Welcome to the March 7th 2018 regular board meeting.
Welcome to our student representative from Nova High School Ellie Kapustani.
Thank you so much.
Ms. Kapustani will have an opportunity to provide comments regarding our school later in the meeting.
Ms. Ramirez the roll call please.
Director Burke.
Here.
Director Geary.
Here.
Here.
Director Mack.
Here.
Director Patu.
Here.
Director Pinkham.
Present.
Director Harris.
Here.
Director DeWolf.
Present sorry.
OK.
Chair's prerogative before the Pledge of Allegiance I would like to ask for a moment of silence for the victims of the February 14 Parkland tragedy.
While the pictures of the victims are on the screen.
Thank you.
Now if folks could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
We do not have any recognitions or student performances this evening so I will turn the floor over to Superintendent Larry Nyland.
Thank you.
I'd like to begin by recognizing Ellen Rowe a long long long time board member 24 years.
So let that be an aspiration for all of you here at the table.
She served long and well.
I was superintendent in Pasco during that time and president of Washington Association of School Administrators.
I had an opportunity to work with Ellen along the way.
David Moberly superintendent at the time says that it was a great honor to work with Ellen for five years and she always did her homework and put what was best for students first.
March 12th through 16th is educational support professionals week and we will be sending a proclamation out via email to all of our staff including our education support professionals.
Every day these professionals support the district's commitment to ensuring educational excellence for every student.
They support.
every manner of operations possible from our offices to safety maintenance safe transportation for students healthy nutrition and instruction of our students.
So we invite all of our staff to share in expressing our gratitude to our educational support professional colleagues during this coming week and throughout the year.
The agenda notes that we would have a presentation by the African-American male advisory committee and I did have a chance to meet with them recently and they are eager to come share their work with the board.
But they did ask if they could do that at the next meeting to give them a little bit more time to put their work together.
As I do each time I want to give just a brief update on each one of our strategic planning goals.
Goal number one is educational excellence and equity.
And today and this last week or so has been a great week.
Mayor Jenny Durkan came in promising to put in place the 14th year Seattle promise.
She was at Garfield last week and we had a panel presentation that I was pleased to be a part of along with Seattle Colleges.
Seattle Colleges has done awesome work.
South Seattle College has done awesome work for the last 10 years.
They've worked the bugs out of this program.
They provide wraparound services for students.
They start during the senior year for students and they engage with them every month and then engage with them over the summer and then have them together as a cohort.
and they take some of their classes together and so they just get amazing support.
We now have about 600 students that have been through this program.
And we're starting to hear success stories.
We heard another one today at Ingram where the document MOU between the city of Seattle and Seattle Colleges and Seattle Public Schools was signed.
So hearing students who've come through our schools and have done their one or two years at Seattle Community College and are moving on to college and a career four year college and career is truly exciting.
Orca K-8 we heard from them a while back about how they engage students and they participated on the 16th for a national African-American parent involvement day.
And this is an example of arrows coming together.
So not only did they reach out to families for family engagement But they also had Dr. Emily Petrie from the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity at the University of Washington and others from our district coming to share with students on that day about how important family engagement is how important school is and how important it is for students to stay in school and do well.
And our very own Keisha Scarlett was recognized at Franklin High School this last week for the Franklin award at their power justice and freedom summit.
I was not there this year I was there last year and it is an amazing awe inspiring presentation with students, bands, speeches, recognitions.
So congratulations both to Franklin for putting on a great event and modeling that event throughout the entire school year.
This year they recognize Keisha Scarlett, Nikita Oliver, Aaron Jones, Dr. Caprice Hollins and Tracy Cooper-Wells.
So congratulations to each of them.
Improving systems is another goal to number second part of our strategic plan.
We do know that the state was going to announce on Monday morning and then Tuesday morning and then went They're not there yet.
To us anyway who the priority schools are.
So as you know no child left behind has been replaced by ESSA.
Sorry President Harris I can't do that one off the top of my head.
And.
So our research department has been working with our Title 1 office trying to figure out who those schools might be.
It depends on the cut score that they set at the state level.
And so we will be sharing that information with school board privately in the next day or two we think.
And then we think that it's supposed to go public next next week.
The program is supposed to be different.
It's kind of the old version I called punishing people into greatness.
And the new version is designed to be more user friendly and recognizing that schools in many cases are doing the best that they can and they need support.
So actually our Title 1 budget will continue to go down partly because our free and reduced student enrollment is going down.
And partly because the how do I say this the feds are allowing the states to take more Title 1 dollars off the top to provide support for these priority schools.
In most cases we're already working with them.
You've seen the red yellow green charts from Wyeth and the MTSS work.
So he's working with 24 schools.
that we recognize have needs for additional support and we'll find out in a few days or a few hours how close we are to agreeing with the state on the same group of schools that need greater support.
The legislature is scheduled to adjourn tomorrow.
This is a short session.
I can't remember the last time that they ended on time.
But I'm told that they will end on time.
So we'll see.
I co-signed an op ed that was in the paper yesterday or today with a nice headline on it.
Legislature should listen to superintendents.
Usually the paper doesn't say that.
And so that was that was nice.
And we continue to say we're appreciative for the work that the state has done but they're not done yet.
And it continues to leave Seattle just a little bit short of being made whole in the long term.
So we think that there's still more work to be done there.
And I guess while I'm on that topic I'll give a shout out to Melissa for her column with the Puget Sound Business Journal.
It was a nice nice piece and well done calling out the same thing that we haven't fulfilled McCleary and we even with all of the money that we're putting into education we're still about average and we're getting better than average results.
So thank you Melissa.
Family education levy funding.
I think we have two balls in this case.
One is what's happening right now.
We just got a notification from Deal at the city of Seattle that they will provide be providing grants of three hundred and twenty one thousand dollars each for 21 of our elementary schools.
That truly does help and I think it is part of the reason why we have so many outliers that are outperforming the state.
The other eye that we keep our eye on is how much they're going to ask for in the upcoming family and education levy.
We are told that it might be a little bit less than what we had anticipated.
That's the good news.
The other part of it is what's in it and how much of what we're currently do will be supported and how much might be.
either reduced just to keep the sticker shock down and or to fund other other programs.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
Sacajawea Elementary.
I had the opportunity to be there on Monday morning and wow another great example of arrows coming together.
They decided they wanted more support for technology.
They reached out to one of the parents.
Parents found a grant opportunity power up found out that they needed lots of student voices and needed lots of staff voices.
All of the students and the staff stepped up.
They got a substantial grant from power up which is several technology firms working together.
And they wanted to do better so they coordinated with our technology department they coordinated with teachers in the building who agreed to support the rollout of technology.
They worked on their instructional plan for how they were going to use the technology.
And they got money from a family foundation parent that no longer has children there.
And so just amazing how all of those different parties came together and are doing just great things for kids.
Goal 3 is our family and community engagement.
Thank you to our school board for our call to action special meeting last week.
Thank you to Eden Mack for taking the lead on getting a resolution drafted in regard to gun safety and making our schools safer.
Thank you to Director Leslie Harris and Eden Mack as well as our student students but Amelia Allard from Ballard giving her remarks with regard to gun safety and why why it's so important.
I followed that with a letter to staff community and have a letter to students that will be available for the 14th as our effort to keep our eye focused on the 24th of March and give schools other alternatives for what they might do in school on the 14th and hopefully have fewer students out of school on the 14th where we can't keep them safe quite as well.
That said I understand that Governor Inslee will be at Ballard walking with students on the 14th.
Family engagement study has just been completed and I think I think it's posted.
We'll find that out.
I don't see it quickly here in my notes here.
We did.
That is one of our focal points for our work together and we wanted to know what we are doing how well it's coordinated and another opportunity to line up our arrows make our arrows touch.
We do have several efforts underway and including the Seattle Council PTSA focus on family engagement our family engagement in the high school and our co-design work with principals.
So we're excited to see that work come together.
It is open enrollment time and we have gone to online admissions and we have had 4263 online applications.
And we also note that it's quieter out here in the lobby.
And that means that for our families that aren't able to get online and the families who do come here to get registered and enrolled we're better able to give them personal attention and help them figure out locations that will work best for their for their students.
And last week we had two well I guess one work session two parts with the school board looking at 24 credits and all of the things that still need to be done as we move forward in that direction.
Thank you for the board input in that area.
I think we heard that 36 out of the 40 largest school districts in Washington are same place where we are somewhat behind in moving toward implementation on this important change.
But it is a heavy lift and as board members have noted we want to do it well we want to have good professional development we want to have it be well thought out.
So thank you to the board for spending time.
Thank you to staff for continuing to work on that.
And thank you to George Breland principal and Catherine Brown assistant principal at Cleveland who were there to talk to us about what an eight period day looks like and how they have worked out some of those bugs.
And thank you to JoLynn Berge around the budget discussion and our ability to move forward.
Again our budget for this coming year looks much brighter than we once feared.
Looks like it will be much easier to balance than it has been in previous years.
However that's a short term something a snapshot because when our levy fully goes away the new state reduced levy will be back into crunch time for our budget in that the state's not fully funding special education and compensation.
We also sent out communication with regard to emergency preparedness.
And as I said at the press conference recently and to the principals yesterday I think we really have two parts to our work and as I've been listening to the news coverage of the tragedy in Florida.
There's really two parts to it.
One part is all of the stuff that we can buy in terms of security systems and security guards and locks and all the other things that go with it.
And the other part is what we can do with regard to social emotional health making students feel welcome giving them a sense of belonging in school.
And thanks to the work that we've been doing around our professional development and our partnership with SEA and PASS all of our indicators are trending in the right direction.
School suspensions are down referrals are down and the number of students that get reported for a threat assessment are down.
If we do hear of a threat sometimes in the middle of the night from one of our board directors last year We're in immediate contact with the police department and trying to analyze that when we get them during the school day we immediately pull together a 411 threat assessment team and we have a protocol that we go through to try to determine is this a prank or is this something where a student truly is in crisis and a danger to themselves or to others.
So.
A lot of good work underway and obviously still more more work to be done and thank you again to the board for their leadership in terms of the gun safety portion of that.
That is probably the closest thing that we can have to something that would really make a big difference.
A variety of good news Ballard Chamber Orchestra was second in the nation.
Garfield high school basketball team won state championship.
We think that they'll be invited to the national championship.
We heard recently from the Bridges program for student success.
Got a personal note from an employer who had picked up one of those students and had them employed.
They were doing well qualified for a good wage and benefits so the program is working.
Franklin High School won the district mock trial championship and today was SAT school day at SPS.
So the district supports all students taking the SAT and the PSAT because when they take it they find out that they may actually be college material.
Hope all of our students are.
And then they start getting all of this propaganda in the mail saying you should go to college.
And that together with our now Seattle promise that says you can go to college and there is not a financial barrier.
All of that helps move us forward.
We did hear actually in this conversation around the 14th year that the 13th and 14th year 40 percent of those students are students who said that they never thought that they would be able to go to college.
So it truly is moving the needle for the students that have the greatest need.
Thank you.
Thank you Superintendent Nyland.
We are at item number four board committee reports.
We have not had committees meet since our last board meeting but we know that our legislative representatives have been busy.
Director Mack did you want to give a short update?
And then Director Geary as well please.
If I also might I wanted to give a kind of preview to the operations meeting which is happening tomorrow.
So folks might know what if I could talk about that first.
So we don't have a ton of things on the agenda tonight for Ops which is unusual.
And we're making up for it tomorrow.
We have 14 different bars that are going to be on our agenda.
Lots of projects moving forward building.
We're growing.
We need more buildings.
It's great work and really exciting.
We're also going to be talking about some things that folks are interested in.
to understand what's happening for next year and capacity management strategies that we might have to take maybe adding some portables or different things that are going to be happening at different schools.
So we're going to get an update from staff on the plans that are in the works.
We're also going to be talking about the 2019 20 school year so we can kind of get ahead of the planning around.
potential boundary changes or things that need to be happening.
We know that we have the Magnolia elementary school plan to be opening in 2019. That's going to require some boundary shifting and and conversations on that are going to start.
So we'll learn more about that timeline and process and what's going on.
And we're also going to be talking about our overall work plan because there's a lot on it.
We have BEX V our levy planning coming up.
Part of that process is developing a facilities master plan for the district.
So we're going to be talking about that and.
Additionally we recently had a work session on the partnership agreement with the city which kind of folds into the facility master planning and all of our building work.
And.
We're coming back on March 28th for a full board work session to talk about BEX planning the facilities master plan and how the city and the district are partnering together to support this work of planning for future buildings.
So that's going to be really exciting.
We'll be talking about that at our meeting tomorrow.
From a legislative standpoint so many bills and so much going on really complicated to try to track all of them but some key things to note apparently the budget doesn't include a lot of the fixes that we're asking for in terms of the McCleary fixes.
The experience factor which Dr. Nyland referenced in his op ed is not included.
A number of things that we as well as other districts have asked for may not be moving forward in terms of fully funding these issues.
And if they leave if they finish up tomorrow then we'll know what the final result is and then we can do our analysis and move forward from there.
One bit of good news though is that Senate Bill 6095 which is the capital budget has passed the house and it needs to go back to the Senate.
And it's I would think likely that it would pass.
And there's some funding requests in there to help our capacity needs.
So cross your fingers and if.
That's just exciting news.
One disappointing bill one great bill that's disappointing that it's not moving forward at least at this point is a bill that would adjust the funding formulas around the school construction assistance program.
This bill would help districts all across the state to fully fund the buildings that they need.
Unfortunately that doesn't look like it's moving forward.
But another good news is that they did pass and the governor signed today, I think, a bill banning bump stocks, which are the ability for firearms to be turned into mass killing machines.
Those have been banned in Washington so that's exciting news and I'm really proud that we're taking a lead on gun safety measures both in our district as well as supporting legislative action at the state and congressional level.
I think those are the main things that I wanted to talk about.
Director Geary did you have any additional bills you wanted to mention?
I didn't want to add anything more and thank you for the report on the state legislative as the federal ledge rep. It's all right.
We'll be attending the council of great city schools legislative conference next week.
I'll be attending with Deputy Superintendent Stephen Nielsen and We have planned, currently we have plans to meet with Senator Murray and Cantwell's staff but we also want to prepare packets.
Last year my experience was that because the Department of Education under Secretary DeVos it was unclear as to what was going to happen and I don't know if we're seeing anything more concrete at this point.
Rather I think it'll be a great opportunity for us as the state's largest district to go and.
share the work that we're doing outside of you know what's happening on the federal level.
So we're going to put together packets together to educate at the federal level some of the great work that we're doing here around EOG race and equity ethnic studies the gun control resolution our college and career readiness moves and then also explaining some of the issues that we're facing with regard to the funding gaps as the intersectionality between the states.
budget and what we're seeing with regard to the money that we get at the federal level as well since that those are identified areas of need around ELL and special education.
So I'm going to make the most of it.
It's always exciting to go to the Council of Great Cities schools which is a conference of the leaders from the United States largest urban districts.
And a lot of work that's very pertinent to the work that we do in Seattle.
So it's good to hear how that is happening and it's good to share.
And it is always.
It's good because we go and it's very clear that Seattle Public Schools is seen as a leader around some of the work predominantly around closing the achievement gap and the opportunity gap.
And so it's exciting place to go and get our our enthusiasm restocked up however you would say it.
But if people have ideas that they want me to take.
to Washington D.C.
please feel free to contact me on Facebook.
Or email.
OK.
Do any of the other committee chairs have a heads up for incoming new meetings and legislation that would be of public interest quickly.
Director Burke chair of C&I.
I just want to provide a couple of brief heads up points related to the curriculum instruction policy meeting coming up on Tuesday March 13th.
Looking at the agenda I'm going to identify five topics to share that I think are of broad interest.
One of them we have a bar that's coming before us for our interim assessments.
This is something that's been discussed for a while now and is coming forward under our assessment policy and for board approval.
This will be you know integrating with this student reporting system in homeroom and will help our teachers do better understand their how their students are progressing against the standards.
We have a instructional materials update that's going to be essentially mapping out what materials adoptions are recommended for for funding and to create committees for 2018. So folks that are interested in instruction materials that's a lively topic.
The ethnic studies team will be providing a report as well on that work and how the ethnic studies curricular work and some of the piloting that they're trying to do is progressing.
We're going to be getting a report and presentation on starting up dual language immersion pathway in the southeast.
This was you'll recall this was part of our.
Our recent board resolution student assignment plan work around the language immersion pathway at Lincoln high school and creating a partner pathway in the southeast.
And then the last point is another lively topic advanced learning.
We had a board resolution that many folks will recall vividly and that's coming before the curriculum instruction committee to understand OK how are we going to actualize that.
Creating a task force what does that charter look like and the timeline and work plan for that.
So I think it's going to be a.
A full agenda but all really good topics.
So I hope other directors can attend if they'd like and by all means the public is welcome to attend as well.
Thank you Director Burke.
Director Pinkham A&F.
Thank you Director Harris.
Actually just we did have our quarterly update yesterday meeting so there were the agendas online so I'm not going to go through too many things there but we had some follow up on an internalize with Rainier Beach High School which should be coming up with our next board meeting.
We had reports from the audit response to the structural leadership human resources budget and finance on how things are going with them.
Capital projects requests and extensions so we didn't get a chance to hear from them but we will be following up with them and operations did not have anything on our audit report.
Our next quarterly audit will be June 5th.
Remember that date because it's very special to me.
Yes.
It's my birthday.
Hint hint hint hint.
And the next Audit and Finance meeting will be this coming Monday.
We appreciate Mr. Stone with his work.
He actually requested an inventory of grants that we have so we can see what we do have and they will be presenting that to us at the next meeting.
Just a couple of contracts we have to go over and just the regular agenda.
No really big items right now for me coming up but with the directors Wolf and Mack I think we're coming up with some good questions for our audit and finance team that hopefully we'll see more transparency and accountability I think with what we're the direction we're going.
OK.
Last I hope not least executive committee we are continuing to work on our back mapping project with the superintendent and with the deputy superintendent and those that we call in so that we can A get our arrows lined up and moving and we can put some deadlines on the big lifts and back map it figure out what we need and do a better job of community input and getting everyone's voice to the table.
Next up Ellie we have student comments.
We welcome you.
This is your chance to tell us who you are and about your extraordinary high school Nova.
You need to bring the mic close to your mouth because it doesn't pick up otherwise.
Yeah.
All right.
So my name is Ellie Kapustani.
I'm a junior at Nova high school.
It's my second year.
I went to private school actually across the water for my freshman year that in the end didn't work out.
But I'm really grateful for Nova because it gave me a place where I could express my voice more and I could be me in a way that I guess I didn't really have there and I haven't had in the past.
And I I strongly believe that the most important part of any community is to accommodate the needs of the people within it and to listen to the people who are there.
And where I've been before sometimes private school sometimes even in public school even here in Seattle I've had I feel like my voice sometimes isn't always heard.
But I'm grateful for this opportunity and I'm grateful for Nova because it's given me an opportunity to really speak and to express what my needs are.
And it feels like a place that's for me.
And that's one thing that's great about Nova is that we've always had the ability to speak and contribute.
Just earlier today we were working on.
Designing an event for the school consent day talking about consent and the importance of it and all sorts of related things.
They're a bunch of student led and adult led workshops.
But what's important to me and what makes me feel proud about this is that it's completely planned by students.
There are there's adult input.
Our assistant principal is helping but.
In the end it's about the students.
And I think that that's the most important thing.
And so I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here and to represent Nova to this community.
And I'm grateful that you're listening to student input.
And in sort of similar to this we are at Nova working on redesigning our committee system to try to get more student input because we really really value the importance of hearing people and hearing what their needs are because we can sit up here and talk about what it is we think everyone needs but we don't know.
I don't know what Nova needs.
I'm not Nova I'm just one person.
And I can represent them but I have to listen to them and I have to talk to them or else I'm just going to be a person up here giving a speech.
And that's good but it doesn't really mean anything.
And so more than anything we are continuing to work on involving students in our school and trying to get as much feedback as we can and how the school is run.
And I'm pretty happy about how that's been done.
But there's still work to be done this work to be done here and there's work to be done on a national level there's work to be done within Nova within our school.
And we're continuing to work on that we're reconstructing our committee system trying to work on giving more things like in light of recent events we're christening a safety committee where we're going to talk about how to some of what you were talking about earlier is talking about how we can help deal with making students feel comfortable.
and emotionally healthy and feel welcome despite all the scary things that's going on right now and the recent tragedies.
And it's all hard.
But as a community as a city as a school district within our school.
We're trying to continue to accept people and to move on.
And so I'm thankful that we're here.
I'm thankful to be here today and I'm thankful for Nova.
Thank you.
And we're most thankful for you.
And I hope that we will see a great many of your colleagues and students and teachers on March 24th 10 a.m.
Cal Anderson Park.
So we can all stand up together.
Thank you very much.
OK.
We have now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.
May I have a motion for the consent agenda please.
I move approval of the consent agenda.
I second the motion.
Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.
Do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda.
Going once twice three times.
Those in favor of approving the consent agenda please say so by saying aye.
Aye.
OK.
We have reached board comments.
We will have the opportunity to add to our comments after public testimony to address the public testimony issues.
Who would like to go first.
Director Mack.
Let's see.
So.
I already talked about committee stuff so I don't need to mention that.
I had my community meeting a few weeks ago and it was relatively well attended about 10 folks came.
The questions that came up there were a lot around what's the planning around our new buildings that are coming along our boundaries and those sorts of things.
So we had a really great robust conversation around the Partnership agreement with the city how that work is moving forward.
Let people know that we had a work session on it that there's planning going on and how to engage in that process including that the operations committee is talking about those things.
And there's some engaged folks that just want to kind of know what's going on and be engaged in the process and decision making.
And there was also a concern that was raised around some change in practices to online enrollment for our birth to three service providers.
And I'm really happy to share that by raising this concern and by connecting with staff and having this conversation.
Internally with district staff in particular Mr. Wyatt Jesse I want to give a shout out for sorting out the challenges that were raised to the online enrollment process for the birth to three and that I got a report back that it's all been resolved and they're very happy with coming to.
a great compromise that serves our families and students.
So thank you for that work.
I appreciate that community members came forward to raise it and that staff was so quick to resolve the challenges as they came up.
And I have another community meeting on March 31st from 1 to 3. And I will be at the march on the 24th.
I hope you all join me.
And I think that's all.
Next up director DeWolf please.
Thank you President Harris.
Just want to first start again by congratulating Garfield boys basketball team and looking forward to seeing at the national tournament and also just want to make sure to mention and send a congratulations to our girls because they also did an incredible job.
So don't want to mention one without the other.
And then just kind of wanted to talk about some other legislation that didn't get picked up in our conversation from earlier.
Today breakfast after the bell was signed by the governor.
So I know they're still looking for some wherever that's going to be with the funding.
I know they're looking for some funding they have I think most of it accounted for and I'm keeping track to make sure that it's not going to be unfunded kind of mandate down to us.
But so it's looking like they'll be able to find some.
funds in the budget and also just wanted to reiterate the excitement around the governor signing the ban on bump stocks and particularly just want to call it the fact that some of our Seattle Public Schools students are really advocating and working on that and so grateful for their leadership and also for them being included in our work on our resolution.
And then the other last one kind of around legislation that I'm excited about is the pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds.
I'm watching now and hoping it will be signed by the governor relatively soon and I'm looking forward to thinking about some creative ways to make sure that we are we can be a part of that process for our 16 and 17 year olds here.
Particularly if if motor voter registration needs any support from us at the schools and being creative about that.
I want to thank Leschi Elementary and the PTSA Washington Council PTSA I think that's what it's called.
Last week Seattle Council PTSA for organizing a conversation around funding.
And thank you especially to our incredible JoLynn Berge budget rock star for being my partner there and also Councilmember Herbold for some really great conversations.
I wanted to call attention to a couple of things that are coming up.
The native pack is hosting a culture night on February 12th from 5. Thank you.
March March 12th.
Thank you Jill.
From 5 to 7 30 at Boren STEM K through 8. And then also the Somali mothers night out which is happening on the 16th at South Shore Pre K. What Jill.
Come on.
And then the other thing I want to mention too is just to really call this out to receive a letter from Jet at Daniel Begley Elementary asking about sci fi books.
And we've been able to work with some partners at Elliott Bay Book Company to get some books donated and we have an abundance of books.
So I'm actually looking for a second school to receive some sci-fi books.
I we particularly work together with these publishers and Elliott Bay Book Company to make sure that these sci-fi books and adventure books were written from authors of color.
So it's an incredible assortment of books.
I would be very honest I'm tempted to take some home myself but I promise I won't.
So if you're a student or a teacher and you have an interest in sci-fi some books and I think there's some pretty exciting ones.
Black Panthers in there for example.
Please send us a letter a handwritten letter to the Seattle school district attention board of directors at M.S.
1 1 0 1 0 P.O.
Box 3 4 1 6 5 Seattle Washington 9 8 1 2 4. And I'll do a little random drawing and we'll pick another school.
And then also just want to mention that the National Urban Indian Family Coalition mentioned us in their report resurgence restructuring urban Indian American Indian education around our Huchoosede Indian education program here at Seattle Public Schools are really really excited about the work that that's.
been able to do in our community and they kind of highlight that in their report.
And thank you to our student speaker tonight.
Really grateful and please keep me posted on consent day would love to be just come and join it and celebrate the awesome conversation.
And I've been having conversations with Flip about potential creative ways to do community meetings.
So I'm kind of flipping on the head the traditional way that these community meetings are looking and so more to say I'm working with him on some ideas to get creative about our kind of community engagement personally from my position as school board director.
So looking at options like a movie night and a conversation and we'll have some more information on that.
And that's all I have.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next up would be Director Burke.
Brief brief comments.
Thank you to our student guest.
You're wiser than your words wiser than your words are wiser than your years is what I meant.
The you know they just the mindset around engaging your community and truly understanding them before you actually go to decision making.
It's something that we struggle with because often it seems like a decision is obvious until you actually engage with the people that it matters to.
And then you realize what's obvious to you or to me or to somebody else isn't really in the benefit of the community.
So thank you for for being open minded in that work.
It's amazing.
I'm also super proud to be part of this district part of this board and the public messaging and the positions that we've been taking around gun safety and really protecting our students.
It's amazing.
It's just such a point of such a point of pride.
So thank you to my colleagues and staff and the community that's that holds us accountable to this work as well.
I had a great meeting yesterday with the Licton Springs community.
You know they they're super passionate about their school their community and and how you know I learned more about the challenges of co-locating two schools in one building and you know how they're working through that.
Some of the ideas they have on how to how to make sure that that's a productive and valuable experience for both schools.
And then also we spoke creatively about you know how to manage upcoming potential capacity challenges with you know new building growing enrollment and we're looking at how to how to manage that for both of the schools.
So it was a really positive and.
Interesting you know we I think we had over two hours of discussion.
It was just a really neat bunch of people.
Hot off the presses.
We already did committee reports but since this one hasn't actually made it to a committee I wanted to share.
I had a conversation just right before the board meeting today with with our director of DOTS John Kroll.
And there have been a lot of we've flirted with the idea of a technology committee and John and his team have really put together some nice groundwork on that.
He shared it with me took some some feedback as well.
And we're going to try to bring that to the executive committee next week.
So just notifying the board and the chair of the executive committee.
ad hoc so I'll take that up with you as well through formal channels.
But this would be an advisory committee that includes community and staff and helps us with our educational strategy, our mission, our specific projects, budget priorities, a lot of really great things built into that charter so I'd love to get that out in front of directors and get more feedback as we work that through our process.
If things go well the it would go through board process by April 4th and the first meeting of the committee could potentially be as soon as the third Monday in April April 16th.
Harris Deputy Nielsen are you listening since you had already advised that you're in agreement with this plan.
And do you know about this fast tracking.
But you're still nodding yes.
Terrific.
Thank you so much.
And then then the last point.
I have a meeting on the community meeting on the calendar for Saturday March 17th and unfortunately I will be out of town that date.
I'm working to reschedule it for March 24th in the afternoon likely 330 to 530. So you know after a march you can spend an afternoon with the board director.
I have a tentative reservation for one.
Oh OK.
Director Pinkham or Director Patu and Director Geary.
Good evening and thank you.
First of all Ellie thank you for your words.
I can really touch base with as far as we got to make sure we listen to our students listen to those people that we're providing services for and not take the assumption we know what they want or need.
Because when we do that we complicate a lot of things where we think this is right for you this is correct for you but if we don't listen and hear that no this isn't right for me we're not going anywhere.
So thank you for sharing your voice and encouraging that kind of perspective in your school as well.
And hopefully you're showing the teachers and everyone else there hey this idea works.
You know just the brilliance of our students in our schools for all our students keep it up and keep going.
Some announcements for me.
Just want to give a shout out to the Urban Native Education Alliance.
They recently celebrated their 10 year anniversary.
Council member Deborah Juarez was there to present a signed proclamation kind of acknowledging their 10 years of providing a service for urban native youth and.
Also while I'm on this kind of idea the UW spring powwow will be April 7th and 8th at Hecate Pavilion.
If you have time that weekend stop by Hecate to enjoy some of the native song and dance and other festivities that will be going along there.
And keeping along with the University of Washington.
Director Nyland mentioned Dr. Emile Petrie in one of his visits.
The Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity is actually celebrating their 50th anniversary this year.
So for 50 years it provides support for our often underserved and marginalized communities.
So I want to give a shout out to them and what they do for our students.
And right now I'm just wish I can be at the Las Vegas because that's where the UW men's basketball tournament is being held right now and the Huskies are playing the Beavers.
Almost like going back to the football when I said we had to work our schedule around the football schedule for the University of Washington.
I also just kind of give back to the students encourage all our students to speak up.
You know I think that's what's going to help our community get better.
If you see someone being harassed intimidated bullied speak up and stand up for those that often feel too marginalized and let them know if you have a friend that starts harassing intimidating somebody else be the one that says hey that's not right.
That's you're not.
lifting yourself up any by putting someone else down.
Let's help raise everyone up and make sure people are doing good.
So again going back to Ellie just you know speak up and share what's going on.
You know think those kind of things can help prevent and get into the way of things that happen such as back in February 14th where someone may have felt intimidated or bullied and didn't feel of value at their school.
Someone could reach out to them so hopefully we can get more counselors and to help our students if they if and when they need it.
My next meeting will be March 24th and actually what's printed on the handouts I do need to make a correction it won't be at Lake City Public Library because they're undergoing a remodel so they moved me to Northgate library on that day and instead of being at 1030 my meeting will start at 3 o'clock.
So my next meeting will be March 24th at Northgate library from 3 to 430 and hopefully get that corrected online.
And attendees at my last meeting included former director Marty McLaren to talk about the African-American advisory council what they're doing.
So I got somewhat of an update from her that will hopefully get more update.
at our next board meeting.
Some people still sharing concerns with the Naviance software that we're going to be using to bring it online.
And just like a director Mack the early intervention and again I'm glad that they brought that up and we were able to move forward and come to a compromise that won't leave out families and students that need those services based upon what we thought would be a good idea.
Again we listened and changes were made that met the needs of our constituents.
And before I go just wanted to I was inspired I was reading applications for a summer program that I run and one of the students had in their quote that they learned from their father who was a migrant farm worker that said there are no complicated problems only complicated perspectives.
So as we try to solve these issues that we have at hand it may seem complicated but the more I guess I'll use complex perspectives that we have up here at the school board the better that we can solve those.
And also from those that are an audience and those sitting around the walls of this building right now.
We have some great minds here and all our perspectives will hopefully make our complicated problems go away faster and with good measure.
Katsia.
Director Geary or Director Patu.
First I want to say thank you to Ellie for sharing with us her thoughts and her ideas in terms of what's happening at her school and also what she's involved in.
Thank you.
I always think it's exciting when young people are actually really engaging in communities.
and really talking about what can they do to make a difference in what's happening in our community.
So thank you for being here tonight.
Also want to congratulate Rainier Beach High School for making it to state playoff even though we didn't win.
We got beat by Garfield but it's the fact that they were there.
And congratulations Garfield.
I thought that they played pretty well and they deserve the win.
So congratulations.
I actually was pretty much out of the loop all last week.
I was actually at home mourning for one of my actually my brother who actually had passed away this week.
And so I've been out of.
So I've been at home actually just.
I'm trying to think about all the things that could have and would have.
And but I'm actually excited to be here today to be able to continue on the excitement of actually being able to come and report in terms of what's happening out there in our community.
I have been able to touch base with some of my schools and pretty much just making sure that things are running in the right direction and then you know really been hearing a lot of good stories in terms of a lot of success that goes on in the southeast district.
So I'm very pleased.
Congratulate all the principals and administration are actually running our schools because it takes great management in order for our schools to continue on and to provide all our kids the education that they deserve.
So thank you for all the work that's going on at the schools and.
I'm actually wanted to thank some of my colleagues who actually have offered their condolence in terms of what I'm going through right now.
But I actually it's good to be here today and be able to share you know what's happening and I am really I I'm very fortunate to always be able to have the opportunity to work at a district to make a difference in the lives of our kids because I think that education has always been very important to me and I think that you know every little bit that we do in terms of making a difference for our kids is the reason why we're all here.
So thank you.
And I think that's all I have to say.
Of course our condolences.
So thank you Ellie for coming.
I won't repeat everything.
We'd love to hear your voice and we'd love to hear the voices of all of our students here at board and I know it's always one of the audience's favorite moments as well.
And one of the things you talked about is an idea that I've been reading about more lately and I and I hope it's one that spreads and that is the idea of taking that moment to make space for voices.
and allowing some student directed times within the educational environment.
And that can be as simple as letting kids talk about what they want to see on the walls of their classroom and letting them draw the pictures of the people that they want to be their inspiration as opposed to coming into a classroom that's already been preordained by history and what everybody thinks should be on there.
And so I think that corresponds a lot with what's happening at Nova and that's your experience.
And so I hope that you continue to tell that story and create energy around that idea on behalf of your fellow students at Nova but for every student in all of our schools that that's a really important idea that generates a lot of enthusiasm for education and so feel free to share that idea with anybody who wants to hear it and you and once you guys at Nova have that dialed down take it on the road and spread that enthusiasm.
So thank you.
And I'm trying to do my work around that as well so I've been spending Mondays having lunch with Eckstein middle schoolers.
I feel like that is a great place where in my district a lot of people come in and then you know will go out again but a lot of my constituents students end up at Eckstein and it has been a pleasure because I see the work that we hear about here in action.
And while I don't think it is currently up on the wall I wouldn't doubt if one day it is.
Principal Sturck has created a lot of enthusiasm around MTSS And I see that in the teachers lunchroom where they have the tools and the opportunity to regularly talk about all of their students as groups.
I talked to the teachers about that work.
They felt it was very supportive for them.
They thought it was great for their students.
In the lunchroom I sit down with students and I ask them if there are people there that they can identify that care about them.
And I have to say I didn't I have yet to meet her because she holds a class at the end of the day.
But Ms. Evans is apparently a rock star because it didn't matter who it was.
When I said is there somebody who cares about you about 50 percent of the time Ms. Evans was the voice that they said.
So Ms. Evans wherever you are thank you for your work on behalf of those Eckstein Middle School kids.
They love you.
And then I want to think I saw Dr. Brent Jones walk out and I wanted to take this moment to say that we talked about Eckstein middle school and he offered to continue what he is doing which is sort of a EOG listening tour with students to go in and talk about a little bit about the work that we're doing here regarding closing the gap but then taking the time to listen to those students about what they need their education to look like.
And I mentioned that to principal Sturck and she said we would love to have Dr. Jones come.
So hopefully we'll be getting that going.
Today Director DeWolf and I met with our city council members Lorena Gonzalez and Rob Johnson just to pretty much talk about how we the board and city council can work together to plan for the future.
We have some big voter asks coming up.
and we want to make sure that we are coordinating so that taxpayer dollars can be put to good use to meet the many educational needs that have been identified in our city from preschool up to the Seattle promise and how we can work.
There's so much exciting work that's happening I think around preschool we talk about that and I know I see a lot of people in the audience here today that want to talk about preschool.
And then there's a lot of work that I know Director Burke is spearheading with Caleb Perkins around how are we braiding career technical education for our kids futures so that they can start in high school to explore pathways into the future.
And we need to be sharing that exciting work with our city because our city takes great interest in our what we are doing and wants to support us.
And so I was very.
pleased to hear their invitation to continue to sit down with us to talk with us to invite us to their meetings around education.
We invited them to our meetings around education and so hopefully we will all be taking those opportunities and coordinating to make sure that we're we're doing the best job we can.
And then finally I've been continuing to have my Tuesday morning coffees at Zoka on Blakely behind the U village.
I find that that is just an easy way for me to meet with people and I get a variety of people coming through including some recent visitors again on the preschool issue so we'll hear more about that I think and have more comments about that a little later.
ADA accessibility at Bryant is another frequent topic.
I hear a number of variety of issues around special education and how we can make those services better in the district.
So I'm going to continue to do that.
It's Tuesdays 8 to 930 at Zoka.
If that day or time is really inconvenient for people then please shoot me an email.
I I'm happy to take some time to talk with somebody on the phone.
I just find that with my children's complicated weekend scheduling that the weekend meetings end up becoming very difficult and I often sit alone because I know everybody else is running their kids around.
So I will make myself available if somebody needs to at a different time.
But I hope to see you there.
It's really fun.
A lot of people show up really concerned about education caring about education and like to talk with each other.
So thank you everybody.
OK I'm up I'm going to make it short so we can take a short break before public testimony starts at 530. My community meetings are at High Point library April 7th 3 to 5 April 28 3 to 5 Delridge library April excuse me May 23 Delridge library 3 to 5 1 in 3 chance of lasagna.
OK.
Couple of other reminders.
Task force on enrollment.
That closes March 19th.
If you're interested in being a part of the solution and being heard.
Go to the website sign up follow the instructions.
I saw somewhere and neglected to write it down and I don't see it on our opening screen and perhaps we can.
Raise its visibility a dual language task force meeting coming up.
And get that out A to the board and B on the opening screen or on the calendar because that's an issue of of great interest to folks.
Tomorrow evening 630 to 730 Chief Sealth International High School Mayor Durkin will be presenting on anti-violence issues.
We will be invited and I believe that our resolution was duly noted and I cannot say again how extraordinarily proud I am of our nimbleness in putting together a resolution we can all stand behind of the collaboration and the input of my fellow colleagues and of the staff that helped us push it out there loud and proud.
And on that note we need to see everybody At the March for life on March 24th 10 a.m.
Cal Anderson Park.
We will have Seattle school district banners.
Wear your T-shirts.
Let's.
Let's keep up the effort.
Banning bump stocks is a lovely thing but there is so much more to be done.
And moreover it's not going to happen in the 24 hours before the legislature adjourns.
I remind folks McCleary has not solved our problems.
We have nine nurses for 54000 students.
We have counseling ratios of 400 to 1 in our high schools.
Not acceptable.
And these issues are all extraordinarily interrelated.
The other issue I want to put you on your calendar March 29th is a superintendent search public forum right here 5 to 8 15. We're working hard and we are listening and you know our e-mails addresses and or you can send questions to the board office as well.
One other piece of legislation that I saw go by and I don't know the status but I think of huge interest is dyslexia screening for our K 5 students.
However.
If it is yet another unfunded mandate it will just cause us more trouble.
It's not to say that it's not important but when we pass bills we need to put money attached to them because there's not enough to go around.
And with that we'll take a short break of four to five minutes and come back for stretch.