January 8th 2020 regular board meeting.
As we begin this meeting our board would like to recognize and honor the first peoples of the Puget Sound territories by acknowledging that we are on the land of the Coast Salish tribes.
I would also like to welcome Tierre Monroe-Jones who is joining us on the dais tonight.
He's from Interagency Academy.
Tierre will have a chance to give comments later in the evening.
Ms. Loffelman roll call please.
Director Harris aye here Director Hampson here Director Hersey here Director Mack here Director Rankin here Director Rivera-Smith here Director DeWolf here.
For those who would prefer or are able please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Is my extreme pleasure to welcome students from Catherine Blaine K through 8 who will perform for us tonight.
So I would like to invite directors to join me in the audience for this performance.
you ♪ ♪ ¶ ¶ you you Okay.
you
Thank you very much.
If I could just ask you to introduce yourself how long you've been with the district and then just have the.
Microphone pass around and students if you could let us know your age excuse me what your name is and what grade you're in.
And.
Go from there.
I'm Nathaniel Oxford and I've been teaching at Catherine Blaine for five years.
I work.
In.
I have two middle school classes and then also.
Teach.
Elementary instrumental at six.
Elementary schools.
So I'm going to pass the.
Mic around just tell us your first name and what was the other question instrument.
Yeah.
Oh.
OK.
Grade.
OK.
Name and grade first name and grade.
I'm Mia and I'm in 8th grade.
I'm Audrey and I'm in 7th grade.
I'm Ethan and I'm in 7th grade.
I'm Lucy and I'm in 8th grade.
I'm Justine and I'm in 8th grade.
Samuel I'm in 8th grade.
I'm Piper and I'm in 7th grade.
I'm Kent and I'm in 7th grade.
I'm Hayden I'm in 8th grade.
I'm David and I'm in 8th grade.
I'm Mirabelle and I'm in 8th grade.
I'm Maya and I'm in 7th grade.
I'm Kevin and I'm in 7th grade.
I'm Itzel and I'm in 7th grade.
Thank you all so much.
We can just give them a please just another round of applause.
I know you two sit next to each other.
Might be a poor decision.
Thank you once again to our students from Catherine Blaine K through 8 for that performance.
I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Juneau for her comments and for the annual financial report per board policy number 0 6 0 3 0.
Thank you President DeWolf.
First welcome back and Happy New Year to the directors and everyone.
Our regulars in the room.
I know we are going to do even greater things in partnership this year and I'm really just looking forward to it.
I hope that you all received your badges in your inbox and those are for you to wear when you are at your events and out in public to represent SPS.
First I'm just going to turn it over to Chief Berge to provide the annual financial report per board policy 60 30.
Sorry I think I clicked.
So the report that we're going to see tonight is required for us to do in January but it really is a repeat of much of what we discussed at the last budget work session.
So we'll go quickly through it.
It is going to be a repeat for board members.
So this is our required report for the 18-19 school year.
You'll recall that our school year ends August 31 and we are required to have our reporting into OSPI in November and then they actually just publish this information either in late December or early January.
So the same information.
Happy New Year.
I don't know who is in charge of technology.
And the ASB fund.
So as President DeWolf mentioned we do have board policy 6030 that requires an annual financial report to the board.
Our business and finance office does also make additional monthly financial reports to the Audit and Finance Committee as a standing item.
And there is our annual financial report is called the F 196 and that is the state mandated report that conforms to state requirements.
So I'm going to go quickly through I'm going to note a couple of things on this slide.
So you can see that we had began the year the first column is the adopted budget and then we show what the actual year to date is.
So to.
Data points that I'll pull forward to mention on our revenues we had budgeted two point eight million dollars more in revenue than we actually received.
And that really was a result of our enrollment coming in lower than we had actually anticipated.
But I would say that our projection is within ninety nine percent of what we had budgeted.
As.
Then moving to our total expenditures.
So our expenditures grew by 100 million dollars.
From the prior year.
To 18 19. Mostly as a result of increased funding and our increased.
Labor costs.
You'll notice that we did underspend our budget so our actual expenditures are 41.7 million dollars lower than what we budgeted.
You'll recall that we do budget.
Capacity.
Each year.
So we plan for an additional.
We put twenty six million dollars more of authority in our expenditure budget that we don't have.
For capacity.
So we don't have a spend plan.
It's for if we get extra grants extra enrollment unanticipated funding from the state something like that.
If you take the twenty six million dollars that we had budgeted for capacity.
Out of the forty one point seven million dollars.
I don't know if this.
Out of the forty one point seven million dollars.
That leaves about 16 million dollars underspent.
So we actually ended up spending about 98 percent of what we'd budgeted as well.
So I want to.
Have a shout out to my staff.
On the budgeting side and on the accounting side they're doing a great job for us.
You can see our revenues compared from the prior year to the year we disclosed.
So the major differences show that.
State policy change.
Between lowering local levy authority.
So.
Levy authority went from 19 percent in the prior year to 26 percent of our revenues or from 26 percent I should say to 19 percent.
And as that offset the state dollars grew from 46 percent of our revenue to 52 percent of our revenue.
So that is the direct result of that levy swap or that change in funding structure that the state passed and everything else is pretty lined up with previous years.
This shows this in a chart.
Same information just in a chart.
We move on to the general fund expenditures compared to the prior year.
We line up very tightly how we spend our money year to year.
So we have.
The majority of our salaries so the prior year in 17 18 84.4 percent which is very typical for school districts was spent on salaries and benefits 84.7 percent of our total expenditures spent on salaries and benefits in 18 19. uh...
same information included on the chart if you're more visual and then uh...
we look at fund balance we've gone over this quite a bit uh...
at the budget work sessions This lines up from again this is the previous year 17 18 numbers to 18 19. You can see that the big difference is sitting right here in the assigned fund balance.
And as you recall that really that detail is on the next page.
And what you recall us talking about previously and really planning for as a district is we had been saving.
Money that we had not anticipated getting and putting it towards future years to kind of balance out that one time increase in additional local levy revenues where they kept the local levy number high through 2018 and then we're decreasing it after that.
That would wrap up the general fund.
We'd move to the capital projects fund capital projects fund really ebbs and flows.
We we estimate what we're going to spend based on how our projects go.
Sometimes we move ahead in projects sometimes we fall behind in certain projects.
But what we don't want to have is is expenditures where we have no capacity or more no authority to spend.
So you can see where we are budgeting.
We budgeted for about three hundred and three million dollars.
We ended up spending about two hundred and two million dollars on those expenditures in those projects.
It really is a timing issue though when it comes down to the capital projects fund.
And in the debt service fund we have one thing that goes to the debt service fund.
It's the repayment of our John Stanford.
Bonds.
And so the activity in the debt service fund for our district is very low.
We're very lucky.
We unlike other districts we have very little debt that we incur.
All of our capital projects are through levy versus bonds.
And finally we have the student body fund.
This is really driven by our students.
They set our budgets so they decide what they're going to fundraise what their revenues are going to be from ASB card sales activities clubs athletic events and then what they are budgeting to spend.
So this is really student driven.
And that would conclude my remarks.
Thank you Chief Berge.
Mr. President I have a few other things.
Just a quick immunization record update.
In September there were thousands of families that we had to notify about the new state law to provide updated immunization records or to be excluded from school because of the hard work of our school nurses and health services team and school staff.
We only had to exclude less than 1 percent of our students today and that is I think really a good success story.
That is fewer than five hundred students.
In fact the latest number is four hundred and seventy six.
And so you think of that number and in the big scheme of things and it's just very heroic efforts.
It was a gigantic team lift and I'm so so so appreciative of Sammy and Pat for their leadership in this work.
I've heard stories like professor or not professor principal Kane at Aki actually called every family.
that Aki Kurose the staff at Denny went out on the weekend to track down those families who had not provided those immunization records and then they ended up I think with just a handful of 0 0 at Denny that needed to be excluded today.
And so there were just heroic efforts that happened across this district and it just kind of heartens me to know that when we are all putting our oars in the water at the same time the kinds of things that we can get done and it just goes to prove that we have fantastic staff who really care about making sure students are getting their instructional time.
As you all know as well student safety is a top priority.
And we are committed to taking care of each other and our students and even in our current national instability Seattle Public Schools is committed to building school communities where all students families and staff are safe respected and engaged.
Right now we must be particularly mindful of students and families affected by the U.S.
Iran issues.
We understand that the current state of affairs may result in a heightened sense of anxiety and fear.
And I just want to make clear that our commitment to the well-being of each and every student is stronger than ever.
Also most of you know that the first day of school is a big deal for people across our district and Seattle Public Schools has for the past few years many years had a start of school date after Labor Day.
As a result of our recent bargain with Seattle Education Association The 2020 21 school year will likely be on September 2nd before Labor Day pending board approval at the end of the month.
So it's important for families to be able to plan.
And so we're trying to push out that news as broad as possible.
And so your assistance with that effort I think is very appreciated.
Finally I think it's important for the board to know that our staff are working to find ways to refocus our efforts and decision making on students of color furthest from educational justice in our everyday work.
These efforts are often not broad sweeping initiatives but they happen as we do our daily work.
It's the small things that add up to the big changes over time.
And I just want to give one example of that work.
I need to give a shout out to our curriculum assessment and instruction team and the high school readiness team for their work to undo some of the.
Legacy course prerequisites that have kept our students from educational just furthest from educational justice specifically black boys from participating in some of our high school courses.
They went through every course offering and eliminated over 200 prerequisites in order to open access and reduce barriers to students.
Students should be able to access courses that they are ready for without having to jump through those regulatory hoops.
This was a huge undertaking and another step toward becoming a more anti-racist system.
And I just want to thank Chief DeBacker and Executive Director Perkins for leading this work.
I think it is those small movements that are a lot of work but make a huge difference for students in our schools.
As usual I start out the PowerPoint with our strategic plan priorities that blueprint to make all of this happen.
These this is what we have launched.
Just a reminder third grade reading safe and welcoming schools predictable consistent operations has transportation lifted and then our culturally responsive workforce priority is working on professional practice.
And I guess just to add on to our staff accolades I want to take a minute to thank the SEB team from H.R.
or human resources including Chief Codd and Chief Berge who were often found in the computer lab helping helping our staff get registered for their insurance.
This team worked super hard to make sure our 8000 employees were educated about the new benefit changes and were then enrolled in a new health insurance programs.
During the enrollment period the HR customer service and compensation and benefits team fielded thousands of calls emails and drop in questions in addition to organizing and hosting information system or sessions in the computer labs for three four weeks.
At the midpoint of enrollment this team realized that less than 40 percent of staff had yet to log in to make their benefit selection and doubled and tripled their efforts to help make sure people had the information and resources needed for this important state mandated change.
So thank you for your time and effort running reports calling and emailing individuals providing one to one assistance with the process including after hours and on weekends.
Thanks to you nearly 98 percent of our staff took the important actions needed to get signed up for health care coverage.
Again another huge lift by our staff and we're just so lucky to have them supporting us and our employees and just want to give a thank you as well to them.
Tier 1 behavior supports or what we know as PBIS is evident in all of the schools that I visit from pre-K to high school.
I was recently at West Seattle Elementary and they use these essential learning skills.
Each month they have a different focus and December's focus was stamina.
This student is working on his writing stamina.
He wrote for seven minutes and did not want to stop when it was time to return to the circle.
Staff there have built strong bonds with the Somali community which make up the majority of that school.
To better understand students staff engaged in the Somali history lesson taught by a community member the day before my visit.
West Seattle Elementary has five family advocates that work as ambassadors in the community for their school and as a result the community has a great deal of trust with the staff at West Seattle Elementary.
Community is so important for staff and students at Olympic Hills.
Thank you Director Rankin for coming on that visit as well.
Staff are giving up a professional development room there to create a family resource center.
They are meeting with affinity groups to determine the design of that room.
Each week Principal DeBell sends robocalls in five languages to keep families up to date on school happenings.
These two classrooms of kindergartners are working together on reading and writing as well as social emotional learning.
Students use turn in talks to work in collaboration.
One student said to another student who was in her space.
Think about your body space please.
Director Hampson.
Keep in mind she was five and that was her response to a young man in her space.
We as adults can learn so much from these young leaders.
Did you know that West Seattle Elementary outperforms the district for black students in English language arts and math.
It's true.
Fifty five point five percent of their black students met or exceeded standard versus the district's thirty eight point three percent.
This STR Seattle teacher residency rock star teacher is partially responsible for this success.
Almost all of his students meet or exceed standard on the smarter balanced assessment every year.
After a few minutes in his classroom I learned why he is so thoughtful and so purposeful with each instructional move and learning time is super important in his room.
And that huge bulletin board that lines the hallway shows sets the standard that all West Seattle elementary scholars will read.
These kindergartners at Olympic Hills are working on their reading and writing skills.
This class is going to different stations to build their expertise.
You can see the young student on the left is not buying my story.
So I was telling him a story and he covered his eyes he did not believe what I was giving him.
This anchor chart on the right has the skills the students are mastering including punctuation upper and lower case and writing sentences.
Keep in mind again that these are five and six year old students.
We have very impressive learners in Seattle Public Schools.
The one thing that stands out with these two schools is that everything is done with intention and attention to detail.
These staff under these great leaders are laser focused on community and literacy.
Every instructional move lesson and conversation with students and families is done with purpose.
As a result they continue to be district leaders at serving students and family furthest from educational justice particularly our African-American boys.
Both West Seattle Elementary and Olympic Hills are recipients of several Seattle teacher residency teachers because they have grown so much over the last few years including there are 11 at West Seattle Elementary in the last four years.
As a result they have teachers grounded in racial equity and anti-racist practices.
Staff at both of these schools are leaders in the building.
They are incredibly focused on student data in the top picture.
The West Seattle Elementary MTSS team uses cards to represent each student with a student's picture and academic levels.
The cards move between levels as students grow.
The Olympic Hills team used Smarter Balanced data to focus to refocus their practices on Tier 1 instruction.
As a result of their intentional work they improved every score on the spring 2019 Smarter Balanced assessment.
A huge thank you to the great leaders at these schools.
As mentioned earlier young scholars at West Hill Elementary are working on their writing stamina.
The class wrote a story about a location in their school had to be very descriptive.
The neon paper on their desk has their current reading level their reading goal for the month and their plan to reach each goal.
Each student enthusiastically can explain all of this data and they were so excited to share that they usually reach their goal every month.
Everything these students do at West Seattle Elementary is intentional and work toward their goal.
I just want to thank Principal Conyers McCowan and her team.
This concludes these comments.
So thank you.
President DeWolf I'm not quite done yet.
All right.
It is board recognition month which you have now your badges and you have some flowers.
So by proclamation of Governor Jay Inslee January is school board recognition month.
I would like to take a moment to recognize the work of our elected school board directors.
They selflessly give countless hours time and energy and support of ensuring our public schools are high quality and high performing for Seattle's youth.
School board directors are charged with making decisions that are often difficult and require sifting through tremendous amounts of information.
They also carry the responsibility of developing a vision that will guide Seattle Public Schools for years to come and directly impacts the health of our entire community and our region.
It is a truly awesome responsibility one that each of them take very seriously.
I am grateful that these dedicated individuals have committed their wisdom and time away.
They'll pay for batteries in the future.
I'm grateful that these dedicated individuals have committed their wisdom and time away from loved ones friends and family.
This month we are encouraging members of our community to thank a school board member.
Thank them for volunteering their time and for playing a critical civic role that helps strengthen public education and in effect our democratic society.
I hope those watching tonight and our supporters in the audience help me and celebrate celebrating our board directors and thanking them for their service.
I also just want to read the governor's proclamation and officially recognize school board recognition month.
Whereas the mission of Washington's public school system is to assure that all students achieve at high levels and possess the knowledge and skills to be responsible citizens of a democratic society who enjoy productive and satisfying lives.
And whereas Montana's 295 locally elected school boards and nine elected educational service district boards are the core of the public education governance system in our state.
And whereas the districts and regions they lead serve more than one million students have a combined annual budget of over 15 billion dollars and employ approximately 120000 people.
And whereas school directors play a crucial role.
and promoting student learning and achievement by creating a vision establishing policies and budgets and setting clear standards of accountability for all involved.
And whereas school directors are directly accountable to the citizens in their districts and regions.
Serving as a vital link between members of their community and their schools and whereas school directors and educational service districts provide a passionate voice of advocacy for public schools and the welfare of schoolchildren and whereas it is appropriate to recognize school directors as outstanding volunteers and champions for public education.
Now therefore he Jay Inslee governor of the state of Washington does hereby proclaim January 2020 as school board recognition month in Washington and encourages all people in our state to join him in this special observance.
I just want to personally thank all of you for your service for the work that we're about to embark on.
I'm super excited to work with you and to serve with you as leadership of this district.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you Superintendent Juneau.
Thank you for these gifts.
Really really grateful.
I would now like to invite board directors to share any of the work they're doing within their committees or liaison work they would like to report at this time.
I just want to ask folks to please keep your comments brief and focused squarely on the the important stuff because we have a lot to get through if you can imagine that.
So I know that we have probably I think Director Mack I think you had brought something from if you'd like to start.
Good evening.
I hope everyone had a great break.
I actually it was nice to have a couple weeks off.
So happy new year.
First I did want to share.
I'm excited that Director Hersey is taking on the legislative rep role for the.
For our board.
I still sit on the WSSDA legislative committee so I got to have two days of.
Legislative Committee meetings for WSSDA in a federal way in your district where we meet with all of the folks from across the state to to plan for the statewide organization around legislative advocacy for the school board association.
The legislative conference is coming up which I hope that you can attend on the 9th and 10th.
I will be going.
I believe JoLynn will be going.
It's a joint conference of.
The superintendent association the school board association and the business official association and then we also meet with legislators on the Hill and WSSDA has and I shared this with you all has put together the legislative priorities.
This is based on what we voted on as a state.
Committee at legislative assembly.
And it's put into three main positions.
One help us keep our students safe and support their needs to give us the staff we need to serve our students.
Three help us afford the insurance that our staff deserve.
And these things these three things align really closely with our own legislative agenda that we adopted.
So this is a nice little handout to have and then there's another handout that WSSDA put together kind of describing what WSSDA is about.
So I just wanted to share that with all of you and invite if if anyone else can make it to that conference and go to the legislative meetings on the Hill that'd be excellent.
And secondarily for operations committee.
Grateful to be continuing to chair that we had a change in committee assignments and I'm continuing on.
which is great and I'm excited to continue that work.
We didn't have a meeting since the last board meeting so I won't report out on that but we do have our meeting tomorrow next door at 430 and it looks like a short agenda but I'm sure it won't be short.
We tend to talk a lot.
We're going to be reviewing one board action report around mobile structures.
And then we're going to be talking about hopefully final revisions for our policy 6900 and 6901 which are facilities planning related.
And getting updates about the advisory committees that we're spinning up one that's already going this that the school and community workforce students and community workforce task force will get an update on how that work is going as well as the capacity enrollment and facilities master planning task force.
I understand that we have we did get about 32 applicants for the 20 slots so I'm very excited that that looks like we will have a good group of folks going forward and I'm looking forward to the meeting tomorrow.
Thank you Director Mack.
Anybody else have any updates from their committees or liaison roles.
I know we obviously had our last meeting and then a break so there's a big chunk of time.
Director Hersey.
Thank you.
As Director Mack mentioned I will be taking on the responsibility of the legislative liaison.
That's a lot of L's the legislative liaison position for the board.
Session starts next week on January the 13th.
So we will have a more robust update then.
But please stay tuned.
As you probably heard it's going to be a short session but that doesn't mean that we are going to work any less hard.
So we are excited to partner and continue to work very closely with our legislators throughout the city in the interest of doing what's right for kids.
Thanks.
Thank you Director Hersey.
All right.
Well again I would like to welcome Tier Monroe Jones.
Tier is a 12th grader at Interagency Academy and participates in football and track and field at Garfield High School.
I also want to make sure we mention that you volunteer for Mary's Place and you're in the process of applying to university to pursue a business degree in the fall.
So I don't want to give too much of your story away after that intro so I'm going to turn it over to you.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
My name is Teair.
I was born and raised in Seattle Washington with a single mother of four.
I have three sisters which means I was the only boy in the house which was kind of hard because I'm always physical.
Growing up in Seattle.
In the community school was hard for me because at a young age in elementary I felt like I didn't get that teacher that teacher support that I needed.
I always felt like I got pushed away or I got thought of last and which was kind of hard which gave me that mindset that school wasn't worth it.
Maybe I should get older and do something else besides go to school until middle school until I actually got a chance to meet a teacher that actually shared that she showed that she cared about us.
And ever since then I've always been focused until high school high school freshman year.
I ended up hanging out with the wrong crowd.
So my grades dropped.
I had to trans — I had to switch over to an older interagency.
And after that it was tough because it's not what I expected.
You know classes are smaller and it's just not what a lot of people do.
You don't want you don't want to take 10 steps backwards.
which I end up having to do and after that switch into interagency it was tough.
Let me slow down.
It was tough switch to interagency actually but it actually helped a lot.
Got my grades up.
I got the chance to hear a lot of people's stories since I go to Alder.
So I go to Alder as a juvenile.
And when I tell people that it's a juvenile the first thing since it's at a juvenile.
So when I tell people it's at a juvenile the first thing that they think of oh you go to a jail school.
And like people think less about the school but until like you walk into the building and you see everybody's story you actually notice that everybody is just like all the other high school kids.
It's just that it's a smaller classroom.
It's just the location.
Alders taught me a lot is actually build character.
They show passion love.
They make you feel at home.
It's your second home.
The teachers really do care about you and like they help you think about multiple ways to get to solve a problem.
Besides.
This is a lot.
The teachers help you a lot.
I need a minute.
Can we go back.
I want to give you some space and just let me know when you're just give me a little.
Bring you back up.
But.
Before we kind of bridge to the next section I think if I could just share anything and this is just to say we are a district of 53000 different stories and I am really grateful to you for sharing yours today.
It makes our work better and it makes sure we're still connected to students who are ultimate the person we're ultimately trying to serve the most.
So thank you for sharing.
what you have and those words really mean a lot.
So you are absolutely a part of our board today so participate as you'd like and are able.
We have now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.
So may I have a motion for the consent agenda.
I move approval of the consent agenda.
Do I have a second.
Second.
Thank you.
Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.
Do any directors have items they would like to remove from the consent agenda.
Director Rivera-Smith Is this on.
I would like to remove the approval of amendment to add cycling and pedestrian safety education for 6th 7th and 8th graders Seattle Department of Transportation.
Let's go bike and pedestrian safety education program.
We need we.
If the vice president would like to read a new motion for the amended consent agenda that would be where we'd go from here.
I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.
Thank you Director Harris.
All right.
All those in favor of moving the consent agenda as amended.
Please vote by saying aye.
All those opposed.
Hear not hearing none.
All right.
That that is approved.
I'd actually like us to just can we just talk about this issue now.
That'd be OK.
So I would like to invite the Chief DeBacker up to the podium for any updates because I know this was updated since introduction and thank you Director Rivera-Smith for taking us on.
Good evening and you can see that Diane DeBacker chief academic officer.
I've also asked Greg Narber to be with us our chief legal counsel because I think many of the questions center around whether it was a grant or not.
And then also we're very pleased to have Lori Dunn with us and Lori Dunn.
is a program manager for health and physical education and oversees this program and knows it inside out.
So the bulk of the changes that were made to the BAR are around the wording of whether or not it was a grant.
Director Mack asked those questions at introduction.
We this is not a grant.
This is money that flows directly through us from the Department of Transportation.
And it goes straight to Cascade Bicycle Club in order to do this program.
So what we have done to amend the BAR or to change the wording in the BAR is we've taken out any reference to this being a grant.
Chief Narver any extra there.
Those are the only changes that were made.
I think there when the BAR came up for introduction in December the sections about policy implications and the box that were checked both indicated the policy 61 14 on acceptance of grants was implicated as Chief DeBacker said because this money is a pass through doesn't isn't something that the district applied for doesn't affect the ultimate bottom line on the district's budget.
We felt that the definitions of grant or revenue producing contracts that are in policy 61 14 didn't apply.
And so the references to that policy were removed from the BAR.
That's the only only amendment from the version that you saw in December.
So now I'd like to open the floor for any director comments questions or concerns.
Director Rivera — Smith.
Yeah thank you.
So I was still wondering so thank you for clarifying that to start with.
I also had questions though just for clarification about the actual program itself.
I'm trying to gauge because this is an amendment to something that's already been happening to a program.
Which years has the program actually ran in our schools.
If with permission President DeWolf can Lori Dunn respond to that question.
Yes.
Thank you.
Good evening directors.
The program actually with the Let's Go started in 2015. The program in limitation has been around for about the last 20 years.
But with the 2015 start of Let's Go in the updated curriculum every single third fourth and fifth grader has received the bike and pedestrian safety.
We added a special needs component with working with another community partner through Cascade to make sure that our students that have IEPs that need the extra support in our classrooms also have that.
So every single student since 2015.
That's what I was trying to clarify.
So assuming that it has run for those years and this will now expand it to grades 5 through 8. Are our students essentially taking it for three weeks every year for six years.
And is that.
No no no.
Because they have taken it in third fourth fifth and now it's going to be 6 7 8. Right.
In grades 3 4 and 5 we have a three week.
time that the bikes are at the particular schools based on individual school needs on when they have physical education because some students have physical education two times a week three times to make sure that learning happens.
And then at our middle schools are the way that their schedules are the students receive physical education every single day in grade 6 7 8. And so the bikes will be at those particular schools in that time.
when it fits into that individual school schedule.
So the flexibility is there for every student to receive that learning.
Are there any more questions.
Thank you.
And then I'm looking at so I saw that the this is as far as going through a racial equity analysis the program obviously you know the nature of it is equitable because it's helping students especially students who are more impacted by transportation needs.
can learn the skills they need for that.
Has the actual curriculum gone through any sort of racial equity analysis or tool because I mean that the program itself we can offer it is great but has the actual teachings curriculum that we're going through with the students has that is that shown to be you know is it culturally sensitive and has it been looked at.
Very good question.
In grade 3 4 and 5 when the curriculum was first introduced and created because it was very unique.
We are the only district in the country that actually is offering this type of a program for every single student with that equity lens.
So yes in grade 3 4 and 5 because that program has been established and we did a rollout as we rolled out the training for the teachers and in the schools.
We're planning on doing the same thing hopefully once you all have given your blessing.
Thank you.
Then last question I think.
So I went through the MOU and it says it shows that the funding for 2019 20 and 20 2021 is almost entirely in the pilot phase.
So do we anticipate future funding to implement it beyond the fall of 2021.
Right now once hopefully the approval happens we will pilot for individual schools and working with the Seattle Department of Transportation and the teachers that have volunteered to try and pilot with our middle schools.
Then as we look at a rollout phase all to making sure in 2021 we have every single middle school on board that that time this current MOU MOA with our three organizations will have expired and over this next year creating a new MOU MOA after 2021.
So we do anticipate there'll be it'll continue in the refunding.
I certainly hope so.
Thank you.
Director Mack.
I just wanted to get a little bit of clarification on exactly what the dollars are funding.
Are we we're funding the training we're funding staff in actual classrooms or.
during recess to support students with bicycle safety.
What what are these dollars actually going towards.
The original dollars when we started in grade 3 4 and 5 the curriculum implementation the curriculum writing the teacher training which has been a huge rollout.
Eight fleets of bikes at our middle elementary were purchased.
And so we now own eight fleets of bikes.
The Cascade Bike Club owns the eight fleets of bikes and they pay.
We actually have an education director that picks up the bikes and delivers the bikes and works with our teachers to make sure that there's an ongoing professional development that the unit is taught with fidelity.
And so to establish the 3 4 and 5 program that funding opportunity was used to for curriculum for biking staff development.
Yeah.
I guess it is a very basic simple question and maybe it's not for you but I'm kind of curious why why the dollars have to come through the district instead of going straight to Cascade Bicycle Club from the SDOT.
I mean especially I mean if they own so they purchase bicycles we don't own them.
Right.
They maintain.
They made the curriculum.
They also all of this is happening.
They're doing all of this.
We're not actually doing it.
It's a pass through.
I'm just curious why it is that we have a pass through situation instead of just going direct.
For I can answer it on a sustainability level.
They actually part of our MOU MOA with maintaining the bikes to making sure that all students are using the same equipment going through the same lessons with fidelity and making sure then as we're working with our the other nonprofit that those bikes are then utilized for our students.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Director Hampson.
Just a final point of clarification on your note that it's not a grant per policy.
However it's still a source of revenue even if it's ultimately distributed through grants.
So how does it show up as a line item on our budget.
That would be a question for budget how it shows up.
It doesn't because it's passed through.
That's the reason we thought it didn't fit within 61 14. Whether it needs to show up first as a line item revenue and then expenditure is more an accounting budgeting term.
But in terms of applicability of the policy our view in legal was that 61 14 didn't apply.
Right.
I'm just clarifying that that's a legal answer not a fiscal answer.
That's I would be OK.
You should not listen to me for any fiscal.
OK.
I just want to make sure that that was clear.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
Any more comments questions or concerns.
All right seeing none Ms Shek roll call please.
Director Harris aye Director Hampson aye Director Hersey aye Director Mack aye Director Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director DeWolf aye.
This motion has passed unanimously.
Thank you and thank you for that update.
We do have about 16 minutes for board comments so I invite board directors who have any comments or any burning announcements you need to make about upcoming community meetings or anything else.
Please use this time before we have to do public comment at 530 on the dot.
Director Harris.
First big thanks to Lisa Rivera-Smith for taking care of my December community meeting.
I had oral surgery and was not fit to be in public I think is the nicest way to say it.
Appreciate you taking that on and I hope that you enjoyed your time in West Seattle.
I have heard from community members that they enjoyed meeting you for my next community meetings.
Third Saturday of the month January 25 3 to 5 Delridge library.
February 15 third Saturday of the month 3 to 5 West Seattle library.
It's in the basement.
They'll send you there March 21 3 to 5 High Point library.
I am excited about our happy new year.
I am a little angsty frankly about the very difficult decisions we have in front of us and I would ask our constituents to give us some space.
And give us some courtesy when corresponding with us because these are indeed very difficult decisions and people are extraordinarily passionate and we appreciate that our children are the most important thing most important people in our lives.
But we're working really hard and we're trying our very best to listen and we appreciate those courtesies.
Thank you.
Thanks Director Harris.
Other directors?
Director Hersey.
Thank you.
First off Happy New Year to everyone.
I hope everybody had a wonderful respite with their families.
I'm going to keep mine really quick.
I've got community meetings that are scheduled out from now until May.
I will be sharing those with the board office officially and then I will make the announcements of the official dates next meeting.
I've got two meetings one on a weekday and one on a weekend each month going forward.
We also have a really great opportunity coming up on January the 13th.
We are hosting a meeting.
We I mean as the district myself and community partners around CPI which stands for Crisis Prevention Institute.
Basically what that is is the event.
of where a situation needs to be deescalated or a restraint or hold needs to be used on a student.
This is stemming from an incident that took place at one of our middle schools earlier in the year and we in conjunction with community partners thought that it would be a good idea to have a meeting for folks to come and learn about what are the techniques and what are the strategies that we use to deescalate situations.
And there is going to be a Q&A portion at the end and also an opportunity where district staff will be sharing some ways to advocate for your child in the event of a restraint or an involuntary hold is used upon them.
So I really do view this as an opportunity for us to take our work outside of our schools and outside of the John Stanford Center and to really build learning and trust and accountability with our community.
So I hope that as many of you that can make it will plan to attend.
I know that President DeWolf is planning on joining.
If other board directors would like to attend we'd be more than happy to have you.
I think we just need to notice it.
But again that's going to be at the New Holly Community Center January 13th which is next Monday from 630 to 730 p.m.
Doors open at 6. So hope to see you there.
Thank you very much.
Happy New Year.
Thank you Director Hersey Director Rivera-Smith.
Thank you.
I would love to attend.
So we probably need to put a notice of possible quorum out or something in case anyone else wants to be there because it sounds like a great opportunity.
Thank you for bringing that to our attention.
I also enjoyed filling in for Director Harris at the community meeting.
That was a lot of fun.
I love going to West Seattle and going and getting some sweet bread.
So thank you for that.
I also had a community meeting.
I am on January 4th in my district and my next one is coming up on February February 4th.
I'm trying to do first Saturdays February 4th will be at the.
Green Lake Branch thank you February 1st.
Thank you.
I'm like looking at my screen here.
February 1st Saturday February 1st at the Green Lake Branch library.
March will have to be on Sunday because I overlapped with our board retreat.
So it is going to be on the first Sunday of that month.
I believe at the Greenwood library I couldn't find it real fast but.
They'll all be on the website and I look forward to seeing you there.
So it's great to hear from the community and I try to make it a safe space.
I don't want it to be loudest voices get all the time.
I want to find as many good as many opinions we can get in there.
It's more of a conversation style.
I don't really like this is weird for me talking to everybody.
I like conversations so.
I try not to talk to you too much.
I really want to have us go back and forth and have everybody feel heard and I hope that everybody has so far at the meetings I've done in this last you know we had a break here so I haven't had a whole lot going on but I have been hard at work working with actually Director Hersey here working on the Black Lives Matter at school.
resolution that's coming up here in February early February.
We want to make sure our district is recognizing that and appreciating that opportunity to have those conversations and also working on this.
We'll hear in a moment we worked on an amendment for a coming a tough BAR and anyways it's been great.
We're hard at work the new year.
I had a birthday.
Oh yeah I almost forgot.
Had a birthday.
That was fun.
I managed to only do two schoolwork email schoolwork phone calls that day.
Yeah there you are.
There was one right there.
But thank you for letting me have a kind of day off there.
And also it's official.
I've gotten confirmation from Ellie and the archives department that I am officially the first Hispanic board member for Seattle Public Schools.
So that's kind of neat.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
It's it's happy and sad that I'm the first really.
Wow.
But that's I wanted to make sure it was official so I wanted to check it out didn't want to claim that yet without knowing that that was in fact a true statement.
And I appreciate having that.
I hope to you know take the opportunity to just.
Be a be a voice for my community every community and know that this is really just the start.
This you know we're going to have many more I'm sure.
And I just wanted to actually like I said verify that before I claimed it as my own.
And thank you.
Director Rivera-Smith and honored to be on this board with you and just really grateful to have your representation.
Do we have any other directors that would like to share any comments or.
Anybody.
We have nine minutes.
It's good to see you all.
That's the translation I have not provided this spelling yet.
I've been instructed I need to make sure that I provide some written translations so that it can appear on the television so I will Hold hold back on the ho-chunk until I can be organized enough to provide that in advance.
So Happy New Year to everyone who celebrated it at that particular time or the solstice earlier in December.
And it was was very nice to have a break particularly after running a political campaign for the prior Six months.
I was grateful for that.
Grateful to help fellow board member Director Rankin welcome seven new puppies into this world.
That was definitely a highlight of my break.
Not relevant at all to board work but I think any time we can take time to recognize the cycle of life and all the cuteness that it provides it gives a boost to our spirits to come back and do hard work in a good way.
I'm really interested in terms of community meetings I do not plan to hold a consistent one location community meeting.
My my preference is to come out to you and I have gotten requests to come to school communities to community meetings.
And I will try to honor those requests whenever possible.
I think I'm also very interested in making sure that I get as much unique voice into my policymaking and I'm going to focus on trying to respond as much as as possible to voices that are in fact coming in as that I haven't heard from before that we haven't heard from before.
And to that end I do appreciate the the e-mails.
I don't know.
We have work to do definitely in terms of communication it is very difficult to not break or create a quorum in replying all and respond to your e-mails and so we've committed to working on a better system for that I'm committed to working on a better system for that but I am reading them.
So I'm seeing the e-mails I'd want it.
I am trying to when there are a lot related to one item to post them on my director Facebook page.
So I did provide background information about the Labor Day start date because I got a surprising number of e-mails about that and that so that I think is a good thorough explanation.
I didn't hear anything one way or the other from.
Carrie Campbell about whether I made any mistakes but it is a calendar.
First Wednesday of September as determined by the collective bargaining agreement and has been since the 2015 actually collective bargaining agreement.
We now know that three years out that two going forward so this year and next year the first Wednesday happens to fall before Labor Day.
That is.
New because it only happens twice.
In a 10 year period.
So I tried to provide all that explanation.
I think we're going to have some additional opportunity this month and this year to talk as a overall community about how we create more culturally responsive calendaring for our school district.
So if you're interested in having more conversation about that with me I would love to hear about that.
That's one example of how I'm trying to engage on particular topics and.
I will as a way to make it easier for folks I will put together some doodle polling that I will provide available on my Facebook page or to just email directly to you for people who are in communities who want me to come out and see you or find other ways to communicate.
And I think that's about it.
Oh and.
I just got the agenda for the Audit and Finance Committee which I'm now chairing.
So I can't.
We haven't had a meeting since last year.
That will be next Tuesday at 430. If you have any questions comments or concerns about that agenda once it's posted please let me know.
Thank you Director Hampson.
I think we should take a five minute break.
So the meeting is now recessed.
Tier would you like to add anything.
OK.
When we will reconvene the meeting at five thirty p.m.
on the dot.