School Board Meeting 3152017 Part 2

So thank you again to the students from ORCA K8 and South Shore K8 and we will now move on to the superintendent comments.

Thank you Dr. Nyland.

I'd like to start tonight with the proclamation for classified appreciation week.

Classified employees do an incredible amount of the work that we need to provide for support and education of our students.

Governor Jay Inslee signed a proclamation in January saying Whereas classified school employees are involved in nearly every aspect of education maintaining buildings and grounds, preparing meals, keeping school facilities clean and orderly, assisting in the classroom, performing and conducting research activities, providing information technology and media services, administrative support functions, safe transportation and a secure and healthy environment and many other specialized services.

Whereas these dedicated individuals deserve recognition and thanks for the outstanding work that they do for the state, their communities and the students enrolled in Washington's public schools.

Whereas there are nearly 60,000 classified school employees working with and helping students in Washington's schools and universities whereas classified school employees are instrumental in the state's responsibility to educate all students whereas by supporting the learning environment along with professors, teachers, parents, administrators and school boards Classified employees are crucial partners in our educational system.

Now therefore Jay Inslee as governor of the state of Washington proclaims March 13 through 17 as classified public school employee week and we certainly appreciate and thank all of our classified employees for the great work that they do.

This evening I want to share a little bit about the highlights for our smart goals our strategic plan.

Some of the good news from around the district and a little bit about visits that we've made to the community and opportunities for the community to be involved in schools.

I want to start with goal one which is educational excellence and equity.

Thank you to the board.

They met last week on March 8 to review the SMART goals five SMART goals that contribute to success of our strategic plan.

And the school board had asked specifically that for goal one and goal two which are around the academic success of our students that we continue to work on clarity of our goals, clarity of our strategies and clarity of the outcomes that we would be measuring.

And so thanks to an incredible amount of work by staff here at John Stanford center coordinating their efforts and their activities that information was presented to the board around what we will be providing to the board in June.

So the goal is to I guess become more coherent and aligned around those emerging practices that seem to make a difference for our schools.

We're really proud of the fact that we've gone from one positive outlier meaning that they not only are above the midpoint for the state but they're considerably above the midpoint for their demographic.

We've gone from one school to three schools to eight schools to I do need to get a correct count.

I'm saying more than a dozen.

I count 16 but I need to confirm that with our research department.

Meaning that our schools are doing great work as we know they are.

They're also stealing great ideas from each other and implementing those new and better ideas across the district.

So tonight we want to have the opportunity to hear from one of those positive outliers Cleveland STEM high school.

I have been privileged several times to do walkthroughs with them.

and to have the opportunity to see students, parents, teachers and the administrative staff engaged in those walkthroughs and know exactly what they are looking for, know some of the characteristics that make for successful teachers and then to have these hallway conversations about wow we saw this and we saw that and that was really good and one of the other things that they could try is And so they continue to steal good ideas from each other in classrooms daily and share those across the district.

So with that I'll invite Kelly Armacchi our executive director for supervision for Cleveland to introduce staff from Cleveland that we have here tonight.

Good evening everyone, Kelly Aramaki executive director for the Southeast region.

It is a privilege for me to introduce the Cleveland high school team.

Not to start in a negative space but in 2009 Cleveland was in the bottom 5% of the state in academic performance and graduation rates.

That year they only graduated about 50% of their students.

That's also the year that they applied for and received the federal school improvement grant.

Now eight years later there is a banner hanging up here on the wall in this room that shows that Cleveland has been named a school of distinction.

I think this is their second year in a row which basically means that they are now in the top 5% of the state in most improved schools which measures data across the last five years.

This year their graduation rate was 87.3% so they've almost made it to 90%.

This tremendous achievement can be attributed in part to the innovative vision and implementation of their award-winning stem program.

But more than that this achievement is due to the equity driven, compassionate, inspiring and as you will see in a second very humble leadership at Cleveland high school and the distinguished and equally inspiring and humble teaching and support staff.

I'm proud to introduce principal George Breland who has seen positive outlier gains at Cleveland for the past four years who will also introduce his team and share about the great work being done at Cleveland high school.

Thank you, thank you to Dr. Notting and the esteemed board.

Thank you for allowing us to brag on ourselves a little bit.

There will be a consistent theme that you will hear run through this whole presentation.

We will be short but brief and to the point.

but I want to actually introduce the team that makes the engine run.

So I have over here Mr. Ray Garcia Morales who is our assistant principal of the school of engineering design.

I have the fabulous Ms. Catherine Brown who is the principal of the school of life sciences.

I have corporal Mike Shaw he's our department head of science he's awesome and a veteran.

And last but not least Dr. Steve Pratt who is, he's awesome.

He's another science teacher but he does way more than his title.

So this is the Cleveland team.

that is represented.

What's going to happen is I'll say a few words and I'm going to step to the side and I'm kind of like the appetizer we will get to the meat in a minute and then we will be out of your way.

One thing that, there's many things that has driven this success as Kelly said but one thing that is constant is collaboration.

Collaboration is our culture at Cleveland.

Our systems are set up for adults and students to collaborate at all levels of our school organization.

The administrative team, we often make many decisions together and input from teacher staff and students and parents are valued and welcomed.

Teachers collaborate consistently through our PLCs that are designed to improve their own instructional pedagogy and improve students content knowledge.

Students learn how to collaborate through our project-based learning instructional platform which you will hear more about.

And hiring people at all levels who are willing and able to work together to reach a common goal permeates Cleveland's culture from adults to students.

So I just want to say we work together we hire people who believe that all students can learn.

if we are willing to teach and we listen to one another and we make decisions based on data and common sense.

And so we work together.

As I step to the side Ms. Brown will come up next and speak a little bit more in depth on how we got where we are currently.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I wonder if you can move to the next slide please.

We have a clicker of our own.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is some of the data that Mr. Aramaki was referencing and again that just kind of highlights the change in Cleveland.

We know that you wanted kind of a deep dive into one strategy to think about tonight and so we of course selected project based learning.

And I want to just briefly and you feel free to ask questions about this if you care to but I want to distinguish between project-based learning and the doing of projects.

Many of us perhaps especially parents might have some and even from our own schooling recollection of like being asked to make a diorama.

Or maybe we made our kids diorama perhaps.

That's perhaps what we might call doing a project.

Project based learning is where inquiry and authentic context and problem drive the instruction from start to finish.

And we're going to let of course our teachers are the best qualified to tell about how that looks in the classroom.

I'm just going to briefly talk to you, project-based learning can happen in all kinds of contexts but there are certain things that drive it.

And that I believe allowed Cleveland to truly transform into this instructional mode schoolwide.

Right?

Every teacher in our building is doing project-based learning and that takes a lot.

So some of the leadership moves that were made and supported by our district to our great gratitude that drive our PBL are a school schedule that allows for 80 minute classes.

This allows students to truly have that time to collaborate that you'll hear about in a moment and of course to truly inquire.

We have a one to one laptop program.

This means that you know students can look up a factual answer that fast that forces a teacher to set a more challenging a more rigorous task for a student.

restorative practices and our school culture of trust respect and responsibility we believe drive a lot of the skills that students need to really be effective in project based learning.

So I'm going to turn it over to Steve Pratt who's going to kind of take us inside a PBL classroom.

Hello fellow board thank you for having us.

If you take a look at the screen one of the questions that I want to, it's my sixth year here at Cleveland or actually my ninth year but my sixth year doing project based learning.

And when I'm asked why do project based learning right is this truly the silver bullet of education if you will?

I think for me it reminds me of this thing called the golden circle.

And the golden circle when they study history there was a TED talk actually on this and you can look it up.

where they said what drives true leadership and change of societies and things like that and it's not leaders who inspire the what and tell how to do it but really get to the why.

Why should we care about this?

And what I like about project-based learning is especially for me as a science teacher is that rather than letting students think of science as a dry discipline where it's for You know at the ivory tower, you're often a cubicle doing calculations, it gets kids to actually care and engage.

And especially for students who may come into my science classroom with many different motivations in terms of experiences they've had with science, it allows them to see science engaged and connected in the community in a really authentic context.

So it's not memorizing terms but applying them and making connections to their own life and so that's why it's I would say an engaging curriculum.

There's three things that when I think about supporting high school students in project based learning one of those is groups.

As we all know when we have a project whether it's working on our home or working on a larger school district project that involves groups of people.

And so especially with high school students I teach ninth graders.

I am a fan of structure.

One of the ways that I help structure this is we create actually group contracts and so students are in groups of three to four.

They have clear roles you have.

students who help learn the aspects of project management, time and deadlines, you have students who are kind of communication managers, you have students who are actually putting together physical models so they may be like an engineer, things like that.

And those clear roles and contracts really help students and it's something that starting from ninth grade I really try to reinforce and make sure that they know their role and they when there's a deadline that's coming they're not just letting themselves down but a group so it creates accountability.

Even today I had a breakout session in a group project where I took a group of students out who are the editors, they're creating a documentary and we talked about storyboarding and what makes a good film and so those breakout sessions work well because their project, their group can be working on one thing and then you can do kind of a breakout session with others.

For opportunity for individual and group learning what's nice is that students are assessed as a group but they're still assessed individually.

As their teacher I want to know individually how does every kid still meet the learning target that I'm trying to teach through the project but there's also some type of presentation or culmination at the end.

Similar to what Ms. Brown was talking about that it's not we're just doing projects I launch every unit with here's the task that we are going to be trying to do so that every lesson I do is embedded into whatever the project is so they can see oh this Newton's law connects to what we are doing here and vice versa.

The last thing is… is an interesting one.

I allow students to give feedback to each other.

So at the end of every project I assess their collaboration skills but before I jump in and give them the grade if you will I allow them to give feedback to each other.

Which can be sometimes a provocative exercise but a really good leadership skill for them to self-diagnose like hey you know like you didn't communicate very well and I want to give you some feedback on it.

So I usually have students give feedback in terms of grit, effort, communication and follow through on deadlines.

And so being able for a student to look at that and assess themselves I would say is a powerful tool not just for a high school student but for adults in general.

Here is an example on the screen of a project I actually have running right now in my classroom.

I have a partnership with bike works which is a nonprofit in Columbia City.

A lot of students have been there to get their flat tire repaired or whatever else but the project I'm doing with this is I'm teaching the students A lot about some physics concepts such as torque, friction, Newton's laws and how they affect not only riding a bike but the maintenance thereof.

So they are taking apart bearing systems, they have a volunteer that comes in from bike works and he teaches them how to overhaul grease so they are putting on gloves, they are getting their hands dirty.

And for a lot of these students like this is I mean I don't even have to like try and make it interesting I mean they are already engaged.

They are jumping in there, sometimes they question about like using the grease you know is it safe and all of that.

But they really like it and what's been cool is to see the authentic context and the connections that they are making between the discussion we had on Monday on friction and what causes it to oh we are trying to minimize the friction and what does that create in the bearing system.

So it's a way to embed and make learning more authentic.

Besides class projects we also do some larger kind of projects that are at the grade level and so for that I'm going to pass it over to the department head Mike Shaw who is going to talk about that.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, members of the board thank you for having us here at Cleveland.

I'm Mike Shaw the department head at Cleveland I've been teaching approximately five years.

So based on what Mr. Pratt has said we really want to stress the power that project based learning has to sort of connect to the students.

One of the things that we like about project based learning is that it really is a nice fit for next gen science standards which we had a meeting in our just yesterday about how that's going to look in the next three to five years.

The next gen science standards allow us to at every level there's eight sort of general practices for example the bike works itself allows us to wonderful modeling exercise where they're specifically modeling the ability to build these friction models with bearings.

So we like that PBL offers a very rich resource to allow really a dynamic really different sort of contextual sort of learning environments.

However it's not just about science for us.

Steve and I teach science and we are uniquely sort of versed in that.

But project based learning really crosses over to other disciplines.

It allows us to sort of hit cross cutting concepts that are also in next gen science standards for example.

Our other, and also it is also, pardon me, it also allows us to be very interdisciplinary so for example our humanities department is currently doing an Othello project.

This is a 10th grade band project.

It involves every 10th grader at Cleveland where they are, will actively prepare for and execute trials for the character Othello based on their reading and their support of that book.

So this idea of project based learning really sort of is lives in every class.

It may not live in every day of every class but in every sort of as an underlying theme in everything we do project based learning is there.

For example, one of the things we also like about project-based learning is that it is scalable.

It can be scaled up as the math department, I mean scaled down as the math department does.

They do complex instruction which allows them to do group work in a very personal sort of environment between just those three or four or five students.

It allows them to learn from each other but it can also be scaled up.

For example, we are currently, we have for several years now had a water project at Cleveland.

The water project is a 10th grade band project.

It includes all 10th graders.

From the science side we are responsible for the water science supporting for the water science.

The humanities department at the same time they will attack water global water issues such that when it comes time for June we will have every 10th grader at Cleveland will be preparing presentations and we will do this in the evening on I don't remember the date June late June where they will present these in a competition style in order to decide which of these projects will move forward to an action level.

That's the water project is our classic example because we have sort of possessed it for the longest however we are also simultaneously this year starting to plan for ninth grade band project that is the Chia project or cumulative health impacts and analysis.

We are partnering with the Institute for systems biology as well as the environment protection agency around a study conducted by Ms. Lynn Gould with the EPA and those community partners are working with us to develop a ninth grade band project centered around air.

So for example in the physical sciences they will attack air science but in the humanities they are going to attack the same sort of air issues but from the humanities via readings, they are choosing a dystopian air quality book right now that they will sort of use that to generate these action environments.

That's happening now.

How can we continue to push PBL for the future?

This year we were fortunate to be the recipients of 160,000 approximately dollars worth of biotech equipment from Quiagin and via our relationships and this actually evolved from the Chia project.

It is our intent to use that technology to begin our 11th grade band project which we We were beginning to sort of beta test the equipment this year, we will begin producing curriculum next year for this which will be an 11th grade bandwide project which will involve doing like bench level wet science with industry level equipment.

With that in mind are there any questions?

Peters I just want to say I love the presentation, I love the entry point that Kelly Aramaki provided in terms of the history and where it is now.

And this is just one more school that now I've got to visit, I've got to know.

I'd love to come see, sit in one of your classes, learn some stuff, talk geek with your students.

Brilliant thank you.

Director Patu.

I just want to say congratulations.

You guys have come a long way and it's all because of the work you know how you all work together and make it fit so that way the kids can actually get the benefit of having the best education that they can.

So I say thank you to the staff and administration for making great choices and continue on the good work.

Director Harris.

Absolutely, congratulations and I say that as a proud Eagle.

And I also want to extend my thanks to the extraordinarily rich conversation I had with Ms. Brown when you good folks hosted the option school fair.

It was rich, it was in-depth, we talked a lot about challenges, we talked a lot about changes, and talk about just an extraordinary representative of your program.

This makes it worth what we do up here and all the meetings.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right I will invite the board down one more time to congratulate Cleveland and thank them for their good work.

Thank you so much.

All right again thank you to Cleveland.

There's so much good information to be shared and we look forward to stealing a lot of those good ideas and sharing them continuing to share them across the.

Replicate okay.

What did I say?

Oh okay replicating.

Well I have quite a few more comments but I will try to skim over those as quickly as I can.

It sounds like we have a lot of people here to give testimony here in a few moments.

Goal two from our smart goals and our strategic plan is one of them anyway is around the budget.

We were delighted in the middle of our board work session last week to hear the buzz from staff and wonder what was going on and to our surprise and delight we found that the legislature had been able to reach a bipartisan solution for the levy cliff.

That's extremely good news and something that we were yeah we were delighted and surprised.

We didn't expect that to come until much later.

That solves about one third of our budget shortfall 24 million out of the 74 million that will allow us to have far fewer staff positions at risk.

We don't know yet whether it will enable us to take care of all of those positions but the lion's share will be taken care of so that's really good news to us.

It still leaves a $50 million hole and it still leaves a lot of services to children that are not being met until the legislature does what they need to with regard to McCleary.

So again thank you to our delegation for presenting our information and keeping it in front of the legislature.

Thank you to the governor for his news conference.

Thank you to all of our partners, our PTSA.

SEA pass, yeah a whole bunch of people that have been instrumental in keeping this issue before the legislature.

Now we are working through the process of how do we do restoration so we've had a variety of emergency meetings with our labor and community partners.

to figure out what that looks like and we will be presenting that information back to the board on the 29th at a budget meeting.

Moving on, hot topics, Magnolia Elementary 300 people came out to talk about where the boundaries ought to be for the new school so that, or the re-new, re-opened school so that is attracting a lot of interest and attention.

John Muir had an epidemic of neurovirus and we had to close the school for two days while we did the cleaning.

Thank you to the custodial staff who had to go through the entire building and get that all cleaned so that students could come back.

Ethnic studies I think we have a lot of people here to testify on this issue tonight that NAACP presentation was made to the curriculum and instruction committee earlier and they've asked for a report from staff on what we currently require and what it would mean to begin to put in place some additional pieces that were requested along those lines.

Good news as we've mentioned at several of our board meetings basketball is alive and well in Seattle.

The state championship was completed between our last board meeting and tonight and Nathan Hale first Garfield second West Seattle third and Rainier Beach sixth in the boys 3A and the girls were I don't know they weren't in the top eight but they were in the top 12 I don't know what that final West Seattle girls so.

Congratulations to all of those coaches and players and we will be having kind of all of our state recognized teams come to a board meeting sometime between now and the end of the school year.

Madison Middle School had 34 great semifinalists at the state level and they will go on to see who the winner is and where they go from here.

The alliance breakfast yesterday, Director Patu, Blanford and Burke were there along with probably about 1000 people, supporters for public education and a lot of good excitement and enthusiasm.

US News and World Report sent out their rankings of top high schools and Roosevelt, Garfield and Ingram were named in the top 10 for all high schools in our state so congratulations to them.

Our communications department continues to help us celebrate women's history month featuring each week some notable women that have helped shape education and our nation's history.

Sounders visited Concord Elementary with lots of fanfare and Nathan Hale sent 10 students to the family career community leaders of America state leadership conference in Kennewick.

We had two dignitaries in our district this week these weren't our meetings but Governor Inslee was here at Highland Park on Monday.

And using that as an opportunity to showcase some of our work and the importance of full funding for some of the 100 business leaders that he's been working with.

And then the mayor today was at Hazel Wolf talking about where the Seattle preschool program would be located this coming year in Seattle schools as well as in the other community areas.

Lots of school visits in my written comments to the board and they will be posted shortly and I won't take time to go through those.

John Stanford Elementary had a Japan night on March 10th.

John Crow was there from district staff and the South East Seattle education coalition along with the Chinese information center hosted a family meeting and Kyle Kinoshita and James Bush were there to hear about family interests and dreams for their for their children.

And they talked about their appreciation for the increased translation and the request for continued increased translation services.

Math instructional material survey is out and the annual family survey will be distributed in April.

And then there's on the back table there's a list of other ways the community can be involved.

So didn't quite make it by 530 but came close.

So thank you very much.

Okay thank you Superintendent Nyland.

So now we move on to our student guests and today I'd like to welcome Allie Kineman from Northgate Middle College.

Is that right?

Kineman.

Ms. Kineman is a junior this year and has found a sense of belonging at Middle College.

She's also been acting and a part of the theater community since she was three.

I will now turn it over to Ms. Kineman for her remarks.

Alexandra is my full name but since I was little I went by Allie and I'm turning 17 on Friday and most of my life I have been, I have felt somewhat of an outsider.

when I was about eight years old I was diagnosed with depression and since then I have felt very different from a lot of people that I went to school with.

And I started taking medication but I never felt that anything was really done for me.

I think I went to a private middle school so that doesn't really relate with and I was struggling academically because I had missed a lot of sixth and seventh grade and I was also struggling socially and that's when I went over to middle college and I joined their distance learning program which worked for a while until I fell into a habit of not doing my online work.

So then I started doing group learning which has really helped me and ever since I've started group learning at Middle College I've felt happier and safer and more included.

I've talked with many other students who have related to to what I have experienced a lot of them missed many school days in their middle school and they they didn't learn everything that they should have but because the rest of the class had learned they had the teacher had to move on and so we moved on but we missed there were holes in our learning and there were just certain things that we never learned which made learning more things more difficult and I always thought that I was not as smart as everyone else because of this but when I came to middle college and I learned that this is just something that happens, this happens to other kids too and I found such a support system at middle college.

I talk with the teachers every day and I'm very Everyone is so friendly and welcoming and I'm never afraid to be myself.

Middle College offers so much that I can be a part of and I was just asked to do this at the end of last week and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say or what I would be doing.

But then I had a talk with some of my teachers and I learned about budget cuts that are happening and one of my personal favorite teachers that was there for me when I first came to middle college is retiring.

So that way no one else, none of the other teachers have to have to be cut and it kind of just like it hit me and it made me feel somewhat kind of sad because everything most of my life up until now I've always like felt anxious and nervous and I never know what's going to happen, am I going to pass this class, am I going to make friends and when I came to middle college all of that just went away.

I just I made friends with teachers and students and I really thank the middle college community because I want to say that if I hadn't gone to middle college I would have probably dropped out of high school but I know my parents never would have let that happen.

So alternatively I think that I would have just barely passed my classes and I would have felt alone and um never gotten out of this funk of feeling like kind of even like suicidal like I didn't really belong and everything and I just would have continued that and it makes me sad to think of the person that I was and the person I was becoming but middle college being there and with three sites I could find the site that was closest to me and it's there for me and I don't feel alone anymore and I really think the middle college community Thank you.

Thank you so much.

That was that was wonderful.

Wonderful.

Does anybody have any questions or comments for Ellie?

So Ellie you are welcome to stay up here for the whole meeting you can stay or you can stay for the public comments and if you wanted to add any comments after because we all give our comments after we've heard from the public so if you'd like to stick around and join that you are certainly welcome to.

I would love to stay for the comments.

Thank you very much.

OK we're now going to move on to the business action items and that is our consent agenda before we get to the public comments and we want to get there as soon as we can.

So we've now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move that we approve the consent agenda.

Do I have a second?

I second the motion.

OK.

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

Yes I would like to remove the OSPI report on advanced learning.

Okay all right then let us now take a vote on the remaining consent items.

Do I hear a new motion for the amended consent agenda minus the one item?

I move that we approve the amended consent agenda.

Do I hear a second?

I second the motion.

Okay all in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Okay so let's now move on to the item.

Director Harris do you want to speak to this item?

I do.

I am distressed that with all of the conversation that we have had about advanced learning that this OSPI form feels extremely box checking and I also have concerns about page five of the form or page 11 of 20 where we maintain that we have a mentorship program.

Now at C&I and at the last board meeting I asked for additional information on same and have not received it.

It would seem to me that if we are in fact implementing a mentorship policy that we should be loud and proud of same.

I need more details in order to feel comfortable in approving this form to OSPI and I might add that it did not go through C&I with a recommendation of approval but for consideration.

Thank you.

Peters Are there any other questions or comments about this item?

Director Burke.

I want to thank Director Harris for bringing this to the attention of the full board.

This was a conversation that was had in the curriculum instruction policy committee and I was wondering if I could ask for associate superintendent Tolley to provide some of the background on this discussion that was had in committee.

Michael Tolley associate superintendent for teaching and learning.

During the C&I policy committee meeting this item was brought forward and there was a question of at least one board member as to why wasn't this information provided during the oversight work session for the advanced learning specifically the highly capable programming at the week prior.

And we did discuss the reason for that being the oversight work session itself actually has a set agenda as to the topics that would normally be covered.

And so we would normally have brought this particular form forward.

As has been discussed this as director Harris has indicated it is a kind of a.

assurance checklist type document that we provide information to the state as to the various types of ways in which we address the requirements under this particular service that we provide our students.

And that is primarily just an assurance document.

And that's the conversation we had at the time.

Peters

I see that Chief Jesse has made his way to the front and I'm hoping that he can explain what kind of mentorship program we have with the Ingram IBX program what the numbers are and how successful that has been.

That request was made two weeks ago.

Thank you.

Yes we received that information we went out and retained it the next day and I believe it was sent but I'll double down to so much correspondence I will double down to make sure that it got to the right people but we did gather it I believe it was sent out but I'm almost certainly will grab that and I can forward it to you tonight because I'll have it right on my computer for that.

Well first I want to ask the underlying premise, address the underlying premise.

Are you saying Wyeth that you would be able to bring that information to us later on in the meeting?

You could?

Okay so Director Harris would like to make a motion to postpone this until we have that information.

I so move.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor of postponing this item to later in the meeting where it will join our action items?

All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone opposed?

All right so this item will be postponed to join the action item of our meeting.

So that now concludes our consent agenda portion of the meeting.

And so we move on to the public testimony.

I just want to remind everybody the rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that these rules.

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

I would also like to note that each speaker has two minutes speaking time.

I realize that's not very much but please honor it so everybody has a chance to speak tonight.

OK well the two minutes have ended.

Please conclude your remarks.

Ms. Ritchie will read off the names of the testimony speakers and thank you all for coming tonight.

Marcy Owens, Naj Ali, and Sadio Noor.

Also if you guys have signs please make sure you don't cover the camera because it is live.

So thank you.

Hi my name is Marcy Owens and I'm 17 years old and I just transferred this year.

I'm a senior.

I just transferred this year from Garfield High School into Middle College High School.

I'm at the Seattle University branch of Middle College High School.

And why it's been so important to me is because I think that Garfield is a great school I think I love my teachers there but I think that the learning at Middle College has been more impactful to me and more beneficial to me as in my progression as a student and as a learner because it's been more intimate it's been a more intimate learning experience because I think the most my class has is about 10 students and we have our teacher Steve he's a really great teacher guys.

And I think it's been really important because my teachers I can always feel that my teachers are really caring whether I'm learning at the time and I think it's been really just a great experience for me as a student going there and I've developed a love for my learning and To make a long story short because I have 40 seconds, a couple years ago I was doing a lot of work on the ACA bill and I met Senator Patty Murray in 2009 and blah blah blah.

I met the president and I was there when he was signing the ACA bill and I was right next to him.

So this year Senator Patty Murray invited me to the congressional joint session that Trump was speaking at.

And I got to go there and the whole time I was just so excited to get back to middle college and talk to my class about it because we're doing a lot of analyzing on speeches and things like that.

So I think that was a point where I realized how benefit how good middle college has been to me.

So I just wanted to let you guys know that I love middle college.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm not going to be able to tell you from the back.

I'm going to have to share this with anybody.

I'm not going to be able to tell you from the back.

I'm going to have to share this with anybody.

I'm going to have to share this with anybody.

Good evening school board members my name is Diego Reyes-Foster and I will be speaking on behalf of Naj because she was unable to come.

First I'd like to show my support and endorse ethnic studies.

Ethnic studies allows us to understand historical context of other racial groups that deviates us from our own.

Having this knowledge promotes empathy and awareness to others.

My peers and I have grown up in a globalized world and being in an IB school this would only make sense.

We have to be prepared to succeed in the 21st century.

We have to have the knowledge to understand the values of the global world.

Learning about the cultures and histories that define all of us is important.

Our nation is blessed with a rich diversity but our public education system only informs us of American politics.

We are failing to live up to the potential that makes our nation so unique.

Next as we brought up before our school is in dire need of a renovation and funds for next school year.

While we think the school board members effort as a conversation we don't want to just be put at the BX list.

We want to be able to know and make choices for the renovation.

Students and parents need to be a part of the conversation.

I like the question why are you slating our enrollment numbers for only 650 students when our enrollment this year was over 700 students?

Why are we renovating a closed school?

Why are we building a new downtown school?

We are barely providing enough to operate other schools such as Rainier Beach.

Hi again.

Remember me?

My name is Saeeda Noor and I am a student at Rainier Beach High School.

First off I want to thank you for placing the RBHS renovation on the BX levee 5 which is a big step forward in our campaign.

As you know for five years now the RBHS students have been fighting for the remodel of our school and nothing has been fully insured to us.

We have constantly been pushed to the bottom of your priority list and by relegating us to a second-class marble dropping you were stopping us from reaching our full potential.

That needs to stop now.

We need to be your first concern because of the many injustices our BHS faces and the solutions that need to be done.

We are very appreciative of the new stance you are taking to ensure our BHS students get a quality education in a good learning space.

I have confidence in our current board directors that you will do right by us.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Sakina and I will be speaking on behalf of Monte who is unable to attend today.

I will be speaking on the need for ethnic studies program in the Seattle Public Schools and especially at Rainier Beach.

As a student, As a school with students of color majority it is important that we see ourselves represented in the materials we learn.

When the only histories available for us to learn, for us to learn is of the European and white focuses.

We are being told that the histories of our own people do not matter as much.

As an Asian-American student looking back on my 12 years in the Seattle school system I have realized that I know very little about Asians in America or the rest of the world history.

Without the opportunity to learn and understand more about our cultural identities that we hold we lack the ability to strengthen those identities.

Diversity is a wonderful thing that we should celebrate within our communities and since Rainier Beach High School is such a central part of our young people's communities it is it only makes sense that it should be a place that diversity is given a rightful place in the curriculum offered.

Thank you.

Just so you guys know the person who is on the list actually has to come to the front and cede their time to you so if you're here as a part of some ceded time that was planned ahead of this tonight please come up here tell me your name get on the waitlist and at the end I will call you up.

OK for the two speakers that went ahead and seated could you come forth and let me know what your name is.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Chris Jackins Brian Terry and Dan Souter.

Thank you.

Thank you Anya.

Nice to have you all here.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124. On the highly capable program plan the plan does not use report cards to help evaluate the program.

Why?

On the budget transfer of BEX 2 and BEX 3 underspend for implementation of an energy efficiency project.

Garfield a BEX II project was so far over budget it had to borrow from other levies.

How can BEX II have had an underspend?

Has the district been hiding money?

On identity and race and gender.

These issues were discussed at the previous school board meeting.

Four questions.

Number one under district policy biologically female students who identify with another gender may use a men's restroom.

For men using urinals in the restroom does district policy essentially remove all liability related to indecent exposure.

Number two according to a recent newspaper article an ex NAACP leader acknowledged that she is Caucasian biologically but identifies as black.

Is the district required to provide similar biologically Caucasian students access to scholarships intended for African-American students?

Number three if a non-Indian student identifies with a particular Native American Indian tribe is the district required to provide that student with educational benefits reserved for that tribe.

Number four if a student identifies with highly capable students is the district obligated to admit that student to the program.

Thank you.

Peters Thank you.

Get this transphobic stuff out of here.

There's no place in Seattle for transphobes.

Nope there's no place in Seattle for transphobes.

Can we please have quiet for the next speaker.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening directors.

I have two sons in the HCC program at Thurgood Marshall and I am very appreciative of the advanced learning programs offered by the school district.

Currently students of color are severely underrepresented in advanced learning programs.

One of the key responsibilities of our schools is to prepare students for success in tomorrow's job market.

Increases in automation make higher education more important now than ever before.

We need to understand which student populations are getting left behind.

Helping prepare more students for success in college or vocational schools would not only make a drastic impact on their futures but also decrease racial inequalities and create a more educated workforce for our city.

While it is difficult to measure college preparedness we can use enrollment and success in IB and AP programs as a proxy.

Students who participate in these programs will have a solid foundation to help them succeed at higher education institutions.

To help us understand the current opportunity gap and measure any progress that we make I ask you to regularly publish summaries on which AP and IB courses are taken, which exams are passed, and how our diverse students are doing in these challenging courses.

Furthermore I would like to ask that you make success in these courses by underrepresented students one of our key performance indicators.

In this way we can understand one of the most important aspects of the opportunity gap, measure the success of our efforts to address it and make a brighter future for all of us.

I ask you the board to be rabid about breaking down barriers to education.

Parents teachers district staff and communities across the city are united behind this issue.

The time to act is now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kraut.

Hi so many new faces up there since I was a regular at this podium so it's great to see you all there.

For those who don't know me my name is Dan Souter I'm a BEX advocate and a parent of two students at Hazel Wolf K-8 school.

As an aside we are super excited to host the mayor's press conference this morning about the preschool program here in Seattle.

I'm here to speak in support of the introductory bar you received tonight regarding approval of allocating underspend funds for BEX 2 and 3 to implement the energy efficiency projects.

As a parent at the district's environmental STEM school I have spent more than two years now investigating with the district in different teams partnerships with city light and sources ways we can implement solar power projects at our schools that are not just educational learning opportunities but actually truly have an energy impactful mission as well rather than just a small demonstration project.

This Washington Department of Commerce grant that they have identified and are applying for is by far the best opportunity we have seen in those two years.

It aligns incredibly strategically with the board's approved environmental green building initiative.

It identifies six solar ready schools that also have good ROI for a project of this nature.

The bar has some great numbers which I'm sure they will beat you through when they present it either at their committee or at that so I won't go into it right now.

But at Hazelwood K8 we are so excited about this opportunity in order to help demonstrate community support from your schools for that we have agreed with the district to provide a $50,000 grant from our PTSA to help support this grant application and its success.

I want to thank Dr. Herndon's team, Richard Best, Mike Skutak, all the folks in capital projects hiding behind this crowd somewhere for their hard work and finding this opportunity.

The researching the programs where it makes the best fit that spreads them across the city where we can all participate and really have an impact.

So as you consider this bar for action at your next meeting I just strongly encourage your support.

This is a great opportunity for Seattle schools to continue its great green initiative.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Stan Strassner, Miley Powell, and Jonathan Greenberg.

Stan Strassner, Miley Powell,

Hi my name is Mailey Powell and I'm a senior at the University of Washington.

As someone who attended Seattle Public Schools for my whole education and as someone for the past four years has mentored students in Seattle Public Schools I'm strongly in support of ethnic studies.

Reflecting back on my Eurocentric education I never felt engaged and thought it was normal not to see myself in curriculum.

It wasn't until I was exposed to ethnic studies at UW that I connected with my identity as a Chinese American woman and realized it wasn't my fault for disliking history but rather a school system that wasn't validating people of color.

I shouldn't have had to be forced to seek out my origins or wait for an Asian American studies course to learn about topics like Japanese incarceration or Chinese exclusion.

Better understanding history changed my trajectory.

Now an education history major I've learned history is a vital tool too many students learn to dismiss.

Without ethnic studies students aren't fully learning the struggles that have shaped contemporary social issues.

Students aren't fully learning the deep racial relations that's led to the injustices that we see today.

This past summer I helped coordinate a program called Seattle to Selma which brought together an interracial group of high school students to delve into the American black freedom struggle.

Through meetings that culminated into a pilgrimage through the South students immersed into history through visiting landmarks and visiting meeting foot soldiers from the civil rights movement.

It was so powerful to see how seriously students grappled with history by connecting it to current issues as well as their identity development.

Students continually ask critical questions and one that came up repeatedly was why aren't we learning this in school?

Not all students can go on a pilgrimage but all students if given the chance can benefit socially and academically if their scope of racial and civil rights history is expanded.

When research has proven ethnic studies increases achievement, attendance, the number of credits students of color take, why wait to close Seattle's unacceptable racial disparities?

With ethnic studies students at all ages learn not to blame individuals but understand societal structures.

Students learn to effectively navigate difference and better understand the diverse cultures of our district.

Seattle schools can fundamentally affirm and empower more students to become agents of change.

Misunderstanding in today's political climate has normalized hate discrimination and indifference which has deepened the divisions between different identities.

Seattle schools has the opportunity now to fight that division with the tool of history.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jonathan Greenberg.

I cede my time to Chocolate Angel.

Hi my name is Chocolate Angel Henley I graduated from the University of Washington in 2008 I majored in American ethics studies and from K-12 I went to Seattle Public Schools.

With that being said I want to emphasize how important it was for me to be here today.

I've been pregnant about half a dozen times.

I've buried all my children.

I'm in my second trimester I'm very very dizzy I'm very tired.

But I just wanted to say that this is extremely, extremely important to me.

There are, when I got to the University of Washington there were so many powerful conversations about race and gender and sexuality being had, I was ignorant.

I could not have those conversations because I had not been educated.

So I would hear all these different very xenophobic types of comments and I couldn't fight back.

I didn't have a voice.

So I wanted to be an anthropologist when I got to the University of Washington but I gave up my dream to understand my reality.

Right.

So what I'm asking you to do is make it so that the children behind me don't have to give up their dream to understand their reality.

I remember John Stanford so I went to Franklin high school when he was a superintendent and people remember him as like the first African-American to be an administrator.

I didn't really know him as the first of anything I remembered him as a child as the last.

As the last man who cared who actually cared who raised you know $2 million in private funding to support Seattle Public Schools.

He was a man who got me to I was busing all the way out to Magnolia when I lived down the street from John Muir and I could just walk to school take part of you know and after school programs because it was so close to my home.

Whereas my mother my working mother had to come get me from Magnolia.

It was a really hard on our family.

So let's not make him the last man who cared, let's make him the first because I'm hoping that all of you will care after him.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Shek Charlie Lentz, Robin Counts and Marty Brekke.

I'm ceding my time to Tammy.

Good evening everyone, thank you Charlie for graciously giving me the chance to raise my voice.

My name is Tami Le and I will speak on why ethnic studies is important to me and why we must incorporate it into the Seattle Public Schools curriculum.

Ethnic studies breaks down inaccurate depictions of people of color.

Black youth are blamed for choosing the paths of gang, drugs and violence.

Immigrants are blamed for not working hard enough and landing back-breaking undervalued jobs such as housekeeping and janitorial work.

The reason we believe in this narrative as a society is because we do not hear from the people, from the perspectives of people of color themselves.

As an ethnic studies major at the University of Washington I have learned why my parents could not help me with college applications.

I learned why they could not go to PTA meetings.

I learned why they could not chaperone at school field trips.

I learned why I hated what I ate for dinner.

I learned why I lied about what I ate for dinner.

I learned about why I was embarrassed to speak my language.

I learned why I had parts of my identity because it was different.

Ethnic studies will allow us to understand empathize and empower our communities and most importantly our students.

We owe it to our students to include their voices and the voices of their families in their education.

Thank you.

I'm Robin Counts.

I'm ceding to Jesse Hagokui.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Jesse Hagopian I teach at Garfield High School and I want to say today that the school to prison pipeline is real.

It extends across this country and it doesn't skip Seattle.

It includes Seattle.

And I think that what we need to understand is that the curriculum is a huge part of that pipeline because when kids check out and they aren't paying attention in class and they act out they get pushed out of the classroom and labeled defiant and often we know in the Seattle Public Schools according to the Department of Education that black students are suspended at four times the rate of white students for the very same infractions.

And those students get labeled as defiant but maybe we should better understand that as resistance to a whitewashed curriculum that doesn't reflect their reality.

Right.

That doesn't reflect the struggles and contributions of people of color of black people and the many cultures that make up our Seattle Public Schools.

And so when those students are disengaged right they're much more likely to cause a disruption in the classroom.

But I think that they're there.

It's a cry.

It's a cry for being included, for being heard, and we want to empower our students to challenge the problems we see that are proliferating across this country when we have an open racist and sexist and homophobe in the White House.

It is urgent more than ever that we stand as sites of resistance here in Seattle and every one of our schools as a way to combat hate crimes.

And I would say that my father and many others were part of the movement to demand black studies in our universities across the country and they often risk the life and limb and brutal force to get those and we are seeing it unraveled today and now is the time to take a stand to make sure that all of our kids get that empowerment they deserve.

My name is Marty Brekke and I'm a parent of elementary school students at Thornton Creek, one in special ed and one in gen ed.

I'm here as a parent but I'm also representing our site counsel and our special ed parent group as well as the special ed students across the city.

The parent group recently learned that the special ed services at Thornton Creek are being cut.

Our newly added preschool It's being cut by half and no new kindergartners are being added or being enrolled into our long established self-contained program which is also known as SM 4 or distinct.

In fact the linked school list for special ed on the Seattle Public Schools website already lists Thorn Creek as a grades 1 through 5 program only.

Wedgwood and View Ridge have also eliminated their SM 4 programs and that leaves no elementary school in the Eckstein zone for SM 4 kids.

We've been told that the incoming kindergartners will be assigned across I-5 to Green Lake Elementary and I'm here today to tell you that the Thornton Creek community stands together and opposes these cuts.

Thornton Creek is a community where all kids are welcome and included.

General Ed and special ed parents choose Thornton Creek because the culture of community and inclusion.

Thornton Creek in our new building was designed from the ground up And much of the thought from our community went into the design of the SM 4 classrooms.

They were optimized to meet the needs of the kids that have unique needs that are often so unique.

We're hearing from the district that SM 4 families are not wanting an option school experience and that's not totally surprising since SM 4 parents are told they don't have a choice often and will just receive a placement.

However from my own personal experience we chose Thornton Creek.

We actually delayed our start into Seattle Public Schools until a spot at Thornton Creek was available.

A lot of other families have chosen Thornton Creek and a mom told me today that she chose it because her son with autism wouldn't most likely have the success that he's finding at Thornton Creek.

He started in an SM 4 classroom and because Thornton Creek was one of the continuum schools he was able to move from SM 4 into access without having to change schools.

So Thornton Creek isn't perfect but as a community we're working towards getting it right for every student in every classroom every day.

Instead of stripping away the services and breaking down the foundation of what makes Thornton Creek successful for kids with special needs and for a growing student population the district should learn from what we're doing right what's working there and work relentlessly to replicate it across the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Excuse me could the people who spoke their time was ceded to them can you come forward and let me know how to spell your name that'd be great thank you.

We have Roberta Lindman, Marty McLaren and Noam Kedar.

Hi my name is Roberta Lindman and I'm going to cede my time to Doug Edelstein who has been a history teacher for Seattle Public Schools for 23 years at Rainier Beach Cleveland and Nathan Hill.

She said everything I was going to say.

I'm also on the board of directors of the Seattle Education Association.

I'm the chairman of the advised teacher advisory board of BlackPast.org the largest black history website in the world.

And I want to first give reverence and respect to the indigenous people to whom this land belongs.

Secondly, we do have an ethnic studies program in the United States.

We have a sophisticated, pervasive, comprehensive ethnic studies program in the study of English Americans, Scottish Americans, German Americans, Irish Americans, Scandinavian Americans, and other European Americans.

We do not have a comparable study for all the other people, all the 60 or 70 ethnicities that face us in the Seattle Public Schools.

This is unacceptable.

We are being told from all quarters that there is just one narrative of American life, and that is the narrative being told by the White House, by the state government of Arizona, etc., etc.

That is not the truth.

That's not surprising.

We know that the study of ethnic studies in the United States is, I'm very fortunate to teach at Nathan Hale where we have excellent social studies curriculum and superior social studies instruction.

All of whom are excited for the opportunity to be trained to teach something very different which is ethnic studies.

Ethnic studies is the study of ethnicity in America.

It's the study of the experience of people like my first students that I ever taught.

Not in addition of course it's the study of origins of people.

The wars the struggles the economic crises that bring people to this country and those that existed here before.

My first student was a kid named Jamal Aden.

He was at the center of career alternatives run by Al Sugiyama and Amy Hirabayashi.

Jamal was an Oromo speaking kid who had an incredible story to tell as a Franklin student.

His job with me was to tell that story in English.

That story would never have been told and was never told in his school Franklin because the study was of history not of ethnic studies.

Now those two are not mutually exclusive.

They can be done well together.

However what we want as teachers what most of them speaking out of turn for but I believe this to be true of most of the if not all of these social studies teachers in this in this district.

We want the training to be able to do this safely and well in our schools.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello I'm Marty McLaren and I'm a retired K-12 teacher in Seattle schools and as you know a former board director.

I'm going to pull this out so I can maneuver better.

I'm here to speak in favor of Seattle schools adopting the NAACP plan for teaching ethnic studies in Seattle schools.

This is absolutely the right thing to do and the NAACP timeline is reasonable in my opinion.

In making a commitment to ethnic studies I believe it is imperative that Seattle schools also commit to fully supporting its educators in the ways that the NAACP has outlined.

Teachers of ethnic studies deserve superb training and strong districtwide support.

We need to acknowledge that studying this history is highly emotionally charged.

Ethnic studies can span the history of the concept of race, racism, white supremacy, white privilege as all of these have unfolded in Seattle and our state, our nation and the world.

The courageous educators who already teach ethnic studies in Seattle can vouch for the challenge of creating a safe space for all students.

It can be both traumatic and cathartic for students of color.

It has its own kind of pain for students who live with white privilege and teachers can testify to the kind of pushback they may receive from white students and from some parents.

About 20 years ago I took a white teenage family member to a workshop on undoing institutional racism.

In that workshop he struggled with the pain of acknowledging his white privilege and the facilitators offered neither compassion nor respect for his anguish.

And so his continuing education on racism was compromised by his rage at the humiliation he experienced.

This is difficult territory and we must help our teachers navigate it skillfully.

Teachers must be honest about the history yet avoid pitting our students against each other.

Our ethnic studies teachers can be our leaders in fostering the beloved community among all of our students as well as staff and families.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Noam Kadar.

Hi my name is Norm Kedar, my son Jonathan attends the preschool at Thornton Creek and I want to talk about the upcoming changes to the preschool program at Thornton Creek.

I was very excited to hear about the new inclusion program that's going to start at Thornton Creek but I'm very concerned also about how it's going to be implemented as far as I understand They are going to be only one teacher and one IA in half time, especially a teacher.

Just knowing my kid, I don't think that's going to be enough to support kids like him.

He needs lots of support and attention to get him engaged in class activities, to pull him in.

So I just really hope that this program will be staffed better, I think.

And I'm very excited about it.

I do think that if it's implemented properly and if it's you know staffed sufficiently to support our kids it's going to be great.

But I'm also I think most concerned about is that it's going to come at the expense of the current existing preschool program that we have there today where my kids learned.

I feel that, we feel very fortunate to be in the program, in the preschool program that we have there today.

I think it's a wonderful program and it's going to be very difficult for me to see it being reduced.

I understand that it's going to be reduced from, it's going to be cut in half, so instead of two sessions it's going to have only one session and that means that in Thornton Creek there's going to be only 15 kids with IEPs instead of 20. although personal problems are going to be reduced.

I think we have currently a very great program there.

I'd really like to see it continues in the current format.

I think also that the fact that the program's going to be cut in half, that also means that the two wonderful IAs that we have there, Jenny and Sandra, might not be able to continue there.

So that's going to be, I think, very difficult to fill in this position if it doesn't happen.

So just to summarize I think that Thornbrick is a school that has always excelled at creating inclusive environments and it's a school that's doing so well.

Director Peters please conclude your remarks.

Dylan Tran, Daryl Brown and then Eileen Sinclair.

I am the son of refugees.

The history of my family tells a history of running.

We ran from a war-torn and famine-stripped China and settled in Cambodia only to be victims of the killing fields.

Those who were fortunate enough to escape disguised our last name to evade prosecution for being Chinese in a hostile Vietnam.

When my father told me the stories of running away in search of a refugee camp in Thailand he told me the story of our struggle to stay alive.

I am the son of refugees but I was born in the United States of America where the streets are paved with gold and everybody is welcomed and equal.

America is a place where as long as you worked hard you could succeed.

The land where that was discovered by the great explorer Christopher Columbus built on by our forefathers and preserved by its people to this day the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is America.

but the America I have come to know and experience tells of a different narrative.

If everyone was welcome why is there a ban on Muslims from entering the country and work being done for a literal wall to be built on the southern border?

If everyone was equal why is there a movement just to show that black lives matter?

And is it just a coincidence that women earn more college and graduate degrees than men but are still paid less?

Europeans did not discover the land, they stole it from the indigenous natives that were enslaved and killed by white settlers.

The streets are not paved with gold, they are scattered with the blood and tears of those who are not white, are not male, are not Christian, are not cisgender, and are not heterosexual.

The list of privilege goes on.

The history we learn in school is zero-centric and sugarcoats the struggle for survival of the real people who make up America.

The United States has a hypocritical history of injustice that tends to repeat itself time and time again.

Education is a pacifier, and the United States teaches a false narrative that perpetuates a white savior complex.

It robs ethnic minorities of their true history and identity, internalizing and gaslighting racism to the youth.

The lack of intersectionality is a lack of foundation in the movement.

My family has a history of running, but I will not run.

I march, I stand, and I speak to you as an education major at the University of Washington.

as a person of color, as a victim of institutionalized racism, and as a son of refugees, learning, working, and organizing because I want my children to know what side of history we are on.

Hi my name is Isabel Haravada I am an American ethnic studies major at UW and I wanted to talk about how we need to stop blaming our students for failing and how we need to look at our institutions and how they perpetuate the status quo of inequality for these failing students.

and how our curriculum disengages and disempowers and devalues them from as early as they start school.

We need our city and school districts to invest in our students and to demand to redirect funds from things like an expensive youth jail to our schools when the district has a deficit.

Education has liberated slaves in the past and it can liberate our minds.

And it should be more than standardized testing but it should be a practice of freedom against the systems and institutions that oppress them and hinder their development as fully formed humans.

We need to prepare our students to be productive democratic citizens that acknowledge and recognize that we all have an active role in how we shape each other's experiences of equality and inequality.

We need schools to model an anti-racist curriculum that helps kids build relationships that tend towards equality.

And we want to give kids the literacy in race and ethnic relations so that they can productively talk and discuss and recognize that race as a social construction shapes their lives and shapes our society.

and not be caught up in anger and misunderstanding but in how they can improve society.

And building this literacy starts as early as elementary school.

It's crazy that I had to pay to be able to have access to this kind of knowledge and literacy about race and how I see, hear, feel and express my understanding of society and myself.

For example I want fellow Asian-American students and the rest of society to know that Asian-Americans like myself are not silent or apolitical but have our legacies of powerful individuals who radically resisted and fought for change during the Asian-American movement of the civil rights era and without ethnic studies I would not have been as empowered to come up here and speak to you today.

So thank you for your time and thank you Oscar for ceding his time to me as a student.

Thank you.

Okay were Dylan Tran I'm sorry Daryl Brown and Eileen Sinclair here?

They were the ones that were called?

Okay.

Thank you.

Good evening my name is Eileen Sinclair I'm a developmental preschool teacher at Bailey Gatzert and I've been a developmental preschool teacher at Gatzert for the last seven years.

I also participated on the preschool task force last year and this year and I'm very interested and invested in the programs that we develop and the programs that we already have established.

Two weeks ago when the budget information was released many teachers and IA's in the developmental preschool programs learned that their staffing ratios were being adjusted.

11 IA's are being cut from our programs and three teachers were notified that their contracts would be reduced to half or half of their day and sessions would be eliminated.

While it's never easy to face cuts or changes in staffing I'd like to highlight some of the especially challenging circumstances facing our preschool community and our programs.

We initiate students for students as soon as they turn three or as soon as they qualify for services through our headstart programs and SPP programs.

Our classroom size is in flux throughout the year but historically our programs are full to include overloads by the end of the year.

The contract acknowledges the importance of consistent teams and stable staff in programs that are filling throughout the year that serve our youngest and most vulnerable students.

The unique challenges are required in the training of the teachers that serve these students and families as their needs are being understood and met.

The contract says that there will be no adjustment for under enrollment in developmental pre-K programs.

We have not understood or been offered a reason as to why IA's are being reduced they are not being reduced in programs that are under enrolled now some of the programs are full and will be losing an IA.

We worked hard as teachers together with SPS to develop staffing ratios that were supportive and responsive.

to the needs of our students and families.

Right now we have 10 students with IEPs with two students that are peer models, a teacher and two IA's.

Without those people in our classrooms our work would be very very difficult if not impossible.

We ask that you please support us as we look for the answers as to why these ratios have been reduced and to why our staff is being eliminated.

They are essential to the programs that we provide for families.

Thank you.

Peters is that the end of our public testimony for tonight?

Well no we have to follow our… How many have we gone through?

We've hit 19 so technically we can take one more.

Peters.

Whoever speaks so could you please let me know how to spell your name come up afterwards thank you.

And please speak into the microphone.

Pelize.

My name is Felicia Pelize and this is Trinity Cho over here.

And we are students from Ballard High School and we are part of multicultural committee and so our objective is to make sure that there is a safe place for students of color in a predominantly white school.

And The student who shared his poem earlier really touched me because right now in my American literature class we are talking about aristocracy and meritocracy and just how we have this American ideal that if you work hard and persevere then you will be at the top which is not always realistic because there are so many at the top who haven't I mean.

who have inherited their way there without any hard work or success and I think that even in curriculums and the way we teach our students it's really important that you implement us and our culture so we can learn about it and so we can be empowered and go on further in life and want to seek a higher education.

So thank you for listening to all of us today.

I know it's probably very tiresome just sitting there and listening to everyone speak.

So thank you on behalf of multicultural committee from Ballard High School.

Thank you.

I believe that concludes the public testimony section of our evening.

We will now go to board comments and I just want to thank you all for coming tonight.

It's been really very engaging compelling testimony.

All right would any of my colleagues like to begin?

Director Patu thank you.

I would like to say thank you to everyone who came and spoke with passion about the various subjects that actually that are concerning you and thank you so much for sharing your heart and also letting us know exactly what is it that you would like to see happening.

I believe that ethnic study is very important and I believe that we do need to learn about our culture because there are so many ethnic groups in our schools and learning about our cultures and other cultures within the school is quite important and I realize that many years ago we did have ethnic studies in our school system so I don't know what happened today but hopefully that it will be something that will bring it back into our curriculum in Seattle Public Schools.

I want to say thank you so much to the performance of South Shore for an amazing performance and also Orca K8.

These students did an amazing job of the various subjects that they had spoken and really they were very heartfelt and thank you so much for a wonderful and a very great performance by both South Shore K-8 and Orca K-8.

Also I would like to just thank you to our representative from Middle College.

I felt really passionate about her story.

I think it's great when we have our students come and tell us what made them successful and what is it that made them go backward and her story really resonates with me mainly for the fact that many students when I worked for the district 30 years ago there were many students with stories like hers so it's really great to hear students come and tell us their life stories because a lot of stuff that goes on is really reality that when students are talking about what's happening with them it's things that actually it's really happening and they're able to come and share with us and I think for educators and also for the board directors it's great to hear what's happening out there and what is it that we can do as board directors to be able to look at what's happening and making sure that every student in our school provide opportunities to have a safe and a excellent and quality education for them so they can be able to continue on with the next phase of their life.

I actually wanted to say congratulations to Cleveland for doing a tremendous job and continue on the trend from where they were many years ago up to this point.

Continue on the great work Cleveland and it's wonderful when you actually see our students you know continue on to be successful from the time that they were you know when they were eight years ago and now they're actually continue on to go on their way up.

So congratulations and thank you to the administration and also to the staff for a job well done.

And I also wanted to say that it always it's you know when I'm up here it's always a great opportunity to just to be here and listen to the stories of the various communities and also maybe I think the most amazing for me is listen to students and their stories.

Because it's real life.

When students are talking about what they've gone through and what they're trying to do, it's amazing.

Because they're telling us the truth and really giving us their heart because they want to see changes.

And I believe that is the reason why we're here.

to help make changes that's going to be able to provide great opportunities for every one of our students.

We have 53,000 students and it's our job to make sure that every one of those 53,000 students receive a safe and secure and a quality education that we can provide them in any way we can.

And I believe that providing ethnic studies is one of those things that we need to do so that all our students can have the opportunity to learn from each other because we have such a great group of different ethnic groups here in our school.

Santa Barbara school has so many languages.

What a wonderful opportunity for us to be able to look at that and utilize that for our kids to be able to excel in many ways.

So thank you again for coming here tonight and sharing your stories.

Director Harris.

Again welcome your stories and your experiences and your advocacy is profound and deeply touching.

And I hope that we can follow through and honor that.

I know that everyone on this dais believes in doing the right thing.

finding the money finding the bandwidth finding the funding to be able to accomplish a rich and appropriate ethnic studies curriculum.

I believe is a goal of this board.

I can speak for myself.

It is certainly my goal.

I have to point out however.

that the since time immemorial curriculum that Washington State passed is a part of our statutory construction has not been fully implemented.

Both because of bandwidth and because of money.

So we have significant work to do.

Fifty seven million six hundred thousand dollars is today's total of the contempt fines issued by the Washington state Supreme Court to the Washington state legislature.

I find it astonishing.

I find it deeply troubling.

And I thank the folks who came out in droves went to Olympia sent postcards sent coloring pages from our kids sent their personal stories to our legislators in Olympia for the levy cliff.

That is a huge win.

Washington Paramount Duty the PTSA suit for teachers and a number of other advocacy groups out there and frankly are very capable and impressive staff who has spent just an enormous amount of time on I 5 between Seattle and Olympia and we thank you for that.

As has been discussed already there is no scooch in the budget whatsoever.

It is painful.

It is tragic.

It is immoral.

So keep up the advocacy for a McCleary fix.

This is absolute craziness that we are willing to send our children sell our children's education down the road.

It is astonishing to me.

And from a personal perspective if we don't get new sources of revenue There's no way we're going to bridge that gap.

And I hope that we as a community and as a state have the intestinal fortitude to address that fact.

Thank you to our librarians Ms. Eads and Ms. McLean.

Unbelievable.

Thanks to the groups that have helped you do that.

And everybody needs to be aware that the friends of the Seattle Public Libraries have their sale at Seattle Center on Saturday and Sunday.

And I think that appropriate books in good condition would be willingly accepted.

Am I correct?

There you go.

Perfect.

Classified staff.

Y'all are the foundation that makes this engine of 53000 students run.

You don't get enough credit for what you do but the heavy lifting of feeding our kids and cleaning our buildings and repairing our buildings is hugely appreciated.

And I think you're every bit as valuable as anybody in this building and anybody on this dais and I respect and thank you for your hard work.

The YMCA.

You might have seen me grinning up here because I was a YMCA brat.

My mama was one of the first female executives in the YMCA system.

The YMCA helped pay for my college and many of the folks that I met in my teenage years were teachers and doers and mentors and they're still my friends some 40 years later and I'm really proud of that fact.

And obviously they're just doing even better and more spectacular work.

Concord PTSA school with extraordinary diversity with an extraordinary staff with an extraordinary PTSA and with extraordinary needs are having a dinner on Saturday night.

You can go to their Facebook page and sign up and I hope we see many of you there.

This this is a group of folks that is working really hard for a lot of folks that have extraordinary needs and they're very good time.

I guess one of my.

Frustrations is when we do a new initiative in this district we spend an awful lot of time dialing it up because of our bandwidth number of staff etc.

But I hope that we can fast track ethnic studies.

I hope we can take some of the folks sitting in this audience who are in fact acknowledged experts invite them into the building figure out a way to get money to pay them money to transmit that information and to do an inventory of all of the experts that we already have within our midst.

It is It is distressing to me that we are not gathering that intellectual talent that intellectual work product and leveraging from it.

Superintendent Larry and I we tease each other all the time about replicating or stealing.

We have it here.

We have it here, we have nationally renowned experts in this district that are pulling a paycheck from this district if we can get them release time or we can build a system on schoolology so that we can share those ideas that are out there but are not uniformly applied and are not embraced.

To Allie Kinnaman from Middle College High School if anybody knows me worth a darn they know that Middle College High School is a passion of mine.

And I've often said it saves lives.

She confirmed that tonight as did our first speaker.

And I want to say thank you for being so courageous to tell your story because it's a story that matters.

It's a story that's recognized by the folks on this dais and the folks on the administration team that are surrounding the room here.

We've got some pretty exciting plans for middle college, we've got to find the bandwidth, we've got to find money but it's a different day than it was a couple of years ago and I'm really thrilled and proud about that.

And please understand that this has been a collaborative lift which is again very exciting.

That pendulum has swung.

My meetings will be this Saturday 3 to 430 and on tax day April 15 another Saturday both at the Delridge library starting at 3 o'clock.

We feed you we get a little rowdy but we have a good time and come on down.

The other issue is I I am available if you work with Anya Ritchie our very capable staff at 7 o'clock on Wednesday mornings to come on down here and we'll drink coffee and listen and learn together.

It really is my honor to do this work.

And when I look at the young people that performed for us tonight or spoke their truths it reminds me.

Why we do this work and why all the folks that are collecting a paycheck from Seattle Public Schools whether small up here or otherwise do this work.

It's for the children and the more we can talk about our students and our children the better off we are.

Thank you very much.

Director Geary.

Well I don't want to repeat all the lovely things that my fellow directors have said so far but it is wonderful to see you and I want to start by thanking Ms. Eads for using the words you know talking about creating a new narrative.

And I think tonight's meeting has really it's just repeated over and over that sentiment from listening to the kids from Orca K8 and South Shore and then bringing their stories to us and having the courage to stand up and be so personal.

I mean I was crying I can't imagine anybody here wasn't with some of those stories.

And those are their stories.

And then to have all of.

Our students come and ask that we include their stories in our curriculum.

Because I agree chocolate angel that you should not have to put aside your academic goals as you grow up to just learn about yourself as something that has to be done separate from just what should we should be doing naturally.

That you should be able to go to college and study anthropology if that's what you want to do instead of having to take all that time.

We all go to college we all learn about ourselves.

But your lift was bigger and that was our responsibility to take care of that lift for you on some level and make it.

And I also believe having gone to college and taken some of those courses myself.

I think it's really important for all of our students.

It is important for our students of color to hear about themselves.

It's very important for our students our white students to have a real understanding of the conflict they live in as well.

We go out into the world.

They go out into the world and they are confronted with the anger that is presented by students of color and they don't necessarily understand it either.

And so it creates defensiveness.

because they are also trying to grow up and learn about themselves.

And so I see this as a curriculum that benefits us all fundamentally in being better people, in living in our society and breaking down the divisiveness that we now see is rampant.

If we had done this forever I don't think we'd be living in the country we're living in today where we have huge divides where we're talking about walls.

It would be different.

So I hear you.

And I think it is time we start a new narrative for all of our students and for ourselves.

And so thank you for coming and keep coming back to us and keep telling your stories because there are people out there.

It's on being televised.

People are hearing you.

Let's do it.

So thank you for that.

Allie Kinnaman just another person.

All these stories they're overwhelming.

They're so beautiful to me to hear you speak and to share it.

So let's just keep doing it.

To the Thornton Creek and preschool community I'm getting a lot of your emails as well.

I believe that in part That there's no community within our school that is safe from the cuts of not having enough money.

I think that with some of the money that is going to come back into our system there will be some readjustments but it's not going to be a complete.

We're not going to be able to reinstate everything that we had this year for next year but we will do our best.

I ask that our communities work hard to understand truly the implications make sure that the information that is being passed around is correct that we're not using misinformation about what's happening in terms of the staffing that creates unnecessary apprehension and as much as we The adults don't want to pass that down to our students.

I fear that that is an impossibility.

I had the pleasure of going to Washington D.C.

this last weekend to the Council of great city schools to advocate on behalf of public education and specifically the education needs of our urban areas to the folks in D.C.

And that's such an important group of people because they are dealing with the issues of urban education.

And I will say that ethnic studies was one that came up.

They did a institute or male males of color Institute in the beginning.

Director or Superintendent Nyland was invited to that and participated in that.

We are lucky that we are seen as a district that is working hard on those issues along with other districts.

So.

We are doing the work and we are joining with other districts across the nation to do the work.

I will report to you that uniformly and absolutely those districts were also very much concerned about what we are seeing on the immigration front.

And we talked in depth about ways that we can make our schools safe places for our students.

And so that was nice too to know that at least in our cities we do have school districts that are working to figure out ways to protect our families the best we can from what is happening throughout our country.

Erin Bennett and I went up onto the hill we met with the staff of our senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.

Their world is in flux as much as ours is in terms of trying to figure out what this new administration means to education.

But we had a chance at least to share the story of our district, what's important to our district, and to let them know that we're doing the work we can to temper the changes that they're seeing.

So we were told that bringing our people's stories to them is the most powerful tool that they have in terms of doing their work.

So we did our best at talking to them and letting them know what we're seeing here.

So I share that back onto the ethnic studies.

There are districts Long Beach Albuquerque San Francisco Los Angeles Portland.

These are all districts that are looking at and have implemented ethnic studies.

So not only do we have experts here to help us but we can look to other communities doing this work.

And again bring out that work I mean just not have to reinvent the wheel.

So it is a big lift but it's not one that we have to do from scratch.

We can work with other communities and see what's working for them.

For example Long Beach is is partnering with Cal State Long Beach to create a class that has college credits that are even recognized by the UC system.

So those are the kinds of ideas perhaps that we can look at to make this something where we are bringing in partners to help us with this lift and get it done for our kids.

My next community meeting will be March 25th 345 to 515 at the Montlake community center.

I've been holding my Thursday morning coffees.

They've been going very well but I'm not going to do that tomorrow and instead I'm going to join Superintendent Nyland to visit one of our schools.

Please again it's just it's been a joy hearing from you all.

Please keep coming back.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

The challenge when you come later in the comments is that I work with such amazing colleagues that they cover many of the many of the points so I'm going to touch on a couple of them.

I can't I'd be remiss to not mention the classified staff which director Harris had mentioned as such an amazing component of the work we do.

are librarians that are both thought leaders and action leaders in their work.

The middle college students are guests and at the podium that share their stories.

The Orca Cade and South Shore presentations the spoken word was just moving and I found myself wanting to just go into a quiet room and just reflect for a while.

And so it's really challenging to hear some of those things and then jump to another work stream and then jump to another work stream.

And I think that's what this evening has been like is we have had so many great statements, stories, conversations and we definitely need some time to internalize reflect and really build that into our consciousness.

I want to put another shout out for Cleveland You know the combination of amazing people, collaboration, shared vision, curriculum, instructional tools and then an ask to staff or I'm not sure who would be responsible to share the presentation that they had with the board to make sure that that's sent out to all board directors.

I think that's a great reference.

As chair of C&I there's a lot of the today was especially relevant for the work stream that we've got going.

You know it touches on so many different areas.

You know we heard the correct the word curriculum tons of times and the you know the values beliefs the work that that has to surround that is just absolutely imperative.

And so you know we have we have national recognition for the work we do.

We have people you know that director Geary goes to conferences and they say well how are you how are you doing that.

We're on the map for the work that's being done.

We have our gap closing strategies our outlier schools you know and and yet we feel this insane sense of urgency because despite the the beacons in the district there are still so many more areas where we need to work.

And you know just the process of getting policy work done, getting things implemented, getting things you know training, the funding constraints is really frustrating sometimes and so your stories and messaging to us really helps us with our urgency.

But I also want to try to balance that against the realities that we face.

And so speaking a little bit about the ethnic studies resolution you know this was brought before us the month before last or I guess it was last month the NAACP resolution and an inspirational piece which was brought to the curriculum instruction committee.

Last month or this month the meeting that was just earlier this week we received feedback from staff on that and the board is committed to issuing an ethnic studies resolution.

So that will be coming to committee next month.

Unfortunately committee only happens every month.

There is discussion on an implementation task force to capture some of the things that Director Harris had described.

How do we bring the best and most enthusiastic and you know the passionate people that can help make this a reality?

How do we align all of these different pieces?

Basically how do we do the right thing?

But we also have to do the thing right.

You know we can't just choose a path and go there or put some words out there and expect them to turn into actions.

You know we have as director Harris mentioned the since time immemorial that we would love to do a better job more thorough job implementing.

We've had a you know board support board enthusiasm around an idea for increased civic instruction civic curriculum and we have not been able to get that implemented.

You know we have a lot of different areas which I think especially in light of the recent election.

You know it would be some motivation to move some of those things forward.

But they're all part of different work streams and I think that's one of the challenges that we're just going to have to face.

I wanted to mention a couple of other ones.

We have an assessments work stream that is also going on.

The board is introducing a policy on assessments and so when we talk about the components for instruction you know the curricular elements assessments are a really important part and making sure that we have the right equity components in that work.

is absolutely imperative.

So I wanted to put that out to the public and daylight that there's a work session on it tomorrow.

But by all means people should look online look at the draft versions.

Staff is being really thoughtful and deliberate about trying to do community engagement.

But that doesn't mean that we can't get more feedback on it.

I wanted to provide a more tangible example of some of the work that's being done recognizing both the budget constraints and the desires to maintain a high level of academic excellence.

We've got in our language immersion schools.

There's a another work stream that's going on to.

You know people who have been following the board have probably heard some of the concerns around the different funding levels at the schools, we have different implementation models, the schools have different demographics, they have different histories.

And so the language immersion task force and the leadership has gone out of their way to engage with other districts around the country experts to understand what are the most student effective and cost effective models and how can we implement those.

And trying to do it in a way that we're not undermining the efforts of our communities to fundraise but rather we're providing them an opportunity to get as good or better educational delivery without having to invest as much money in staffing.

So this is a way that I think I really see that as an exciting opportunity for the future.

And I guess in closing I just want to mention that the Lincoln high school meeting that I had about a month and a half ago, the notes for that are finally up on the Lincoln BEX website if anybody is interested in that.

And then I have a community meeting that I'm trying to schedule in April and as soon as I get the dates for that I will post that.

But I thank you all for sharing and I remain honored and somewhat stuttering and somewhat speechless.

Peters Director Pinkham.

Thank you and good evening.

It's in I think evenings like this that it makes me proud to be part of the Seattle community seeing the students and community members coming out here and letting us know what it is you want to see us providing for our students.

For our future generation our future leaders.

You know so just seeing the it just makes me proud to be here to see the community your output and what you're providing.

for our future.

You know those of you that have graduated from the Seattle schools and came back and shared your voice saying boy I wish I had that while I was in high school I had to wait until college you know how much further I could probably advance myself if I had that earlier in my life that exposure to American ethnic studies, Asian-American studies, African-American studies, American Indian studies etc the list can go on.

Yes I agree it's needed and we as a board it sounds like we are kind of coming to that what can we do to get that to move forward.

We talked about how budget and money can be tight for us but when we sit down and think about our priorities we can make it work we can see what we can do.

As we work with the Seattle education Association, the principal association, the classified staff, everyone that's going to be involved with educating our students I think we can find a way to how we can make this more immediate instead of waiting longer to adopt a curriculum.

What can we do now?

What can we do that isn't going to cost us too much money that can bring in different perspectives into the classroom?

You know listening to the presentations we had today as far as the project-based learning our guest speaker talked about the impact of her getting involved with group learning that when you bring in those different perspectives values added to everyone.

It doesn't take away from anyone but it definitely adds to everyone.

And it just made me think about again what I shared at the last board meeting from Vine Deloria Jr. on when he talked about the Indian student American inconsistencies and I'm going to read the quote in whole I just paraphrased it last time.

And where I say in here refer to either American or white society we can put in other ethnic groups in here.

And this is what he had to say.

The whole education process must be recognized as fundamentally different when one passes from white society to Indian society.

Education in white society appears to be the creator of communities.

It is oriented toward the production of income producing income producing skills and the housing business entertainment and recreation sections of white communities reflect this fact.

But in the tribal setting communities are producers of education.

At least they were in the past and we can make them so today.

When communities produce education the groupings of the community reflect the charisma wisdom and activities of the various parts of the community.

The respective activities can be viewed in relation to their importance to the community and that way the sacredness of the community can be protected and developed.

And I feel the community of Seattle shown today.

Thank you all for your input.

Definitely want to acknowledge Mary's Place and what you're doing to provide you know resources for students that can't afford it or those that are lacking the access.

You know keep up the good work and reaching out.

The Arkansas Shore your presentation today showing that in the middle school they're getting it now and we can see if we can get that civics and ethics studies education for them as they proceed hopefully to high school.

Cleveland STEM what you're doing there for your students in that project-based learning you're involved in it you're seeing it isn't necessarily just STEM when I heard you talk also about the arts you know spreading across each area that we're looking to provide our students for.

Again I almost kind of like the others and kind of speechless here for me tonight looking at the turnout for our community and I think with your help we'll get the Seattle school district to be a leader in providing the education that reflects what our community needs.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you.

Quickly my community meeting will be this Saturday from 3 to 430 I'll be competing with Leslie here at Lake City library.

Again Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ thank you.

Thank you Scott.

All right so I also being the last one to speak I have a lot of my points have been eloquently stated already by my colleagues.

I'll just add that the beginning of the evening with the presentations by the students from Orca K8 and South Shore K8 were something really worth watching if you have a chance to watch this again on television.

You know what they said, what they presented to us was raw, it was real, it was pensive, it was poetic, it was powerful and these kids are not past eighth grade yet.

And so the theme of the night of being honest and real and speaking your stories as Jill mentioned continued with our public testimony and I really want to appreciate, say my appreciation for everybody who came out tonight.

I wish we could take a photo up here of what we see because we saw just a group of people with signs and passion and it really speaks well to the engagement and the diversity of our district and I think it was very effective.

So I also wanted to say thank you to Allie Kinnaman from our middle college student and she highlighted very well how important it is for us to have different ways of reaching our students.

For me the theme tonight was engagement.

how crucial it is how fundamental and urgent it is for us to engage our students.

And we're not doing as good a job as we need to do.

And so we do need to have places like Middle College we do need to have schools like Cleveland that reach our students in lots of different ways and we just need to replicate those models that work.

And the same theme was brought forth in the whole discussion of ethnic studies.

We need our education our lessons our class time to be relevant to our students and to be something that is meaningful to them.

And so I fully support anything we can do as a district to make education more meaningful for our students.

So they actually get something out of it and I'm not talking about common core I'm not talking about career ready I'm talking about making them whole as people understanding who they are and going forth in life confidently and doing whatever they want to do.

So thank you all for bringing that to us and I'm very excited about the work we're going to be doing in terms of the ethnic studies.

I do think that some teachers are already trying to do this I have seen it with my own children's education there are teachers who will do Parts of the history that are not in the textbooks and I really appreciate the effort that they're doing.

What we need to do is give them more resources and give them more support to do that and integrate it more naturally and organically throughout what we teach our students.

Let's see a couple other things Mary's place thank you so much to the two library and teachers who came and presented to us and reminding us that we also have students who are in transitional situations in terms of housing and we must not forget them and we must not forget that they too you know have aspirations and educational needs and abilities and we can nurture them and we can all come together and help them out.

Women's history month I guess that's not one we think about too much.

It seems like it's worth mentioning it's worth having more than a month.

Hopefully we can have a woman's history revolution in the next four years maybe even two years we can have it happening at the national level.

Let's see.

I had a community meeting just earlier this week and the topic the main topic was the opening of Magnolia elementary school and what everybody wants in the Magnolia and Queen Anne neighborhoods in order to have a school that people are excited about going to and doesn't require taking people out of their existing schools.

It's always a challenge.

So we also had a very engaging energized meeting on Monday night over at Blaine.

I did make the end of the meeting I wasn't able to be there for the whole meeting and I apologize for that.

I had some conflicting other meetings I had to go to here but I am in touch with staff and they are filling me in on what I missed and I'm also in turn bringing to them everything that my constituents are bringing to me in my meetings.

This is just the first meeting of that kind and we're going to continue this dialogue so that we can come up with some good solutions to how to deal with the growth throughout our district in general and our city but very specifically there's some growth happening in the Queen Anne Magnolia area.

In large part because we have a lot of people moving in brought to Seattle by jobs from Amazon and Expedia.

So we're seeing a lot of growth there.

And let's see.

It's good news about the levee cliff, it's incrementally getting us to where we need to go.

This whole exercise has forced us to take a look at things closely and I look forward to being able to restore resources to our schools to the extent that this latest development allows us to do.

So we now need to take a break.

And when we come back we will go on to the action portion of our agenda.

And I just feel like I'm forgetting something.

Well I don't know we have to we have to be.

Yeah we're going to pick up from there.

So the board is now going to recess for 15 minutes.

Thank you all for coming tonight.