School Board Meeting 142017 Part 1

Oh, the dance?

Welcome everybody to the January 4, 2017 regular school board meeting.

Ms. Ritchie the roll call please.

Director Blanford.

Here.

Director Burke.

Here.

Director Harris.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Peters.

Here.

Okay if everyone would please stand for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

I would like to now turn it over to Superintendent Nyland for tonight's recognition.

Well we want to start tonight with recognition of the school board.

So thank you for the incredible number of hours that each of you put into the job.

Fortunately we even gave board members a little bit of time off.

over the holidays but here we are.

Just a few days into the new year and back at a board meeting.

So I don't know by my math it looks kind of like almost 20 hours a week for some board members for committee meetings and reading materials and coming to board meetings and doing all the prep work so thank you for all of the work that you do.

I do have a proclamation by Governor Jay Inslee that I will read into the record.

Whereas the mission of Washington's public school system is to assure that all students achieve at high levels and possess the knowledge and skills to be responsible students and enjoy productive and satisfying lives.

Whereas Washington's 295 locally elected school boards and nine elected educational service district boards are the core of public education.

Whereas the districts and regions they lead serve more than 1 million students and have a combined annual budget of more than $11 billion and employ 160,000 people.

Whereas, school directors play a crucial role in promoting student learning and achievement by creating a vision, establishing policies and budgets, and setting clear standards for accountability for all involved.

Whereas, school directors are directly accountable to the citizens in their districts and regions serving as a vital link between members of the community and their schools.

Whereas school directors and educational service districts provide a passionate voice of advocacy, more on that later, for public schools and the welfare of school children.

Whereas it's appropriate to recognize school directors as outstanding volunteers and champions for public education.

Now therefore Jay Inslee's governor of the state of Washington hereby proclaims January as school board recognition month.

So again thank you to the board, we will invite you down to have a picture taken with certificates and at the end of the meeting the flowers at the end that provide nice maybe bookends for a photograph are yours to take with you.

So thank you to the board.

Yes.

Were you going the other way?

Oh, no.

This is probably the board participation part of the meeting.

We will invite you back down to do that again in just a moment for a different purpose.

So we are delighted to recognize tonight city year for their work with us.

have as we've talked about before so many many great partners.

We have about 300 CBO partners and we've got about a dozen or so of those that are over the top in terms of their participation with us in standing beside us in our student achievement work and in helping eliminate opportunity gaps.

City Year has a theory of action to die for.

They worked with Deloitte and Touche and identified specifics nationally that they could engage in where they could make a major impact.

So they want to come to communities and make a difference.

Specifically in feeder patterns for high schools that have a lot of work to do in terms of increasing graduation rates.

They are in 10 of our schools and they do a lot of fundraising they do a lot of work on the ground with kids and as you see they are here some of them with their red jackets on and that's what you would see.

in a school on a regular basis encouraging kids to come to school, building relationships, doing great things to encourage students and student learning.

So with that I would like to introduce James Bush who will add a little bit more in terms of recognition and thanks for city year.

Awesome thank you Dr. Nyland and board members for the opportunity to introduce city year and to recognize him as one of our gap closing partners.

As Dr. Nyland shared City Year deploys 89 AmeriCorps members to about 210 schools throughout Southeast and Southwest Seattle.

One of the things that I found out earlier today is like the services that City Year provides our students actually account for an extra month of learning time for our kids and it's actually a really important way that they are actually engaging and making sure our kids get the supports they need to be successful.

Denny International Middle School is one of those schools that we have both a City Year AmeriCorps member Nina Montoya who will come up and share her experience and Shamar Botley who is a teacher at Denny international middle school and they will share how they partner together to kind of make sure that they are having the impact with the kids it's important and being able to show and demonstrate the success.

At this point I would also like to recognize Kyle Angelo the ED and vice president of AmeriCorps city year Seattle King County who is a critical partner for us in making sure that we are successful in kind of the work that we want to do at the schools they support Nina Shamar can you please join me and I'm going to pass the mic over to you for a few comments and after we're done it would be great to get another photo opportunity with the red coats.

Okay thank you.

Hi my name is Nina I'm a second year corps member at Denny international middle school and I've been working with Mr. Botley for both of those years.

And I'm Shamar Botley I teach math at Denny international.

Yeah we're just going to share a little bit of our experience working together.

Mr. Botley and I are pretty different people, for example I'm a Gonzaga basketball fan, he's a UW fan, we don't agree.

But while I've been kindly asked to step out of class on Fridays for wearing my GU gear, we both agree that a positive relationship with an adult has a huge impact on classroom success.

So we leverage our differences to reach the majority of our students.

I can think of many students who have really benefited from having both of us in the classroom.

Particularly we had a student last year Adrian who was pretty wiggly.

He didn't really have enough stamina to focus through the whole class period and his behavior didn't really allow him to maximize the time in math class.

Both Mr. Botley and I were able to build really strong relationships with the student.

I was able to support him in an intensive small group setting every day for a whole semester.

through that small group he gained both confidence in math and also some self-regulation tools that made it a lot easier for Mr. Botley to support him academically in the whole class setting.

Collectively we spent, we invested like thousands of minutes in Adrian's success and luckily we got to celebrate with him when he went from an L1 on his 6th grade ESPA to an L3 on last year's test.

And even though we don't have him in class this year I'm so proud to watch him continue this momentum in 8th grade with one of my teammates at Denny.

Another really good example of how we partner to support our student success is Angela's story.

Angela is a student who came to Denny right before the interim ESPA in December.

I got to spend multiple class periods working with her individually to really gauge her math skills and also to see how she was feeling about coming to a new school district in the middle of the year.

And while I did that Mr. Botley was able to continue working with the rest of the students while I got her caught up and since then we've been working together to make sure that Angela is on track with her peers in class every day.

These stories are just a couple examples of how teachers and core members work together to differentiate instruction based on individual student needs.

During my time with City Year I really seen SPS take a leadership position nationwide in eliminating the opportunity gap.

Which is also one of like it's a core piece of City Year's mission statement.

And it's an incredibly powerful thing to be such a direct part of the solution to an entrenched educational issue.

And I'm really privileged to be a part of that work every day alongside Mr. Botley.

So with that I'm going to pass it off to him for a minute.

So before I start to speak let me just tell you guys right now I'm not much for speaking outside of teaching.

But when I was approached with and asked to talk about my relationship with City Year that was something I felt I had to do.

I'm just going to kind of talk about what it means for me to have Nina and Sydney in my classroom.

So I teach six periods and I see roughly 130 kids a day.

I would say on average you would talk about 25 kids in a classroom give or take.

Relationships are extremely important as far as with kids and their learning.

You have to be able to touch base with them, meet with them, have that relationship for them to be open to your learning.

And having city year build those relationships with those kids, it makes learning such a good experience for them.

It allows me as the teacher, our goal is that every kid reaches standard.

Sometimes that's difficult by myself but having someone like Nina in my classroom who they do one-on-ones, they do small group like she was talking about with the student who was actually my student the person she's talking about and seeing the student go from a level one to a level three was incredible and being able to go and approach and be like you know you scored level three on the S book for this past year and I know that that's something that Nina played a significant role in doing that.

Also like I said the small group aspect when At the school where I teach I get new students, I can sometimes get a couple new students within a quarter and trying to get that student caught up by myself would be extremely difficult.

But I can have someone like Nina sit and work with that student while I still continue doing what I have to do for my lesson and then incorporate that student back into the class.

Like I said, I've been at Denny for 10 years, been working with city year for six and it's just been an amazing experience for me to have them in my classroom.

We touch bases as far as with lessons so she knows what I'm going to do and like I said this is our second year together so besides the Gonzaga situation that we have we work really well together.

And like I said I appreciate, I really appreciate having City Year and I have appreciated having them for the past six years.

And I thank you guys for just letting me have the opportunity to kind of get from my perspective what it means as a teacher to have City Year in the classroom.

These are really just a few examples of how we collaborate to support our students but like Mr. Bali was saying we also support each other.

If I've learned anything from spending 50 hours a week in a middle school for over a year it's that middle schoolers have no filter, literally no filter.

And that teaching is incredibly difficult.

And at the end of the day it's really awesome to have a thought partner, a laugh and even a basketball rivalry but we really are better together.

So on behalf of the other 88 AmeriCorps members working with hundreds of partner teachers, admin and school staff and the thousands of students across South Seattle who are benefiting from this collaboration I just really want to thank you for this recognition and for your continued support to our organization and our schools.

Thank you.

Awesome thank you.

So with that we will invite the board down and we will invite the city here up and we will do some pictures.

Okay, squeeze in a little bit.

One, two, three.

One, two, three.

I'll take one more.

One, two, three.

You guys look awesome.

Thank you.

All right we do not have a student presentation scheduled for tonight as our scheduled presenters had a last-minute change which prevented them from attending.

We would like to thank the Broadview Thompson choir teacher Ms. Thronson for the effort in trying to organize the group over the holiday season.

So we will now turn to the superintendent Nyland for his comments.

Tonight I want to comment on a variety of things.

One is we always do talk about our SMART goals that the board has set for focus and direction for the district.

Second talk about some of the critical issues coming up.

Third highlight some of the exciting things that are happening across the district and then finally talk about some ways that people can be more involved in what we are doing.

As I've said many times eliminating opportunity gaps is the important issue of our time to make sure that all of our students have a great opportunity for the future and are productive parts of our community and our nation.

In support of smart goal number two, eliminating opportunity gaps, we want to start tonight with the work that is being done by Gail Morris as program manager for the Native American education services.

She over the last several years has grown the program in positive and effective ways.

She was hired at a time when the program was in some turmoil and had some issues with regard to compliance as she might mention tonight.

It is challenging to find and count and get credit for all of the students that we want to provide services for.

Since the time that she has been with us she has grown the program and the staff and it's reached throughout the district.

I'm really impressed with her thinking process in terms of how do you serve and reach 1000 Native American students across however many square miles we are in Seattle and 100 different schools.

And she has found a way to do that with her staff by kind of if you envision the MTSS triangle by working with dozens and hundreds of teachers in that bottom part of the pyramid to provide training, coaching and suggestions for how they can work with native students in their classrooms.

In the middle part of the pyramid she reaches about 250 students through tutoring programs that are strategically placed around the district in places where native students tend to be a little bit more concentrated.

And then this last year, year and a half we've had the privilege of starting up a Denny Chief Sealth program that provides more of the one-on-one relationship building with students.

With that I would like to introduce Gail Morris and have her come and give her report on some of the challenges and opportunities and successes that they have been working on in the Native American program.

Good evening.

Were you going to give me the clicker?

Here I am.

Are you on back there?

All right, thanks for letting me be able to report on what the Huchoosedah program has done so far this year.

I just want to start this conversation by letting people know we will no longer be the Title VII program.

They changed it to Title VI.

It will be official the third week of January.

But I'm going to run through my cards first before I change all my cards and all their So here is our native update overview.

We are going to talk about the successes, some challenges, what our next steps are and look at some data.

Before we get into looking at data I just would like to remind everybody again That data continues to be a little bit of a challenge for us even though we changed how students enroll we still have to clean up the data that we are looking at and separate some Hispanic out of the Native American, Alaska Native.

So we have been doing a lot of work around data.

So we are still only capturing about one-fifth to one-fourth of all native students in the data.

So here we go.

successes, challenges, next steps data.

Some of the successes are our 506 forms.

As you know we need to fill out 506 forms all the time, all year round.

We get a lot of support from enrollment office on this.

This is how we get our title VI monies.

We get about $210 per student.

It's a formula grant.

We were able to We were able to report 521 students which was up from 460 which finally pushes over the $100,000 mark.

When I first started here we were at 57,000 so that is nice.

We are still collecting 506 forms right now.

One of our greatest successes was starting the Shekachib so when you look at that it's pronounced She-ka-chib at Chief Sealth and Denny and we started that the second semester of last year and we started this year and I'm happy to say that we are now getting ready for second semester at Chief Sealth right now and our teacher there is super excited because we are now going to, we are official, we are in the catalog and people can see our classroom so it's pretty exciting.

It's a leadership class it's not an intervention class they do a lot of work there.

We have a Native American teacher Boo Balkan Foster and a Native American paraprofessional Ben Hoyrup and they do a lot of great work with the students and I can't be happier with that program.

We do high school credit retrieval, our high school summer credit retrieval program and we also have a K5 literacy culture program two weeks in the summer and I brought Rich Summers here and he can talk about that because he is our secondary liaison and he does all of the work in the high school credit retrieval.

So some of the challenges that we face are the workload issues and completing 506 forms correctly.

If we don't get those done the way that the feds want them done we have to drive out and have families fix them and so that takes a lot of time from us to drive to people's homes and have them fix them the first time.

I look at this bullet where it says there are not enough Title VI staff to meet the academic needs of all of our Native American and Alaskan Native students who need assistance and advocacy.

When I look at this I think you know what I feel like I don't have enough time to do is go into the schools and work with the teachers and the principals so that they understand our role and what we do with students and how we advocate on behalf of students.

to bridge that for parents to come in and talk to teachers and talk to principals because we don't you know we don't take the place as a teacher in the schools we are trying to help build relationships between families and the schools.

And so while we are trying to meet the needs of all students that are scattered throughout the district.

We find that a lot of times there's not enough of us to get to all of the schools and right now we are currently hiring and that's another challenge because we don't have Native American people applying as teachers.

So that's a huge challenge for us because we know that that is something that really makes our program successful is having all Native people on staff and families are comfortable with that.

Again transportation for our afterschool programs we have We have five after-school programs all of which don't cap out more than eight students because our kids don't have access to transportation, our families have to work and so they can't pick their kids up or they don't want their children to miss the school bus and so we can't recruit as many students as we would like to.

And so that transportation I wish we could do a little bit more with that but we still have some great programs going and I was telling Director Patu that we just started one at South Shorts, a partnership with South Shorts not actually Chucita we do services for them but they run it.

And then the enrollment data workload issue we are still separating the Hispanic students from the Native American students this will take quite a bit of time for us to move through that.

We are going to continue to collect 506 forms, continue to work in secondary schools to track attendance, grades, course completion and discipline as we have two objectives in our title VI program one is K5 literacy and the other is high school dropout prevention.

Co-teaching in classrooms while supporting native students so we don't necessarily pull students out we go into the classroom and we work with students and we work with teachers on how to find curriculum in to supplement the textbooks that they have because with the since time immemorial a lot of teachers want to use it but since time immemorial is about Washington State history it's really hard to do a K-12 so we help them with other curriculum as well.

I'm going to go on to there has been interest in a Shikachi classroom in the north end.

Something I'm excited to talk about if that's going to happen.

If we could do that we know it is successful at Chief Sealth.

We know that students attendance is great.

We know that the dropout over there has decreased huge because of Boo in her classroom.

And then finally we are having to move out of Lincoln.

as they get ready to remodel and we have two rooms there so we are looking at moving to the central area so that we can be accessible to all teachers in the district because we have a huge library.

We have our Huchoosedah books and then we have books that whatever books were left over from Indian heritage high school so we have a huge library that we want to be able to allow teachers to come and access.

We need space for that.

the since time immemorial we've been doing some great training around this I'd say that Since 2010 I counted 328 teachers and librarians have done the training for since time immemorial not only here but some have went to reservations and done the training there.

Shanna Brown and myself have actually done training for over 250 teachers ourselves and we are preparing to start training all fourth-grade teachers here in probably March through May. in all of the regions and so we're in the planning stages for that right now and I've talked with Kyle about it but we're going to be ready to go once we've secured the dates and we're pretty excited about that.

We know that we can use the since time immemorial for the new ELA textbooks that are coming out next year.

We know that those teachers will be able to access and use this curriculum because it will work well with it.

Here's our afterschool programs.

We have Highland Park John Muir, Olympic View on Tuesdays and Thursdays, South Shore and Sandpoint on Mondays.

We are working with schools out of Washington.

We also have all of our teachers in the afterschool program are certificated which is really unique because most afterschool programs don't have certificated teachers and so what we do is we just pay the existing teachers through our city of Seattle grant to help with our afterschool program.

One thing I didn't get on there is I would like to say that Janine has a leadership club at Whitman and she currently has 11 students in that club and she just took some books to teach them about Billy Frank so we are pretty excited about that.

This is something that Kyle and I have been talking about, the community engagement planning piece about how we want to do some outreach in the different regions to talk about, well the goal is to dialogue and obtain ongoing community feedback and hopes and desires and preferences on Seattle Public Schools efforts to close the opportunity gap for Native American students.

So we are going to do four regional community meetings.

We were going to set that date today but he had to leave out of town for the day.

Then he wants to continue the meetings with the Native American Council and what that means is the community-based organizations in Seattle so there's about seven or eight of them that attend Dr. Nyland's meetings regularly.

And then it says provision of information and updates from Seattle Public Schools and what we are doing to close the opportunity gap towards to let our community-based organizations know what we are doing.

And then here is the data that we were looking at and this was last year's data and we noticed that once we started taking, if you could see in 14-15 when the common core and we started doing the smarter balance testing there was a dip but it was a dip for a lot of students as well and we can see that it's going up last year and Janine and I were, we were talking about this to some, well we talk about this quite a bit is like you know when we look at our students and we look at the challenges that they face in taking the test and how do we support them and what are the schools doing to support them in helping them to be successful in the test.

You know I mean it's a much longer conversation than a five-minute board report for sure.

So that was in reading and here is in math in both we are in the third it looks like we are moving back up again.

on time graduation.

You can see the data on that as well.

And looking at the special ed.

We were looking at the special ed and looking at the percentage on that and we were trying to figure out we are trying to brainstorm on because we spend a lot of time going to IEP meetings and talking with teachers and talking with families and helping families you know understand special ed and how to support their kids and you know when we look at this number here we are trying to figure out like how does this Let me rephrase that.

When we look at this number and we know that and we're not sure and this is another question that we're going to ask.

If we have a lot of Hispanic families that you know mark the Native American box I mean are they in this number too?

I mean it was something that we were talking about.

It's a much deeper conversation with the Department of Technology and how we're going to look at that number.

And then actually how are we you know how can we help parents to advocate more at a school level with their students because that's really what we do is we want to support the families when in the schools and to talk with the teachers and the principals.

And then we were looking at and here's the students suspended or expelled.

that dropped significantly that makes us very happy.

And that was that.

So when we, I mean we sit and look at this data and we try to figure out how can we support the teachers and the schools and the families when looking at A few of the things that we really look at, we really look at special ed, we look at homeless, we look at foster kids because that's the biggest crisis that we work with in our program because we certainly have a lot of that in our community.

and how do we support families when they have to go to the school and help their students and that's why I brought Jeanine and Rich because Rich before he came here he just went to a student's house who, he missed 20 days of school so he's no longer in school and we couldn't contact the parents so Rich went to go and talk to the family to figure out what was going on.

So this is what we do we spend a lot of time driving out to families houses to figure out like how can we support you we pick them up we drive them places.

and you know advocate on their behalf.

I mean we have a great bunch of people that work here that all they want to do is help students and so I did bring Rich to give a quick update on what he does as a secondary liaison.

Good evening board members and Dr. Nyland.

My name is Richard Summers, I am the secondary liaison for Huchoos and Native Education.

A little bit of background on myself, I work with 6th to 12th grade students.

Our focus is mainly dropout prevention.

A historical problem in our communities is high dropout rates.

I graduated from Cleveland high school in Seattle so I am a local product.

After I graduated I did four years in the United States Marine Corps with an honorable discharge.

After that I went to UW and got a degree in American Indian studies, Director Pinkham was one of my professors there.

My family is from Alaska, we are from Prince of Wales Island, we are Haida's Eagle Frog clan.

So since Gail developed this position a little over a year and a half ago there wasn't somebody I could do a turnover with.

So much of our goals and duties I've had to kind of develop myself.

Mainly those do fall around increasing our graduation rates.

So how do we do this?

I get into schools and make contact with staff.

I get a point of contact that is usually a counselor.

So if a counselor such as happened with that student they sent mail home and they did calls but they didn't get any response I could jump in and work with that counselor and do the home visits.

I get familiarity with power school, the student database so I can print out grade reports and find attendance for the student and find the ones that aren't going and aren't doing their work.

Also the 506 forms that's really big in our program.

It took me a little while to get familiar with those but I'm familiar with them now and help the families fill them out correctly.

Like Gail mentioned one example of the work I do was yesterday I was in power school checking up on one of the students I worked with.

and it said he transitioned out so usually when I see a student transition out they either move or they've been dropped because they dropped out.

So this kid is only in seventh grade and I know his family hadn't moved out so I know he dropped out so I went and met with that counselor today and they were under the impression at his school that he enrolled in Washington so we double checked that and I said no he didn't and that's when I went to the family's house and sadly the family was, the parents were not home the younger children were home.

So I left my cell phone number and hopefully we'll get a call back and help get them enrolled.

Besides doing dropout prevention we do take students on field trips.

We go to UW Native American student day, Bothells, reaching American Indian Native student conferences.

Last year we did Ocean Shores Native Success Summit student conference.

And we also do Native American Youth Leadership Academy which is at the Puyallup Tribe Youth and Family Center.

We do that four times a year and I take about four to six students.

They learn leadership qualities, they get presenters from around the community, get fed and we just build on that for them.

and it's about 150 native students so you think in each school there's probably 10 native students, it's a big deal when they get to be around other students that kind of resemble themselves and their backgrounds.

Numbers wise last year I worked with around 80 to 90 high school native students and I do the summer credit retrieval so I targeted 11 native students that were on track to graduate, five enrolled, one no showed me and four actually finished past packets and got credit for graduation.

Numbers wise for our graduation rates, last year we had 27 native students that were seniors and we had a 506 form on file with them.

20 graduated, 5 re-enrolled, one was in Bridges transition program and one was a dropout.

So our dropout rate last year was only 4% which I think is pretty good.

Any questions?

Alright thanks.

I just thought it was important to know about with the 506 forms because our numbers are different than what is actually shown here so if we had 27 students that were in 12th grade and they had 506 forms we were able to track them and we know exactly where they are at and five of them are fifth-year students this year.

So that's why 506 forms are important to us.

Do you have any questions?

All right thank you very much.

Appreciate all the good work.

Thank you.

And thank you to the board for the two by twos that we've had over the last few weeks to further understand the program and some of the requests that we've gotten from the community about expanding services to Native American students.

Smart goal number four is focused on our budget.

Board was clairvoyant in recognizing that this was also a very important issue of our time unfortunately.

As I've said a couple of times I don't know what this is my 40 something year in education and I keep waiting for the state to finally step up and do their job and follow the Constitution and do what they promised.

As we heard from Tom Ahern when he was here a couple of weeks ago.

Washington is the only state in the nation that says that education is the paramount duty of the state of Washington.

I want to start my remarks simply by saying how hard the job is.

We have been working over the last month really now, I'm sure far longer than that for the budget office but over the last many weeks to take the budget message to the schools and to the community and talk about what does a $74 million hole in our budget look like.

That is almost 10% of our budget.

It is the equivalent of a levy failure and it will have severe impacts on us both in the short-term and hopefully not in the long-term because we do hope that the legislature will step up and do the job that they need to do.

But in order to reach that $74 million phase we will have a work-study session, yet another one with the board next Wednesday.

It takes virtually everything that is discretionary.

And many things that we really don't think of as being discretionary at all.

But it basically means rolling back a lot of our staffing to where we were two years ago.

which eliminates some of the extra teachers for K-3 class size and other things that we think of as essential parts of our program such as our dual language programs and our options programs and our K-8 programs.

Curriculum I know is near and dear to the heart of many of our board members as it is to those of us on staff.

But that's also one of the things that is most likely needed in all or in part to get to that $74 million spot.

The governor's budget is moving us in the right direction and he recognizes salaries for the first time so in the state's budgetary estimate for what it's going to cost them to fund going forward for the first time they are recognizing that they do have an obligation under McCleary for salaries and that means that they've got about a $3.5 billion shortfall in their budget.

So I do certainly recognize that our delegation has been supportive.

I do recognize that the legislature has a tough job to do to find the revenue and at the same time we also read the Constitution and as a social studies teacher I think the Constitution should be more important than all those other things but we'll see.

So I won't take time to go through our talking points we've been through those frequently.

The big talking points are that this is an avoidable crisis.

The legislators decision to cut our budget by $30 million those are funds that taxpayers have already approved for student learning in the city of Seattle.

And for the state to tell us that we can no longer use those dollars means that we put needless turmoil and consternation into our schools as we try to balance the budget over the next few months.

And then the other component is largely salary.

And for the board members I have at the end of your packet I have A new one pager, I don't know that I was bored over Christmas break but I was incensed over Christmas break to say some people in our community or some people in the legislature are saying well it's your own fault Seattle you did not need to give those salary increases.

And I beg to differ and I went back through the historical documents over the last 17 Our state has been promising to take care of compensation.

We recognize the need to do annual cost of living adjustments.

Our intent is to provide state funding for competitive salaries.

Part of the McCleary decision is consistent underfunding of the actual cost of recruiting and retaining competent teachers.

They studied this in 2012 and said that the state should be paying $1.3 billion in salaries that would be $65 million in our case, almost enough to take care of our gap.

I could go on and on, you've got the sheet there, we'll figure out how to post this and get it out.

We do have meetings coming up with the Chamber of Commerce and with our legislative delegation.

And we're trying to figure out, I guess if you're a classroom teacher you figure out where are your students and what do they need to know.

So we we have a compelling case but it's a little it's challenging to have that message be heard.

So we're trying to figure out How do we communicate the urgency?

How do we communicate the impact?

We had a young lady last night at the Franklin presentation that was very eloquent about what that would mean for her and for her students and for her child.

So we are trying to figure out what other ways do we have to communicate.

I do very much appreciate Seattle Council PTSA for co-sponsoring a lot of those meetings with us and helping get that message out.

So I could go on with the budget but I'll stop on the budget.

But it is consuming, it's taking an incredible amount of time at the district level, we have a big rollout plan over the next few days literally.

geared around the board work session on the 11th.

So we will be talking internally to individuals whose positions will be impacted over the next few days and then we will be talking with the school board on the 11th and then we will be having more of a broader message to teachers and to parents and to others.

And then rolling forward is probably the middle to the end of February when we translate this information into staffing ratios for each of the schools and send out notices to schools basically saying that every school will be one or two staff members short from what they were this year and then having to go through the seniority process and identify who those teachers are.

At this point in time we hope to retain virtually all of those teachers through attrition.

A little bit different situation with regard to non-certificated staff but trying to minimize layoffs because we do expect that this crisis will be resolved to some extent by the legislature.

We will press hard to get the legislature to do their work early in the session so that we can avoid all of this consternation.

There is a salary task force underway right now and they are charged with giving recommendations to the legislature on January 9. Given what we saw today it's highly unlikely that they will be at a point where they will be capable of making recommendations.

So unfortunately reading the Supreme Court document is enlightening in that it points out failure after failure after failure after failure to do what the legislature promised to do in 2009 and 2010. I'm sorry I said I was going to stop didn't I?

All right moving on.

Hot topics, EOG funding are eliminating the opportunity gap we have very little wiggle room in the budget we are trying to protect our eliminating the opportunity gap work to the extent that we can.

Preschool and childcare we continue to run out of space and we continue to work with our childcare providers, continue to work with the city and we will be bringing forward to the board in the next few weeks recommendations with regard to preschool and we are in the process of talking with childcare providers and giving them as much notice as we can as to spaces available and spaces not available.

I guess kind of spur of the moment thought those two issues that I just talked about contradict each other and if the legislature doesn't do their job we have space available.

We certainly hope the legislature does do their job and we have those teachers that we need and want and kids deserve to make class sizes reasonable.

Under good news a lot of things have been happening with regard to the arts.

We reported recently or actually the board has had on their agenda.

accepting some funding with regard to CTE and the arts program and further information.

We had this planning meeting with Seattle Repertory Theater, Children's Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Breitmaier Family Foundation to talk about professional development for 70 of our teachers in these arts pathways over the next, well over the next summer.

So we continue to have good partnerships from the community to help us continue to move forward with the arts program including the city of Seattle and the Laird Norton family foundation.

Niche Insight, I don't know that they are leading whatever but they sent us a notice this week saying that they had identified us as being in the list of 2017 best school districts in America.

So we will take it.

And Nathan Hale has had some consistent press early in the season.

ESPN will be here I believe on January 30 to televise their game with Garfield.

I thought wow that's a lot of hype but they actually beat the number one team in the nation during their basketball invitational in Oregon last week and they are now ranked number one in the nation.

I think we reported before that we were continuing to have conversations with the Annie Casey foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

I think we are on draft 10 of our proposal to them and we are still talking.

That's encouraging and we're hopeful that at some point in time that also contributes to our eliminating the opportunity gap work.

School visits, it's been a long time since I did school visits but since our last board meeting I have been to Leschi, Lowell and Stevens and continue to be impressed with the work that the schools are doing around building relationships and connecting with students.

And finally in terms of our partnerships and engagement work we've had Cedar Park community meeting recently in terms of talking with them about what an option school might look like and how interested they might be in helping make that happen.

Thank you to Dede Fauntleroy our planning principal Kim Whitworth.

Thank you to Michael Tolley Director Burke Director Pinkham for attending those meetings that meeting.

Community engagement task force was held on December 19th and continue to move forward with getting interaction from that task force about how we can do a better job of engaging families.

Undocumented families, the mayor's office, well actually the city council approved a $250,000 grant of funds to the district in support of undocumented families.

The city hosted a meeting with us recently where attorneys were present and we tried to provide information for families.

Unfortunately, over the last two months or so there's been a huge spike in the number of students that have been harassed, intimidated, called out, singled out and then we've had quite a bit of consternation from families who want to know wow am I in danger and am I going to be deported.

We do have another meeting coming up with the city in the next two weeks or so and continue to communicate internally to say we want every student to be safe, welcome, respected within the district and we want to help families understand as much as they can what their situation might be and connect them with legal assistance as needed.

Upcoming meetings, community engagement task force meeting, next one will be on January 23 here at 6 PM in the John Stanford Center.

Robert Eagle Staff, middle school, actually I skipped over Meany middle school so both of our new middle schools that will be opening next year.

are now having meetings to begin meeting with parents and getting advice and counsel in terms of the million and one details that go into opening a school.

And then individual education plan IEP overview and development.

There will be a workshop on January 11 at South Shore pre-K to focus on helping parents and guardians understand the IP process and what that might mean for them.

And finally the nutrition services policies task force will be holding their second meeting on January 19 and will continue to work on recommendations for new policies through the end of February.

On a sad note we would like to recognize Al Sugiyama former Seattle school board director who passed away recently.

We express our condolences to his family and want to recognize his unwavering commitment to the community and to the students and to the district.

Al served on the school board from 1989 to 1997. I have one announcement and then I want to turn it over to Director Harris.

Tonight coming up the lion's share of those here to testify before the board are here to talk about the student assignment plan.

The board continues to have detailed discussions about the student assignment plan and how best to move forward with that.

There will be a discussion tonight to delay action on that item.

There will be discussion tonight amongst the board and depending on how the board moves forward on the motions that might be made during that discussion.

We can delay slightly, we can delay until next Wednesday to provide more time for consideration of the issues, the amendments.

So those of you giving testimony, your testimony is welcomed and appreciated and yes the board will be discussing that tonight and presumably maybe next Wednesday as well before making a final decision.

With that I would like to turn it over to Director Harris the new audit and finance committee chair who has a statement to read into the record.

At the December 13 quarterly audit and finance committee meeting the office of internal audit presented two internal audit reports.

The first was an audit of Rainier Beach high school and the second was a follow-up audit of human resources.

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

Click on departments under the district tab then click on internal audit.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris and thank you Dr. Nyland.

So at this point in the meeting we typically have student comments but due to the holiday season and the timing we do not have a student representative with us unfortunately today and we hope to have a representative from Roosevelt high school at another meeting.

So we now move on to the business action items of the meeting and specifically the consent agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Seconded.

Okay approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

Director Burke.

I request that item 3 amending policy number 2415 high school graduation requirements be removed from the consent agenda.

All right, and do I have a second?

Do I need a second?

Okay.

All right all in favor of removing that item from the consent agenda?

Aye.

Okay would you like to discuss this item?

Yeah I just wanted to bring that to the forefront and make a couple of comments about it not so much to question its passing but just to highlight that this is a a legal change that we had to make to comply with new graduation requirements from the state.

24 credit graduation requirements which formerly was 21. So our expectation now is that students will complete 24 credits in their high school term and this is coming at the same time as our budget gap and so I just wanted to make a special note that what we are doing is we are meeting our legal requirement but we are not funded to do this and so this is part of our stretch.

So this is really just a soapbox moment for me.

Director Harris.

We as a board in the past have talked about having graphics that show the unfunded mandates.

Are we closer on that?

Because this is one of those yet again unfunded mandates that we need to be able to transmit graphically.

We certainly do have a graphic for the levy cliff and for the compensation and for the 74 million.

The unfunded mandates we will keep working on that one.

So I want to apologize I did that in the incorrect order.

So we now actually have to return to the amended consent agenda and read a new motion for this agenda as amended.

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Seconded.

Now all in favor of the consent agenda as amended?

Aye.

All opposed?

So now we move on to the discussion part that we just had.

So now that we have discussed this item are there any other questions or comments about this particular item that Director Burke highlighted?

All right.

So now I believe we vote on that particular item.

Okay do I hear a motion to approve that item?

So moved.

Seconded.

Okay all in favor of approving that item number three?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay hearing none, I guess that was unanimous.

So we are now at around, that clock is not quite accurate so we are at 519 so we are a little bit early before we can start public comment.

which we will start at 530. So we can turn to our directors if anybody wants to jump in right now and have some preliminary comments.

Reserving the right to add some more comments after hearing public testimony.

Is there anybody who would like to weigh in at this time?

Director Burke, thank you.

I'll start with a few reserving the opportunity to add a few more afterwards.

First I want to welcome everybody and share a happy new year with you.

Thanks for coming down and speaking on behalf of your schools, your students, your passions.

We've gotten a lot of email and heard from a lot of folks that are helping us with our decision-making process, helping us with our inquiry and we expect that to continue.

So I'll touch more on that later.

I want to share my gratitude and appreciation for our city year guests and partners.

The work that they are doing in our schools, we serve our 52,000 plus students but each of them has individual stories and needs and challenges and passions and to have that level of individualization that engages with students and opens them up to learning is super powerful.

We hear that story again and again and we have to just figure out how to implement it and so the work of City Year and their Their people out in the schools is really influential.

I wanted to reaffirm a promise that I had made to the community around Lincoln High School.

We had a public meeting which helped me better understand some of the landscape and I had promised to have another one within three months which would be in January.

I'm going to have to bump that just a little bit and go for early February.

I'm working with staff to finalize a date and an agenda.

We have to finish up the first student assignment plan before we start looking at the next one.

So there will be an announcement coming out within the next week or so on another community meeting around the organization of Lincoln high school.

I have two planned community meetings coming up Saturday January 14, 3.30 to 5.30 at Greenwood public library and Saturday February 18 from 3.30 to 5.30 at Fremont public library.

Director Blanford.

I'll start out by giving good wishes to everybody for a happy new year.

I had the opportunity to attend the city year board meeting a couple months ago and speak to the board and thank them for their partnership with Seattle Public Schools that is a longstanding partnership so it was great to see staff members actually in attendance here and that that message could be magnified by involving all of the board.

I want to extend the superintendent's remarks regarding Al Sugiyama who I got to know a little bit when I was considering running for the board.

It has been indicated that he served for eight terms as a school board director which is no small thing in and of itself.

I learned a lot from him about leadership and particularly advocacy back in the 80s late 80s and early 90s when he served as a school board director we weren't even talking about the word equity in the way that we do today and he was a leader in that.

So, I wanted to extend condolences to his daughters Maria and Alyssa and thank him and them for their leadership in guiding our beloved district.

I also wanted to appreciate the superintendent for visiting several of the schools in the central area.

I hear frequently from parents in the community as well as staff members and administrators in schools particularly when the superintendent comes because he has a good sense of what to look for in classrooms and gives good guidance to our educators and so I just wanted to share that appreciation.

And then finally I had a meeting scheduled, a community meeting scheduled for this Saturday and unfortunately because of a death in the family I'm going to have to cancel that meeting.

I have one scheduled for the 4th of February and I am trying to identify a location and a time that could work for a January meeting but if anyone is hearing this please know that if I would be there if I could but I have other business to attend to this Saturday.

So stay tuned for future dates.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Blanford.

Would anybody else like to weigh in for a few minutes?

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

Good evening.

I also want to thank the city year participants for their presentation earlier this evening.

Just the work that we do in collaboration with other people in the city and the community to keep our students in school and making sure that they graduate.

It's great to see those efforts going out and I want to definitely acknowledge their contribution what our students can truly be.

When we give them a chance, when we give people out there that can let students know we believe in them.

That will get them through.

Just having that support I truly believe will help our students overall.

I also want to thank Gail Morris for her presentation on the native education program.

It's definitely something really close to me and my heart here and the training that we are providing for our teachers again I still want to see if us as a board can get that same training so that we know when we hear the term 506 forms what does that mean?

What are we asking our native students to fill out and why do we need our native students to fill that out.

So if we can understand it better then pass it on to the district office here and then to our principals and other administrators and then I can see hopefully that we will see those numbers start to increase because when she says we have 500 506 forms completed and seeing that as only being maybe one-fifth or one-fourth of our actual native population.

Yes, I would expect here in the city of Seattle that our native student population should be in the hundreds.

We should be more in like 1000, 1500 of our students here.

If we are able to reach out to them, let them know that we care about them, we want them to feel respected and all students that they are feeling respected for who they are.

And I also want to give a shout out to Marnie Campbell.

She was at our Urban Native Education Alliance meeting last night at Nathan Hale high school.

She got the opportunity to see the efforts that another CBO is doing to help our students to feel that they are part of this community.

We had the pleasure actually last night of having representatives that were at Standing Rock come and share with our students you know what was it like?

What's going on there?

And so students are aware that hey I can make an impact here in the city of Seattle, it's going to impact other people as well around this nation.

And it's going to be for the better.

So appreciating that again, Maureen Campbell is there and thank you to Nathan Hale for hosting us and providing a space for us to meet.

Getting back to the native ed program, thank you to Gail, Janine and Rich who are here and all her other staff and I did want to give a thank you to Rich for the work that he did because it was actually my oldest daughter that went through a lot of the programs that he ran too.

The credit retrieval program, my daughter had to do that in the summer, probably three summers of her that she had to go through and do that.

And it got her through, got her degree, graduated from the Ingram high school and where she is now at the Institute of American Indian arts in Santa Fe and she is home for the break, glad that she's home.

Hi Molly.

And it also made me proud to want to share with you guys that she went on and made the president's list.

Her first quarter, excuse me, perfect 4.0 for my daughter.

So I've got to give some of that credit to the native ed program that we have here because if it wasn't for them she may not have graduated on time.

So thank you Gail Morrison to her team and to programs such as UNEA.

Kind of keeping on the native theme I want to announce that the UW Winter Powwow is this Saturday at the City Union building, the hub, doors are planned to be open at 3 PM with grand entry at 4. If you want to stop by and enjoy some of the native community here in the city of Seattle that is one venue to do so.

My next district one community meeting is still to be determined, I'm looking right now at January 25 which I think coincides with the football playoffs where there's a break.

But I'm not sure, I'll see if I can get a Saturday or Sunday in there at some point.

It's going to depend upon space availability but I do plan to have one on or before January 25 and I'll share hopefully sometime to make comments after public comments as well.

Thank you.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you Director Pinkham that brought us perfectly to 530. So as we have now reached 530 it is time for public testimony.

The rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask the speakers be respectful of 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 a two-minute speaking time.

When the two minutes have ended please conclude your remarks.

Ms. Ritchie will read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you.

Lucy Durham, George Durham and Susan Hubbard.

My name is Lucy Durham, I'm a current 7th grader at Hamilton International Middle School.

I'm asking you to please pass the amendment to grandfather rising 8th graders at their current middle school.

I'm one of the rising 8th graders that will have to switch schools unless you grandfather us.

I'm asking you to please pass this amendment.

Some of the things that are important to me in my school include music, sports, language, academics and friends.

I am in band and I am grateful for the opportunity to be in and work towards a higher level band.

Being able to stay at my school would mean that I along with many of my peers would get to continue in that music program and play in a higher level band that we have worked towards as well as being able to go on field trips and the experiences that come with that.

I have also spent my time working to learn in a higher level Spanish class.

I have been looking forward to being able to learn Spanish at a higher level and being able to finish middle school at my school would allow me to continue to learn Spanish on the same course.

There are many opportunities provided at Hamilton that you can only have as an eighth grader.

For example being a TA, a teacher assistant especially with a teacher that you know.

It is unlikely that some if any of those opportunities will be in place at a brand-new school.

If we are grandfathered we will be able to have those chances that we have been looking forward to throughout our sixth and seventh grade years.

Grandfathering also means that I would be able to remain at the appropriate level core classes.

I spent my time at Hamilton working towards being able to learn math, science, history, and language arts at a higher level of these classes.

And finishing at Hamilton would allow me to complete these classes that I have worked towards throughout my 6th and 7th grade years.

Many of my friends will stay at Hamilton regardless because they live in different neighborhoods than I do and so being able to stay would mean that I would be able to finish my middle school years with my closest friends.

Being able to stay and finish my 8th grade year would mean a lot to me and to many of my friends and peers.

It would mean we would be able to participate in higher level classes that we have spent our time working up to.

It would mean we would be able to play music or learn a language at a higher level.

and go on the field trips that come with that opportunity.

It would mean we would have the opportunity to participate on a varsity sports team.

It would mean we would have the opportunity and the option to participate in a program available to only 8th graders and to me the most important thing is that we would be able to finish middle school with our friends.

Good evening my name is George Durham I'm the proud parent of three Seattle public school students one of whom you just heard from.

I'm here this evening to express my strong and unequivocal support for amendment one to allow grandfathering for all rising eighth graders in the district.

Allowing them to remain in complete middle school at their current schools if they choose.

You will hear tonight from people on both sides of this issue.

There is a small but vocal group of parents with students entering Robert Eagle Staff encouraging you to vote against this amendment.

They claim it will adversely impact the experience of students entering the new Eagle Staff middle school.

As a parent of a rising Eagle Staff student we are thrilled about the new school and look forward to the experience.

I could not disagree more.

Rising Eagle staff 6th and 7th graders will have two and three years to build their school into a rich and robust community.

Principal Campbell will have time to develop faculty, staff and curriculum.

Students and families will have time to develop extracurricular resources and programming.

Requiring rising 8th graders to move for their final year of middle school however will hurt them academically, as learners, as students and as young people.

You will hear a variety of attendance, population and budget numbers from parents tonight.

Both thoughtful and well-intentioned we all want to do what's right for our kids.

The numbers and projections are not reliable and have not thus far persuaded me or many others to think that requiring 8th graders to move outweighs the clear disadvantages to doing so.

Grandfathering allows students and their families to make the choices to what is best for them.

Grandfathering provides greater equity across all 8th graders in the district and does not cater to the needs of a small group at one school.

Overcrowding issues at Hamilton, Washington or elsewhere will not be solved by requiring 8th graders to move.

If anything grandfathering may improve capacity by providing choice for students and families.

The district strategic plan states that our students come first.

We believe it is essential to place the interests of students above all others in every decision we make.

Please do what is right by these students, let them finish what they have started, minimize disruption to their academic journeys and vote to approve amendment one.

Thank you.

Susan will be followed by John Chapman and Jenny Young.

Hi directors and staff, hey great job kids.

Rising 6th and 7th graders, ditto.

They feel the same way about their school and what they are looking forward to.

So my name is Susan Huber, I'm a future REMS parent, I'll have a 6th grader there next year.

I represent the many families I guess that would be considered that small contingent that have not been told about this change because they've heard nothing about this amendment.

5th graders don't really know about this, 5th grade parents.

I'm asking you to vote no on this amendment.

By the district's own report this amendment would have significant financial implications for next year.

At a time when the district faces a $74 million shortfall it's costly, it's not required and more importantly it sends a really confusing message to legislators before a session where Seattle is asking them to address McCleary.

Number two, the impact to families is being distorted to bolster this argument.

I was really disappointed to read some of the changes to this amendment.

And it's shameful to use a report about school mobility related to homeless children to make the case to grandfather children in middle school, upper middle class families so they don't have to change schools.

it's wrong.

The use of these reports is an insult to homeless families who face real and serious issues with sudden and frequent school changes.

My third point, community engagement on this amendment has been embarrassing.

Especially for recently elected board members who campaigned on a platform of more and transparent community engagement.

There has been no posting on the district website for parents for meetings on this issue and the district staff has not organized anything at this point.

You know, you had meetings for some but not for all.

A meeting in fact that I found out about that I was not welcome to.

And it was held at my old elementary school.

But it was only for 7th grade families.

This is subjective, it smacks of exclusivity and it denies busy parents the opportunity to engage.

It doesn't pass the test.

This change has been known for three years.

This last minute amendment hobbles the planning of district staff that you're going to hold responsible later.

This is going to impact things for quite some time and if you work on boundary issues you know that grandfathering keeps change from moving forward.

Don't delay this vote, vote against this amendment today.

Thank you.

My name is John Chapman and I cede my time to Myra Parker.

Good evening thank you for this opportunity.

My name is Myra Parker I am a parent of a fifth grader at Licton Springs K-8 school near Wallingford and I would like to urge the school board this evening to consider their promise that they made to Licton Springs several years ago which was to establish a new setting, a new school with 14 classrooms.

Recently that proposal has been changed to have that amount.

Right now there are no other available schools that support native students in the same way that Licton Springs supports native students.

Previously my daughter went to another magnet school or option school in Seattle and she experienced severe discrimination.

There was a gym teacher that asked her class to act like Native American chiefs and they ran around whooping throughout the gym period which was just a horrible experience for her to have to go through as a third grader.

Since she's been able to go to Licton Springs she's received the support that she needed from the students, from the native parents there, from the principal and from all of the incredible teachers who are opening and affirming to native values native cultures and who are welcoming and understanding to people who are different from them.

And I really want to urge the school board to reconsider and to make sure that there is a place for native students that supports this community that has a lot of high risks and who could really benefit from educational grounding especially in the early years in K-8.

Thank you so much for your time and I appreciate it and I hope you will consider our request.

Jenny Young will be followed by Travis Saunders and Lisa Costley Saunders.

Good evening directors and Superintendent Nyland and staff.

I'm Jenny Young the PTSA president at Whitman middle school.

Starting in the fall the school staff and the PTSA planned a variety of ways to help inform our families of the upcoming changes for next year.

We especially wanted our families who would be assigned to Robert Eagle staff to start thinking about their options.

One of the ways we provided outreach was with an information sheet and a short survey.

Last week I emailed the surveys out to all of the directors and the staff and I hope that you had a chance to review those.

The survey provided insight into the preferences, expectations and concerns of the families and it should be recognized that the needs of the students assigned to an attendance area middle school are likely to be much more varied compared to the needs and preferences of HCC students who opt into a program pathway with a cohort.

Response rates were highest from Greenwood and Broadview Thompson area families and show that a strong majority of respondents from those areas prefer for their student to stay at Whitman.

In contrast Responses from families in the areas of East Viewlands, Bagley and Northgate for which Eagle Staff tends to be closer or more easily accessible tended to prefer reassignment to Eagle Staff.

This included both current sixth and seventh graders.

Comments from those preferring Eagle Staff indicated that important factors included walkability, having a fresh start at a new school and attending school with friends.

I personally delivered 17 translated surveys to families and I can tell you that they are excited to be living close to a new middle school.

Across the board for all grades families want reassurance that their child will have access to strong academics, music, arts and sports programs at either school.

At this point students of all grades attending Eagle Staff next year including those currently in sixth and seventh grade at Whitman need to be ensured that they will be served well and I ask that you carefully weigh the impacts that any amendments could have on funding, program development and community support.

Thank you.

Good evening for the record I'm Travis Saunders thanks for the opportunity to speak this evening and for your service to the children of Seattle.

I'm here to encourage you to vote yes on amendment one for allowing grandfathering with transportation for rising 8th graders.

I'm a father of a rising 8th grader at Hamilton international middle school who would be affected if this amendment does not pass.

I'd like to point out what I believe are the three key issues.

Issue one, I understand there's a need to figure out the capacity issues this school district faces but moving children to new schools in their eighth grade is not an approach to solve the capacity issue.

In amendment one Director Peters astutely points out that such a move is blatantly at odds with core values detailed in the Seattle Public Schools strategic plan.

which states our students come first.

We believe it is essential to place the interest of students above all others in every decision we make.

A decision to move any student in their 8th grade year certainly doesn't place students interests above all.

This type of decision appears to be a half-baked attempt to take the easy way out of honestly solving the capacity issue.

In fact moving Hamilton's rising eighth-grader doesn't even begin to solve the capacity issue.

If amendment one passes Hamilton's enrollment will still decrease for the 17-18 school year.

Where's the logic in moving rising eighth-graders?

More importantly and paramount to any decision made would such a move place interest of students above all?

Issue number two, under 4C and Director Peters school board action report she provided references to show changing schools can be highly disruptive to students both academically and emotionally.

It was especially concerning to read the published scientific findings that show that changing schools is as stressful as the hospitalization and incarceration of a parent.

This should raise alarm to the school district.

Moving on to issue 3 because I only have a second is that we've really faced the financial fiscal cliff in the upcoming years.

At this point making a decision related to budgetary would be physically irresponsible without running the full budgetary process to understand.

My time is up so I thank you for your time.

I encourage you to vote yes on amendment 1.

Lisa Cosley Saunders who will be followed by Renee Remlinger Tee and Betsy Klebanoff Hills.

Hi I'm Lisa Cosley Saunders and I spoke at the November board meeting.

I'm here to show support for amendment one to grandfather middle school students and I'm ceding my time to another parent to give her a chance to speak.

Leslie.

Good evening my name is Leslie Sinisfett.

Please vote yes to grandfathering all rising 8th graders next year.

Our older son is currently a 7th grader at Hamilton Middle School.

He started at Hamilton in 6th grade and he is a thriving student of the Hamilton community.

Without grandfathering he will move to Robert Eagle Staff for his final year of middle school.

Our younger son is a 5th grader at Whittier Elementary and he will eagerly attend Robert Eagle Staff next year.

Although it would be more convenient for our family if both our sons attend Robert Eagle Staff next year, we feel very strongly that it is in our older son's best interest to remain at Hamilton for his last year of middle school while our younger son attends Robert Eagle Staff for his first year of middle school.

I hope you will understand the importance of academic consistency and social stability at a time when 13 to 14-year-old children are undergoing significant emotional and physical changes.

They need all the strength and confidence that being middle school veterans can provide in order to prepare them for the next big step into high school.

As eighth graders it is their opportunity to be the wise and experienced student leaders.

If you do not vote yes to grandfathering our children will miss this very important opportunity.

They will spend their last year of middle school learning how to fit in and figure out their place in a brand-new school environment with a new staff, a new culture, When they should be honing what they've learned since the start of middle school.

Please vote yes for an equitable grandfathering solution.

We are very pleased and relieved that new schools are opening and our rising sixth-grade son is very enthusiastic to attend one of them.

However a one-year investment to allow a rising eighth-grade son and his peers to finish their middle school experience with confidence is the right thing to do.

They can solidify their academic achievements and strengthen the relationships they have been building with each other and their teachers.

Please don't break down the foundational groundwork laid that shores our eighth graders up for successful transition to high school.

Our eighth graders should not be uprooted in their final year of the middle school just to round out the population of a new school or be context for incoming sixth and seventh graders.

Please vote yes for grandfathering for next year.

Hello my name is Renee Remlinger Tee I'm here to ask you to vote yes on the student assignment plan amendment one grandfathering rising eighth graders.

I'm ceding my time to Vivian and Eric Bailey.

Hi my name is Vivian Bailey and I'm a seventh grader at Hamilton.

I'm asking the board to vote yes to approve amendment one the option to grandfather rising eighth graders.

Kids my age in particular are already under a lot of social, physical and academic stress from trying to balance out school, sports, instruments, friends, family and health.

So is there any good reason to force them to change school in the last year right before they move into high school?

I know that at least for me if I have to go to the new school in eighth grade it would be extremely hard to keep up the friends that I've made over the past two years and that makes me really anxious about this decision.

In addition I play viola and I'm in junior orchestra.

I started playing last year and I've worked really hard with Miss Armley and private lessons to move ahead.

Thanks to Miss Armley there are five levels of orchestra offered and they are based on skill level.

Ms. Armalee is probably the best and most inspiring teacher I've ever had and I'm positive that all of the rising eighth graders in her classes will be seriously affected by leaving her.

Next year I'll be going into my third year of Spanish, college level science, high school level language arts, world history and geometry which is also high school level math.

Will Eagle Staff be offering these classes?

I know that Hamilton does and leaving might cause a disruption in my progress at the school.

I hope you all agree that eighth graders should get to stay at their current school to finish their social and academic experience in middle school.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Vivian's dad.

There's no facts supporting the argument against grandfathering eighth graders.

We don't have any actual numbers of kids other than this great group that showed up here.

There's no solid capacity projection.

No actual budget has been handed to principals and our kids would be bused to either school so that point is moot anyways.

There's going to be the cost either way.

The fact is our eighth graders are at their most at stake and letting them stay gives them everything they need without spending any extra money.

Thank you.

Betsy Klebanoff Hills will be followed by James T.

and Koichi Orita.

Hi my name is Betsy Klebanoff Hills and I'm here to have you support grandfathering and I'm conceding to Emily Malone and Harper Nesbitt.

My name is Emily and I'm a 7th grader at Hamilton.

I'm asking you to please consider voting yes on amendment one, grandfathering 8th graders.

I know why we are being asked to move but I wanted to say that doing this will have a lot of ramifications for me.

Middle school hasn't been the easiest.

I've had to work very hard to make new friends.

I've been looking forward to being one of the upperclassmen next year and such activities as trying out for the varsity ultimate frisbee team, actually having a chance to be in the senior orchestra and to possibly become a teaching assistant for my favorite teacher Miss Paris.

Reestablishing all of these opportunities in the new school seems like a very difficult task and one that will take a great deal of time.

maybe even more time than I will be at this school.

I will miss my friends and my school.

Please consider letting me stay where I started.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Harper Nesbitt and I'm a seventh grader at Hamilton.

I started Hamilton almost two years ago and I would like to graduate knowing that I finished what I started.

There are many great opportunities as an eighth grader at Hamilton that I would like to partake in such as the amazing Spanish program that Hamilton has.

I've been looking forward to the eighth grade trip to Costa Rica since I was in sixth grade.

One of my goals is to get into the Hamilton vocal jazz program which I think would be a great experience and it would be a lot of fun.

I most likely won't have these amazing opportunities at the new school.

I've made a lot of new friends at Hamilton who I would hate to leave behind.

Moving to Robert Eagle Staff would be a stressful experience because I would have to start a brand-new school and make a lot of new friends.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Hello my name is James T and I am the parent of a rising 8th grader and a rising 5th grader.

So for me this is all about a vote for choice.

The choice for the kids to finish what they started at the school that they started.

And I'm here to say that I am the product of 20 different moves in my life.

Over 22. It's about 22 moves.

And in that time I've gone to two preschools, three elementary schools, two junior highs, and two high schools.

And I'm here to tell you that switching in mid-cycle is very traumatic.

I'm the product of that.

And through years of therapy to get over things like that, I come here to talk to you about two main points.

That this does not necessarily have to be an either or vote.

It should be a yes and.

You're giving us a choice to attend the school that's appropriate for our kids.

Some of those kids will decide to stay, some of those kids will decide to go.

It's what's right for the children.

And the two points that I wanted to talk about is that there is an emotional and academic impact first and second that with grandfathering you can also and this is a yes and set up the children that decide to stay in the sixth graders and the seventh graders for success.

When I moved in eighth grade That was a very great time for me because at that time they were going to open up a new high school.

And the school board and the school district did everything that they could to include us into creating the traditions and being leaders at a new school.

But the thing was that they were not going to open that new school with seniors.

It was only the three classes.

And they did a great job of including us and empowering us to be part of that.

And that I think is what we can do here.

Allow us a choice and I'll set up the kids that are going to go to the new school for success.

Thank you.

Koichi Orita followed by Charlene Johnson Fordland and Kathleen Durham.

I'm Koichi Orita, I'm a future LEMS parent.

I'm here to ask you to vote no on amendment one because amendment one is not equitable.

As you see here there are a lot of Hamilton HCC seventh grader parents and students supporting grandfathering.

This is not a coincidence.

They are just one degree separation from the sponsor of the amendment.

The number tonight reflect inequity in public engagement, especially the surrounding communities.

The amendment affects so many others.

Many families are not informed and or they don't know the implication of the amendment.

Advocating for grandfathering your own child or yourself is easy and even understandable.

I would understand that.

But looking at the bigger picture for all kids is very hard.

There will be students of all grades at the Eagle Staff next year.

They all deserve a strong school program.

Amendment 1 benefits a selected few but other kids get the short end of the deal.

That includes many minority and immigrant families.

Parents and students are citing social and emotional problems as a reason for grandfather.

Why does that apply only to eighth graders?

Also studies cited in amendment one are about individual students moving from school to school, being away from classmates and friends.

They are not about the large cohort moving all together and using that study for justification is suspicious.

Directors, when you vote this amendment please think of those students whose families are not in this room.

They are being affected greatly.

Please vote no on amendment one.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Charlene Forsland and I'm speaking in favor of approving amendment one.

My family has had students in the Seattle Public Schools for the past 15 years.

We currently have a seventh grader at Hamilton and at Hamilton our daughter has thrived in the well-developed programs there.

Particularly the music, Spanish and science programs.

Since starting orchestra for instance in sixth grade our daughter has formed a strong bond with the orchestra program as well as with her teacher Ms. Armalee.

Our daughter has worked very hard with reasonable expectation that her dedication and diligence would culminate in her being in the top orchestra at Hamilton next year.

Like our daughter who has been working for two years towards this specific musical we know her peers have parallel aspirations that will be impossible to realize with having to spend their eighth grade year at a brand-new school where programs and curriculum are just being developed.

The aspirations of these children should not be forcibly interrupted or abandoned at this crucial stage in their development.

Programs can be replicated in time but long-term goals that depend on sequential work in a particular program and specific relationships with teachers cannot be recreated.

Our family understands the capacity constraints schools like Hamilton and Washington face and we sympathize with the difficulties the school board faces with budget deficits.

Robert Eagle Staff and Meany middle schools offer exciting opportunities for some families to influence their new schools culture and programs from the ground up.

However our family and others However, for our family and others allowing our children the choice to stay in their current schools and benefit from established relationships as well as actualized long-term goals is more important.

My family supports amendment one because it allows rising eighth-grade families the opportunity to choose the school and programs that best support the education values of their children.

Thank you.

Kathleen Durham who will be followed by Chris Jackins and Lisa Watkins.

Hello my name is Kathleen Durham I'm supporting amendment one and asking you to vote yes and I'm ceding my time to Amy Snover.

Good evening my name is Amy Snover and I'm the mother of a Hamilton seventh grader.

I urge you to vote yes on amendment one.

I urge you to focus your decision on the children who will or will not be moved because of your choice.

By voting yes on amendment one you can ensure that these children receive the core classes and continuity that every Seattle student deserves.

By voting yes on amendment one you will refuse to stake our children's 8th grade education on mitigation funds that are not in your current planning budget.

I looked for evidence that the current assignment plan can support the education of next year's eighth graders and by support I mean just provide core classes.

But there is no evidence.

I contacted principals, school board directors and school district staff and no one could tell me whether Robert Eagle staff can open with the staff necessary to provide core classes to next year's eighth graders.

How can you move students if the success of the move depends on funds you don't currently expect to have?

The precautionary principle says that when we don't know whether an action will be harmful the actions advocates must either prove the absence of harm or choose an alternative action.

Amendment one is your alternative action.

By voting for amendment one you can ensure that rising eighth graders receive the education they need and deserve.

simply by allowing them to stay at their existing schools where that education is guaranteed.

Thank you very much.

Please vote yes.

Chris Jackins.

Mr. Jackins will be followed by Lisa Watkins and Alka Sud.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124. On the student assignment plan two points number one the district should reopen Indian heritage school which had native education as its central focus.

Number two please verify the proposed enrollment for Decatur will not exceed 250 students otherwise the board vote will be an illegal violation of SEBA requirements.

on the contract for BEX V capital levy planning.

Please adopt rules to assure that the company planning the BEX V projects is excluded from later bidding on these same projects.

On amending policy 4237 please don't sell commercial access to public school students.

Please vote no.

On the increase in the contract cost for the Loyal Heights project, two points.

Number one, both options offered by the district stink.

Scenario one cost $2.5 million and scenario two cost $3.4 million.

Scenario one costs less and gives a tiny bit of the playground back but the school will still be losing close to 35% of its playground.

Number two instead the board should look at scenario three, downsize the project to three instead of four classrooms per grade level.

Give the school back its playground and save money.

On the Magnolia project $5.8 million budget increase.

Magnolia is another school whose playground is being destroyed.

Apparently this drives up costs.

Please vote no.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Lisa Watkins and I am here to support amendment one.

I am the parent of a son who is a seventh grader at Hamilton middle school and I also have two girls who attend Cascadia and Wallingford and who will attend the new Cascadia next year and then will move on to Robert Eagle Staff.

So it's hugely important to me that Robert Eagle Staff is a success.

That being said I would like my son to remain at Hamilton for his 8th grade year.

Switching schools prior to 8th grade would be hugely socially disruptive for my son and other students and research shows that there is a strong link between social and academic success.

Owen moved from Loyal Heights as a kindergartner to Lowell as a first grader.

After first grade year the Seattle Public Schools moved the HCC program out of Lowell At this time some students moved to Thorogood Marshall and others moved to Lincoln.

This was the first time a geo split separated him from new friends.

The HCC program grew each year and soon there were six classes in each grade at Lincoln now Cascadia.

This meant each year his chances of being in a class with a friend from the previous year was very slim.

In fifth grade Owen made two very close friends, one who he remains close to today because he is with him at Hamilton.

The other student went to Jane Addams for sixth grade when Owen went to Hamilton.

Again he lost a close friend due to a geo split.

Now as a seventh grade student Owen has several really close friends who make a difference in his daily life at school.

He looks forward to seeing these friends in the morning, sitting with them at lunch, etc.

Unfortunately not a single one of these students will attend Robert Eagle Staff with him.

All of them are slated to go to Hamilton because that's their reference area school.

I know that if Owen goes to Robert Eagle Staff he will survive as an 8th grader.

I know that he will make new friends but this is not how we pictured his 8th grade year.

It is my hope that Owen and other students in his position will be allowed to stay at their current school for 8th grade.

Please help these students thrive not just survive.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alka Sood followed by Robin Meyer and Jennifer Hayes.

Hello I'm Alka Sood and I'm ceding my time to Chrissy Dillon.

Hi board thank you for your time on this board I know you guys don't have an easy job we appreciate what you guys are doing.

I'm Chrissy Dillon I'm a mom to a current sixth grader at Hamilton and I'm asking you to vote no on amendment one.

We are all here as neighbors and friends and supporting 8th grade grandfathering or not and we all want to try to find some resolution to this.

We have been expecting a move to Eagle Staff for years.

The kids have been expecting a move to come all together and the families have been expecting to come together as one strong community and I believe that we are stronger together.

Amendment one is framed as being about rising 8th graders but it has huge impacts on all students in the district including rising 6th and 7th graders.

This amendment effectively adopts a new model for opening middle schools and it's breaking the precedent and expectation that was set with Jane Addams middle school.

Some are trying to characterize the jams opening as unsuccessful but by what measure?

SPS staff thinks this was a good opening as did many parents.

A jams parent with an eighth grader the first year has said and I quote jams had a few challenges upon opening its doors but it was a fantastic year for my eighth grader and many others.

The community was close and the new teacher hires were all rock stars.

An incomplete school cannot cost effectively offer the same number of quality electives.

To offer grandfathering at this point in the juncture seems elitist and financially irresponsible.

It is my belief that the board needs to stick to its commitments and open a complete comprehensive middle school for all students.

That's directly a quote from a parent that's active at Lincoln, Hamilton and Jams.

The question shouldn't be about which students feelings and needs are most important it should be about how to start a new comprehensive middle school strong and ready to serve the needs of all students.

It's about learning the right lessons from the startup of jams and it's about whether or not Eagle Staff starts with a critical mass and support it needs to offer all students a comparable experience to other established middle schools.

Please vote no on amendment one.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Robin Meyer I am a parent of two in Seattle Public Schools, a 6th grader at Hamilton and a 4th grader at North Beach who will be going to Whitman.

It actually makes me really sad to be here tonight that this amendment was proposed and has us speaking against our friends and our neighbors and our community.

I'm looking around this room I'm really sad.

My daughter played sports with these kids, she was coached by some of the people here and she's been in classes with some of these people.

So sorry I've lost my place but this is really sad that this happened.

Today, my daughter would also love the opportunity to stay at Hamilton.

When I told her where I was going tonight and why she said that's not fair I want to stay too.

Changing schools next year will be as challenging for her as it will be for the rising 8th graders.

Every single argument made today by the rising 8th graders who spoke so greatly and their parents applies to my child and all the rising 7th graders as well.

Every child in their family has been expecting this move for three years including those with the heartfelt pro-grandfathering stories we've heard tonight.

I was surprised to hear how horrible EGLE staff is going to be and how many things won't be offered making this even more upsetting.

Every one of them, every person here was expecting to go to Eagle Staff next year.

This amendment came at a time when we should have been planning a strong start for Eagle Staff, building a music program, a language program, a sports program.

It's unnecessarily divided neighbors and friends at a time when we should have been strengthening our bonds.

The only community engagement done that I was aware of was with the very few who will benefit from this amendment.

Those of us who have children that could be severely impacted had no specific opportunity to participate in the engagement nor raise our concerns about the inequitable experience for our kids if Eagle Staff starts with possibly 350 kids while Hamilton remains at 1100 kids.

I could go on but I think you get my point.

I was going to move into the budget impacts of this but everything said tonight applies to all the kids going to that school.

And I just want you to consider that.

And I'm super sad that this happened to our community.

And all of you who I'm speaking against tonight I'm very sad.

Jennifer Hayes who will be followed by Leah Martin and Brenda Ralph.

Hi there this is my first time speaking at one of these thanks for having me.

I find the comments about it being sad really confusing I'm definitely in favor of passing amendment one and I think it's sad that people who have kids who would not be affected would be fighting so hard against the kids who are.

There's not going to be one decision that makes everybody happy but I think there's one decision that's going to have a really clear direct impact on a lot of rising 8th graders across the district some of them you've seen tonight there are many more it's an equitable proposition it's not just for some of the rising 8th graders it's for all of them.

That's going to be a really tangible effect that will impact their lives if they are allowed to stay at their school where they have what they need, where they found success, where they are about to change the following year to high school which is a really big change.

The positive benefits of voting no are much more theoretical, tangential, undefined.

Parents with kids who are going to move to the new school anyway where they have longer to get adjusted or arguing against kids moving for one year.

My daughter wrote you a letter and just a quote from what she said, please vote yes to the grandfathering amendment.

It would make a world of difference.

It's going to make a world of difference for rising eighth graders across the district who are impacted.

Thank you.

I'm here today to ask you to please vote for grandfathering of all middle school students.

My name is Leah Martin.

My daughter is a seventh grader at Washington middle school.

I have two other children at Stevens elementary and this is not the first time we've endured a possible grandfathering clause.

For my daughter at Washington middle school she was grandfathered in elementary and was allowed to stay at Stevens elementary.

It changed her trajectory for the better.

I want to describe a specific circumstance, she together with a small group of 7th graders at Washington middle will be profoundly and negatively impacted should grandfathering not be passed.

These students are identified as either scholars or spectrum students by the district but have been placed in HCC classes based on teacher recommendations.

These children should they be forced to move to Meany middle school will invariably repeat a year's worth of curriculum in math and science because those classes will not be offered at Meany middle school.

According to principal Fulmer at Washington middle school there are seven to 10 students currently in seventh grade and roughly the same amount in sixth grade that meet this description.

Ms. Otis the new principal of Meany will be hard pressed to justify creating a class around 7 to 10 students.

I think we can all agree that forcing a student to repeat curriculum when there is no academic need would fly in the face of SPS policy.

To assume that open enrollment alone could accommodate this group of students would be a grave error.

Our family for one would not be able to attend Washington Middle School without transportation.

We would incur significant costs to get our daughter to and from school, we would have to miss work, so much so that we would have no choice but to send our daughter to Meany Middle School.

That's all I'll say, not to mention the music program.

Thank you.

Brenda Ralph, who will be followed by Monica Greenberg and Madeline Stavelsi.

Hello my name is Brenda Roth and I'm the parent of a seventh grader at Washington middle school.

I'm here today to ask your support and to ask you to vote yes on amendment one.

I grew up as a military child and the frequent moves did not have a negative impact on me until my middle school and high school years.

That's when the frequent moves became academically disruptive and socially and emotionally traumatic.

I fear that forcing kids to move in that final year of middle school will have a similar negative impact on their lives and they shouldn't have to experience that.

My son Christopher knew that Washington middle school was a special place the moment he walked through the doors.

He has advanced in the exceptional music program and wants to continue playing trumpet in his eighth grade year.

He also chose to take French and appreciates the various foreign language options offered by Washington.

He has enjoyed French and wants to continue taking it with his current teacher in eighth A lot of kids feel the same.

Continuity is very important for all students and these are reasons that it matters and that we ask you to please allow them to finish their final middle school year at their current location.

If you vote no you take away the progress that these kids have made in the last two years.

Those strong connections and opportunities are lost because they have to start over at a new school.

A school that they will attend for one year before moving again the following year to start high school.

Precious time and learning opportunities will be lost.

They will encounter unnecessary stress at a time in their lives when things are hard enough.

The potential negative impact should not be underestimated.

Please have empathy and understanding for their needs.

Help them succeed by keeping them at their current school for that final middle school year.

That will allow our kids to focus on the important things such as those connections, those opportunities, building confidence and academic and social growth at a very critical time.

please vote yes on amendment one to show support for the success and future of our kids.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Monica Greenberg and I am still hoping that you will support the request to provide 14 classrooms at the Robert Eagle Staff site for Licton Springs K8.

That is the space that we need to thrive and to grow.

14 classrooms means one classroom for each grade level in a K8 model as well as classrooms for our self-contained special education programs and cultural education for our native students especially but which benefit all of us.

I appreciate aspects of the proposal brought to this meeting as amendment five as it does lift the enrollment cap from 150 to 250 students.

I believe that once our school is afforded a stable home in the Licton Springs community and space enough to thrive and grow that we will do so.

But I don't want to see our schools growth in that location happen at the expense of our special education students.

They are part of our school community.

And it appears that their needs were not adequately addressed in the space allocation plan for the Licton Springs site.

And honestly I don't see their needs adequately reflected in the proposed amendment five either.

I'm glad that amendment five makes a broad commitment to our school so that we will have a stable home in a location that is culturally significant to our Native American students but I also need to say that amendment five does not relieve my anxieties about the specifics of the commitment that is really being made to us.

And if I feel this way I can only imagine how the parents of our special education and our Native American students feel.

So while I wish I could simply say please vote for amendment five in order to do so I need to hear more specifics about what a long-term home means when that's going to be assessed in two years and what creating space for a 250 student K-8 school means in real terms.

Thank you for your time.

Good evening I'm Madeline Stavely and I would like to cede my time to Kelsey Wyman.

Hi my name is Kelsey Wyman and I am the art teacher at Licton Springs.

So along with all of the room issues being shortened down there is the issue of what to do with the arts and sciences and one option that has come up is combining them into one room.

And I was really confused by that because it seems not physically sustainable, those are two of the most material intensive classes and also proposes kind of a dangerous issue when you have kindergarteners coming into a classroom after chemicals have been mixed and there's fumes in the air.

I also wanted to bring some positivity into the room and mention things, when I started out at Licton Springs we had didn't have an art classroom and now that I do have an art classroom I have partnered with Roger Fernandez he's a member of the lower Elwha band Squallam Indian tribe and he's been able to come into the classroom and work with the students to The younger students have actually created their own drums so instead of being in a classroom sitting and just drawing a drum they actually got to make one and that's something that wouldn't be accessible to them otherwise the older students have access to native stories and are doing literature work as well and that's something that's only possible with this partnership and with this space.

So I want to cede a few seconds sorry to the science teacher Sophia Jetha.

I'm also advocating to express the need for at least 14 rooms in the new Eagle Staff building for Licton Springs which is currently not outlined in amendment 5 and deserves clarification.

I already share a room in our current building and it has already made my work more difficult and limited in prepping hands-on lab experiences for my students.

So not having adequate space at Licton Springs for students to practice academic skills such as art and science is an equity issue and I urge you to consider otherwise.

Thank you.

We have Eric Blumhagen, Sharon Peasley and Dr. Porter.

Hello my name is Eric Blumhagen and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight.

I'm here to talk about the student assignment plan particularly about high school assignments for HCC students.

In particular I'm a bit baffled why the pathway to IBX at Ingram has made a lottery only system.

Here's why.

Ingram draws most of its HCC students from areas north of downtown.

If you look at the five-year enrollment projections for Ballard, Roosevelt and Garfield you'll notice that those schools are expected to add 200 to 500 students each over the next three years.

Those schools are already bursting.

I know students who can't get classes they need to graduate on time.

HCC students deciding to go to Ingram have kept the North End high school capacity crisis just on this side of manageable for the last several years.

By instituting a lottery you are pushing more of those students to Garfield or their neighborhood school which is asking for trouble.

If anything you should be trying to encourage more HCC students to go to Ingram.

Why?

Because Ingram is unique among the North End high schools.

It has space to add portables.

Encouraging students to choose Ingram or at least not standing in their way will keep those three high schools back from the brink over the next few years until Lincoln comes online and the new building is added at Ingram.

It will also help right size Ingram's enrollment for when the new building opens.

I'm not coming here to ask you to change the assignment plan.

That ship has sailed.

However, if you want to add portables at Ingram next year in order to save Ballard, Roosevelt and Garfield, the permit for those portables needs to be filed in the very near future.

I'm asking you to look ahead and make plans now to install portables at Ingram over the summer.

If you wait to file until the end of open enrollment, it will be too late to get a permit from the city.

You can make the final decision on installing portables after open enrollment and you have a better idea of how many students are headed to Ingram.

Over the next three years you need temporary capacity anywhere you can find it for high schools.

In the north end there is only one place to find that capacity and that's portables at Ingram.

If HCC students who want to go to Ingram are forced to go to Garfield, Ballard or Roosevelt, students at those schools will be directly harmed.

Thank you for your time.

Happy New Year everybody.

I'm Sharon Peasley former school board director and this pertains to amendment 5 facility space for Licton Springs.

As the amendment states Licton Springs currently uses 14 classrooms and two small resource rooms.

Its population is 60% free and reduced lunch and 30% special education.

Many of these students are Native American.

The intentionally vague language of this amendment makes it possible to allocate less than the 14 rooms the board granted the school in 2013 which is the space it needs to serve its students and program.

This amendment notes that the board approved ed specs in 2014 that designated space for 150 students leaving a capacity of 850 for the middle school.

The 50% reduction of enrollment and space for Licton Springs was buried in the ed specs and there was no transparent consideration by the board or the community.

It's very clear that Gen Ed and HCC students were assured adequate space while Licton Springs was denied the space it needs to serve higher needs, lower income and Native American students.

Amendment number five does not reverse this discrimination or ensure that it won't happen again.

The SPS racial inequity tool analysis tool defines institutional racism this way.

when organizational programs or policies work to the benefit of certain racial groups and to the detriment of people of color usually unintentionally or inadvertently.

Structural racism is defined as the interplay of policies, practices and programs of multiple institutions which lead to adverse outcomes and conditions for people of color compared to members of other racial groups.

Please apply this tool and the race and equity policy to amendment five and specify that Licton Springs will have a minimum of 14 rooms so that it will not be deprived of the space required to serve its high needs and historically underserved students.

This is a very easy addition that can be made before you vote.

Thank you.

Dr. Porter I am also in favor of Licton Springs getting 14 rooms, my child goes there, but I'd like to give my time tonight to Gabby Casper.

Hi I'm Gabrielle Casper Platt and I'm the access teacher at Licton Springs.

I am advocating for us having at least 14 rooms.

I found out that there was only seven rooms allocated for our entire school.

I wondered where is access going to go?

Where is resource going to go?

Access is an inclusion program but that does not mean that the students can be in general ed 100% of the time all day long.

According to their IEP's there is a service matrix so some of the students need pullout for a percentage of the day in a classroom that is designed to meet their sensory needs, their behavioral, their social behavioral needs and their academic needs.

special ed programs, resource access possibly self-contained into one room would be a disaster.

That would make it really hard to provide the least restrictive environment for these students and it would be very hard for the teachers to teach them.

Access has a staff of four, one teacher and three instructional assistants and the instructional assistants provide support to the entire school They work with all students, they work with students during recess, in the general ed classrooms.

One of the instructional assistants is instrumental with the green team so it's a very strong program and it's an important program.

And the district made no provision for access at the new Robert Eagle Staff building.

Thank you.

Thank you all for coming that now concludes our public testimony for the evening.

We will now move on to board comments.

Some directors have already made some preliminary comments they are welcome to add some more especially in response to what we've heard tonight and directors who have not yet spoken are also encouraged to share their comments.

Director Geary.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to everybody.

I want to start with thanking City Year for coming and sharing details about their program.

I think it's good for all of us to hear about the good programs that are collaborating within the Seattle Public Schools for the benefit of our students.

I also want to give a huge thanks to Gail Morris and the people, her team that work with our Native American students.

It's exciting to hear about all the different aspects of that program and I look forward to learning more about it but I just wanted to call her out because I'm always so impressed with the work that she does.

I wanted to give a thanks to everybody who came and especially the students I always love to hear from them and I know everybody is here speaking from their heart and we have to consider that and I will consider that and I do listen and I will try to think over this next week if we pass this amendment on how we can meet the most needs of our students while creating robust schools that are going to serve everybody who has to attend.

It's clear that there is a well-organized group of parents here tonight and it always does make me wonder who are the parents that we are not hearing from on this issue and so we have to be mindful of everybody when we make a decision to make sure that every student who comes is going to get what they need.

to pass through and get the academics.

Unfortunately with our budget crisis that is going to be where we are going to have to focus I think and that some of the other concerns that we have spent so much time focusing on these last few years in terms of meeting the social emotional needs of our kids, addressing the achievement and opportunity gaps that exist.

We are just not going to have the same ability to do and that is hard for us up here.

I know And we have to think about it across our district so know that the decisions that we are making are very hard and trying to balance all of that out.

But I wanted to give a thank you to Jenny Young because I always love it when we have people who come and bring us hard data that they have collected from a broader group within their school.

I find that very very helpful.

in understanding how things move forward and she did provide us by email information of the survey taken and broke it down by the different groups of parents and so just a special shout out for that information because I find it particularly helpful.

I think President Peters for bringing up the issue or the opportunity for us to delay the vote on the student assignment plan.

And in talking with her today I'll just share sort of the summary of why I think that's important because I'm having a real hard time with that plan on a number of issues.

And I hopefully can remember them all right now I'm a little like many of the people in the district I find that I've been dealing with a lot of illness both on myself and with my family so I'm trying to, I'm recovering but not quite fully here but I thought it important to be here tonight to hear from you all.

The student assignment plan I see as a problem because on a number of levels I hear from Licton Springs that they believe that there's been a broken promise.

I think that while we haven't heard from them tonight the parents within the language immersion program in the south part of the city feel that there is a broken promise in terms of a pathway to Franklin.

I feel that this plan also doesn't fully address how we are going to staff our middle schools and make sure that what we are offering to the kids that are being moved into them is going to be adequate and meet their needs as they progress through their academics and move on to high school.

I have an issue with the idea of opening Decatur as a self-contained school and increasing that population when I feel like it's much better that we look for ways to serve our kids within schools where they have the opportunity to mix amongst a wide variety of students and so I want to look at that and we haven't yet decided entirely what we're doing with Cedar Park.

So it just seems premature to me and that we need to take more time and do a better job and I don't know as we have enough time to get all the community input and all the projections and map it out and I hear you that we don't know how it's going to look in any of these scenarios fully because it is some speculation based upon where people enroll.

And so again I just think President Peters for allowing us just a little more time especially after the holidays to come back sit down together and look at it all and try to meet the needs because once we make this vote then we move forward and we have to start planning for all the other aspects.

So I don't even know if that was entirely cohesive but those are my thoughts for now.

I will work on getting some weekend community meetings scheduled but I have been holding a series of Thursday morning coffees at Soka on Blakely in Northeast Seattle.

I post those on my website.

page, my school board Facebook page so you can check there to see if I am going to hold one and I will hold one tomorrow morning as an opportunity to try and get some people maybe who can come in the morning before they are on their way to work and reach a different group of parents who may not be as free on the weekends.

So I've been doing that regularly and will continue to do that for a while if you want to come and have coffee and sit down with me on Thursday mornings at Soka and then look at my webpage for a meeting, the regular weekend meeting and I'll continue to hold those monthly.

Thank you.

Director Harris and then Director Patu.

I'm going to try and keep this really short tonight because I've been attacked by the cold from HAC.

I appreciate all the input very much, most of it.

Some of it has been kind of ugly and unnecessarily ugly and folks we can and need to do better on that because they are all of our kids.

And I am very frustrated by our inability to do as much community engagement on some of these projects and some of these changes as perhaps would be more robust so that we wouldn't be facing such draconian choices.

Today the fines are $50.4 million on McCleary at $100,000 a day as ordered by the state Supreme Court.

I believe it is January 16. will be a day of action in Olympia and I hope we see every one of you and your children at the state Capitol because a lot of these issues that we are talking about right now would not be issues but for full funding.

I too was moved in the middle of my rising eighth-grade year and it was pretty darn traumatic so I have a great deal of empathy.

On the other hand, when I really sift this and I lay awake at night about these really difficult choices we have to make, I think about a number of the programs we heard here about tonight are not in all of our middle schools.

And that is a tragedy.

And every time we have an extraordinary student group come down here.

and perform.

I always wonder how extraordinary this district could be if we did have those robust programs in each and every one of our middle schools.

So let's take a bigger picture.

Let's be kind to each other because these are ugly ugly choices and we are going to have to make them and then we are going to have to move on and make the best of what we can do.

I would like a shout out to associate superintendent Michael Tolley, executive director Helen Young, and middle college high school principal Jennifer Kneasley because before Christmas we got to go out to South Seattle College and talk about reestablishing middle college high school.

No guarantees But they didn't throw us out of the office and it was a pretty terrific conversation.

So stay tuned.

Thank you very much.

As far as my meeting goes I expect that I will have one from 3 to 430 on the 24th but I've got to find a library or community center to do so.

Thank you.

Director Patu.

I'd like to thank everyone who came tonight to let us know about your concerns and I think that it's quite a, it's going to be quite a choice to actually to look at and figure out what's best for the kids.

I think that that's always most important is when you kind of looked at all the different situations and what's been said tonight we have to look at how are the kids going to benefit from all of this.

They are to me they are the most important and that's the reason why I'm sitting up here because I realize that you know we are here because of them.

So I need to look at all the evidence and pluses and the minuses and make the right choice on behalf of the kids.

I want to thank you to all the students that came and spoke.

I am always amazed by the things that come out of our kids.

Normally when I hear kids I know that it comes from their heart and they are speaking from what they believe the way it should be so thank you for sharing your testimony with us tonight.

I also would like to say thank you to City Year for their continued partnership with Seattle Public Schools.

I could think way back when I was working at the district I remember City Year continue on to provide support and opportunities to many of our schools and it's really amazing to continue to see them continue the partnership that they have done for many years.

I also want to say thank you to Gil Morris for the update on the Native American programs here in our district and it's always great to see variety of different ideas and curriculum that actually is going to help our Native American students become better learners.

I appreciate all the work that's going on in the various schools and all the different programs and hopefully that we can be able to look at one curriculum and be able to support a curriculum that actually would be amazing to utilize for all Native American students within our Seattle Public Schools.

I also would like to say you know give my condolence to Alice Okiyama who has been a great friend of my husband and I for many years.

A person who has dedicated his life into the community and making a difference in equities for all students and also for our people.

So my condolence to the family and it's kind of sad to see a great person no longer here.

I also would like to congratulate Rainier Beach high school girls basketball team who are actually doing great this year.

I hear that there is no loss yet so congratulations give a shout out to Rainier Beach high school girls basketball team.

Continue on success.

I believe that this year is actually hopefully a better year for all of us and hearing all the comments and the different things that are going on I am also very happy that President Peters has postponed this very issue so we can be able to come together as directors and really look at what do we need to do to actually to be able to make this work for everyone for all kids so that way we're not leaving anybody out but be able to come up with the best decision that's going to be workable for every parent and also for every student.

So we can't make everybody happy but we want to make sure that at least look at all the options and be able to come up with the right choice.

So thank you so much for being here tonight.

Happy new year and hopefully looking for a bigger and better year this year.

Would anybody else like to comment?

Director Burke.

I would like to add a couple of points after the testimony.

I want to again thank everyone for the testimony and I'd also like to put a special shout out to the kids.

Appreciate you coming, taking the time, stepping away from your homework in case you have some.

Let your teachers know you're at the school board meeting.

I'm sure that you know, I'm not sure if I can write you an excuse but extra credit is good.

So I just want to say wherever you go, whatever the board decides, whatever we end up with, I'm asking you to rock that school.

Whether it's Hamilton, whether it's Robert Eagle Staff, whether it's some other school, I can just tell from the presence that you bring down here and the way you carry yourselves that you'll do amazing things there.

I say that because I'm also expecting to see some of you as part of our transition to Lincoln High School.

Because this is a practice run we are going to be doing this again as we figure out how to start up Lincoln.

So thanks again for that.

I'll discuss some more detail about the specific student assignment plan and amendment topics but I just wanted to touch on a point for Licton Springs.

I hear you, I absolutely understand the concerns of the people who came and gave testimony.

When I visited the school and looked at your program and talked to some staff, talked to some families and looked at the ed spec, six plus one rooms is completely non-viable and that was clear to me from the instant that I saw your program.

But I also do not believe that the number 14 defines you and I also don't believe that the number 14 is a long-term, does not undo institutional racism.

I think what it does is our commitment to multiple decisions over a longer period of time and that's what I tried to build into some of the language of the amendment.

I will continue to stand up for the school and I will try to remove barriers wherever possible and I look for the school community and the school leaders to make it an awesome facility, an awesome growth destination in the new Eagle Staff building.

I want to put some words out for some community that I was hoping that would make it but didn't around Greenwood Elementary.

I have an amendment for that which unfortunately did not get its due time for community engagement and through a little bit of a delay I'm hoping that we get an opportunity to take that one to a broader community.

You know that's also an amendment that was put out to try to balance long-term enrollment numbers and I'm hoping that we can talk that one through a little bit further.

the, around the issue of grandfathering I want to give credit to Director Harris for her comments I really appreciate the way she stated that.

I think when we get into these really tough decisions I have to kind of close my eyes and think okay what would this look like if it were perfect?

And this is one of those issues that I don't have an answer for.

because there isn't a perfect in this.

There are different degrees of where we put our discomfort.

And I think the communities, the community that's here, the opportunity to support students at their destinations and the opportunity to take the excellence that's in some of our current schools and use those as seeds in our new schools is really really attractive to me.

And if there is a way we can do that without creating disadvantages without really minimizing the impacts for those students that feels like the right way to grow excellence in our system.

And I think I'll leave it at that.

But I really appreciate the comments and I know that these discussions are going to continue.

Director Patu.

I'd just like to remind you of my meeting, community meeting coming up on January 28. I really want to thank all the parents that came from the north end.

Appreciate your comments and also coming by and visit.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

I do want to thank all the community members who came out here and shared their thoughts and perspectives.

You know we need to hear from all of you and yes we do our best for community engagement and outreach but you know we'll miss people and that's one thing that we're actually looking at trying to improve that we can reach out to those populations have been overlooked or sometimes feel marginalized.

We do the best that we can and with your being here it lets us know we still need to keep on improving our work.

For the grandfathering I thank the parents and students and teachers and staff that wanted to share their perspectives.

And I don't think any of our amendments are ever meant to try to divide a community.

We are here to try to make sure that the district is going forward in the right direction.

And that we are not leaving anyone behind.

That we are all moving forward together.

So when you look up here when we're making decisions that's where I'm going to come from.

We want to move this district forward and if people feel left behind or feel outside still come and talk to us and let us know and we can hopefully Maybe we're not going to come up with solutions for everyone but let us know that yes we hurt too sometimes our decisions are going to be painful.

For Licton Springs you know the amendment that we have on with Director Burke and I thank his input on this and yes I'd like to see that we do have the adequate space and yeah that 14 if we put 14 in there does that then limit us to 14 classrooms?

more the number of students maybe we can actually grow beyond that.

That it's not just going to limit to 14 maybe we can get more classrooms for you.

So do we add additional language into it if that's what you're looking for at least 14 classrooms.

But right now we've got to work with the capacity and space that we have.

We are doing the best that we can and we can't do it without your input so continue to come here each and every Wednesday that you can and yes we have e-mails but sometimes we get e-mails it's hard for us to respond to each and every one of them but know that we are looking at them.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Okay well that leaves me.

I just want to give everybody a sense of the schedule for the rest of the evening so you can plan especially those of you who brought children.

What happens next is we then move on to the action portion of our meeting And actually the first thing that's going to happen is we're going to have to take a break, a 10 minute break and then we move on to the action portion and there's three items we're going to discuss and vote on before we even get to the student assignment plan.

And then there is the option of us motioning to postpone the vote on this until next week.

I can't say what the outcome is going to be because we never know until we vote but I know there is a lot of interest.

and gathering more information before we make a final decision on this plan.

So I just wanted to let you all know what the schedule is so you can plan accordingly.

Director Harris.

Madam President does that mean that if we have a work session next week that that is an open public meeting for folks that want to come?

That is correct.

In fact that is what we would be able to do.

We would be able to have a work session next Wednesday and discuss all the various loose ends related to the student assignment plan.

Issues that you all have brought up tonight, issues that a lot of us still have questions about and at the end of the session we could effectively vote on the plan.

The public is welcome to attend these sessions.

They are held typically in this room and so you would be able to sit in the seats out here and you would be able to attend but we don't I don't believe we allow any public speaking at that point.

We do, we do not.

We do not.

So this was great that you came out tonight that was really smart to give us your feedback tonight as we head into this decision.

So I just wanted to give you that schedule so you can plan.

As far as my comments I will keep them fairly brief.

I also appreciated the presentation from City Year and from Gail Morris.

And I had my community meeting recently and it was standing room only, we had between 30 and 40 people and I recognized some of the faces tonight, they were there at my meeting talking about their interests regarding various amendments in the student assignment plan.

There were people with both perspectives.

on my amendment to grandfather I realize that it's not perfect and that there's you know it's not perfect for everybody.

My motivation behind the amendment has to do with the fact that as a district too often we are uprooting students and disrupting students and taking away the predictability that parents want and the stability that our children need.

Now our city is in a difficult position in that we are growing and so we simply have to make more space, we have to open more schools and therefore we have to direct children to these schools.

And so our staff is trying to come up with the best means possible to fill these schools so they have a fair chance of being robust, comprehensive places for our children to learn.

And so working within those parameters I was simply trying, I've been trying to offer a compromise solution that looks at the students in our middle schools, there's only two middle schools that are opening who are the ones who would be pulled out in their final year and have to spend their final year somewhere else and seeing if there's a way to mitigate against their disruption.

Whereas the 6th and 7th graders would be able to have two years and some of them would have three years in the same school.

So that was the motivation here.

We have heard from people from various schools tonight.

I was glad to hear also from people from the Washington Middle School.

We've received a number of emails including from Madrona.

Madrona has a very unique situation in that they could not grandfather because they will not be able to stay as middle schoolers if the student assignment plan goes forward as planned.

This is affecting different people in different ways and I want to be absolutely mindful of that before we cast our vote.

You know the pros and cons for everybody.

So I really appreciate the comments from Director Harris regarding the need for us all to be kind to each other.

I know what it's like to be a parent and feel that something precious is being threatened by something that's happening in the district that you can't control.

And it's hard to remember how this works on a larger scale for other kids and we have to look at the whole picture.

We as the board especially have to look at the whole picture.

So we always are faced with difficult decisions where there's not going to be one answer that solves everybody's issues.

So we are going to try and make the best decisions possible for the student assignment plan.

We are making these decisions with a lot of care for your students and I hope that what we end up with is something that does the least amount of disruption to students and please understand that we are going through growing pains as a district and whatever happens next year the following year will be better.

We are going to have a transition year no matter what happens and things will get better beyond that.

So bear with us on that.

My next community meeting I am hoping to schedule towards the end of this month.

It will likely be in perhaps Magnolia library or Queen Anne library and as always my meetings are open to everybody and that will probably be on a Saturday.

All right, I think finally I wanted to just wish everybody a happy new year, welcome everybody back, hope everyone gets well.

I had the opportunity to travel over the holidays and I just wanted to share one highlight.

I love going to museums, I especially love anything having to do with history and I had the opportunity to visit the museum of the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta which I highly recommend.

It's very engaging, very moving, very thought-provoking, wonderful backdrop to all the issues that we discuss here in this district.

So, with that I am now going to call for a 10 minute break for the board and when we come back we will have to discuss three other topics before we get to the student assignment plan.

So, heads up.

Thank you all so much for coming tonight.