, moving the kids between classrooms, and is disruptive and detrimental to learning.

Thank you for your consideration.

The next speaker is Lexi Jicek.

Hi, I'd like to cede my time to Brandon Sanchez.

Hello, I'm Brandon Sanchez, Family Support Specialist, Interagency, Parent, and Community Activist.

I'm here to speak about the safety concerns of the relocation of our Southwest Campus.

It has a dual impact in the community because those students that are also being relocated from our Columbia City Campus will be going further south.

the demographic impact of kids moving further south within some of the violence or disruptions we've heard about within our community will not only impact Southwest students, but those students that have to go further south to Henderson as well to go get their education.

In Southwest, we had, for the past four years, the West Seattle region has sent interagency the most schools, the most students by far, to interagency.

To not have a campus out there will be detrimental to the mental health the well-being and the safety of those students as well who demographically now have to transportate from west seattle to two buses all the way to south seattle not only with that there was no advocacy or partnership within the community or the parents or the staff about the impact of the move it just happened boxes were placed at the school and it said figure it out there was only two parents that were in on the listening session that was provided So I'm here to advocate for there to be a spot located in West Seattle, partnering with Southwest Youth and Family Services to provide our kids with licensed behavioral health care with bilingual providers, also provide family counseling, youth case management, GED access, along with onsite opportunities.

Not only is this building safe, has kitchen, has security, the building that students are being relocated to doesn't have any of those abilities as well to serve students.

There also has been weapons found on that campus in the Columbia City.

There's also been vapes found on that campus in Columbia City.

So please stop making interagency students and families and staff an afterthought to the things that are impacting them in their community.

The next speaker is Alicia All.

Hello, I'm Alicia All.

I am a mom of three at BF day, two upcoming fifth graders, yes, two at the same time, it is hard, and one upcoming second grader.

In order to find out if my child needed to go to a HCC school, I had to meet with the registrars at Hamilton and at Lincoln.

I had to meet with the fifth grade team at BF day.

The program is taking so many kids from BF day.

This is an enrollment issue and it's not a new issue for this district.

Neighborhood schools are losing and our enrollment is dropping.

The district is not communicating that there are ways to get to calculus in high school without an HCC track school.

Cascadia is recruiting and gaining students, funding, and faculty, while our neighborhood schools are losing all of the above.

Due to the enrollment drop projected at our school, we lost two full-time teachers, .5 art, .5 resource, and so many wonderful scholars and families.

When the kids leave, mostly for this math track, is what we have been told by all of the parents, they take funding.

They take FTE for teachers with them.

Like Mr. R, the fifth grade teacher who teaches science, math, and was gonna bring a robotics club to our neighborhood school.

It's all gone.

Our ask is to push for differentiated education within the gen ed setting at our neighborhood schools.

Stop the Exodus, support our teachers with tools and trainings.

Tell us, tell the parents about what our neighborhood schools can bring our scholars.

They can provide what is needed for all students if we keep the students.

Don't make us parents do the job of the district.

fight for our students fight for the kids and the right for quality education thank you the next speaker is Dimitris Wheeler okay not yet we've got two more minutes you're good I know you guys got this

Good evening, school board directors.

My name is Demetris Wheeler, student and family advocate at interagency.

I'm here to say what many are thinking, but few are giving space to voice.

Seattle Public School has failed the West Seattle and interagency community.

It failed to engage families, it failed to partner with staff, and most importantly, it failed to protect our most marginalized students, those furthest from educational justice.

Students who rely on safety, stability, intentional staff advocacy.

Interagency was intentionally built with multiple campuses across the city to meet students where they are.

Our motto is relational and grounded in trust.

We serve a variety of students.

Each one brings their own story, their own barriers, and their own resilience.

They deserve systems that meet them where they are, not systems that move without them.

These are real barriers that demand proximity, flexibility, care, and intentionality.

But instead of honoring that foundation, SPS made decisions behind closed doors with no real communication or transparency.

The Southwest Campus is being closed and relocated to Columbia City.

Two additional campuses are moving to Sugiyama, fracturing the very design that has long supported our students.

It's been said that this is a temporary move.

Maybe one year, but a year to an adult making the decision is not the same as a year to a young person trying to survive it.

To you, it is a pause.

To them, it is a lifestyle.

A year can be the difference between dropping out or graduating between feeling seen or erased.

And they didn't just close and relocate campuses, they silenced the community.

Interagency staff weren't consulted.

We weren't allowed to communicate with our families.

At least several Seattle Public School employees knew what was happening, yet restrictions were placed on our ability to inform or involve parents.

That is not just poor communication, that is suppression.

When you remove our voices, you remove the voices of the students and families we serve.

You dismantle trust and you break the promise of equity the district claims to uphold.

You claim safety, but how is it safe to move students into areas they already identified as unsafe?

Where was the in-person space for families, the ones we always say we value?

What happened to the engagement before action?

Policy 0030 calls for inclusive, equitable, decision making policy 6883 mandates transparency public participation in school closure and relocations instead we got rushed virtual parent meeting just days before the school and he ended a clear oversight at best and neglect at worst and now the staff who took personal time to advocate for students and demand transparency are under investigation Let's be clear, what they demonstrated was not misconduct.

It was cultural humility, anti-bias awareness, authentic communication, and true community partnership.

So I asked the board, stop the closure.

Sorry.

So I ask the board to stop the closure of the West Seattle region, stop the proposal presented, I mean, support the proposal presented tonight as more equitable for a student-centered solution in retaliation against staff who stood up when others stayed silent and hold Seattle Public School accountable to the values and policy it claims to uphold.

Disappointing doesn't begin to describe.

This is betrayal.

our families our students and staff deserve better thank you the next speaker is nicole ariel jebailey hi can you hear me yes we can

Okay, great.

Well, first, I want to apologize to Ms. Wheeler.

I think I had a muted error which interrupted her very powerful and important testimony.

So I want to make sure that that is clear that it was no intention of mine.

I do appreciate and agree with what she has to say.

I also want to thank the board and the acting superintendent for their time this evening and for letting you speak.

I'm a parent of a student at BSA.

The other parents and Crosby, the students who have spoken, were very eloquent and really shared my feeling on this matter, which is that neighborhood schools are the foundation of the Seattle Public School System.

They need resources.

They need the great teachers who will make them destination schools.

Unfortunately, as Alicia pointed out, the HCC schools are able to recruit away from the students, and schools like BSA become schools of last resort.

incredibly unfortunate because we need these neighborhood schools.

We need these places for all kids, diverse learners, to go.

And so I'm asking the school board, respectfully, to please consider rethinking the way these late lists are run so that they're not so disruptive, to please reconsider how things are counted.

and to please do what they can do to help us retain Mr. R, who is the type of teacher who can make our school great and can continue breathing life into a school that otherwise will just be fast based on students wanting to go over.

So thank you for your time.

The next speaker is Webb Hutchins.

Hello, my name is Webb Hutchins, or I just go by Hutch, and I'm here to testify on behalf of the motion that Eric Pettigrew and I made in the Seattle Times op-ed page this morning, which I handed out to many of you.

It's right here.

It's also online.

I invite you all to go online and check it out.

and get active.

I'm imploring the school board to hire a superintendent next month or yeah later this month early next month who will formally commit and contractually commit to doing what everybody wants in this city and in this country which is to teach our kids about democracy, civics, and civility.

Do you all here support teaching our 50,000 kids about democracy, civics, and civility?

Yes or no?

Can I get it loud?

Yes, we do.

A little louder one more time.

Thank you.

That's for real.

I've preached up here for 14 years.

I taught for 30 years in this district.

14 years, my students and I, Judith Billings and I, Erin Jones and I, many of the biggest people and the littlest people in this district want you.

You have the hardest job in the world.

I give you all the credit in the world for doing what you're doing.

You're doing it on a volunteer basis.

I really appreciate that.

It's hard.

But it's time.

Our democracy is under fire.

We know it.

You know it.

Let's do this.

The proposal I've made and Eric Pettigrew and I have made is clear.

It's in the newspaper.

It will bring this city together.

We can rally around it.

Thank you for your time and support.

Feel free to reach out to me anytime you want.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Emily Merrill.

I'm Emily Merrill, a special education instructional assistant, and I'll be speaking on discussions about piloting SROs to turn to the school, then ceding my time to a speaker about interagency.

So that's the weird split that's going to happen here.

Disabled students are safer when cops aren't in our building.

Then, there's no pathway between misbehavior and the city attorney's office.

I'm hearing the community will be consulted about the discussions I'm hearing about potentially bringing SROs into one of our schools.

Will disabled people in the community groups that are resentful be in that consult?

For trans feminine people, criminalization is catastrophic.

The protections against torture through being put in men's prisons are easy to remove through protection reasons.

Ask Amber Kim, for instance.

Will groups representing transgender people be consulted?

I assume black civil rights groups will be consulted, but if not, that's obviously a necessity too, given the undue impact that criminalization has on black people.

So that's also a group that needs to be consulted.

I'm dubious that any such program can be damaging, but if so, there are numerous groups that need to be consulted.

Thank you.

I say the rest of my time to Lynn Oliphant.

Greetings, board.

My name is Lynn Oliphant.

I am a substitute school nurse, and I've recently been at interagency.

And I come up here with the rest of the people that you see to ask a question.

Would it be okay for you if what transpired for us happened?

Would it be okay?

Would it be okay for you as parents to get information at the very end of the school year saying that your student would no longer be attending in the area in which they did?

We're talking about people, we're talking about students who, like Mitra said, are furthest from educational justice who struggled who absolutely struggled at comprehensive high schools and came to interagency as a place where they knew they could get help.

Would it be okay?

My wonder is this, how is it that we as SPS, and I said we, me including myself in it, make decisions where we do not include our stakeholders, our students, our staff, our families, our communities.

It took some of us to go ask questions in the community to find out that, in fact, there are places who are more than willing to house us.

Southwest Houston Family Services said absolutely.

We would be very happy for interagency come.

Do you guys know that interagency used to exist at that very place?

Did you know that?

Why isn't it interagency?

It is us interfacing with agencies to serve our students.

My wonder is, why isn't it that our questions that have been asked are answered?

I sent emails to people, decision-making people, asking questions, no answer.

SO MY QUESTION TO YOU AS BOARD, WHERE WAS THE DECISION MADE?

WHO WAS INVOLVED IN MAKING THE DECISION?

AND WHY ARE PEOPLE HIDING AND NOT COMING FORTH AND LETTING US KNOW THE PROCESS THAT WAS USED?

I WANT TO SAY ONE MORE THING, SINCE WE'RE IN A MONEY THING.

YOU ALL SPENT MONEY AT INTERAGENCY FOR INNOVATION TO TOTALLY TRANSFORM THE where it is that they are so that we can be there.

And now the decision is being made three years later to move them to a place somewhere else, it makes no sense.

It makes no sense.

That is my question.

And I would love, I literally would love for someone to give us answers.

Because at this point, principal said it's not them.

Other people have said we.

Who is the we?

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sabrina Burr.

Sabrina Burr.

Okay, we don't see Sabrina Burr, so we're going to move on to our wait list.

Do we have Gloria Ramirez?

Gloria Ramirez.

We do not see Gloria's number online, so we're gonna move on.

Janice White.

Hi, I'm Janice White, the mom of three SPS graduates, one of whom was restrained and put into isolation many times as an elementary student due to disability-based behavior.

I've testified here and in the state legislature many times about the harm done to students disproportionately to black and brown students with disabilities as a result of restraint and isolation.

I've been involved as a parent advocate in several rounds of drafting policy 3246, including most recently in 2021. Under policy 3246 and Superintendent Procedure 3246 SP, the school board is supposed to receive an annual report on the uses of restraint, including disaggregated data on race, disability category, and school.

The report is also supposed to include the types and frequency of technical assistance and supports provided to schools to change practices to reduce the use of restraint in buildings.

Did you know that no report has been published on the district website, and I assume no report has been provided to the board for school year 2023-24?

Did you know that none of the reports you've received since the policy and procedure were last amended in 2021 have included the disaggregated data called for?

I inquired about the missing report on Let's Talk in May, because in the past it was always published in February or March, and received a response that the team responsible was working on gathering the data, which makes very little sense, as the data has already been reported to OSPI and is available on the OSPI website.

I hope that you investigate the failure to provide the annual report required by your policy and make clear that the failure to provide the report in a timely fashion is not acceptable.

You need this report to monitor whether the district is making progress in reducing the use of restraint in our schools, which harms some of our most vulnerable students.

If you don't monitor the implementation of policy, you'll never know whether it's actually been implemented.

Thank you.

We're going to go back to a few people that were not available the first time is Eli Cortez.

Online or in person, Eli Cortez.

Iris Viveros.

Okay, we're going to move on to Jameen All.

Is Jameen All here?

Okay.

We're going to move on to Lila Woods.

Okay.

Ora Buitrago.

Hola.

Hello.

Hello.

Yes, now I'm going to be traduying your part.

Please, come on.

Yes, it's my turn.

Yes, we're listening.

Well, my name is Gloria and I want to share today's importance of being able to have the interpretation and to expand

I would like to testify today to explain the importance of interpretation and the different languages, including indigenous languages.

Sigue, por favor.

Muchas veces la información Many times the information doesn't come through and the big reason is due to language.

Thank you very much.

And that was Gloria Ramirez.

Is Ara Pichargo online?

Do we see her number?

OK.

We're going to move on to Shannon McClure.

OK.

Brandon Sanchez.

Brandon's already spoke.

Catherine Milazzo.

Lena Jones.

Hello, my name is Lena Jones.

I'd like to cede my time to an online participant, Michael Grant.

Michael, are you available?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, thank you.

I'm here to provide comments on the district's proposed relocation of Southwest Interagency Academy.

I worked at Southwest Interagency for four to five years running music intervention programs and have worked in Southwest Seattle schools for 10 years.

In my whole career, including many alternative high school settings, This campus stands out as one of the most phenomenal, unique and personalized resources for SPS's most vulnerable students.

And it is being steamrolled by this secretive and irresponsible process.

Why are the most marginalized students in SPS once again bearing the brunt for this?

Effectively closing this campus has truly life and death consequences for young people in my neighborhood of Southwest Seattle.

We've heard about some of this in terms of demographic and geographic implications.

What I need the board to understand is that these students have been pushed out of all other traditional schooling programs.

And we are lucky enough that Interagency has the staff and community resources that is keeping them but it is a very thin tether that keeps these students in school every day that we get them into the building is a victory and so by causing this level of disruption whether it's taking two to three buses to get there whether it's confusion is turning these young people's lives upside down in a way that is irreparable.

And so I want the board to contend with the implications of this and return to parents, students, and the community of teachers to address a more sustainable solution that does not disrupt these students' lives.

The next speaker is Evelyn Lewis.

Evelyn Lewis.

We do not see that number.

The next speaker is Kate Barrett Dyke.

Kate Barrett Dyke.

OK, we're going to move on.

Oh, sorry.

I was just walking up, friend.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

So my name is Kate, and I am a parent at BFDA.

I'm not only a parent at BFDA, I actually moved to the neighborhood because I did a ton of my teaching at BFDA and really intentionally made the decision to keep my student in the neighborhood school and to do everything I could to be able to send my kid there.

It is a really, really special place if you haven't been.

The community is just, like, honestly unreal.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

I didn't, to be completely transparent, think I was going to get off the wait list, so I pulled together just a couple of points because I do want to respect your time and the time of the other folks that are here to speak about the programs that matter to them.

The couple things that I do want to talk about that I know a lot of this isn't in your control.

Staffing isn't in your control.

Decisions, you know, people have to move around.

That happened to me as a teacher.

I get it.

I really, really do.

Our issues are really around more of the timing of this.

We are losing, we've heard people talk about the fact that we're losing teachers that really, really matter.

Some of the things that folks haven't yet talked about is this also is taking place during other really big transitions for our school.

We're losing our school leader.

We're losing our school counselor who's really been just an incredible leader in our schools.

And BFDA just really needs your help and attention.

When there is a lack of communication and understanding around like how Enrollment decisions are made and staffing decisions are made people just really built like breeds fear in folks and we try to collect grasp information other places it places the burden on trying to like fill this gap on PTSA on volunteers on parents like googling random things and trying to figure it out for themselves and And when we have that fear of the unknown of what school's gonna look like for our kids next year, it's going to only continue to cause people to move elsewhere, to make the decision to send their kids to a more stable environment or to Cascadia or whatever.

So we really just need There to be really clear communication and timely communication around what's happening and please like acknowledge that you hear Our concerns around losing the teachers and trying to get an understanding about who our leaders are going to be That's all I want to say so thank you so much for your time really appreciate it The next speaker is Sam Friedman Sam Friedman

Hi, I'm a teacher in SPS.

And a lot of other people have already spoken very eloquently about how much this relocation is going to affect the community, the interagency community, the students that are served by it.

And I I feel like this is just part of a large pattern of fast movement that really leaves community out of these equations.

And I also see it as part of trying to use the money that you have efficiently.

I know that's always like a big part of these decisions that you all are making.

And I just want to urge you to move slowly, involve people who need to be involved, and think about money differently right now.

This is actually a time to invest more money.

We need to make sure that we show the state how much money we need to actually serve students.

And by backing away from that every single time and figuring out how to use less, we are telling the state that we can do with less.

We need to stop that behavior.

We need to spend the money that our students need.

We need to consult with communities before we make decisions hastily.

It's worth it.

Thank you.

And that was our 25th and final speaker.

Thank you, everyone.

That concludes public testimony for this evening.

I so appreciate folks taking their time out to provide feedback to the board.

Board directors, we're going to take a quick five-minute recess, so we will come back at 6.15 on the dot, and we will be up here at the dais.

It is 6.16, hoping I'm not the only one here.

All right, we are joining back together here.

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

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

Okay, approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Hersey.

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

Yes, I do.

I would like to remove item 11, please.

All right.

Item 11. May I have a revised motion for the consent agenda as amended?

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

So approval of the consent agenda as amended has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Hersey.

All those in favor of the consent agenda as amended signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

THE CONSENT AGENDA HAS PASSED UNANIMOUSLY.

ITEMS REMOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA.

ITEM 11 WAS REMOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA.

MAY I HAVE A MOTION FOR THAT ITEM?

Okay, wait, sorry.

Am I... Making a motion for that item and then a second, then we can have a discussion.

Okay.

So, let me see.

Oh, okay.

Oh, did I say 11?

Is it 10?

why are there yes your current 11 okay well so sorry in the motions it says it's 10 so I got a little confused there but we're all talking about the same thing right okay I move that the school board authorized the superintendent to enter into a three-year agreement from September 1st 2025 to September 30th 2028 with an option for two additional one-year extensions for a total not to exceed so that that is item 10 you want item 11 no i wanted it wait okay let's let me let me look at it's item 11. it's it's 11. it's item 11 in our agenda but on this motions sheet it's it's item 10. so so i think there's a mismatch so this is

So which item did you want to pull?

You wanted to pull.

Item 11 from the agenda.

Waiver application from the school year?

No, item 11, the.

BTA, BECCS approval of license and subscription fees.

Yes, yes.

That's 11, so you pulled the right thing.

Yes, I did pull the right thing.

And so where I got confused is that here, on the motions to be made, item 11 is different.

So they are not aligned on the motions to be made.

That's where the confusion was.

So where are we at now?

So now I need a motion for item 11, which might be on the call on that sheet.

No, that's what I was just reading.

It's item 10 on the sheet.

That's what I was in the middle of reading.

Sorry.

So do I keep reading?

Yes.

Okay.

Not to exceed the amount of $3,914,817.31 plus Washington State sales tax with Power School Group, LLC.

This authorization includes any minor additions, deletions, and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and any actions required to implement the purchase orders.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Okay.

I have a motion.

Do I have a second?

As soon as I stop chewing, second.

All right, we have Vice President Briggs made the motion, Director Hersey second, and Vice President Briggs, you pulled this item, so I will give you the floor here first.

Yes, I just wanted to echo the concerns that were articulated by the community member who spoke during public testimony.

I was aware of, made aware of these concerns prior to tonight's meeting, and I share these same concerns, and I think we need, the board needs A LOT MORE INFORMATION AROUND THE CONCERNS THAT WERE BROUGHT UP THIS EVENING AROUND THE MONETIZATION OF STUDENT DATA, DATA PRIVACY, AND, YEAH, BASICALLY, WHAT IS, WHAT ARE WE AGREEING TO IN THIS CONTRACT?

SO WE DO HAVE STAFF HERE WHO CAN MAYBE ANSWER SOME OF THOSE QUESTIONS, SO I'LL GIVE IT OVER TO CARLOS HERE.

Good evening.

It's Carlos Devalle, Assistant Superintendent of Technology.

It is, in fact, there was a breach on the Power School, which is their student information system, on their premises, which is on the cloud.

This is called SAS.

We do not have cloud services with Power School.

We host all the data here internally.

And the reason why multiple other districts got hacked, the data got infiltrated, they don't have the same architecture that we have here as far as cyber security.

We host the data here.

We have very tight cyber security on the systems.

So it was probably impossible for them to get to our stuff.

In addition to that, as far as the the privacy, we host the data, nothing goes out of this district without a data service agreement, the DSA, which is an agreement between us and any organization that might require that data.

Of note, the data that was exfiltrated from power schools included both the, you know, included personal information, parents' names, numbers, social security numbers, of which we do not, we host a lot of that data, but we do not collect or use social security numbers as well.

So we have pretty much a triangle of defense as far as cybersecurity.

We have the data privacy and the usage of that data is well controlled.

OK, I guess my concern remains around the business model of this platform.

And so what was the thing that you said, the DSA?

Yeah, data share agreements.

Right, so what is contained in that agreement and does the board have access to read that agreement?

We can provide those, yes.

It's an agreement between us and the vendor and it shows what can be shared or not shared within that data as well.

It's legally binding as well.

We can provide that to you guys.

Okay.

this this is michelle sarju can you hear me yes i'm i'm i had to call in i'm getting ready to drive to the mountain so i may lose coverage um i still haven't heard anybody speak to the monetization um and so if we can't hear about that then i don't think we should be voting on this

Right.

That's the point I'm trying to get to as well, Michelle, around the business model and what...

So are you saying that in the DSA contract that there is specific language that prohibits power school from monetizing Seattle Public Schools' students' data?

That's correct.

And in addition to that, in case there is a breach, they're supposed to inform us in a very short time.

I'm not going to go into the tactics, the cybersecurity team, but we have all those laid out in that agreement.

Okay.

I would appreciate the opportunity to see the agreement.

Sure.

Director Rankin.

Thanks.

I have a different question that I actually apologize for not sending to in advance, because I made a note to myself while I was reviewing materials, I don't know, a week and a half ago, and I just forgot to send it.

So apologies for putting this in the moment.

My question is a little bit broader, which is in reading through the materials, my wonder was, it seemed like we're renewing a thing because we already have the thing.

And while that's not necessarily bad, my question is, in your estimation, is this the best, does this actually meet our needs, this kind of umbrella inclusion power school with all these other things?

We've talked a lot about helping support our own systems communicate with each other so that they're supporting more effective instruction and better supporting the needs of teachers and staff members.

And does this do that or is this sort of a It's what we have, so it's what we're going to keep doing.

And can you just explain a little bit about that?

And again, sorry for not giving you a notification ahead of time.

No, it's fine.

If you remember coming out of the pandemic, we had power schools, we had unified insight, which it was called, you knew it back then.

We had multiple programs, and we started that fulfill the requirements of the district and educational requirements.

Power school bought all of them.

So pretty much we're stuck with this.

We have our digital learning team has looked into and evaluated other SIS and it's not just the SIS, it's the entire suite of products.

They have evaluated and at this time they have said that this is the best system that is in place to fulfill all the academic requirements and district requirements.

Just of note, we host all that data locally.

We protect that data.

We use the DSAs to, if anyone needs to, access that data.

And it is not just for the use of the district.

We have CBOs across the city that are utilizing this data.

They're logging into this.

with the controls, cybersecurity controls in place.

So there's a lot of usage for this system for the district.

Progress monitoring is one of them.

It comes out of that.

Sorry, you said, did you say CBOs?

CBOs.

CBOs, yeah.

That makes sense.

So we have people who are providing services for students that also need to know, yeah, how to

We do have on the BTA 5, I believe, some money to do a feasibility study in the future.

We haven't got to it, you know, mainly because we have that capacity internally.

But as soon as we start, you know, get some capacity, we probably will look into that.

That's part of our roadmap.

given there will be very disrespectful to the district to implement a new system and it's not like you could just turn it off and turn it off.

It will take two, three years to implement a system like that or equally similar to that.

Okay, so I guess a question, this is not to be answered now because it's a bigger thing, but with the, because I remember having this conversation as part of the BTA wanting to make sure that our systems are aligned and can do the things that we need them to do.

To your question, also in reference to that, coming out of the pandemic, we heard that from everybody in the community.

I don't want to be logging here, logging here, logging here, logging here.

So that was part of the approach also to keep everything within power schools so that you just go to one place.

It was one of the major concerns from the community.

I GUESS I'LL DIRECT THIS TO YOU, MR. PADESTA.

TWO SORT OF REQUESTS OR THINGS THAT I'M JUST GOING TO SAY ON RECORD AND MAYBE IT WILL HELP ME REMEMBER TO WRITE THEM DOWN BECAUSE THIS IS REALLY NOT THE RIGHT TIME TO HAVE THE CONVERSATION.

BUT IT WOULD BE REALLY HELPFUL FOR ME AND THE BOARD, I THINK, AND ALSO FOR THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY, MAYBE I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS PART OF THE STRATEGIC PLAN, IF THERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES, BUT TO BE ABLE TO SEE Well, it probably wouldn't be part of the strategic plan, but in kind of levy oversight, maybe a timeline of if we're going to do that feasibility study, when that might happen, what that study might encompass, why, just to kind of provide a little bit more context, and just in general.

And then it would be really helpful, and I'm saying this as a parent, to have all the different programs that we use, why and when you might access them.

We have PowerSchool, Schoology, School Messenger, TalkingPoint, all these different things.

I don't know if we have like a landing page.

This is so technical and in the weeds, and I apologize.

But it just says, here's what this program is, here's why you might use it.

That would just be really, really helpful to understand how to navigate.

DEVAIA'S TEAM IN CONCERT WITH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY COMMITTEE COULD PRODUCE AN ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PICTURE THAT SHOWS OUR QUILT OF SYSTEMS.

SOME ARE MORE INTEGRATED THAN OTHERS AND SOME ARE HIGH PRIORITY TO MAKE IMPROVEMENTS THAN OTHERS.

IT'S LIKE THE REST OF OUR CAPITAL PROGRAM.

I'm wondering, too, in connection to our guardrail around engagement, if it just is an access point to engagement and community involvement, understanding where your different inputs are as a parent or a community member.

So what I'm hearing from you is PowerSchool, if we were to invent our whole own system and wave a magic wand and get everything we want, it might not look like this.

But for what our options are right now, for where we are as a system, this is what you all are recommending as being the thing that works right now and we may reevaluate in the future.

The other thing I'm hearing is that our internal data belongs only to us and is directly controlled by SPS as to what's shared and when.

AM I SUMMARIZING THOSE TWO THINGS CORRECTLY?

THAT'S CORRECT.

AND PART OF THE DSA PROCESS IS GETS STAFF THROUGH THE LEGAL OFFICE AS WELL.

EVERY TIME THAT WE PUT SOMETHING OUT, WE'VE ENTERED INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH SOMEONE ABOUT THAT DATA.

THANKS.

VICE PRESIDENT BRIGS?

YEAH, I MEAN, I GUESS I... I'm just confused around why the, if their entire business model is predicated on harvesting data, why would they say, oh, Seattle Public Schools, you don't have to give us your data.

I mean, that, I just don't understand how that would work, honestly.

So, maybe I just need to read the agreement.

But I'm not going to be able to vote in favor of this until I have personal clarity around that.

Any other board directors?

Yeah, this is Joe, sorry.

Sorry, Director Mizrahi, I was not looking at the screen.

That's okay.

Yeah, I mean, I think, as I understand it, you know, their business model may in other places be around data, but we're also giving them, we have a contract, we're giving them money to provide a service.

So I'm sure they make something off that.

And I would just say, from a parent perspective, I actually, I find power school to be very useful.

And I want to be one thing that we hear a lot is about, and I appreciate Director Rankin's questions because I think one thing we hear a lot about is taking something away without the replacement.

It may be that long-term power school is not the right solution, but I would be in favor of renewing the contract until we have that other solution in place.

Yeah, just to add that to that, from the parent perspective, I agree with you, Joe.

I very much want us to have a system that is streamlined.

It's really onerous when we don't have that.

And I still feel like there's just a little bit of due diligence that needs to be done around this contract, right?

Like before I can vote to approve it, doesn't mean that I wouldn't ultimately vote to approve it but I do just this is such a such a pervasive issue this is not just about power school this is about everything about the way we live I mean my cell phone is probably listening to everything I'm saying right now and I'm going to get some weird advertisements yeah exactly So, yeah, I think this is worth, I just, I think it's worth delving into just making sure that we are doing everything we can to protect data and not have it monetized or unfairly wielded in any way.

And it's not that I don't trust you at all.

Carlos has nothing to do with that.

It's really just this, the power of surveillance capitalism at this point is so intense and all-consuming that I just, I personally just feel the need to read through what we have agreed to because the language around this is also so intentionally opaque and legalistic that I just would feel better if I could read it myself and evaluate what it is exactly that we're signing up for.

Sarju agrees with that.

Any further discussion?

Okay.

I will turn it to Ms. Horth for the vote on the item.

Vice President Briggs.

No.

Director Clark.

Abstain.

Director Hersey.

Abstain.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Sarju?

No.

President Topp?

Yes.

This vote has failed with three yeses, two noes, and two abstentions.

Hang on just a second.

We'll go to Ms.

Wilson-Jones.

Hang on, everyone.

Under the district policies for counting votes abstentions, unlike many other governing bodies, they do not count as no votes.

So it would basically remove those from consideration, and it would be the number of yes votes and the number of no votes.

Apologies for that.

This vote passes by three yes and two no votes and two abstentions.

PERFECT.

THANK YOU.

WE ARE DONE WITH THE CONSENT PORTION OF THE AGENDA AND THE ITEMS REMOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA.

SO WE ARE GOING TO MOVE ON TO THE ACTION ITEMS ON TODAY'S AGENDA.

READ THE TITLE AND THEN CALL FOR A MOTION.

SO THE FIRST ONE IS APPROVAL OF THE RESOLUTION 24-25-19, FIXING AND ADOPTING THE 25-26 BUDGET.

DO I HAVE A MOTION?

Sorry, I'm just looking for my lines here.

Is it not on here?

Okay.

I move that the school board adopt resolution 2024-25-19 as attached to the board action report to fix and adopt the 2025-26 budget, the four-year budget plan summary and the four-year enrollment projections.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right.

We have Vice President Briggs made the motion.

Director Hersey second.

Now we have an opportunity for discussion.

We also have Dr. Buddleman available for any questions.

Director Mizrahi, I see your hand up, but I'm wondering if it is.

It's from before.

Okay.

Director Rankin.

um hopefully this is not shocking um you know we don't have any questions because we don't have new information but i have been saying for many months that the budget needs to reflect our direction and it doesn't i understand it needs to pass we have to pass an annual budget but before we take the vote i didn't want to vote no and not provide some explanation to my colleagues and um on the record um uh yeah that's it

Other directors?

Seeing none, I'll call staff for the vote.

Director Clark.

Abstain.

Director Hersey.

Can anybody hear me?

Yeah, I'm thinking.

Thank you for clarifying.

I didn't know if I had lost coverage.

No, you're right.

I should have said something.

I am not happy about it.

Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

Director Rankin?

No.

Director Sarju?

Aye, and I'm not happy about it.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye, and I'm not happy about it.

President Topp?

Yes.

THIS VOTE HAS PASSED WITH FIVE YESES, ONE NO AND ONE ABSTENTION.

THANK YOU, EVERYONE.

WE HAVE A BUDGET FOR THE UPCOMING SCHOOL YEAR.

I APPRECIATE EVERYONE'S PARTICIPATION IN THIS PROCESS AND I ALSO HAVE GREAT HOPE THAT OUR AD HOC BUDGET COMMITTEE THAT WE FORMED HERE AT OUR RETREAT WILL HOPEFULLY GET US TO A BETTER SPOT WHERE FOLKS CAN FEEL EXCITED ABOUT THE UPCOMING YEAR'S BUDGET.

WE'LL MOVE NOW ON TO THE NEXT ITEM, APPROVAL OF THE BOARD RESOLUTION 24-25-20, AUTHORIZING AN AMENDMENT TO THE SCHEDULE FOR REPAYMENT OF THE INTERFUND LOAN.

I MOVE THAT THE BOARD APPROVE BOARD RESOLUTION 20-24-25-20, AUTHORIZING AN AMENDMENT TO THE SCHEDULE FOR REPAYMENT OF AN INTERFUND LOAN.

DIRECTOR HERSEY.

SECOND.

ALL RIGHT.

MOTION AND SECOND.

IS THERE ANY DISCUSSION?

WE ALSO HAVE DR. BUTTLEMAN AVAILABLE TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS AS NEEDED.

DIRECTOR RANKIN.

THANK YOU.

DR. BUTTLEMAN, AS WAS JUST ADOPTED, THE APPROVAL OF THIS REPAYMENT SCHEDULE IS NECESSARY TO BALANCE THE BUDGET AS WAS JUST ADOPTED, CORRECT?

OKAY, THANKS.

JUST SO FOLKS COULD HEAR, DR. BUTTERMAN'S ANSWER WAS YES, THAT'S CORRECT.

ANY OTHER DISCUSSION?

ALL RIGHT, WE'LL SEND IT OVER TO STAFF TO CALL FOR A VOTE.

DIRECTOR MIZRAHI?

Aye.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Sarju?

Aye.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Clark?

Aye.

And just checking if Director Hersey is joined online.

I do not see him.

Okay, President Topp.

Aye.

This vote has passed with six yeses.

All right.

Moving on to the next item, and I've been told I don't need to read the full title.

It is just the review of board governance policies in the 1000 series and approval of the revisions.

Can I have a motion?

I move that the school board amend and rename as applicable board policies.

Do I have to read all of the numbers?

I'll just go ahead and do it.

Yes, you do.

OK.

It's OK.

It's OK.

One thousand one thousand five eleven twelve eleven fourteen twelve ten twelve twenty twelve forty thirteen ten fourteen hundred fourteen fifty seventeen thirty one eighteen ten and eighteen twenty two as attached to the board action report.

I further move that the school board repeal board policies number 1115, 1410, 1420, 1430, 1440, 1732, and 1820, and board procedure 1430 BP.

I further move that the school board confirm that the remaining thousand series policies have been reviewed through this action and direct that these policies be administratively updated to reflect the date of this board review.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right.

Motion from Vice President Briggs, second from Director Rankin.

Is there any discussion from board directors?

Director, and we have Ms. Wilson Jones as needed to answer questions.

Director Rankin.

I just want to, for clarification, we have already introduced this item.

It's not on consent because there were some updates made, so we wanted it to be its own action item as well, in case anyone had questions.

And I appreciate that.

I was able to attend the ad hoc policy manual committee meeting to work through some updates that I had, and I appreciate them being reflected and working with the committee on that.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

Any others?

I have a question.

I'm sorry, I'm not able to raise my hand for some reason.

It says disabled and preview.

I'm not sure what that means.

So apologies for bursting in.

I think my question is for Ms. Wilson Jones.

How many board directors were able to engage in review of this package?

Like with

I know you mean with Miss Wilson Jones who utilized an appointment.

So Miss Wilson Jones offered for board members to work with her to review the policy package.

I and so she's walking to the podium to see how many utilized her time to walk through the policy package.

I cannot recall specifically how many directors I met with throughout the course of the committee meeting and in preparation of this packet.

Between introduction and today's scheduled action, though, the committee did hold that meeting, directors participated, and then the edits that were made to the package between introduction and today's meeting were summarized and sent to the board, and I didn't hear any follow-up from that point.

Thank you.

Dr. Clark, any follow-up?

um no follow-up um i enjoyed working on as um on the committee and being a part of the review process i think just knowing how dense the package is um you know time constraints um for directors um i guess i was just wanted to make sure that folks an opportunity to understand the changes of.

Yeah.

So that's all.

Appreciate that.

Other board directors.

All right.

Staff for a vote.

Director Rankin.

Yes.

Director Sarju.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Clark?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Aye.

President Taup?

Yes.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Okay, for the next action item, since we'll have a little discussion, and for the rest of them, we're going to move to the U-shaped tables.

So we'll head that direction.

What's happening now?

Sorry, getting my mic back on.

We are moving to the U-shaped tables.

For what purpose?

I'm sorry, I didn't clarify my question.

We are going to be continuing on our agenda, which is next is the policy, the safety policy package.

Okay, thank you.

I had to call in because I couldn't, the video feed was in and out for me.

So now I can't see anything.

So that's why I asked for clarification.

I can't see the agenda or anything at this point.

Can I get a motion on the next item?

I move that the school board amend and rename as applicable board policies number 3432, 4210 and 4310 as attached to the board action report and that the board repeal board policies number 3248 and 4315. May I get a second?

second all right we have a motion from vice president briggs and a second from director rankin so the bar before us was introduced at our june meeting there have been changes to this including the removal of policy 43 11 which was including uh which includes the conversation around sros We did not in our June meeting have an opportunity for board discussion or questions at the June meeting.

We just had the presentation portion.

So we wanted to have an opportunity to continue that discussion.

We have our panel here just because I know directors at that time had had some questions that they wanted to ask.

So this is sort of a two-part.

There is the motion before us that has removed SROs, but we are still able to talk sort of about the whole policy package and continue that discussion.

I want to, Director Rankin, do you want to start us off?

Oh, I'm just going to, for clarification, so 4311 is no longer a part of this package.

yes we are uh open for discussion on 43 11 okay yes thank you so again tonight the policy or the safety pack policy package that we are talking about the uh 43 11 which is including uh A police officer in schools has been removed.

However, we want to continue that discussion as we talked about at our last meeting.

This is just sort of the beginning to that discussion.

And I may even send it over to Acting Superintendent Podesta to just say a few words as well.

Thank you for an opportunity to expand on the conversation we had at introduction and appreciate the opportunity to defer discussion on, not discussion, but a vote on 4311, which is our umbrella safety and security program policy and has an element of the staff recommendation It recreates a school resource officer as an option in our security program policy.

Staff recommended deferring a vote on that because the new policy calls for engagement with students and families and communities as part of and requires written memorandum of agreement between the district and a law enforcement agency if we were going to have an SRO program.

The staff recommendation is those be done at school at a time if we enter into such agreements.

And we thought it would make more sense to do more of that engagement with regard to the pilot program we proposed for Garfield High School for two reasons, to inform the policy.

Maybe the policy would be stronger if we'd actually done some of the tasks and requirements of the policy, and then also just to give the community and the board some confidence about what that engagement looks like, so when you at such time when you consider this, you just have a little bit more information.

So at this point, I think we had a fairly robust presentation about all the policies at the last meeting.

So we did just want to open up for questions.

I invite my colleagues if there are anything they want to add.

And again, even though tonight we're only asking a vote for three of the policies, I think anything is fair game at this point to discuss, and certainly the policy that we are deferring is the one that I think has raised the most question and that we talk the most about at introduction.

I see Director Mizrahi's hand already up, so I'm going to start with him.

Yeah, I think, well, first of all, I appreciate that this has been taken off for vote tonight, because I totally agree we need to do more engagement, particularly if this is a school by school question that we're answering.

I guess the biggest question for me is, given all that we talked about in the last presentation, the role of this as a liaison to police and helping particularly with violence that has happened around the schools, why it has to be an armed commissioned officer?

I know that there are lots of civilian jobs within SPD, many of which act as a liaison role or community role.

I'm just wondering if we've explored or asked and answered this question of why we need to be putting an armed officer rather than a civilian liaison position within SPD.

an initial crack at that and then invite my colleagues if they want to add any issues.

What we're really hoping to have a rich relationship with the police department is with the patrol function and the public safety function that responds to requests for service, which is how the police department considers a 911 call or emergent issues.

the community service officers and those programs within SPD are also good at relationship building.

They're not necessarily operational in nature during the course of the events that we often deal with.

And so I think that's why these SRO programs are built around sworn officers and we will continue to leverage every available resource in the public safety front from the city including the fire department including the care program within the city but I think specifically for some of the actual emergent safety issues were very we're quite interested in a relationship with patrol, some of the crime prevention coordinators, and that most of those programs are operated as part of the commissioned program.

And Dr. Howard or Mr. Howard, if you have any other thoughts on that, please expand.

I have no additional thoughts on that.

Yeah, I have no additional thoughts on that.

I think Mr. Podesta sort of addressed it.

Board directors, I think anytime there's a threat of any nature, sometimes unforeseen threats, we want police to be able to have every available resource they have at their repertoire to address threats and sometimes there's threats that are unforeseen that happen.

I can give you a hard example around Garfield.

There was a threat of bank robbers and they tried to get inside the school and they were armed.

And so when you don't have an officer with all the potential things that they could have at their disposal, They can't really protect students, staff, and the community as well.

So I think those are unforeseen things that can happen that are unforeseen and unpredictable.

Director Mizrahi, can you follow up?

Done right now.

Director Rankin.

And I just want to say I would like to make a comment after others who've had their hands up you can go ahead now michelle oh wait um so i like uh director mizrahi appreciated this the said in in the public and i'll say it again for the public record that i support uh mr hart's uh desire for a pilot um related to engagement if we were giving seattle public school district a letter grade on community and family engagement it would be a big fat f and so i'm not sure when we say we need to do engagement like really what what is that plan and who's going to do it um we the seattle public schools does not have the right personnel nor the experience to be doing this, as has been evidenced, and feedback from families and community members from other meetings.

If there is going to be some kind of survey, it actually needs to be legitimate and likely needs to be conducted by someone who actually understands, or an entity, not someone.

An entity that understands how to do surveys that actually are reliable and statistically significant.

And so I don't know how we get there, but anything less than that is performance and it's the same result.

Families don't feel, at the end of the day, if they're not engaged, they don't feel engaged.

So I'm not sure what that, what the path to that is.

The other thing I want to state is that this issue is emotionally charged.

And there has been, I have received reports of discrimination and harassment from staff who have a different viewpoint around whether there should be an armed officer in a school.

And I will be taking that up with Superintendent Podesta and Director Morelos because we all get to have our feelings about this and no one should be silent.

when they have a different opinion from a staff member.

And I have a good word.

There was a witness to this situation.

It is appalling, and it infuriated me when I got the phone call.

And so we need to be clear that while the ultimate goal is safety for our students, And we are not all gonna necessarily agree on the best path for that, but we should all be respected for our own individual viewpoints around this.

The other thing I'll state for the record is that I specifically said, if we get to a place where we are gonna have officers in schools, it needs to be every school.

And I'm gonna say that on the record.

You don't just choose the...

Well, y'all know what I'm talking about.

You don't just choose certain schools because of perceived demographics and who's dangerous and who's not.

It's a cop in every school or none of them.

I mean, we can't tell one group of students, you're not worthy, and another group, you're so dangerous.

We need to have a police officer in the building.

Oh, sorry.

Just a quick comment and thank you Director Sarju for your comments.

As far as community engagement, I think each community works differently and one of the things we're trying to do in this community engagement is allow Dr. Hart to engage his community.

And the school district is coming alongside to actually allow him to be a part of this community engagement, but not lead it.

And so the next engagement is going to be on July 17th.

It's from 6 to 8. And 100 Black Parents and the Medium Newspaper will be actually sponsoring this engagement.

And as they sponsor an engagement, we have the partners who actually partner with Garfield High School on a day-to-day basis, working with students, working with interventions, having conversations in the community and support not only financially, but support in theory and in practice.

So, we have from as far as from Seattle University to the Urban League to Wise Scholars, Upward Bound, just some of the families and community that have been longstanding partners with Garfield.

One of the reasons we have waited for that is to actually have something of substance for them to have a conversation about.

And what that's going to be about is the MOU.

What is in the MOU, what legally has to be provided by the City of Seattle, what we would like, what we don't like, and we can be able to cross out things and be able to bring you substantial feedback from the Garfield community, allowing Dr. Hart to play a role, but not be the front facing of that, because he works with the community in a different fashion, but allowing me to be that front facing representing downtown in that conversation.

So that's the second half that will be happening on July 17th from 6 to 8 in an actual engagement.

yeah any thank you i i did not one second i i did not hear you say uh mr howard the naacp youth council you named a list of people but you didn't make them Was that just an oversight?

No, they have decided who is actually representing them and coming to that.

I've heard back from their representation.

And so who they decide to bring in that conversation is actually students who are attending Garfield, that are a part of Garfield, not people that are not in the community.

We're strictly focusing on Garfield community, people that are there day in and day out.

And if they're former students, we welcome them.

But we want to hear directly from students who are currently at the site, as well as students who were there when we had a community officer in the building.

Right.

But are you saying that you did engage with them?

And that they made the decision?

Yes, we've engaged with the NAACP and Urban League and they are bringing students and community people that are supporting our students.

I want to clarify, the NAACP Youth Council, have you engaged with that?

I have not directly talked to them.

I've talked to the leaders and they are bringing students that are supporting and are going to be able to be engaged in that conversation.

Okay, I think it's important to be really clear because the NAACP Youth Council is an actual bona fide legitimate group.

And so if they're making the decision that they want students, it means that they've done some engagement with some students because they don't make decisions in isolation.

So I just, I want to be clear about that because they have said they wanted They want to be engaged with this.

And it should be their decision to say, we defer to the students at Garfield, not the district decision.

All right, so in addition to this engagement opportunity on July the 17th, Garfield is holding a Reclaiming the Village Black Family Summit on August the 16th.

And this is being supported by some of our community-based organizations.

And it's an opportunity for us to sort of really engage black families.

Part of the day is sort of me sort of telling the story of Garfield, where we are, where we want to go.

And we hope to have our community-based organizations there, specifically those who support students of color, black students specifically, and have an opportunity for families to really engage with these community-based organizations, to connect with them, to see some of the programming that are offered to our students.

But a significant part of that day, particularly that morning, is feedback, just a feedback session where we have tables and scribes and facilitators and we're asking questions, probing questions of black families and students to really get at some of the, identifying some of their needs and some of the opportunities that we have to better support them.

And absolutely, this is gonna be one of the topics that's gonna be discussed and gonna be, and data's gonna be collected from the participants in this forum.

And the second half of the day is gonna be breakout sessions where they get families and students get to choose from topics that are relevant and address their needs.

So we are, in addition to what the district is doing, we are, I'm making a special effort, and this is part of our CSIP work, to better engage black families at Garfield.

And absolutely, this is gonna be one of the topics that we're going to, on August the 16th, we're gonna engage with families and get their input on.

And that'll be another data source.

Dr. Hart, can you make sure the board gets notice of that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Whether that's through Mr. Howard or Superintendent.

Podesta, but we should all be on that invitation.

Absolutely.

So I just want to clarify just because there's a lot of moving pieces here, and I want to make sure that I heard Superintendent Podesta's comments correct.

So what I think is being proposed here is you're pretty much saying we pulled 4311. We want to go do specific engagement around this pilot at Garfield we're going to do that engagement we're going to work on an MOU with SPD and then come back to the board and say here here here here are the results here's where we're at and and that at that point we with the board would have further discussion or direction on that is that is that correct

Yeah, that's our intent is to have that discussion informed by some engagement and gives the board some visibility into the process and into the feedback and perhaps we would amend the policy proposal.

We're always open to learning and in that discussion we'll learn something and we can characterize a real MOU and that discussion so that the board you know, to the extent that if you're concerned about signing a blank check with the way this policy is structured, at least you have more real data and real experience to work with.

Vice President Briggs, sorry, Dr. Reagan, she said she was first.

Ooh, I feel like this, my mic is real, woo, that's really...

Oh my gosh, what's going on?

It's a power school phone.

That's a good one, Ted.

Okay.

Wow.

What are my questions?

Oh, yes.

Okay.

So, I have two questions.

They're pretty specific.

So, one of them is I know that there was a meeting scheduled, I think, for the 24th with staff, district staff and the Keep Your Promise group who had come to our board meeting in June and gave testimony.

And we've also, board members have also received lots of emails from them.

And I'm curious to hear what the outcome of that, what you, what staff understood the concerns of that group to be, and to what extent you felt like there was a Well, I guess just what happened in that meeting?

Do you feel like it was productive in the sense that there was a coming together of understanding or was it more open-ended than that?

I'm just curious how that engagement played out.

And then my second question is, I know we keep talking about this as being a Garfield specific situation, but I think that I'm just having a hard time talking about it in that way because I don't know how that works.

I guess to Michelle's point, yeah, I'm having a hard time thinking about, I understand that the proposal on the table right now or that will be coming is specifically for a pilot program at Garfield, but that certainly opens the door for additional programs at all schools.

And also, what does it mean to say that we're having cops in some schools and not all schools?

There's just a lot there.

So, I guess my question is how are district staff thinking about that?

So I'll take one attempt at our meeting with the Keep Your Promises Coalition and ask Mr. Howard also to add to it.

I think it was a constructive conversation.

It was more introductory.

I don't think anybody necessarily changed anybody's mind in that meeting, but we heard their concerns and wanted to make sure that they were able to continue to give us that feedback.

And we made a request of the group that we do keep talking about this as a pilot, and pilots typically have an evaluation period at the end, and that we would very much like their input about, if we go forward, what would they want to see us evaluate in terms of the the success or not of this pilot, and so that's something they expressed some interest in.

Again, I think it was constructive.

We heard them at the June 4th meeting, and we heard, again, their concerns, and the concerns a lot are raising about the presence of a commissioned officer in a school.

So let me just start with that question, and Mr. Howard, if you want to add, what your experience was in that meeting, that'd be great.

Happy to.

Great question.

I think when we're having conversations with community people, trying to ground them in what it looks like boots on the ground, whether it was yesterday or last year or five years ago, trying to get them to understand what it's like today in the building.

And so trying to ground them in the history was the first part.

The second part of that conversation was really talking to them about where a police officer would be in this step process, last step, first step.

And Dr. Hardis said discipline is handled by his admin team.

But they really want to have conversations about the supports, social workers, clinicians, therapists, interventions, things of that nature to make sure that the police weren't the sole source.

And I think when we say police, people think that that's the sole source, but that is not.

When SROs were in the building of Garfo before, there were so many options that came along with that.

And the radio was a big part of helping Dr. Hart make informed decisions about safety.

But the other pieces of that is the resources that comes along with that, having an SRO in the building to help families and community understand their rights and responsibilities, and also teaching that in the classroom.

What are the laws about pulling someone over?

How do you utilize an officer as a teacher, not as a disciplinarian?

And so as that changes the culture, that's the big piece to really inform Keep Your Promise.

I don't think we were trying to change anybody's mind, but also trying to get them to understand the history.

But what's currently happening and how do you rebuild community?

That is not an easy task after COVID.

There's a lot of resources that will never return.

to a community that once were there and stable in the community.

But how do you rebuild it for the current students that you hear the outcry for now?

And so the big piece, I think, about that is how do we engage families?

How do we have conversations?

How do we make sure everyone has a seat at the table?

And that is something that didn't exist before, but we're trying to make sure that exists now.

And Director Sarju is absolutely fantastically right about, hey, how do we engage?

If we're not doing it well, how do we do it better?

And so bringing in outside people to make sure everyone to the best of our ability has a voice, whether it's written, whether it is anonymous, we want that to happen.

So that's the big piece that We are attempting to have outside people do, but also that keep your promise was to hear from people that they had different viewpoints.

We want to hear that.

We have to hear those.

We're a public school system.

Director Rankin?

Oh, sorry.

Follow-up from Director Brayson.

...

was about the thinking of the Garfield versus the system.

You know, we've talked a lot about this program over the years.

It's always been pretty small.

I think a high water mark for the district was five school emphasis officers that we called them at the time.

There was only one ever at any high school.

It was Garfield High School.

Again, I think that's why we're proposing to think about this as a pilot.

to see what works, what doesn't work, and what would be kind of the system-wide approach.

How does this fit into our kind of agency-to-agency relationship with public safety agencies?

So I... And I appreciate Director Sarju's point about, you know, there needs to be some uniformity about this.

Again, a big aspect of this work is keeping our campuses safe from community issues.

So just as public safety agencies design kind of beats and how they distribute resources related to need and public safety, I think that we'd need to make a you know, make informed decisions about where is this useful, you know, what are the different schools have different cultures, you know, what works and I really want to emphasize this is a really small part in the scheme of things of a layered approach to the pride of try to provide safety across our system.

This is a tool.

It needs to be coupled with all sorts of student supports, with community partnerships, with changes to our practices and our investments in technology and staff and other things.

So this is not the centerpiece, certainly.

There are some campuses where we have a lot of interaction with public safety agencies and having kind of a dedicated relationship would make that interaction, I believe, make that interaction more effective and actually lead to more safety with students and more diversion from other touches with the criminal justice system because we would develop a relationship where people know our students and know the culture of a particular campus as opposed to just dealing with law enforcement agencies kind of cold.

But I think we'll have to think very critically about how this works.

And part of the discussion we've had with the community at Garfield that have some history, which Mr. Howard has been really helpful at having been part of that history is, you know, at some point, members of the community feel like we took something away that used to be beneficial.

And so we want to understand that.

Is there a way we can mitigate concerns they have about that?

Dr. Hart.

I've completed my fourth year as principal of Garfield and this is the first year that there was no gun violence on campus and I attribute that to a number of things.

Certainly community-based organizations like Community Passageways who were there most days, lunchtime and after school.

The support, the additional mental health support that we were able to receive thanks to the city to deal.

So there are a number of factors that I think are improving safety at Garfield.

And I just think that, and I want to approach this as a pilot because I think we've heard from students who say that they want a say in designing what this program looks like.

And I just think, you know, Even if the goal is to expand this program to other high schools, we have an opportunity to sort of get it right here, to continuously engage students, continuously engage staff, continuously engage our families.

And I think this is an opportunity for us to learn what is a successful SRO or SEO program in Seattle Public Schools.

What does that look like?

And I want an opportunity to really engage our students who are smart and have a lot to say and have strong opinions and get them as part of the design of what an SEO program looks like.

And I think that Garfield is the school to do that.

We've had a history of having a successful SRO program.

And I think that's what it's about.

Is this going to make an impact?

Let's figure it out.

Let's pilot this to see if, in addition to the other resources that we have now, can this add another layer of safety protection, of community safety to our community.

And we've done the physical part.

I think what Dr. Hart, just to add to it, is all the students at Garfield are gifted.

And so as all those students come together, how do you create focus groups with all students that sometimes are marginalized and their voices aren't at the table?

How do you create that and rebuild that conversation so they have buy-in?

And when students don't feel like they're part of something, they stay back.

And adults do the same thing.

So how do we bring everyone to the table so they're part of that cohesive mix of a community that needs to be.

And we're actually building the future.

So when we talk about our ninth graders, when he said he's been here 9, 10, 11, or 12, he actually graduated.

That was a joke.

So his first class graduated.

And that's really, really, really profound after COVID to see, after four years, to see students walk across that stage and to not have gun violence and to live in that trauma.

That is for staff, for students, for community.

I can only imagine what it felt like for a parent to send their kids to school and not know if their kid is going to make it home and that to be on their forefront.

every day or get a call from school wondering if the kids are okay.

That is what I hear Dr. Hart asking to have all the tools at his fingertips to make that decision.

We empower him to do that every day with our kids anyway, because we send them to Garfield.

But then we also empower him to do that, make those decisions with the $10 million budget.

So as we do that and engage the community, we should allow them to actually make those decisions now and give them the same support as we've always said.

Principals need support.

Give them the support.

Give them the tools they need so they can actually make those decisions.

And definitely as the board makes those decisions to say, hey, this is what we will include and won't include, but give him what he needs to be able to make those informed decisions, but also to keep our kids and community safe.

Director Rankin.

Oh, it was you.

Move over here.

There we go.

That's somehow fixed it.

Okay.

So to the underlying motion, that is gonna bring us in alignment with state law and WASDA model policy, and I look forward to approving that.

To the other, I think, and I've said this before, This is the wrong conversation.

And it's the wrong part of the conversation for the board to be involved in, quite honestly.

And there's a whole bunch of reasons for that in my evaluation.

Is that because we are not super duper clear about what safety means in our schools and about what we as a board and community will and won't accept, everything is up for question.

So this is a decision about one staff person at one school, I can't think of any other topic where the board would be the ones that had to approve this one placement at one school.

And it's not our, it's not our, it's not appropriate, quite honestly.

But the reason that you're coming to us is because there's not clarity about What kind of what are the rules?

What is and isn't okay?

And so we have a number of things that are conflating here that it's obviously a very chart like we're not somebody could be bringing in a new math tutoring program and we would not have this conversation because it's not as emotionally charged as it doesn't come with as many things that it does.

But it's in some ways when we're talking about a district of 100 plus schools In some ways, it's no different.

The school should be deciding within the boundaries of policy and expectations what they want to do at their school.

And so I think our, and the royal we, not just the board currently today, but the board going back for a long time, because we haven't been direct and clear about what is and isn't okay, kind of everything has to like, got to check and see if the seven people sitting up here at that moment in time, if at least four of them are okay with it.

And that's just, it's just not a good way to be.

It's not, it's not fair to the community.

It doesn't provide clarity to the system, and it certainly doesn't support building leaders in making good decisions for their own communities.

We need to be much clearer about what the rules are, which is the intent of goals and guardrails, but also our policy.

The goals and guardrails really are a measure of how close are we getting to making progress.

on adhering to our policies in alignment with the expectations of our community.

And so I think we have left Dr. Hart and Mr. Howard in an uncomfortable position of having to keep coming back here and asking for what they think is the right thing to do.

And I will be totally honest, too, it doesn't feel like an authentic conversation because you all already know this is what you want to do.

And so, you're trying to convince us to be okay with it.

And I don't think that's fair to you or to us.

So, it's kind of a, it's a little, I'm just kind of naming that.

And that's no, nothing, it's not meant to be disparaging.

It's the position that we have put you in.

And so we have the confluence of our data and reporting is not solid from our buildings.

We actually, part of my trepidation is I don't feel like I have a good enough understanding of what the real safety risks are at our schools to even know whether or not this would make a difference at all.

The broader world of research about police in schools said it's not going to.

But that's different contexts, different cities, all kinds of different scenarios that we don't know.

I don't even know in our own buildings what kind of incidents or how many weapons do we recover?

Do we recover weapons in schools?

Is the problem student to student inside the school or is the problem external to the building?

We simply don't have that information coming in any kind of consistent way from any of our buildings.

to know as a whole if this is even anything that's going to make a difference.

So it's a little bit, I think I said this before, a solution in search of a problem.

Which doesn't mean the problem's not real.

So we've got the data collection problem.

It's really hard to capture a real picture of what is actually, what is or isn't actually happening.

And then we have, as Michelle talked about, you know, we talk about engagement.

Well, we're right now in pretty much the exact same place of this conversation as we were last summer when we were told there would be engagement done and all these things would happen and they didn't happen and we're still here.

So that's another obstacle that's making this conversation not really the right level for the board.

Because you shouldn't have to guess, what is the board going to think is enough engagement?

We need to build those, I mean, and this is a bigger picture.

We need to build those systems and those structures and be clear about expectations and about what success looks like or doesn't look like, and then let you do it.

And then the third one is safety.

Safety just means different things to different people.

And so when we're talking about what's going to be safe, some people would automatically say a police officer.

That means safety.

For some people, that's gonna be a threat.

And so in the absence of defining what safety is, we're caught in these, and it reminds me of during COVID, half the people, my inbox was literally 50%.

How can you even consider having students go back And 50%, students need to go back to school right now.

And it's like, so we didn't, we didn't agree on what it meant to be safe in times of COVID and all the different things that it included.

So there's, we couldn't possibly have a rational conversation about return to school when, for some people, in person meant safety, that my child is learning, my child is in a place they're comfortable, and for some people, in person meant more vulnerability and less access to education.

So unfortunately, Dr. Hart, all of these things are combining and coming into this issue, which is a really worthwhile issue.

And I also don't think it's for the board to decide whether one school engages one external staff person.

So, but it is absolutely our job to determine what the community does and doesn't accept as being good for our students.

So I'm going to go back to an email from a year ago that I did CC the full board on.

That was a follow up to some meetings about these same conversations.

where I left a meeting with you, Mr. Howard, Dr. Jones, Interim Chief Rahr, who I know there's, throughout the various changes of leadership, stuff gets lost in translation.

It's like the worst game of telephone.

But there was a, my understanding leaving that meeting was there was a commitment to a general MOU, not about do we, or do we don't have school emphasis officers, but how does Seattle Public Schools and the police department work together?

Because we are part of the same city.

We serve the same communities.

I still really want that.

And I'm not sure how to ask.

I feel like we've, I feel like I keep bringing it up.

And I don't know if it needs to be a specific board direction or where the right place is for that.

But I, my sense is that if we can have an organization to organization outline of roles and responsibilities, how we intersect, that would help inform specific school-based MOUs.

That I think we're, I think it's a problem if we're just gonna go individual school to individual school and everybody's gonna make something up from scratch.

That makes me really uncomfortable.

And I don't, and I think in our role of governance, it is our role to make sure that any agreement that happens at a school would align to our values and expectations.

So how do we get to talking about what safety looks like and when it's the school district and when it's the police department and how those things work together?

I really think we need that clarity.

I don't know if that's something between you and the mayor or between our security department and the police department, but in addition to us getting stronger about, nope, we said this isn't our policy about student safety and that's what we're gonna stand behind until we have more clarity on that.

I think we all need the clarity and guidance of when is it a police business and when is it school business and then how do we work together?

I would note that state law is fairly prescriptive about how these MOUs work.

Yes.

So it would not be that there's a blank sheet of paper at every school.

There might be special considerations and special safety issues.

I do think I agree an umbrella agreement would be good to have.

There are some aspects of this that are somewhat urgent.

There's also Nothing the board can do governs the police department, just like nothing the city council can do governs us.

So it does need to be a conversation, a negotiation.

This would help clarify some issues about our relationship with police, that this is a good first step.

I think there are other data sharing and other real-time information that we're all interested in and security measures that they're putting in the public right away that we want to be part of.

I think, again, that this is a constructive place to build that relationship with the operational parts of SPD.

So this is why we're starting.

I would say We're not exactly where we were a year ago.

We wanted to be informed by having an increased police.

Again, the Garfield campus is unique and very complex for our comprehensive high schools.

We did have a police presence on city property near there, and we wanted that to happen before we had this discussion.

And my understanding at that time as well, looking back into some of my emails and remembering is that that would be for 60 days while an agreement was created for something more permanent.

And my understanding is that not only is there a new agreement, but that Person also went away.

Well, and we, that person, so that happened both at the start of school and at the end of the school year, which are both important times for us.

We controlled much of the pace because we wanted time.

I don't think we've ever, the surveys and the focus groups and the other work Dr. Hart did, I don't think we've ever conveyed that as engagement.

We wanted time for the Garfield community after having experience with SPD nearby to react to it.

And so some of that pace was us wanting to take our time, I think SPD would might have wanted to move a little bit quicker.

We also really needed to catch up with state law, which when we went into those discussions, I don't think people had factored in as well as they could have.

Well, and there's new discipline rules that have just come from OSPI, too, that I haven't had a chance to read yet, but I feel like that's going to impact.

And then we decided it would make more sense to finalize this with the confirmed chief of police who has, Chief RR is great also, but Chief Barnes has much deeper experience in this particular issue.

So we just thought the timing would be right to have that leadership change happen.

So I do think we've made progress.

OK, that's good to know.

Thank you.

And apologies if I implied.

From sitting here, the conversation the board is having is very much feels like it's 2024. It's August 2024 again.

So, what can the board do?

And when is the next opportunity?

I feel really strongly about the need to have organization-to-organization agreement of some kind.

I also, quite honestly, we're talking about students at risk of being trafficked.

Students, I know children who have been recruited into drug and stealing cars and kinds of stuff because they're not getting what they need from us.

And folks know that juveniles will have a lighter punishment.

So kids are being manipulated into doing things for other people who would face harder consequences.

A lot of those things are happening near our schools, but not in our schools.

I would like, for part of this agreement with the police, I would like for the police to provide some youth safety resources much more strongly, either in our schools or out of our schools.

But why aren't the, okay, I'm gonna, entry level salary for a police officer is $117,000.

And then they get another signing bonus on top of that.

Is that twice as much as our teachers make?

And somehow this is all gonna fall on educators.

The police department, if they want to be partners, we all need to come together around our students and do the things that are gonna help keep them safe.

Not just cross our arms and stamp our feet and say, we will only be a school resource officer.

All right.

I think the board continuing to advocate for its own position with city leaders and others is always helpful.

So I have a question and then maybe a few comments or things that I'm looking for.

Just this is to you, Dr. Hart.

Based on your experience, do you believe having an SRO would make your school community safer?

I can't definitively say that.

I mean, I think we'll certainly feel safer with an SEO on campus.

At least I will.

And how we respond to shelter in places and lockdowns and some of the threats that we get by phone.

And from intel from some of the students.

Yeah, I would certainly feel safer.

if statistically if there if it if it will make us safer i think that's the point of the pilot that's the point of the pilot and i guess i appreciate this conversation because i think this raises you know a very politically charged fraught issue and as representatives of the community weighing in i think is important i think i i think I am at the same place as Director Sarju being okay with a pilot, but looking for a few things.

Mainly, what does oversight of the SPD officer who would be in the school look like?

What does that look like?

What's a process for complaints or a system of accountability?

And then really what some of you have touched on tonight, what does success look like?

So those details sort of in the MOU, around you know discipline or sir what is sorry let's go what does success look like here for that pilot and being very clear about that and then also quite frankly some of the details in in the MOU so we talked about discipline I think that's also part of state law also really kind of wondering about ice and interaction in the officer and what can be in an MOU there and also officer training so those are some of the very in the detail things that I'm interested in.

So that's sort of where I'm at.

Other board directors?

Questions?

Oh, you had...

I just want to add really quickly to your list, Gina, which is also the relationship and expectation between our staff who are security officers on campus to the sort of details that you were highlighting present atop.

Vice President Briggs.

Yeah.

I just wanted to, I think because of something that Director Rankin said that brought this into sort of sharper focus for me, but around the naming that we've put you, Dr. Hart, in a position of having to convince people of something.

And that made it click for me that I think what has been hard about this whole conversation is that they're, I'm trying to think of the most concise way to say this, but basically that it, there's a difference between coming to community and saying we all agree we have a safety issue This is a priority.

Let's all come together and share ideas for how best to address this.

And then see what the collective comes up with.

And versus saying we all agree that we have a safety issue.

Here's our solution.

Now we're going to engage with you around it.

And it feels like a I think it's hard to do authentic engagement under those circumstances because it is no longer, hey, we're all coming together.

There have been no decisions made or, I mean, not that there have been decisions made in this case either, but there is an outcome that's desired.

And that's really different than having something open-ended and having it come from communities.

So I guess I just wanted to name that piece of it because I think that's going to make it hard for the members of community who don't agree with us to feel like they ever really had a say.

So, that was my, yeah, that's really just a comment.

And I think that's just true for all of engagement.

If we come on anything that is any change we're thinking about making that's going to impact our families and students, if we're coming to them saying this change is happening, that's really different than saying, we need to make a change, how should we do it?

And that's, again, that's just so broad for the entire district and all the decisions we have to make.

And I think it's a problem that we have where families often feel like they, the engagement is not authentic because a decision has already been made.

And they're being told that they have input but they kind of feel and know that they don't.

So I'm concerned about that a little bit here.

And then, like, I guess to your point, Liza, and again, this is sort of an academic argument, but when you were saying this is totally inappropriate for us, the board, to be talking about a staff person in a school, agreed, and yet the thing that we're talking about is a policy, which is a board thing.

And so weird stuff happened here to get us in this position, and I think we need to untangle that so that we...

are not having this conversation about other things in the future.

Oh, and sorry, I have one last thing to say and then I really will be done.

I was really struck by the student or former Garfield student who spoke with his sister during public testimony about falling through the cracks in middle school.

And I watched that happen to one of my own children's friends in middle school this year.

And it's really...

He was so right about that.

I'm wondering what we're doing.

This is, again, open-ended, don't need to talk about it right now.

I just really wanted to underscore how important safety is starting to talk about safety and consider the impact of basically involving community organizations at the middle school level.

Because it is really true that by the time we get to high school, a lot of this So, I just, I'm a root cause person and not that middle school is a root cause, but it is a little upstream.

And so, I just want to encourage us as we think about safety long term in our district to really consider putting a lot of effort and intentionality toward middle school.

And that's it.

Seeing if staff have anything.

This clearly won't be the last conversation we have about this.

I can share with everyone that with Superintendent Podesta's approval we'll have a copy of the MOU I can get to you after the break.

By that time you'll have the first look at it as well as the community being able to look at that and maybe we can get to those non-negotiables.

as we start to look at the pilot.

So as we do roll this conversation out, people can see and have some input on what is considered and what is not considered.

And if the board says and the community says, we don't want this, then we need to listen to the community and not do it, honestly.

I mean, if they say no, then Dr. Hart will have to listen to his community and move forward with it and go in a different direction.

That is a must as we bring community together, not to say we heard from you and now we're going to give you that medicine anyway.

No.

If you say absolutely no, then the answer is no and we move forward.

All right.

ECHO, that's the same sentiment.

We've heard from police that the police department, they want to set this program to be successful if it's not supported by the community.

They're not interested either.

I'm going to move us along and just, I'm going to call for the vote, but I want to clarify one more time what we are voting on.

So we are not this evening voting on any updates or changes to policy 4311, which would affect an officer or SRO in a school or a potential pilot.

But I do think staff has outlined their next steps in that and the continued conversation and as Superintendent Podesta said I'll get used to that I promise this is not the last time this is not the last time we will we will we will hear that but we do have the other portion of the policy package before us a safety policy package before us there has been a motion and a second I'm gonna ask staff for to call a vote

Director Sarju?

I'm not sure what I'm voting on.

Remember, I can't see the document.

So this is the safety policy package that was introduced at our last June meeting without policy 4311, which is the updates to the, which would include updates to a security officer or a police officer in schools.

Okay, so we're not voting on the moratorium.

We're not doing any of that at this point.

No.

Okay.

So my vote is yes.

Vice President Briggs.

Yes.

Aye.

Director Clark.

Aye.

Looks like Director Mizrahi has dropped.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This vote has passed unanimously.

We are moving on approval of the 2426 collective bargaining agreement between SPS and the building trades.

Can I have a motion?

I move that the board of directors approve the 2024-26 collective bargaining agreement between Seattle Public Schools and Seattle King County Building Trades Council and authorize the superintendent on behalf of the board of directors to execute the agreement in the form attached to the school board action report with any minor additions, deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the terms of this agreement.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

I second.

Okay, we have a motion from Vice President Briggs, second from Director Rankin.

We do have staff here for questions.

Any discussion from board directors?

I have one quick question.

Director Rankin.

So I know it was in the package or information provided to us, but some of this is retroactive.

It says 24 to 26. So when is the next time that this contract will be negotiated?

And then is it also, is it limited to the same three years that other bargaining agreements are?

No.

Good evening.

It's going to get the squeaking.

Director of Liberal Relations, Tina Meade.

It is retroactive September 1, 2024. It's a two-year contract, so 24, 25, 25, 26. So then it'll expire August 31st of 2026. We'll probably be at the table based on historical practices starting late spring and into the summer with this group.

Okay, and is two years, I can't remember all the different contracts, how long it usually goes, but two years seems short.

Well, they've been short these past, during my tenure as Director of Labor Relations, part of which is because of the difficulty with the structural deficit and the legislative biennium.

That's it, thanks.

We will, any other discussion?

Move to a vote, but staff please call the roll for the vote.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Clark?

Aye.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Sarju?

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

All right, thank you so much, Ms. Mead.

We are moving on.

The last item before we move into our work session, approval of the 2526 collective bargaining agreement between SPS schools and the Seattle Education Association.

May I have a motion?

I move that the school board approve the 2025-26 collective bargaining agreements for the Seattle Education Association, certificated non-supervisory employees, the paraprofessional employees and the Seattle Association of Educational Office personnel and authorize the superintendent on behalf of the board of directors to execute the agreements in the form attached to the school board action report with any minor additions, deletions, and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the terms of these agreements.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

All right, moving into discussion, we have Dr. Pritchett at the table to help answer any questions.

Director Rankin.

Nope, sorry.

All right, then looking to Ms. Worth for the vote.

Director Clark?

Aye.

Director Rankin?

Aye.

Director Sarju?

Aye.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

President Taup?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

amazing thank you staff thank you so much for all your work on this oh i feel like maybe that's the first time ever the cba and the budget we got we we did a lot tonight there was a lot of voting you know we did we got a lot of business done we have a budget for the upcoming school year we have some contracts for the upcoming school year um so now we just need a superintendent which brings us to the next item uh We have Acting Superintendent Podesta doing a wonderful job, but the last item on today's agenda, not the last item, sorry, is our work session, study session on our superintendent search.

I believe we have HYA joining us this evening, Mr. Ali online.

And I just I will tee this up a little bit since Mr Ali and I had an opportunity to discuss at our weekly Monday check in sort of an update.

We've had approximately 26 meetings.

Engagement meetings, Seattle Public Schools and HOA have reviewed the community engagement effort conducted over the past month.

The engagement process included several components, so people are aware, a district-wide survey serving as the primary sort of gathering input tool along with supplemental in-person sessions, language-specific meetings, and targeted focus groups.

I know we had one day of tech issues, and we will need to redo just for transparency purposes a Vietnamese session as we had some translation issues so that community will need to we will we will address that for sure in this process but that being said it is the recommendation and I think we can act ask Mr. Ali a few more questions that from HYA to ensure all voices are heard especially those from multilingual families and historically unrepresented communities that the board do an extension of both the survey and broader community engagement so this would include additional meetings in person or online depending and keeping the survey open through roughly mid-July to allow or a little bit later to allow for some actual time to develop those.

From my perspective, I think that as a board, we're committed to getting this phase of the process right and ensuring that the next leader of Seattle Public Schools is selected with as much community insight as possible, and that person is set up for success.

So it is my recommendation, and I'm seeking feedback from board members that we say yes to this recommendation from HYA.

But I want to open it up for discussion here.

I mean, I will always be in favor of more community engagement, so I'm just wondering about how this impacts the timeline.

That's my only question, but I think yes to more engagement from me.

Yeah, I agree, definitely.

I think that if we didn't do this, the survey would have closed two days ago, and It's important that everybody have the opportunity to fill that out if they want to.

Mr. Ali, do you have anything in addition that you would like to add?

Yes, in brief, I would like to first, and I would most certainly be remiss if I did not do this, acknowledge the hard work of your staff.

We've worked very closely with respect to the engagement effort, specifically the various scheduling, which we've literally done well over 18 sessions to date or might even be 20 plus at this point.

We will in fact redo some of the sessions that they require interpretation as you articulated, President.

But there's one particular area I really wanna focus on and those That area hovers around historically marginalized communities in Seattle.

I've received a plethora of phone calls as well as emails from individuals within the communities seeking an enhanced strategy which involves community-based organizations.

And so I've been on the phone with your staff within the past 24 hours to develop a comprehensive plan, which will roll out a final stretch of on the ground engagement in the middle of July, working in tandem with community based organizations as well as your ecumenical community to ensure we capture the voice of those communities.

I believe it's more than appropriate and fair.

to ensure that all voices are heard.

That's one element of inclusion for which the board as well as the district espouse.

And so, again, as individuals who support the principles of equity, I believe we do that and not even worry about the fact that this timeline may slip because it will.

Let's be very honest.

The timeline will slip, but it's not going to slip in a very deleterious manner, which will adversely impact our ability to recruit a highly qualified superintendent.

The objective here is really to capture more voice and anybody coming in an aspirant would expect us to be able to ensure that the leadership profile report is done in a way that allows them to be able to understand the essence of the community, but also the type of care and concern that's invested in ensuring that we raise and uplift community voice.

Thank you.

I so appreciate that and agree.

And I think in our, we have a weekly with board directors check in with the executive officers or the officers, excuse me, and starting to lay out that plan on we chatted about a lot yesterday Monday and I know staff has been directed to work on building that out and hear from them again on Monday of what that plan looks like really partnering with some of our community-based organizations to build out that program I think it will will make this a more robust process director Rankin

Yeah, I appreciate that and agree that, you know, there's nothing magical about the date September 3rd.

that we need to do what we need, not, well, it's September 3rd, so we better check this and cross this and do that.

I mean, Fred may be feeling like no, September 3rd is extremely important, but we're gonna have to make adjustments if we have to make adjustments because it's more important that we find the right next, I mean, I really want the next leader, personally, the next leader of Seattle Public Schools to be someone who we think can stay for six to ten years to give this district a chance at actually building something and moving towards something instead of kind of treading water and scrambling.

And I just, if we start from a place of rushed appointment or selection, we're just, we're setting ourselves up for failure and we're setting up that person, whoever they may be, for failure.

And I also, you know, I've heard some feedback from community members and definitely heard from community-based organizations and historically marginalized communities that, you know, groups that we engaged with as a board last year that we did do in-person engagements with.

that they are not feeling welcomed and included in this process.

So I really appreciate the readdress of that to make sure that our partners are being honored as partners and included and not expected to sort of jump in at something whizzing past them to give input.

Because we know that that's just easier for some people than others and so it's on us to go to meet our community members where they are, so I appreciate it.

But my question though, Makai, is be honest.

We're going to find somebody, right?

Absolutely, unequivocally.

And listen, I've been honest, and forthright day one.

Yeah.

We're going to find somebody for this exceptional school system.

And as you stated, September 1st, September 3rd, September 30th, arbitrary dates.

The objective here is to capture voice.

And rest assured, as we're capturing voice, aspirants are watching this process.

Your community is energized and invigorated.

We want to make sure all of that finds its way into this report.

I appreciate that one thing I will just do to address Vice President Briggs like timeline concern is I've asked staff now to make sure that we are relooking at the timeline and getting dates on our calendars reserved within this next week moving forward because we had dates already reserved and so what that looks like moving forward so it's be on the lookout for those just from an organizational housekeeping perspective but yes

yes directory sorry I have a I guess it's maybe a technical question related to the survey something that I've heard from some community members but more from some staff members is the survey is anonymous and collects input but there's no there's no place to just offer just here's what I think we need or here's what I think is going on and I'm wondering Makai and you can tell me I'm guessing that that's not in the survey because that would lead to just huge volumes of data that can't be really evaluated together And so how do we, or at least the survey that I took the other day didn't have any kind of open comments.

It was all select the box.

So my question is, is there a way to capture just open feedback, but also I think that what we may want is a way for the board to collect some open feedback about issues to address, which is different than what we want in another superintendent.

Does that make sense?

I'm not sure how to capture that.

Yeah.

But now I will tell you this, many of your constituents who are excellent writers, by the way, they've penned several missives for which they've sent me.

I'm getting probably one or two a day.

And these are very extensive writings.

And I respond to these individuals and let them know what they've sent will indeed be included in the leadership profile report.

Provide my email address to these employees.

They can email me all of their concerns, and I will make sure those elements are encased within the leadership profile report.

It's not abnormal.

It's not a regular constituents.

And citizens email me all the time as a search consultant because I make myself available to them.

I've literally engaged a multitude of folk within your community over the past few weeks.

They'll call my number.

They'll send me an email.

I'll respond to them.

We'll talk via cell phone.

And so, again, I've been very responsive in that regard because, again, I want them to know that I'm immersed in this process and immersed in the community, and I do want to hear them.

And it is, in fact, anonymous.

I've had people share information with me, and, of course, it'll go into the report, but it will not be attributed to anyone.

Yeah.

Okay, that's great.

Thank you so much.

all right thank you so much mr ali for joining us this evening really appreciate it and look forward to continuing in this process and we're going to move on to the last item in our agenda tonight which is a board committee and liaison reports so looking to directors if they have any committee or liaison reports Director Rankin.

I do, and I'll try to keep it very brief.

There is literally voting happening in the House at the federal level right now.

I've been periodically checking.

It's actually very close.

So I don't know if people aren't following the budget bill.

I can't call it the name that it's been called because that's embarrassing.

But the bill that is passed the Senate that would strip medicaid snap it would just be absolutely devastating i don't care what political party you're in or where you live this bill hurts everybody um the senate passed it on a tiebreaker vote by the vice president so it's by no means a mandate from the country but it still did pass As in our state legislature, when there are changes made to a bill, the other, either the House or the Senate or vice versa, has to also agree to any changes that have been made.

So that bill that was passed by the Senate, that again would be hugely detrimental to school districts and children and families and working people, is now over in the House and they've been pitching amendments and taking votes all day.

I did send a letter to the two Republican representatives in Washington State that represent Eastern Washington.

And I didn't get it into the meeting minutes and time, but I'll make sure to send it to the rest of the board and to anybody else who wants it.

Just imploring on behalf of, I kind of stated that, you know, our advocacy in Seattle Public Schools has not been about just do what's best for Seattle and we don't care about the rest of you.

We have been really clear in the last couple of years and in our legislative priorities that solutions have to work for the whole state.

So I communicated that.

representatives new house and I'm blanking on his name Michael somebody help me totally blanking on his name so sorry districts four and five congressman who are in the house voting and did vote before it went to the Senate to approve kind of imploring, asking them to change their vote and consider voting no and talking about the harm that it will do to students and families and school districts in eastern Washington where they represent and that we care about that because as the largest district in the state we care about.

all of the children in Washington, and understand that it matters how we show up for them.

And so, yeah, it would be really devastating.

So that, so I wrote a letter to them, and I cc'd it to the rest of the House, or the rest of our congressional delegation and our two senators, just so that they have it, but, you know, who knows if it actually gets to the people to read it, but.

It's been sent, and so I'll send that to you all.

And I think that's the biggest, that's the most, I mean, everything else is, everything's like in play right now, so I don't really have anything specific, but that's happening literally right now.

So if you do have, let's see, am I allowed to say this?

It's a good time to connect with your...

congressional person and let them know your feelings and you may want to if you have relatives family loved ones who have a representative that may not be yours but can still reach out the it's making a difference this is something that's really critical for I mean really truly everybody in the United States So, kept it to the school district perspective about the importance of education and access to healthcare and all these things for children in our state.

Policy committee, we tonight approved the kind of foundational governance package.

Our next phases of that work, which we haven't scheduled our meetings yet, but we'll be looking at, there are some policies, that we will be looking at if we want to add to our governance, like do we want to have a governance budget policy where we adopt our own budget that says what we're going to spend money on for training and development and other things.

I personally think we should have that.

And related to Shanna Brown being here, a very high priority is the government to government policy between our school district and our tribal government in Washington State.

We should have that in policy.

It's really important.

And it's, yeah.

And I would say I'd like the ad hoc policy committee to work on Deliverable 4, which is a calendar.

And that, yes, that's also, sorry.

I was trying to stop my comments, but yes.

And as came up tonight in comments, there are, in the administrative policies, the, you know, 2000s through 6000s, there's still annual board required approvals that are contained in there and board required or state required reports on each one.

And we don't have, the board doesn't have a regular calendar of when to expect those things.

And so we're going to work on that to really strengthen our oversight.

That's a high priority for me.

All right.

Other liaison or committee reports?

All right.

Seeing none, I, you know, oh, sorry, director Clark.

I'll be very brief.

Um, I attended the June, um, uh, levy oversight council meeting where we received a briefing on, um, some of the FEP levy current FEP levy summer programming opportunities for not only Seattle Public School students, but also the Seattle Preschool Program and Seattle Promise Program students.

So just given the time and everything, I will send my notes and the PowerPoint presentation to directors.

And the Levy Oversight Committee is going on break for July and August.

We will reconvene in September for our annual retreat and have regular meetings through November.

So a little summary of the meeting that I attended and what's coming up for the rest of 2025.

Appreciate that, Director Clark.

Thank you so much.

Director Rankin, Baumgartner, Newhouse and Baumgartner.