School Board Meeting, June 27th, 2018 Part 1 B

Director Geary.

Hard to follow that.

It's very emotional evening.

Anyway congratulations of course to all of our graduates.

I had the pleasure of presiding at the commencement for Roosevelt High School and the distinct pleasure of getting to hand my son his diploma.

Oh gosh.

You got me going.

And I'm so proud of him and all of his friends who've graduated.

They're good kids and they're going to go forward.

And I'm just I'm proud of the work that Seattle Public Schools has been doing and the conversations that we have been bringing into our classrooms.

And I too thank our teachers and our building leaders because I know under Superintendent Nyland's leadership there have been changes in how we've done things in our schools and we've asked a lot of our teachers and of our buildings and we're asking a lot of our families.

We're asking them every day to show up and we're asking ourselves to make sure that everybody is welcome and we have to continue.

to do that work because it is so important especially because every time we turn on the TV and every time our students listen to the news it is it can shake them to their foundation.

And we see that in the rates that they are being treated for anxiety and depression and uncertainty.

And so it is our job to continue to look for ways that we can make an education that is meaningful to them.

that isn't just going into a building and doing what has been done before because it doesn't seem to be working to them.

They they don't feel like the traditional forms.

And so we the adults who came through that process are now charged with having to really reimagine what education looks like.

And I think we're all up here trying to do that in our own way.

And certainly I hear Director Pinkham and how he wants to make sure that students feel safe.

So one of the things that I've been doing is trying to figure out how we're going to do that.

How we're going to make sure that our LGBTQ kids are safe.

How our native kids are safe.

How our kids who end up in smaller schools like Middle College or South Lake or Nova.

don't feel that it is a deficit to be there but that they are getting the best that we have to offer.

Because in many ways they are and yet the perspective of this district doesn't always match that.

And we have to change that.

So I've had the great honor of being invited now twice down to Tacoma to look at their innovative schools.

And these are schools that I invite anybody to go online to look at what they are doing.

These are not schools that look like our traditional high schools.

They are they are high schools that are being serving kids in a lot of different places.

For example one of the high schools is in Point Defiance Park and the kids receive education out at the old Nisqually Fort in portables out at the logging camp.

And they just recently put a building inside the zoo.

The kids get to go to school in the zoo and go and look at the animals as part of their biology class.

They have class in the forest.

They have class at the beach.

They have classes in the marina.

The kids that go to school in downtown Tacoma for the arts program have classes in the theaters, have classes near the UW Tacoma.

And so it also serves to look at how are we going to meet our capacity issues without building and building and then if we have a retraction in our students we're back to determining whether we're going to sell schools.

So I've been spending a lot of time looking at this program and I want to continue those conversations and look for partners in our city that might be interested because these kids get internships within the city of Tacoma.

They get mentors from the private community the business community of Tacoma.

But what I love most about these schools is that they make sure that they draw students from all over their city as part of their plan so they are incredibly racially and economically diverse and that they don't put any barriers to kids with disabilities on providing.

They serve with four pillars that are embedded They're not just on you know they're not just something they say but they embed them.

The teachers are told they must embed them in the curriculum and those are community empathy thinking and balance.

And the students know it.

They can tell you what those four pillars are because the students that I met were lovely well-spoken confident.

And when you went into those environments that they were clearly happy to be there.

It made me think a lot of my visit with Director DeWolf to Nova.

There are spaces where kids really feel like they are invested in creating their education and these students get to design parts of their curriculum and they're told that they must have a vision for themselves beyond high school.

So.

That gives me hope because we are at a point right now where we are envisioning re-envisioning what school looks like and we need to listen to our students and so in the coming year we also need to look again and continue to look at creating the student advisory council to the board so that we can continue to embed their voices in the decisions that we are making.

And I invite everybody in our community everybody in our city to think of ways that they can partner whether they are a small private business who just wants to make sure that they have something that they could help train through an internship.

I invite everybody to start putting on their thinking cap on how we're going to partner with our schools to do this work because I know it's being done and it is considered what needs to happen.

So let's do it.

And then the final thing I wanted to say is that the Special Olympics are upon us.

July 1st they start.

Many of the activities are going to be happening out of the UW.

So go on the website.

Figure out which events you want to take yourself and your kids to.

You're going to go and cheer our athletes and athletes from all over the country who are here.

We have to give them a big Seattle welcome.

the city of inclusion.

So I'm asking you all to take a moment and figure out how you are going to personally participate.

And even if you have little kids remember they're going to be events out at the Seattle center specially designed for very young students where you can go out with your student who has special needs.

And it's a great opportunity if you're in that preschool mode to start making connections with families.

and getting the support that you need as you are starting to enter the journey of public education because you guys really need to if anybody our families with kids with disabilities really need our support.

They need to support each other and we all need to look for ways to create environments that their kids feel safe welcome and have absolutely wonderful educational opportunities.

And so this is just the beginning and we'll continue to work next year with building our Our athletic program here in the district to make sure that we have lots of inclusion opportunities for our kids.

I'll have a director.

I've been continuing to have my director coffees on Tuesday mornings at Zoka on Blakely and I'm not going to have one on July 3rd because I think that that would be a little foolish but I will resume July 31st if anybody's in town and wants to come and hang out with me on July 31st.

I will be there 8 o'clock to 930. Thank you and have a great summer.

Thank you Director Geary.

So I believe Director Mack is still up and as am I but we have reached 530. So this is the public testimony section.

The rules for public testimony are now on the screen.

I would ask that the speakers are respectful of these rules.

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

The majority of the speaker's time must be spent on the topic he or she has indicated they wish to speak about.

I would also like to note that each speaker has a two minute speaking time when the two minutes have ended.

Please conclude your remarks.

If you go beyond that I will ask you I will interrupt you and ask you to conclude.

Ms. Shek will read off the testimony speakers.

First up for public testimony we have Chris Jackins followed by Karen Ingstrom and then David Posner.

My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4 on the two point nine million dollar budget increase on the Queen Anne Elementary project.

Two points.

Number one years ago I watched a previous board pump over 30 million extra dollars into the Garfield project.

Number two the current budget increases on project after project after project are eerily similar.

Please vote no.

On the three point four million dollar contract for Cleveland athletic field lighting and the proposed agreement with the parks department six points.

Number one on June 6 the board voted to approve money and contracts for a package of five athletic field lighting projects including Cleveland and Franklin.

Number two the bulk of the new night field use will be by adults in the city parks department not by schools.

Number three there were district assertions that all five projects had received full environmental review.

Number four.

In fact the board voted to approve the contract before a final environmental decision had been made on Franklin.

Number five the board vote thereby appears to have violated state law.

See WAC 197 11 0 5 5 2 C and WAC 197 11 0 7 0 1. Number six please do not compound this error by rushing to approve the Cleveland contract.

Please vote no.

On the contracts for sign language interpreter vendors please include the allocation of an on call sign language interpreter.

On Native American education please quickly support a board action to reestablish a school in the tradition of the district's previous Indian Heritage High School.

My thanks again to Director Pinkham for his great words tonight on that topic.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Karen Engstrom and I'm a paraeducator substitute.

I'm going to read this because I can talk for hours.

I'm bringing you a petition from the Seattle Substitute Association signed during our recent picnic at the end of the year to confirm the need for paraeducators in our school.

In every budget the people who are assumed expendable are the support personnel.

My position as a library assistant and a career center specialist was always on the line every year and the school community becomes very traumatized by the fact that these people will be possibly leaving their school community because they do they do help.

With all kinds of issues as you've mentioned tonight with immigration issues young people who are homeless and and whatever because they they can take that on and not this teacher.

All right.

It can't continue.

We have to go back to Cheryl Chow actually did a study about what was needed in the school.

It was a statewide study and it included numbers of paraeducators that should be in every every school.

And so I'm hoping that you will consider to extend the numbers of people in every school to have counselors family support workers school nurses for goodness sakes and intervention specialists along with career specialists as well.

So here's this is what you saw three weeks ago from the paraeducators and we've added to it.

All right.

Hi my name is David Posner.

Some of you may recognize me from times I have previously addressed the board.

To those of you who do not I am a retired Seattle Public Schools teacher.

Excuse me.

A current substitute with the district the grandparent of three SPS students and a member of lunch and recess matters a community based group of parents and at least one grandparent which formed in 2014 to advocate for adequate time for lunch and recess for our students.

And I'm going to apologize and kind of put my notes aside because I changed my plan after I got here.

I was headed down to a two minutes that I was going to read and now I'm going to just off the cuff here so.

I wanted to talk to you about the board policies 6700 which was adopted last July when some of you were not on the board yet I guess.

Formalizing the district's requirements for students to have regarding lunch and there were a lot of different aspects to it.

It was a task force that was a great task force that.

Peggy Peggy McEvoy convened and facilitated and we reached consensus a wide range of people on the committee.

The issues that I'm concerned about are the mandate that students have a minimum of 20 minutes to sit and eat and socialize exclusive of time to stand in line.

And because the policy wasn't passed until July schools did not have enough time to actually incorporate that fully into their schedules.

And I apologize again for not coming here a few months ago when schools were forming schedules for next year to say hey let's deal with that.

But here I am just to encourage you to make you aware that in my observation as a substitute and talking to other parents and teachers that a lot of our elementary kids a lot of our K-5 kids are not getting that 20 minutes.

In some cases it's still down in the range of 10 to 12 as was brought out years ago.

And I know there are serious barriers capacity cafeterias aren't big enough.

Some schools still share cafeterias and gymnasiums not enough lunchroom staff.

staff especially the schools with a high percentage of students buying school lunch free reduced lunch which becomes an equity issue.

So I will not go over too much longer.

I don't know what you can do at this late date but please be aware at least that that policy is not being followed in many cases.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up for public testimony we have Brian Terry followed by Margaret Pak Inslow and Mary O'Neill.

Good evening.

In our schools today a white student is 20 times more likely than a black student to be identified as highly capable.

This is a direct result of the decisions made here in this room.

Data clearly shows that we are not meeting the needs of our highly capable underprivileged students.

Back in 2013 the WAC was updated to address this specific problem.

The new language reads highly capable students are students who perform or show potential for performing at significantly advanced academic levels when compared with others of their age experiences or environments.

This is a mandate to close the opportunity gap in advanced learning.

Neighboring districts reacted by making innovative changes to their service models with impressive results.

This was an opportunity for us to make our own improvements.

Unfortunately we chose instead to maintain a service model that excludes virtually all underprivileged students in order to better serve their privileged peers.

As a result the opportunity gap in our advanced learning program has grown each and every one of the past six years.

If we want to overcome a 20 to 1 racial inequity we must unbiased the identification process to include underprivileged students as mandated by the WAC.

We must unbiased our service model in compliance with district policy 0 0 3 0 and.

Most importantly we must change the way we make decisions in this room to better prioritize the needs of underprivileged students.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Margaret Pack Enslow.

I am a parent of a kindergartner now first grader at Stevens Elementary.

You'll see our great group over here.

You're gonna hear a lot of stories a lot of facts tonight.

I'm here to read a story a letter written by a teacher has been deeply affected by the district's decision to not.

fully allocate teachers to Stevens.

She has decided to leave Stevens Elementary.

And if I have time I will share also the reasons why I'm considering leaving the Seattle School District.

Here's her letter.

Dear school board members.

My name is Morgan Lemming and I was a teacher at Stevens Elementary from 2014 to June 2018. I'm writing because I feel you need to know what a negative impact your decision has had last year on not giving us our 12th teacher.

I taught second grade for the 2017 18 school year with 31 students in my room.

Within this number I had identified students and several unidentified students who needed a lot of support to make it through the year.

One sixth of my class needed support that one teacher could not provide without bringing them to their breaking point.

Yes I had the support of all my SEL access and resource teachers and I could not have made it through this year without them.

However to ask a teacher to take on this many students with this number of identified and unidentified students and not give any additional support is ridiculous and then to do it possibly again is unconscionable.

The impact that this year has had on me emotionally physically and professionally to have a room that size with limited support from the district was exhausting.

The impact that the decision has had with my grade level team having such a large class size as well limited our abilities to do things that we love to do.

Some students are leaving second grade and even first grade not getting some of the basic supports that they needed to feel successful.

You cannot let the staff at Stevens go through another summer with anxiety of waiting and hoping to see if they will get the relief of a 12th teacher that they absolutely need and deserve.

Please consider this past year and what you have asked of the Stevens staff and community.

Realize that you've made a bad decision and make it right by giving them the 12th teacher that would make their school and community more successful.

Thank you for your time.

After Mary O'Neill we will have Emily Lieberman followed by Janet Bowersox and Jenny Rhodes.

Good evening.

It's an honor to be here with you tonight.

I'm going to give a reflection of a substitute paraeducator.

September 15th 2017 medically fragile students in a portable 1960s era with an oil furnace.

I was completely unprepared for my assignment having never even heard of medically fragile students.

There were five students ages 18 to 21 in wheelchairs.

Several students had feeding tubes.

The others were fed baby food by teacher paraprofessional.

The teacher and paraprofessional were fabulous.

They obviously were dedicated to their work.

and their students.

Lots of sorting out to do in this early day in the school year including medication charts feeding times when to change diapers use of lift for getting students on diaper changing table lack of supplies and learning how to do the necessary skills.

Thankfully I found out I do not mind changing adult diapers.

I return to this classroom as often as possible because of the excellent work environment environment created by teacher and paraprofessionals.

These types of paraprofessional positions are hard to fill.

Substitute paraprofessionals find out how difficult the work is and do not sign up to work in this classroom.

The job include involves a lot of heavy lifting competency with complicated wheelchairs and ability to work with the students who are completely dependent on the care of the staff to keep them alive.

Later in the year the biggest problem this portable was the oil furnace that gave me major headaches.

Thank you so much.

And we need to support our substitute paraprofessionals and paraprofessionals.

We lift the school school district.

Thank you so much.

I'm Emily Lieberman a Stevens parent and I'm here because this is the second year in a row that the district has funded 11 classroom teachers at Stevens when our numbers entitle us to 12. I respect everybody's good intentions but it is not right for district staff to just decide to take apparently arbitrary approaches when they hurt individual students and schools.

Here's what's happening.

Like with other boundary changes some Stevens families rely on choice assignments to let siblings attend school together.

In 2016 and 17 district staff just decided to eliminate choice assignments to Stevens including for siblings.

After much protest at this time last year.

The board directed the staff to allow siblings to attend school together when possible per your policy and several students were admitted from our waitlist.

Our kids arrived last September to extremely overcrowded classrooms.

We asked why Stevens didn't have the teachers that was entitled to based on the weighted staffing standards and district staff said it was because they had just decided not to count the kids they let in from our waitlist for staffing purposes.

Let me say that again.

The district told us that they were intentionally understaffing Stevens by one teacher and it was because they were not counting or funding the kids that they had admitted from our waitlist.

There's no precedent for that approach but Stevens got only the 11 teachers and as a result every student and staff member at Stevens has suffered this year.

Now this year the district didn't do June projections and instead just decided to staff Stevens based on a February projection number which mysteriously predicted that Stevens would shrink by 40 students next year.

But in fact everyone including the district acknowledges that our current actual enrollment numbers Show our enrollment staying the same as last year.

But they insist on using their February projection number instead of our actual existing enrollment number.

So they're telling us that they won't hire the 12th teacher that Stevens needs until after school starts.

So once again Stevens is entitled to 12 teachers but staffed with only 11. It's not acceptable to wait until after school starts to fund the teacher that we're entitled to right now.

Thank you.

After Janet Bowersox, we will have Jenny Rhodes, followed by Michael Williams and Michelle Martin.

Good evening.

I am Jan Bowersox retired teacher and this is my going to be my 13th year as a substitute.

You heard from Molly on the issue of being a paraprofessional substitute.

We really need to have specific training for our substitutes not online training but specific training.

This is really necessary because when I sub in medically fragile, I depend on the paraprofessionals who are there because I have had no training.

I don't know how to do the lifting and the diapering and the tube feeding, et cetera, but the paraprofessionals can direct me to things that I can do to relieve them so that they can do what they know how to do.

Since we also have a lot of our students are in the least restrictive environments substitutes need to know techniques to work with autistic students with behavior modified students who have behavior issues.

I have subbed in blind classes I have subbed in hearing impaired classes and I recognize autism because of my family relatives.

So what I am saying is that online training is not adequate.

I direct at the new hire orientation which we substitutes meet for one hour with the new hires.

I direct them to go to the Puget Sound ESD which has a very good online training but it's limited.

Seattle needs to address the issue of substitute training.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Jenny Rhodes, and in three days, I complete my two-year term as Stevens PTA president.

When I told my mom I'd made the decision to focus full-time as a volunteer at my daughter's school, she said that in her day, the PTA board was selected by electing the husbands of the women who were most likely to get the job done.

We've come a long way baby.

I'd hope to appear at today's meeting to simply and sincerely thank you the board and the district for all you do.

It is hard work that is not always appreciated.

And yet I'm back again standing pleading for equitable staffing so our kids have a fighting chance at a most basic education.

As recent as yesterday I appreciate two members of the district coming to Stevens to tell us quote I believe you will end up with 12 teachers end quote but wouldn't confirm until September and then questioned our class counts from this year.

I brought class pictures for you to look at.

I wish together we could count the kids in the pictures so you could see the overages that were in six of our 11 classrooms.

What you can't tell by looking at these wonderful faces is how many and which ones are designated special education students through our access resource and social emotional learner programs.

Nor should you as we practice inclusive education as much as we can.

When you capped us at 11 teachers last year You guaranteed our most vulnerable learners would join already overwhelmed peers in oversized classrooms acting out in their own ways for the attention of their overstressed teachers.

As IEPs are developed we welcome SPED students throughout the year and our enrollment always increases past the September date when staffing could be adjusted in theory for actual enrollment.

We employ you avoid further disruption this fall.

We qualify now fund our 12th teacher now so that we begin to interview and rebuild a team that will be rested and re-energized to welcome all our kids on day one.

Thank you.

A good evening my name is Michael Williams I'm a retired civil engineer and at the urging of some of my teacher friends I became a parapro substitute teacher just this past November as a way to give back to our kids.

Recently while I was doing a one on one with a student in a principal's office the student assaulted me.

And so when I responded and this discussion went further I was suspended from that school for a year.

Now after this happened to me and talking around the district I've found similar cases where teachers for their response to violent students have been suspended from their schools.

Some even fired.

Now this is a nationwide problem and I'm here to urge you to look into ways to provide safe environments for substitute teachers.

We need to hold our students accountable for how they apply themselves to their work and for their conduct.

Thank you.

Thank you.

After Michelle Martin we will have Karen Black followed by Jules De Amore and Brendan Dotson.

My name is Michelle Martin.

I'm going to give my time to Emma Turner as I'm still recovering from this past year as a first and second grade split teacher with 27 kids and no adults given to us from the district for any type of help whatsoever.

My name is Emma Turner I am the access teacher at Stevens Elementary.

As a special education teacher I was able to see the impact of and ripple through the building of the fact that we only had 11 teachers in our classes were full and oversized and we had a lot of kids with special education needs as well as unidentified students in these classrooms.

There was a lot of support given out.

by our staff and we were stretched so thin and everyone worked so hard this year.

But a 12th teacher definitely could have lightened this load.

It would have given us an opportunity to spread these kids out in a way that would make it easier for all kids in the classroom to learn and to succeed.

We would be able to support kids that are coming all year long from different buildings to programs where they need smaller environments, quieter environments, more structured environments and are very relationship driven.

It would give them the opportunity to get what they need from these teachers instead of coming to the building that's oversized and understaffed from a building where they are at a reasonable number in class size just because the program that they need is at our building.

And it is not fair to those kids coming in just because they need our support, that they are lacking in the gen ed classroom what they need from the special ed programs in our building.

Our teachers have been stretched so thin, and they always are working so hard to support these kids and go the extra mile for our IEP kids.

And it's just not paying off like a 12th teacher would.

Thank you.

Hello school board and staff.

My name is Karin Zogblack and I am the mother of two kids at Stevens an auntie of three kids that have been going through Stevens and a new incoming kindergartner.

I'm also a proud Stevens alum.

I also am a graduate of Meany Middle School and Garfield High School and I'm organizing my 30th high school reunion this year for the class of 88. I am the parent in charge with another co-parent of the Stevens chess club.

One example of our big success this year was having more Eritrean Ethiopian and other girls of color participate in our chess program.

We had over 50 kids.

That's a really good example of the kind of focus that Stevens school has on access and equity.

And that's why I'm here is because we really want to have equal opportunity for all of our students.

And when we don't have adequate teacher ratios and staffing that really affects learning for all of our students.

This year you've already been hearing how it's been really hard with overcrowded classrooms that make it tiring and harder for teachers to teach.

My son was a second grader in Miss Martine's 1-2 split class that had way too many kids.

And we had so many volunteers in the parent community going in to help in that classroom just to hang on.

And that is not what should be happening.

We should have adequate teacher funding.

It makes it unsafe and I think Ms. Turner and others have spoken to that a little bit of not having adequate support.

We have the enrollment numbers projected for our 12th teacher.

We know that other schools have recently been allocated their 12th teacher.

We are asking the district to fund our 12th teacher now.

Waiting until the fall hurts the school's ability to plan and get another teacher on board.

We have over 30 parents kids and teachers here today and we represent many more who are upset how the district's decisions over the last few years have negatively affected our school.

Please listen to our community and please fund our 12th teacher.

Thank you very much for your time.

Peters.

I'm Jules but I'm going to cede my time if that's OK.

No it's not OK.

I can't.

Yeah.

Each person can only speak once.

We'd love to hear from you though.

I'm just nervous about being videotaped.

You can't turn the video off though.

Okay.

Well, no, I'm sorry.

Thank you for joining us.

Brendan.

Good evening.

I'm here tonight as both a Stevens parent, looking out for that 12th teacher that I was talking about, but I'm also a teacher at Aki Kurose.

Having taught for 19 years, I'd like to speak a tiny bit about how issues like FTE in one building is also representative of how we make decisions as a system and as a school district.

My ask as a parent of a second grader is for us to consider that SPS leadership and policymakers, those are the levers of power to choose what experiences and resources are students' rights in the city.

Recently I read this quote and it stuck with me a couple days ago.

It said, if the rights I have are not the same rights as everyone has, then my rights are a privilege.

And I suppose this is sort of a proxy for the question what are the students rights in our district?

What do all students have a right to?

Do all second graders have a right to having a class that's smaller than 31?

Does our system provide that experience as a right or does it provide it as a privilege?

Is that a negotiating item?

If the district leadership declare that this is a right well then the 12th teacher at any school and that ratio needs to be down because it's a right.

But if it's a privilege then my 30 my students 31 kids in his classroom.

That's something that he's going to have to manage because it's a privilege to have anything less.

So all the students that experience all the mismanagement management issues and developmental issues that come along with that with that lack of support.

That becomes an issue for them because it becomes an issue of privilege, not as a right.

Systems always do what they're designed to do.

If our system ends up with one lower FTE than what's really necessary to provide the optimum experience for kids, then we're saying that optimum experience for kids is a privilege.

If we know the decisions to fund staff members mean students get less than our system is treating it treating those things those experiences as privileges.

So is that ratio especially in a primary grade or right of privilege.

Our system should reflect that belief for all our young people in our schools.

Thank you.

Next up we have Quanshi Maxwell followed by Sabrina Burr and Freya Neustadt.

Take your time, you're among friends.

Hi, my name is Kwanshe Maxwell.

I have four kids.

My oldest child will be in fifth grade next fall along with her brother who will be in first grade next fall.

Thanks for taking the children off the wait list because by you doing that my children were able to go to the school they loved.

Here is a little bit about me before I became a Stevens family member.

I was the girl with a troubled childhood.

I was the girl that was a victim of bullying.

I was the girl that was molested at the age of 13. I was the girl in the special needs class.

Someone who was misunderstood not only by my classmates but by my teachers.

As well as I said as I say that I say this to say that I was afraid for my kids to go to school but not only to go to school but to be black and go to school.

But with Stevens Elementary I do not no longer have to worry.

So sometimes I think sometimes I think I'm not supposed to even be up here speaking at something like this.

I can't even do the paper because where I come from we don't get opportunities to speak.

I speak for not only low income families, I speak for families that come from homelessness.

I just wanted a place for my kids to be safe and to go to school and to feel like it's OK for them to be at school to learn.

And by you guys helping us fund a 12th teacher then that provides a safer place for my kids and not only my kids but everyone else in the Stevens community's kids to have a safe place to go to school and learn and to be great.

Thanks.

Thank you Ms. Maxwell.

Good evening.

Sabrina Burr and my final meeting as your Seattle Council PTSA president.

I walked in here with a heavy heart and it's a lot heavier right now.

Most of my time as Seattle Council president has been talking with families talking with families that we're not serving right.

My daughter has seen way too many tears in four weeks.

I talked to four different parents who had suicidal elementary schools not from bullying from students but how they're being treated as adults who leads our buildings matter how we do this.

It's not consistent and we need to get a plan.

to how we hire our instructional leaders.

We have a huge opportunity with the ESSA Every Student Succeeds Act and I implore you to use this opportunity to find a way to have a system That honors our teachers our staff our community our parents and our student voice at South Shore.

We had students as young as fourth grade who are a part of deciding not only who their next principal was but their next two vice principals.

They did an awesome job.

Too many schools.

I have had to spend tireless hours.

Seattle World School.

I have spent 60 hours with that community.

They finally have a resolve of not having the principal who caused them trauma.

Our most critical students at a time that immigrant kids are being ripped from their parents arms.

Our person who's responsible for replacing that principal has not gotten back to that community yet.

After several requests and I implore you to make sure the community the students have a voice and that we use the Seattle World School model that was developed by the community and Seattle Public Schools.

Our immigrant families are most vulnerable.

And what's going on in this country.

We need to do right by them.

The most important hiring decision you do is the superintendent.

But the most hiring most important hiring decision that our superintendent does is that of our building leaders.

Let's get it right.

Let's get it right for Seattle World School and every other Seattle public school.

Thank you for what you do.

I know it's not easy and I appreciate each and every one of you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Freya Neustadt followed by Janice Reichert.

All right can you hear me?

Hi everybody.

My name is Freya.

This is my daughter Elora who is in Ms. Lemming's second grade class.

I'm really thankful for this opportunity to stand before you and have you guys hear me.

Just last night I got to sit in circle with Al Constantine and talk to him about restorative justice and bringing that into our school system and juvenile justice system.

And I got to hear him talk about his program, Best Start for Kids.

And all I could think about was, well, that's not happening at Stevens.

So I really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to you a little bit.

There's been a lot of saying that there's been trauma and there's been harm.

that's happened to the kids at the school.

And I just wanted to tell a little bit about the stories.

I got to volunteer there every week with math.

And I just wanted to describe to you my observations in the classroom.

And there's one dependent variable here.

Ms. Lemming was my daughter's first grade teacher and second grade teacher.

So the teacher didn't change, but something changed from first to second grade.

And that was the overcrowding that happened.

My first day, I had to break up a fight.

I was down on the ground, I lost a button on my jacket, pulling kids apart from each other.

The third week I went, I came in, there was this little girl named Arden.

She was sitting there crying at her desk.

No one saw her.

The teacher didn't see her.

She was busy with other kids.

The paraeducator didn't see her either.

So I watched her for about two minutes and finally went over there to see what was wrong.

She had been hit in the face.

And no one saw it.

And she didn't know to go and ask for help.

My my daughter's been inappropriately touched.

She's been hit in the face with a hard book.

She last week of school she was assaulted.

You know when I ask her how was the day at school she would come out with stories about things that would happen in the classroom and I had to take her to a therapist to talk to her about how to feel safe in the classroom.

So I just wanted to give her even though we're almost over a voice.

This is my daughter.

Hello my name is Elora and the difference between second grade and first grade is that I got more crowded and I didn't get a very good chance to learn more than I needed to to be ready for third grade.

In first grade I learned a lot to be ready for second grade.

I just don't think I learned enough to go up to second to go up to third grade and I I hope I've got a less crowded class this year next year so I would like to learn more.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Both of you.

I think I think waiting until school starts.

for a second, for a 12th teacher is not the best start for our kids.

And I don't think that's what this board would want either.

So, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Janess Reichert.

I'm an alumna of the original John Hay Elementary School now Queen Anne Elementary.

I was a member of the SDAC committee for the QAE construction project and attended each meeting.

I want to address the cost overrun for the project.

The minutes from the first SDAP meeting indicated that the scope of the project was for eight classrooms and a gymnasium and that the budget was 16.4 million dollars.

Throughout the process the district's own project manager reminded the team frequently that he only had money for eight classrooms and a gym.

As the design process continued more benefits for the school were added.

An administrative suite and an expanded commons for example.

The minutes of the last meeting on May 1st 2017 still showed a budget of 16.4 million dollars.

I remember being impressed.

Excuse me. by how much the how much additional augmentation was possible within the original budget.

So when I learned last week that the district is requesting an additional two point nine million dollars I was stunned.

I read the school board action report for QAE which states the scope of the work will include but is not limited to administrative suite slash classroom slash gym addition.

From the guidelines the design team was given this statement is in error.

We were not told there were funds for anything beyond eight classrooms and a gymnasium.

We were not advised of the 18 percent projected additional funds that would be required.

seems prudent to scale back the project when the projections of three cost estimators were so far over budget.

Why is the board expected to fund beyond the scope of the allotted budget?

Why is the request made so close to the construction start date?

when there is so little time to adjust plans.

Please think carefully about how contingency funds are spent.

It seems there may be more deserving places such as Stevens.

Thank you.

Shek This concludes a sign up list for public testimony this evening.

Thank you.

So we have now come to the board comments section of the agenda and directors have had an opportunity to begin weighing in.

I'd like to go to Director Mack and then if if other directors have comments that they'd like to add after public testimony they're welcome to.

I too have a heavy heart with the news in the media and things that are going on and I'm excited that we have graduated so many amazing students.

I got to be at Central School and that was absolutely amazing.

Those students were amazing that community is amazing.

And I'm just so proud that we are doing Oh sorry.

I was so proud that we're doing we're doing good things in Seattle Public Schools and we still have some really big challenges obviously with the testimony that comes before us today.

I don't I don't want to go on for too long but I do want to I do want to touch on the issue that's going on at Stevens that I think is a systems issue.

And the overcrowding that was mentioned that's that's what brought me into advocacy in the first place.

My concern around every student every student having a good educational environment and that the impact of overcrowding on our students is hard to see but it really exists.

And the system of assigning students to schools and projecting numbers of students and assigning teachers is a complicated one that involves boundaries and choice and projections.

And then there's as was mentioned this really complicated thing where we don't actually fund students based on the number of students in the building.

We fund them based on annual FTE.

So.

That's less than the number of students are actually in the building.

So we have this.

We have a number of things that are going on in our system that impact where we're at today with.

I think and JoLynn may need to correct me here.

I think there are some 30 schools that have a plus or minus teacher need at this point based on the assignment of the currently assigned students and not the projections but the currently assigned students that we know for next year that the June adjustments are a revised projection and a number of schools were adjusted and provided an additional teacher or even subtracted a teacher.

But there's a good number of other schools some 30 or so that still based on their presently assigned numbers likely need another teacher or may not need as much staff as they've been provided.

Currently the process is that the district staff are not making those adjustments now but want to wait until closer to when school is there and the kids actually arrive and we actually know how many kids are there.

And I understand why that's when we have budget shortfalls and we're walking really fine lines on our budgets.

That makes sense.

It's also challenging though when we want to be able to hire effective teachers and give them enough time on the front end.

So I do think that the process needs some fixing and I think we do probably need some sort of mechanism.

This is my personal opinion but I think we need a mechanism in June in which we actually assign based on the actual assigned students to the WSS as opposed to the average and that adjusted average.

personal opinion but I want to let you know that from a policy perspective that's what I'm thinking.

And I appreciate y'all coming here tonight to share your personal stories because it's clear that it's been an impact in this last year and challenging to your school.

And so I hope that we can make some positive movement forward.

And I also wanted to respond to the medical the substitute teacher that was in the medically fragile portable from 1960s.

I'm concerned about that educational environment for any student.

But I think in participle in particular for our most vulnerable students.

I would like to be looking into this further and find out how many of those 1960s portables do we still have and are using and what can we do to fix that.

So thank you for bringing that issue up.

And.

With that thank you all for being here today.

I'm not going to go on and on and I'm going to let Director Burke make his comments.

I'm going to look around other directors and see if anybody wants to add on following public testimony.

Director DeWolf.

Thank you Director Burke.

I just wanted to reiterate my thanks to the Stevens community and my neighbors.

I'm just grateful to have had you here tonight and the work you do advocate on behalf of your students in your school and just thank you thankful for you for having me come out to your school a couple of times and meet with JoLynn and you.

I am really grateful to hear the stories tonight just to add some additional understanding of the issue.

So I'm really grateful for you coming out tonight.

I know it's after school school's not in so I really appreciate the advocacy that you're doing on behalf of your community and I know that JoLynn is working hard to resolve the issue and I don't have any other answer other than I will continue to be a resource over the summer if you have any questions and happy to get those answers or anything through the district for you.

So thank you.

Anyone else?

Director Pinkham.

I too want to thank the Stevens community for coming out here and sharing perspectives because we can look at numbers and do all this but having the community input is paramount to seeing that our schools are serving the community and meeting their needs.

So without you being here.

We wouldn't have known.

So thank you for coming to share your voice and all the other speakers.

Thank you for coming to share your voice as well.

And Sabrina thank you for your job as president and hopefully you'll still come by and say hi every once in a while.

Thank you.

Director DeWolf you want to put a wrap up on that.

Sorry.

I also just wanted another just to my Stevens community and families here particularly around these issues when it comes to the that intersection around funding and the frustrating place that that puts us in.

I also encourage you we are we can only do so much as far as we get from our state and federal partners as far as funding.

So I also encourage.

to just CC your state legislators and in the 43rd district that's Nicole Macri that's Frank Chopp that's Senator Jamie Peterson and just mention that this issue actually is important to let them know about this too right.

Not not the teacher the need for a 12th teacher but the fact that the funding that the state gives us.

doesn't give us an ability to give you an answer today and you should have that answer today.

So please also CC your state legislators on this need because they're also not adequately and or amply funding our schools so.

OK I'll try to put a couple of wrap up comments on it.

Congratulations to everyone who made it through the academic year especially our graduates.

But you know it's a success story for every every one of our students and our families.

I unfortunately missed graduation this year.

It was a big year for my family.

I put a cap on 21 years with Seattle Public Schools four years as a as a SPS spouse.

And then 17 years as an SPS parent.

So my youngest graduated and we were out of country to celebrate.

So he got to toss his cap in front of the Coliseum in Rome.

It was pretty cool.

He didn't think so but his parents thought so.

I want to also thank our staff you know our our educators worked their butts off this year support staff central office superintendent leadership.

We've had a lot of a lot of initiatives going on.

You know we're an active board.

We're really excited committed to the work and and everybody picks up on that energy and what it turns into is a lot of work.

And so I just want to really acknowledge that.

the volume of work but also that that I feel like it's really been impactful.

So I want to celebrate that for folks who came to testify.

I want to thank you for taking your time spending your evening with us.

The Stevens community.

I think I share Eden's Director Mack's concerns around it feels like there has to be a systems way to do this better.

But I know from being on the board for you know this is my third round on this.

In some ways it feels like an intractable problem where we don't have accurate enough projections.

We want to provide flexibility for families to to have choice whether it's waitlist moves whether it's choice assignments.

We also want to have predictability in staffing and we're also running razor thin budgets.

And when you combine all of those things.

Every move that we make has an unintended consequence.

So I'm I'm super interested to keep trying to think how we can make the system better.

Your feedback really helps us know when we're missing the target.

So I'm grateful for that.

I appreciate the feedback on our lunch and recess progress how we're how we are or aren't making inroads in that work.

I think it's it's been shared with us several times it's been important to the community and important to the board.

Also our work in advanced learning which is always a hot topic.

The task force that is taking that on right now.

Aligning vision.

Defining services.

talking about identification, and then figuring out how to make it systematized, build it into our DNA.

And so that's not just identification but it's truly what are we providing those students and how are we dealing with the difference between highly capable and spectrum ALO you know the different service levels.

So it is a big nut and I would love if we could move faster on it but every time we move faster we might fix one part of it and break something else.

So I'm really excited for the work of that committee.

I want to put a special shout out to Ms. Maxwell for your bravery.

I think I might have just missed her.

Well if folks could share I'm grateful that she was willing to share her truth with us.

I know that's that's a challenging thing to stand up at the podium and do that.

So I want to acknowledge her.

And then I want to thank Sabrina Burr.

I met her through this work on the school board.

I you know some of the folks who have been more involved in PTSA before had more opportunity to get to know her better.

I did not as much but we got to go to several events and every single time it's been a pleasure.

You're an inspiration to work with and to hear and listen to.

So you've you've helped us move as a district and I'm grateful for that.

So yes.

Looking forward there's there was an event today and then also tomorrow that I believe is it's hosted by one of our our our labor partner organizations the Manufacturing Industrial Council called Seattle Together Seattle Works.

And there they do a lot of work with the Rainier Beach skill center and other other skill centers and CTE programs around the state.

They had some work groups today and they've asked me to be part of a panel presenting tomorrow for recommendations on how to improve career and technical education and career connected learning.

So I'm honored to be able to to speak a little bit about some of the great things in the district.

And I reaffirm the invitation to directors if you if you want to go.

I understand Director Mack has signed up for that.

If other folks would like to that would be awesome.

And I have no meetings set so far.

Oh welcome back.

Ms. Maxwell I wanted to give you a public thank you for sharing your story because I know that's tough to stand up at the podium and I want to know you.

I hear you.

We hear you and we're grateful for you taking your time to share with us on that note.

Have a great summer everyone.

And I would like to have a looking at the clock.

It looks like a 12 minute break.

Oh no.

Thank you.

There's there's an announcement for the from Director Pinkham chair of Audit and Finance.

Thank you Director Burke.

Board procedure 6550 BP internal audit requires an announcement of completed internal audits as Audit and Finance Committee chair I am announcing that at the June 5th quarterly Audit and Finance Committee meeting the Office of Internal Audit presented two internal audit reports of Cleveland High School and the Center School.

All findings and recommendations are discussed at a public audit and finance committee meeting and the completed reports are available online at the office internal audits public web page.

Click on departments and services under the directory tab then click on internal audit.

And then the other thing before we go to a break.

I want to also publicly note that the 2017 18 superintendent evaluation for our outgoing and esteemed superintendent Larry Nyland is posted along with the meeting agenda.

This was prepared jointly by the school board and is posted for public review.

On that note we will now take an 11 minute break and we will we will be back at 640 p.m.