School Board Meeting November 16, 2016 Part 2

Now I'm going to turn it over to the superintendent's comments.

All right welcome all this evening.

Thank you again to our students.

Today, this week actually is National Educational Support Professionals Day and I'll explain who they are in just a minute but we can't live without them.

They are the people that drive our children to school, help them cross the street, provide them nutritious meals, keep their school buildings clean and safe and provide assistance to teachers in the classroom.

So many many thanks to our educational support professionals.

It's also school psychology awareness week and we certainly thank our staff and professionals who support our students mental health and overall well-being.

Tonight I have comments in four different areas.

Some highlights around our strategic plan, some critical issues coming up that we want the public to be aware of, some highlights about good work in the district and finally some ways to get involved in Seattle Public Schools.

And I'll be ending my remarks tonight as I think it says on the screen up there we have Thomas Ahern with us tonight and he'll be commenting on the McCleary work and the good representation he's been providing for Seattle Public Schools and the other schools and partners in the news lawsuit.

So some of our strategic plan work that's been underway.

Smart goal number two, eliminating opportunity gaps.

Board President Betty Patu and Dr. Ben Jones presented our work at the Council of great city schools recently.

Captured the audience's imagination with some great introductory stories from Director Patu.

And then information from Brent Jones on our, the way that we've identified our gap and made that public and the way that we've used our outlier schools to learn about what we can do to close gaps.

Director Geary and I also had the opportunity to represent the district at the Council of Great City Schools board meeting.

Last week the school board had a work session around the district scorecard and the operations data dashboard.

It was a culmination of reporting back to the board on the SMART goals that they had set as a focus for the district in the past year.

And then reporting out on many of the indicators that we keep track of and we want to use as a gauge to know how well we are doing.

Some of the gap areas that we have taken a look at are closing.

Graduation, 7th grade reading, 8th grade science.

Some, too many, remain static and some of them actually continue to grow and get a little larger.

3rd grade reading, 7th grade math.

Probably one of the highlights of our work is that graduation rates for African-American students are up 10% over the past three years.

And as we look at some of our outlier schools we are encouraged by the results that they are showing.

Denny, Rainier View and Aki are among, they actually are, they are the three highest performing schools for African-American students in the state.

And Olympic Hills is the school that does best at closing opportunity gaps statewide out of more than 1000 elementary schools.

One of the items that we identified as part of that work was that for the African-American students who are showing growth from year to year, one of the major factors are students that report out on our climate survey that they have an adult at school that cares about them.

So that's part and parcel of the professional development work that teachers have been doing in each of the schools across the district.

And then the school board also had during that same session last week they had a work session on boundaries which are a prominent part of the agenda for tonight.

So this is a continuation of work that was set in place by the board in 2013 as we made plans for opening schools and continuing to address growth in the district of about a little bit less than 1000 students per year.

Hot topics and some of the issues that are coming up.

McCleary is becoming front and center for many of us for two reasons.

One is that this is the year that the legislature said that they would complete their work in the timeline that the Supreme Court has given them to address that.

And secondly it's a year of the levy cliff.

The legislature had anticipated that they would have addressed the McCleary issues by now and they could roll back the amount of money that we collect locally.

We are holding our breath to see if those two will come together in a timely way.

We urged action in the last legislative session that did not occur therefore we are up against budget deadlines for this current year and will need to be in the process of making some plans to cut our budget.

until we know for certain that the legislature will follow through on their commitments to either restore the levee cliff or resolve at least a portion of the McCleary issue.

We had an election last week I'm told, yes.

And as an aftermath of that we had considerable concerns expressed by students in many different formats.

Unfortunately we did have Some students, immigrant students that were treated badly by others and wanted to know whether they would be safe in school.

We put together communications to parents and to students saying that we certainly wanted to continue to provide respect and support for each and every one of our students in school.

And we would continue to do our work which includes finding ways to close opportunity gaps.

Following that we had I think West Seattle high school and Rainier Beach high school had walkouts, student walkouts on Friday and we began to hear the indications that there would be a national walkout on Monday.

Our staff came together, provided resources for principals, reminded ourselves as to what our opportunities and obligations are.

Students do have First Amendment rights.

It turned out ultimately on Monday that about 5000 of our students walked out.

Our role similar to having students off campus coming or going to school is to do our best to keep them safe but recognizing that if they do choose to walk out they are not our responsibility when they are off of school grounds.

Therefore, our principals worked with staff and we had staff shadowing students to try to make sure that they were safe and demonstrating in a responsible way recognizing that we are not fully in control of them when they are off of our campus.

We also coordinated with the police department and as schools reported their information about walkouts that information was relayed to police and police made their presence available in the vicinity.

So this wasn't the first time we had demonstrations and walkouts during Ferguson.

We certainly don't encourage or support those demonstrations but we do recognize that they happen and want to work with everyone concerned to keep students safe.

So for an unplanned field trip of 5,000 students earlier in the week I think we had two students that were arrested for some activities after the demonstration had ended and we had one or two other incidents but all of our students were safe and appreciate the effort that went into that.

Good news.

State of the district was held last week.

Thank you to many many many district staff and school staff and directors who participated.

Something different this year we did it at Franklin high school that we recognized for a lot of their gap closing work.

President Betty Patu introduced the evening again by making it very personal and real sharing her story with us to set the stage for the evening as to why it is so important for us to close opportunity gaps.

We had a young student with a heartfelt poem.

Several students presented musical information and we had video including the mayor and some of our staff as well as a panel presentation from different members of our staff.

show was stolen by one of our family support workers that would be in that educational support worker category telling wow just heartwarming and heartrending stories about working from 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

and beyond to be available to students and help them through tough times as part of his role as a family support worker.

Metro Athletic director of the year is Ms. Carrie Burr and so we honor her as one of ours and proud of her recognition.

LGBT families dinner was held on November 3 with about 200 student staff and families participating.

School visits, always the highlight of my week.

Jane Adams last week was actually one of the first to recognize the student initiated demonstrations and they were there I think well before school started on the day after the election and had already sent out to parents a memorandum with regard to reminders to keep their students safe and one that we shared across the district.

This was built on some of their ruler work and recognizing ruler is regulating something our emotions.

So it was a nice application of the work that we were doing in about 60 of our schools across the district to say that we all come to school with different moods and sometimes those moods aren't as positive as we might all like and then talking about how they could work through that process.

At Nathan Hale I had, as I do each year, had the opportunity to visit the radio station.

I think they are number four in the Puget Sound area for public radio and have quite a followership, listenership, whatever that would be.

And they actually have, they are in quite a bit of demand in that in order to listen to NPR the average listener is probably 50 or older and so NPR needs fresh young listeners and so they are interested in working with programs like Nathan Hale to begin to reach a younger audience.

So it's just amazing that they, I don't know, they showcase all of their student talent and some of the adults that work with them and they were recording a Sunday show when I was there since they don't work on Sundays but they still are on air on Sundays.

Nathan Hale, I had the opportunity to visit with them and my intent was to meet with the staff at lunch to find out kind of what some of their issues, interests, concerns are and I didn't have a lot of takers and finally one of their staff members came in and said come with me.

I'll show you where the teachers are.

So they do club activities at lunchtime.

It's kind of after school, the teachers aren't here, the kids aren't here so let's do clubs during lunch.

And so I made the circuit of the second floor Virtually every classroom was filled with kids and had a teacher there participating with students and helping support them in their work.

So again something that predates our work on relationships but something that certainly fits into that category.

And then also had the opportunity to meet with Union Gospel Mission this last week as well.

I think we started last year with 18 church school partnerships by the end of the year we had 28. I think virtually all of those churches participate and schools participated in our serve day the weekend before school started and we had about 1,000 people out doing Wow, just incredible projects in our schools.

Word is spreading.

There is now an additional 17 schools that have signed up for church school partnerships and we have set a date for I believe it is the 19th and 20th of August for the upcoming serve day before school starts next fall.

Next category is our community engagement work.

The school board that is one of the three major goals that they have and that they have had in place for the last three years and one fundamental part of our strategic plan.

And I will comment on both some of our internal partnerships as well as our external partnerships.

Internally we have been working with our teachers association and with our principals association on a peer assistance review process to update our evaluation.

work and zero in on what it means to be a high-quality teacher.

And so that group of about 50 people has met I don't know four or five times and are moving forward in finding consensus around how we can provide, put more of our energy into creating improving skills and creating high-quality professionals.

I won't take the time to go through the rest of them, the board has it in front of them with a lot of additional partnerships that we do with both SEA and with PASS, our principals association.

Several community meetings have been held recently.

Director Burke was at the one for Ingram I know this last week where Flip Herndon and I happened to be in attendance as well.

So we are in the process of working on educational specifications for high schools.

One of the items that we've been working on for community engagement is extending the school day.

The collective bargaining agreement that we agreed on with teachers a year ago calls for a longer school year starting a year from now in the fall of 2017. Adding 20 minutes to the school day would make our school day more comparable to the school day across the state and it would also provide a little bit more reliable professional development time for teachers to meet on a consistent weekly early release schedule.

So based on the feedback that we got from the surveys that we did with teachers, principals and the community the recommendation that will be coming forward as part of the transportation standards and coming to the board in January would be to add 10 minutes to the start of the school day and to add 10 minutes to the end of the school day.

that, yeah, parents who are in tier 1 we are all for having it added at the end of the school day.

Parents who are in tier 3 we are all in favor of adding it to the beginning of the school day so it seemed appropriate to split that.

Everybody, all three groups, teachers, principals and parents said that early release was preferable to a late start.

And then there was a lot of individuals split between having an early release on Friday and an early release on Wednesday.

And looking at our attendance data decided that having the early release on Wednesday was a better opportunity to make sure that we didn't encourage absenteeism.

So that information will be coming forward.

The other part that was reflected in that survey was the continued discussion with regard to tier 3. So there continues to be a lot of interest in having only two tiers of busing and the challenge with that is that it's got a price tag of about $3.8 million.

Transportation has been working on that to see if that price tag could be reduced some and we will continue to take a look at that.

Coming up here we have a $71 million budget gap for the coming year so it makes it difficult to look at items that have an added cost before them.

We have a huge partnership between Seattle Public Schools and the city of Seattle.

We are the only district in the state of Washington where every where the school district boundaries are identical to the city boundaries.

The city therefore provides about $35 million in support for schools through the families and education levy.

And as a result of that we have opportunities in our schools that others don't have across the state.

We had a retreat on the 14th of November with representatives both from the city and from the school district to talk about what we are learning about making a difference in closing gaps.

And the focus for the year is how do we increase attendance so that we improve instructional time.

How do we build positive relationships with regard to effective discipline and how do we use our data to support school performances.

Budget meetings have been occurring as well.

I believe that we have had four so far and we have others coming up.

As I mentioned we are facing a potential $71 million shortfall.

The board met earlier this evening at 3 o'clock to begin looking at some of the ways that we could begin to close that gap.

And although we certainly remain hopeful that the legislature will do their part and will close that gap we have to act as if based on current law we have to, we will be looking at big cuts for the future.

So there will be another board session next week and it will be part of the board retreat on December 3. And tonight there is a number of boundary amendments that will be presented.

I want to thank Ashley Davies and her team including the planning principals for Cedar Park, Meany Middle School, Robert Eagle Staff Middle School.

Over the last several months they have held many many meetings with families and other stakeholders.

My notes say 4,000 stakeholders have been engaged and we have certainly heard a lot and we know that the boundaries are certainly of great concern to parents and students as we talk about relationships and what that might mean for future changes.

So, Flip Herndon and his team have gone through the list of potential recommendations, amendments from the board and we will have some suggestions during the agenda as to sequencing and discussing of those items that might make that process go a little bit more smoothly tonight.

Coming up the community engagement task force co-chaired by Director Leslie Harris and Kerry Campbell will be held on November 21 from 6 to 8 p.m.

here at the John Stanford Center.

And tomorrow, the big day is the mayor's education summit unveiling.

The mayor's summit has been underway for the last seven months and the advisory team has completed their work and has 18 recommendations and tomorrow the mayor will be presenting that information.

Meanwhile, the mayor has already included in his budget request to the city council $1.5 million to help support eliminating the opportunity gap.

Director Patu and I will both have the opportunity to speak during that session.

And coming up we are in the process of putting together nutrition services policies task force and that will be coming up in the next few weeks as well.

With that I would like to introduce John Kroll who is our new DOTS director, director of information technology.

Comes to us with kind of the dream resume for technology.

Somebody who has great experience in technology with Microsoft and some technology startup companies as well as many many years in the classroom and in school district as both an educator as a teacher and most recently from Oakland school district where he headed up their technology work so welcome John.

Glad to have you here.

So I'm getting, I'm at the end of my remarks and we have two other things that we need to do.

One as I mentioned I'm going to be introducing Thomas Ahern who is lead counsel for the network for excellence in Washington schools spelled news.

kind of I have to have it in front of me to know what news stands for.

We've been around for four or five years and he's done excellent work in representing us and I think he's a big part of the reason why we have the Supreme Court decision that we do have.

Meanwhile, I have a note here saying that tribal officials are here and so we have a very intricate sign-up process for people who wish to address the board.

The first part of that is people who signed up on Monday and we have a list of you and we will be calling your names in order.

We also have as part of our procedure an exception to that saying that if we have elected officials in the audience we would also extend to them that same opportunity to talk for two minutes without having them sign up.

So if we have anybody in the audience who is an elected member of a tribal board they are certainly welcome to sign up over here and after Thomas Ahern is complete We will give any elected tribal officials a two-minute opportunity to speak as well.

So with that again I would introduce Thomas Ahern.

Thanks for your work Tom and thanks for being here tonight.

I take it this is on?

I was asked to give a 15 minute update on the McCleary v. State of Washington case which the Supreme Court issued their decision in 2012 but actually the update could be on the Seattle school district case which was issued in 1978. Because in that case you are indicating, am I not talking loud enough?

come a little closer like that.

Okay so in the Seattle school district case which was like over 40 years ago the Supreme Court held the state system of school funding does not make ample provision for the education of the children residing within the district that is the Seattle school district and thus does not comply with Constitution article 9 section 1. Fast forward 40 years, McCleary v. State of Washington case The Supreme Court held the exact same thing.

The state has not complied with its article 9 section 1 duty to make ample provision for the education of all children in Washington.

The state has failed to meet its duty under article 9 section 1 by consistently providing school districts with the level of resources that fall short of the actual cost of the basic education program.

Let's go back to Seattle school district case again.

In that case the trial court had said legislature I don't trust you.

I don't think you are going to comply so I am going to retain jurisdiction.

What did the Supreme Court do in the Seattle school district case?

They said well we do not retain jurisdiction because we are confident the legislature will comply fully with its constitutionally mandated duty.

It is comply fully not comply-ish.

It is comply fully.

Well now let's go forward to the McCleary decision where the court said what we've learned from experience is that this court cannot stand on the sidelines and just hope the state meets its constitutional mandate.

A better way forward is for the judiciary that is the Supreme Court to retain jurisdiction over this case to monitor the state's compliance with its paramount duty.

So in the McClure case what happened, this ruling now was back in January of 2012 and what the Supreme Court has required as part of their retaining jurisdiction is every year the legislature has to report to the Supreme Court to say look we are on track to full compliance.

So let's see the 2012 legislature's compliance progress the Supreme Court gave them an F.

2013 F, 14 F, 15 F, 16 F.

All these years the Supreme Court has reviewed what the state has done and said you guys are not on track for full compliance.

So what will the 2017 legislature, this is what is coming up now, this is going to be the showdown, what does the 2017 legislature need to do?

What will article 9 section 1 compliance require?

Because I keep saying article 9 section 1, article 9 section 1, what the heck is that?

Well, that is article 9 section 1 of our constitution that says it is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders.

Now in this case what the state's first argument was well let's look at that all children phrase.

You know people all across the country have tried and those kids in the lower socioeconomic strata they never make it.

So all children really can't mean all children and the Supreme Court said no. all means all.

Each and every child, no child is excluded at least in our state.

The next issue came up of well what does education mean and the state has said that well it is a basic education.

and we have basic education funding formulas.

And as long as we are funding our funding formula we are complying with the Constitution we are funding basic education.

And the Supreme Court said no education isn't defined by a funding formula it is the basic knowledge and skills that are needed to compete in today's economy and meaningfully participate in our state's democracy.

That is the purpose of an education.

And the state said well you know that's a bunch of fluff.

How the heck are you going to define what kind of skills, knowledge and skill kids need.

And the Supreme Court said legislature you've already done it.

When you passed House Bill 1209 which is now in the RCW's you set forth the read with comprehension, know and apply core concepts of math, science, etc.

You said what all kids need to know.

And you know what else you have done legislature?

You have established the essential academic learning requirements for our state.

I mean they are not optional academic learning suggestions.

There are essential academic learning requirements which specify what all students, not most, all students should know and be able to do at each grade level.

And we all know that the list of the nine specific categories of essential academic learning requirements that the state itself has specified.

So then we get to this ample provision part and what does that mean?

And the state had said that well you know ample that just means adequate.

And you know most school districts aren't going insolvent so obviously the funding we are giving must be adequate.

And the Supreme Court said no ample means considerably more than just adequate.

To comply with the Constitution you have to provide considerably more than just adequate.

Which then brings us to the most important phrase or one of the most important phrases is paramount duty bid.

And the state's argument had always been that paramount duty that just means like important consideration.

And you know we spend billions of dollars on education so it is clearly an important consideration we are complying.

And the Supreme Court said no, no duty actually means duty it is not a consideration.

The state must amply provide for the education of all Washington children.

And you know that word paramount it actually means paramount.

It is the state's first and highest priority before any other state program or operation.

So that is what the Constitution means.

The McCleary mandate, the Supreme Court said in one sentence to make it perfectly clear, article 9 section 1 confers on children in Washington a positive constitutional right to an amply funded education.

Remember way back Brown v. Board of Education the Supreme Court said the Constitution confers on children a constitutional right to a desegregated education.

Our Supreme Court said in McClaring that our Constitution confers a constitutional right to an amply funded education.

And this court even emphasized the civil rights foundation of education and ample funding when it said education plays a critical civil rights role.

and promoting equality in our democracy.

And amply provided public education operates as the great equalizer in our democracy equipping citizens born into underprivileged segments of our society with the tools they need to compete on a level playing field with citizens born into wealth or privilege.

And summarized very succinctly education is the number one civil right of the 21st century.

And the Supreme Court made it very clear that what remains to be done to achieve compliance is undeniably huge.

And why does it say that?

Look at what the state itself told the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, the state told the Supreme Court that look in the 08-09 school year we are funding about $6,800 per kid.

But Supreme Court trust us by 2018-19 we will be funding over $16,000 per kid.

Trust us that is what we are going to do.

So what does steady progress look like through that?

Well steady progress would look something like this on the per pupil funding by the state.

And this is state funding above local levies, above federal funding.

This is the state funding above that.

What was their actual progress so far?

It is less.

And so that is why the Supreme Court said that what remains to be done in this last year that is remaining here, that blank year is undeniably huge.

So let's go to McCleary v. State of Washington and what the state, what the court has said is if the state's funding formulas provide only a portion of what it actually costs the school to pay its teachers, get its kids to school, keep the lights on, then the legislature cannot maintain that it is fully funding basic education through its funding formulas.

So what is on track for the 2017 legislature to comply?

Well they have to address do the state's funding formulas fully, not partially, fully fund your school district's actual cost to implement the components of the state's basic ed program.

That is transportation, the MSOCs, material supplies and operating costs, all-day kindergarten, K-3 class size reduction, the other components like the highly capable programs, special education programs, core 24. and compensation to attract and retain competent personnel.

Those are the components that the legislature itself has said is their basic education program and the legislature in 2017 is going to have to establish funding for those.

Transportation, right now we know that the transportation funding formula it funds the lower of last year's actual costs or statewide average whichever is lower.

That is not your actual costs this year.

Material supplies and operating costs.

Those MSOCs are based on statewide averages and an old snapshot from the 07-08 school year.

that is not actual costs today.

All-day kindergarten and K-3 class size reduction.

The funding formulas partially fund your actual compensation costs and they give partial assistance for some of the capital costs.

You can't have smaller classrooms if you don't have more classrooms.

You can't have all-day kindergarten instead of just half-day kindergarten without more classrooms.

The state Supreme Court's rulings have said the state has to be amply funding those as well but right now they are not.

All these other programs that are part of basic education, highly capable, special education, the ELL programs those are less than the actual student caseload and they are funded at part of the actual personnel cost.

They are not on track right now and then compensation to attract and retain competent personnel well again as you all know it is partial funding and there are significant teacher shortages even when you add local levy money and federal money on top of that.

So that is not even close to fully funding the actual cost.

Which then raises the last question of can the Supreme Court actually force the legislature to comply?

And the Supreme Court of Washington has said well look we have got all these options of what we can do to force you to comply.

And I am just going to focus on two of those, option number six by the Supreme Court is prohibit any funding on an unconstitutional education system.

Well what the heck does that mean?

Well for example does the court want to strike down every underfunded school statute.

That is the option that some people refer to as they are going to close the schools.

Well the purpose of a sanction is to force the legislature to actually obey the Constitution, obey the oath they took to uphold the Constitution.

You know other state Supreme Courts have done exactly that.

I will pick out three examples Arizona, Kansas and New Jersey.

In each of those cases, each of those states the state Supreme Court said legislature our constitution requires you to be funding this particular program or this aspect of the public schools.

In those three states the legislature said what a lot of legislators here are saying is remember your basic civics with separation of powers you can't appropriate money out of the state treasury so you can't do anything nanny nanny boo boo.

In each of those three states the Supreme Court said well you know you are right we can't appropriate money out of the state treasury but we can invalidate unconstitutional laws and we have been telling you legislature the way you fund your school statutes is unconstitutional and so first day of school next year we are going to invalidate the school statutes in our state unless you comply with our order.

Arizona and Kansas they called themselves into special session and they actually appropriated the money to comply.

New Jersey the legislature said Supreme Court you are bluffing.

You are never going to do that.

And in New Jersey the first day of school rolled around and in New Jersey the school year is the same as the fiscal year so technically the first day of school is July 1. July 1 came around the Supreme Court said fine all the school statutes were invalidated so that you know the summer school kids got some time off.

The legislature reconvened and they had to impose some taxes and raise revenue so they could actually comply with the courts school funding ruling.

So that is what has happened in some other states.

Another option is this order any other appropriate relief.

Well what the heck does that mean?

I mean I think of that as like when I was a kid and me and my four brothers and sisters would be goofing around in the backseat of the car and you know mom would take the rear view mirror as she is driving and go don't make me come back there.

And we would all quiet down because we didn't want her to come back there even though if we thought about it for a second she really couldn't do that while she was driving.

But you know other appropriate relief what could that possibly be?

Well one of the Supreme Court justices actually suggested one of the things during the contempt hearing back in 2014 and that we could invalidate all the tax exemption statutes passed by the legislature because if the legislature is saying they are pleading poverty we don't have the money well there are about $15 billion of tax exemptions on the books they can invalidate those and what is important to remember here is invalidate the tax exemption statutes passed by the legislature not those by voter initiative because the sales tax exemption on food that is a voter initiative that is not the legislature.

So you can invalidate all the tax exemptions by the legislature and you are going to leave the sales tax exemption on food in place.

That is a big target because Washington state gives a lot of tax breaks.

Number one in the country for giving out tax breaks is the state of New York.

Number two and usually it is good to be ranked high but is the state of Washington.

We are number two in the entire country so that is a big target.

So that leaves us with the answer can this court force compliance?

Yes.

Lastly I am going to talk about then is what are the next steps under the Supreme Court's order of what is going to be happening next.

First, the 2000 regular session is coming up and the Supreme Court's order has said the state must enact appropriations to achieve full constitutional compliance by September 1 of 2018. Two, 30 days after the governor signs the budget the state has to file their report and legal briefing with the Supreme Court to say that they have done it.

30 days after that we file our brief, our response and I would be shocked if our response is going to be anything other than they haven't done it because I would be shocked if they have done it.

Step number four is after reviewing everything the Supreme Court says we will decide what to do.

That is sort of vague but what could that be?

It could be they could issue another order They could have another hearing like we've had hearings before.

They could ask for more briefing, fine.

They could appoint a special master and what a special master would be is basically the Supreme Court saying we don't do trials.

They'll send it down to a superior court judge and say hey you do a trial and figure out what the facts are, tell us what the truth is and we'll just go on whatever it is you say.

Or they could give up.

and there is a lot of pressure on the Supremes to just give up and you know I had that little map with Arizona, Kansas, New Jersey where the Supreme Court stood firm and made the legislature back down.

Well Ohio went through the same exercise and in Ohio the Supreme Court backed down and gave up.

So the question is going to be is our Supreme Court going to give up or not.

And that is all I have and I hope I stuck to my 15 minutes and I am happy to answer any questions if people have them but otherwise I will roll away.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your presentation.

My understanding of the New Jersey situation they have very similar constitutional language to Washington State's language but it took 10 years from the time that they had a ruling to when new dollars actually flowed to the classroom is that correct?

Okay a couple of things.

One the language is not similar actually.

One thing we have in Washington is we have the strongest language in the country.

In fact ours says it is the paramount duty of the state blah blah blah.

There is only one other constitution in the country that says paramount duty.

That is Florida and it says a paramount duty so that is one of many.

So ours is stronger.

With respect to the timing yes it took an awful lot of time for the money to actually start coming in because there were years of this going back and forth between the Supreme Court saying do it and the legislature saying well we'll do part of it but we ain't going to do all of it.

Going back and forth back and forth so that's why it took a lot longer and just if I can say one other thing.

We filed this lawsuit in 2007. So that was 10 years ago.

And the other irony here is the case is called McCleary because the lead plaintiffs are the McCleary family.

Stephanie McCleary the mom was 13 years old when that Seattle school district ruling was issued.

When we filed the lawsuit her daughter Kelsey was 13 years old.

An entire generation has passed already.

So to follow up and I appreciate the clarification on that but what can we learn from the New Jersey case?

Because I frequently hear that our language is stronger but their language should compel their legislature to move forward.

What can we learn from that experience so that we don't have to go through another 10 years of waiting for the legislature to actually comply with the Constitution.

Well there are two things.

One, the Supreme Court has to be firm.

And our Supreme Court I think has been very clear in what the requirements are but they haven't laid down a very firm sanction like first day of school next year if you are not complying we are shutting the schools down.

Or we are going to invalidate all the tax exemptions.

You want to get Microsoft and Amazon and Boeing's attention that would do it.

So one the Supreme Court has to lay down a serious threat that the legislators believe because no one believed these threats in Arizona, Kansas and New Jersey.

Finally Arizona and Kansas the legislators believed it.

In New Jersey it took the Supremes actually closing things down.

So that is one.

Another is legislators have to understand what the McCleary case is.

They have to understand what the Constitution requires and they have to understand that even though they spend billions and billions of dollars and even though they have added billions of dollars which isn't really new money it is just maintenance level funding.

They have to understand what the needs are in today's schools and that is something I know that you already know or actually everybody in this room who just listened to what I said they know more than virtually every single legislator about what the McCleary case stands for and what the Constitution requires.

Because my experience with all due respect is they are pretty clueless and I think to get things to move forward they have to be educated on what that oath they took to obey the Constitution actually means and what the Constitution means.

Director Harris.

Thank you for coming Mr. Ahern as you know you are one of my heroes.

Today it is $45.8 million in $100,000 a day fines.

Okay I'm sorry go ahead.

But I guess part of my question is how many millions of dollars were spent by independent end quote entities to try and knock off three of the Supreme Court justices in the last election.

I have not reviewed the PDC filings so I don't know what the numbers are for that but that The disappointing side I saw was when they were trying to knock off the three justices and I have been spending some time out in Spokane recently and before the election seeing the ads that the Republican party was running against the three justices because citizens if you vote for them they are going to impose an income tax on you which of course is not what a court can do.

So I was disappointed with that.

I was encouraged by the election results.

I mean there was an awful lot of money put into defeating those three justices and they all won handily.

Thank you.

Now I would like to introduce our next speaker.

ASB president from Ballard High School.

We do have two elected officials here.

We have two tribal council members here.

Nancy Shippentower and David Bean.

So I would invite them to the podium and give them the two minutes each to make their comments to the board.

So does that mean each one of us has two minutes?

Each of you yes Nancy and David each have two minutes.

Okay my name is Nancy Shippentower I am a Puyallup tribal member and my indigenous name is Wakebo.

I want to just give you a little bit of history here on the education of these public schools and our people.

I grew up in the 60s when the civil rights was going on and the fishing rights struggle and our teachers didn't care whether we learned anything unless you were a good basketball player then they just passed you anyway.

But their interpretation was oh they are just going to grow up and be drunk and stupid anyway.

And that is because of the relocation act.

When the federal government did the relocation act they took people from all these tribes back in the 50s and relocated them up here.

Promised them good education and good jobs.

Did they get it?

No.

My mother's dream was to have an Indian school everywhere.

So Chief Leschi came.

Wahilu came and the Heritage Hive came.

And there's Indian schools throughout the state.

And what they teach in those schools, well let me remind you that English is our second language.

We did have an indigenous language that was wiped out from our people when they picked them up and took them to these boarding schools when they were young kids.

Mass deportation of Indian children from their parents.

Little babies they took them.

Many of them died on these trains.

Many of them died in these schools.

My grandmother survived it.

So then they tried to civilize them not really realizing that we were already civilized in our own indigenous way.

Now today however We go into public schools, our people are still treated that way.

Our people are still ignored.

Their culture, their indigenous way, their spirituality is ignored.

Yet these public schools get a lot of federal funding for our Indian children.

You have to mark on a form, are you Indian?

Are you Alaskan?

Because of the funding that comes into these schools.

Our people deserve their own school and their own teachers to learn the language, to learn their culture, to learn their spirituality.

So I am here to support our people to get this school opened again.

Thank you.

Because you get the funding.

Please complete your remarks.

I've never been on a timeline before.

My name is Steve Stokes I'm from the Puyallup tribe.

My great-grandmother was from the Suquamish tribe, the winter home of Chief Seattle for which this city was named.

My great-grandfather was Puyallup so we settled in Puyallup.

I want to share a few words with you today.

I'm here from the Puyallup tribe and the Puyallup tribe stands behind our Seattle Indian community relatives in their quest to reopen the Indian heritage school.

I want to share a few words that this school board passed two years ago when they recognized indigenous people's day.

They recognize the fact that Seattle is built upon the homeland and village of the indigenous peoples of this region without whom the building of Seattle would not have been possible.

Whereas the school board has a responsibility to oppose systematic racism towards indigenous people in the United States which is perpetuated in high rates of poverty and income, inequality, exasperating disproportionate health, education and social crisis and whereas the school board seeks to combat prejudice and eliminate discrimination and institutionalized racism to promote awareness, understanding and good relations among indigenous people.

I just want to share those words with you and ask you to not just look at that as a piece of paper but to back that up with action and support Indian education and reopen that.

Our children drop out at the highest rates.

I'm here today because Many elders in our community saw the need for Indian education, they saw that our children were being discriminated against, were being abused in the public school system.

They saw a place where we, they sought out a place for us to call our own, to call home where we can learn our language, our songs, our dances.

My elder talked about us being relocated.

Many of us were without our songs and our dances and our ways of worship.

That was ripped, we were ripped away from a lot of that.

and these tribal schools were put in place to revitalize our culture.

And so looking at the statistics you see Native Americans are the highest of everything whether it be diabetes you know I am going on a health kick right now but diabetes and heart disease but when it comes to suicide rates and dropout rates we are right there at the highest so I am asking you and urging you to support the reestablishment of the Indian heritage school program.

Our native students thrive in a learning environment which honor their history, culture, cultural differences, perspectives and worldviews.

We need schools which actively support inclusivity, culturally responsive and culturally relevant curriculum.

Restoring Indian heritage would provide the entire region with cultural based resources, rigorous academic standards, identity, safety, community ownership and the success of Native American learners.

At Chief Leschi my uncle was the first graduate.

One graduate in 1977. 41 years later we graduated 77 students and so our children are being supported.

We are learning our languages, our songs, our dances, our traditional ways.

And we are working on decreasing the suicide rates because we are reestablishing our identity.

Please complete your remarks.

So I just want to say thank you and we support the Seattle Indian community and we will encourage other tribes in the area to support the reestablishment of the Indian heritage school system.

So I say hey Shibut, see I raised my hands to you and thank you for the work that you have done and the work that you will do.

Thank you.

Now I'd like to introduce Julia Jackson who is ASB president from Ballard High School and I would like to hand it over to her so she can make some comments.

Welcome Julia.

Good evening everyone my name is Julia Jackson and I am tonight's student representative at the school board meeting.

I am here today because I am the associated student body president at Ballard High School and this is my 13th year in the Seattle Public School system and I just wanted to thank the board for everything that Seattle Public Schools has done for me.

I am a Whittier alum and a Whitman Wildcat alum.

And in my 13th year of school I can say that all of the staff and everyone that I've encountered in the Seattle Public Schools District has really worked to support me in the classroom and also outside of the classroom.

Especially at Ballard High School they really support every kid to be involved in the school and so I just want to highlight some of the really awesome things that Ballard has going on.

I am co-president of the student lives always matter club at Ballard high school and that is a suicide and depression prevention club so we go around to middle schools and all of the health classes at Ballard and give a presentation about suicide and depression awareness and ways to get help.

We also, our ASB is putting on a kindness week this December which I am super excited about just really to promote kindness throughout our school.

We did this last year and we are hoping to make it an annual thing and hoping to see it spread to other high schools.

We also have our star club students and teachers against racism which has been doing amazing work this year.

And I have one of my peers and best friends Samantha Blue who will talk more about Ballard High School later during the public testimonies but I just wanted to say thank you for having me here today.

I've wanted to be a teacher since I was in kindergarten and this is really cool.

Thank you Ms. Jackson I really appreciate you having you here and also letting us know what is going on in your school.

We have now reached the business portion of tonight's agenda where we have a motion to amend the agenda.

I would now entertain a motion to amend the agenda to include action items number one authorization to comment salary and contract discussions.

So moved.

Second the motion.

I would like to ask directors if they have any questions.

on the motion to amend this agenda?

I don't see any.

I'm sorry I didn't understand what the purpose of the amendment is.

The purpose is so we can actually be able to, this is the business part of the agenda where we have a to amend, to include the action item number one authorization to comment salary and contract discussions.

Director Blanford I would note that since this item was not posted with the agenda on Friday this particular motion is being brought forward to have the full board approve this addition to the agenda since it was not there at posting.

Oh so it shows up on our current agenda the one that we have the posted copy but it was not posted for the community.

No.

Got it.

Thank you.

So since we, is there any more questions?

Since I don't see any questions, Ms. Ritchie can you call the vote?

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion passed unanimously.

We have now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

Is there any questions from directors?

Okay, Mr. Ritchie?

All those in favor?

Aye.

Those opposed?

Okay, the consent agenda has passed.

Okay what time is it?

We are now into our testimony.

We have now reached the public testimony portion of the agenda and it is not yet, well it is now 538. The rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

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

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 can you read off the testimony speakers?

Eli Walks and Sammy Blue.

Joanne Pinkham.

Daniel Vaughn.

Good evening school board.

I am Samantha Blue and I am ASB vice president at Ballard High School.

I see my ASB president up there.

Hi Jules.

I am here on behalf of Ballard High School to address two issues facing our school and district.

The first being overcrowding.

Currently at Ballard we hold approximately 1,890 students with our maximum capacity at 1,600.

During passing period we are shoulder to shoulder.

The ratio of counselors to students is too high with each one having to accommodate over 400 students.

During an assembly last month in order to accommodate the entire school we had to sit over 200 people on the floor in chairs after filling the bleachers.

As an ASB that continuously uses assemblies to unite our student body having two assemblies as opposed to one would not have the same impact as students would not be able to be all together.

Although we understand that the reopening of Lincoln High School in 2019 will alleviate a big part of this problem we are adamantly opposed to students who have attended Ballard for two to three years being moved to Lincoln in the first year of its reopening.

High schoolers tend to identify with the schools they attend and stripping that away would be detrimental to them.

With that said we ask you to consider respecting our maximum capacity as the city population grows.

We would also like to address the pros and cons of our new start time of 845. It is very positive considering that students are more awake in first period and we have noticed that the numbers of tardies have decreased.

I for one really appreciate being more alert in the morning.

The new start time has prompted our staff to consider alternative schedules.

After much debate and with the help of our ASB a schedule was created that allots 20 minutes at the end of each day to students to help them with their homework or plan the rest of their day.

This we call daily academic management or dam time.

While there are certainly pros and negatives that students and teachers and athletes are having to stay at school much longer during the day.

District transportation for athletic events is also not acceptable as students who are participating in sports are forced to miss up to three periods of class time often several days a week.

Thank you for your time and we hope you take into account our input on the current situation at Ballard.

And remember it's always great to be a Beaver.

Thank you.

Hello my name is Joanne Rossier-Pinkham my father is Scott Pinkham school board director number one.

I would like.

I would like to talk about the boundaries issues are segregated, segregating our schools.

This is not fair.

It leaves it, it leaves the free and reduced lunch students at the old school while others are allowed to move into new schools.

I would like you to reconsider the tobacco issues and allow.

Can you please speak straight to the mic please so we can hear you.

Thank you.

And allow for ceremonial tobacco to be allowed when appropriate.

I would like to say that the Indian heritage high school was taken away from the American Indians.

The Wilson Pacific site was initially landmarked as a historical site however the school district cut a deal with AP parents who threatened to sue the district if their kids were not allowed to have the site.

As a student of the district for the past six years I must say I am disgusted with the leadership and the way that American Indians are treated.

This the school board has the opportunity to do the right thing.

They have the moral obligation to provide for students.

We want you to do the right thing.

We want a school of our own because the dropout rate is higher than any other race.

The graduation rate of American Indians are in all time low and the suicide rate is at the highest.

You say that there is equality in this district.

I am asking you to prove it.

Why are you allowing for the superintendent to divide our school district?

We need a superintendent that will work together with families and students.

We need new leadership.

Thank you.

Thank you.

After Daniel Vaughn we will have Chris Jackins, Christina Steinberg and Anne Hillman.

My name is Daniel Vaughn and I'm speaking on behalf of the families in section 126 a two by three block sliver of the West Woodland area scheduled to shift to Whittier next year only now it's being considered for grandfathering in amendment three.

Although we are grateful for your responsiveness to our concerns thus far we still cannot understand your rationale for removing our neighborhood from West Woodland.

We sent you a detailed letter about this in the morning of October 31 and provided testimony to the board on November 2. Our chief concerns are safety, walkability and community and family stress.

Safety.

Our children now cross four or five streets walking to school.

Our children walking to Whittier will cross 15 to 20 streets including 8th Avenue Northwest which is basically a drag strip between 65th and 80th with terrible pedestrian visibility and no controlled intersections.

Crossing 8th and dark rainy rush hour traffic is dangerous for adults and inconceivable for unaccompanied kids.

Walkability.

Switching 126 to Whittier increases children's walking distance by almost half a mile.

Meanwhile much of the western part of the West Woodland area would actually be less impacted by moving to Whittier including a section larger than 126 that is closer to Whittier than West Woodland and would have a safer walk route.

Redirecting 126 therefore seems arbitrary and unfair.

Stress on families.

West Woodland is such an important part of our lives and grandfathering is still an eviction Furthermore our currently enrolled children will be split up from their friends in middle school and younger siblings not yet enrolled will be sent to a different school.

This will impose a time and financial burden requiring rearranged work schedules and additional childcare.

We therefore propose a revision to amendment 3 to keep section 126 assigned to West Woodland.

Please allow our children to keep walking safely to school, let them attend school with their siblings, let them go to middle school with their classmates and keep our community intact.

And if a long-term shift of students from West Woodland to Whittier is required and there are no other options then please take the time to conduct an impact assessment that takes into account the aforementioned issues in determining the boundary change.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on the legislative agenda.

Seven points number one the proposed legislative agenda wrongly seeks to evade local landmarking ordinances.

It is very very important to preserve the history of our schools.

Number two, when the district destroys familiar and important places people lose the connections to their schools.

It robs people of their history, it is what colonizers do, it is what totalitarian regimes do.

Number three, the district sold Martin Luther King Jr. school and then as a stop put the same name on Brighton Elementary.

Number four, the buildings in sight at Wilson Pacific were made a city landmark because of their Native American history and culture including Indian Heritage High School.

The district put the Robert Eagle Staff name on a new building but the district sued the city and bulldozed the original school.

The district continues this disrespect by refusing to reopen Indian Heritage High School.

Number five, the district is robbing playground space from landmark Loyal Heights and Magnolia destroying areas that parents and neighbors helped create.

Number six, having a building named the African-American Academy was not enough to stop the district from closing the school.

Please reopen it.

Number seven, landmarks regulations are needed.

The district is unenlightened about its own history and that of the people it serves.

Please vote no on the legislative agenda.

On Loyal Heights and Magnolia please don't approve these actions until the projects are right.

Please vote no.

I also appreciate having school bus drivers here today who want to make sure the bus contract RFP includes medical and pension issues.

Thank you.

Good evening thank you for your time.

I am a parent of a sixth grader at Whitman and a first grader at Greenwood and a resident of Area 47 which means under the current boundary plan our middle school will be transitioning to Eagle Staff.

I am here to speak for the families in Area 47 Greenwood Elementary School attendance zone who are worried about the outcomes of the current plan particularly with the capacity issues that arise when Eagle Staff opens next year.

We are concerned with the implications of setting boundaries that do not address the real middle school capacity issues in the north end.

In order to open Eagle Staff with a full cohort which is likely to be too full, Whitman's enrollment is being sliced in half while Hamilton is only getting modest relief from extreme overcrowding.

The plan is designated to fill Eagle Staff but it is not designated to fix the real capacity issues.

It will create bigger problems and the plan unnecessarily tears students away from established communities.

please do not rush into any changes that are unnecessary.

We encourage you to vote for the motion to postpone.

Middle school boundaries should not be set until the district can justify the extreme imbalance in enrollment caused by these challenges.

To help balance capacity we are asking you to reevaluate which feeder schools will be transitioned to Eagle Staff.

Particularly we are asking to keep Greenwood Elementary, area 47 zone for Whitman.

Some of our reasons are geography and proximity.

Many of the families in our feeder zone live closer to Whitman than Eagle Staff.

In fact roughly 95% of our attendant zone falls within the Whitman walk zone.

Keeping area 47 assigned to Whitman balances enrollment while keeping transportation costs in line.

Consider our relation to 99. All of the families in green with the tenant zone live on the west side of 99 which means we will have to cross 99 in order to get to Eagle Staff.

and consider the drastic reductions to Whitman's student body which is extremely disruptive to the school's ability to provide educational opportunities as a comprehensive middle school.

Alternatively we are asking that you reconsider grandfathering not just for the rising eighth graders but also for all students at Whitman.

For years families were promised that we would be able to stay however this fall that commitment was rescinded as Whitman is projected to be seriously under enrolled.

Middle school is really hard on kids.

Please don't make it harder.

Please allow us to stay.

Thank you.

My name is Anne Hillman.

I am here representing Olympic Hills Elementary at Cedar Park.

Thank you Board of Directors for hearing us.

For two years our community has tried to shed light on the equity issue caused by this growth boundary proposal.

Only recently have we understood how our issue also impacts schools as far away as Viewlands and all of those in between.

We are encouraged that you have listened and have carefully considered creative ways to solve a series of cascading problems that affect children across the entire north end.

We want to reiterate our position in favor of amendment 5A as the best option to address our concerns about equity.

This conclusion is based on extensive outreach to our community.

At the last board meeting our PTA submitted a letter to this effect and for the work session last week provided both an explanation of our community outreach process and the results that show broad support for 5A.

These are included in the attachment section of the school board briefing and proposed action report.

We reached out via online survey to our PTA members and those members carried that forward to their connections.

We reached out to parents at before school drop off and after school pickup.

Teams of teachers and interpreters reached out to families at bus stops in Jackson Park and Little Brook neighborhoods.

We polled parents at our PTA movie night event and we had conversation after school on the playground.

In as many ways as we possibly could we asked our families what do you want?

Some district staff have questioned the legitimacy of our representative voice but because we engaged in this extensive outreach and documented it I can confidently assure you that on this particular issue amendment 5A represents the voice of our community.

We acknowledge that there are unique equity issues in the option school model that draws from a homogeneous population.

But consider how we were able to communicate the options before you tonight to the community at a grassroots level and without district support.

Imagine what we can achieve together when the board, district staff, PTA and community all collaborate to inform and engage our families.

Going forward the district must intentionally target outreach and not lean exclusively on parents to spearhead this project or you will exhaust this valuable commodity.

Please do not delay approving 5A.

Our community and the district need time to plan a successful diverse option school in the North Northeast.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next will be Laura Riley Jennifer Young and Melissa Pailthorpe.

Good evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback.

My name is Laura Riley.

I have a second grader at Sacajawea Elementary and hopefully I will have an ongoing kindergartner next year.

I would like to thank the board for their careful consideration of the community feedback that has been presented around the growth boundary changes and for creating the many amendments that are answering our concerns.

My family is impacted by these changes and I am here today speaking on behalf of both the impacted families at Sacajawea and other schools as well as those indirectly impacted and concerned about the boundary changes and what they will do to our schools and our students.

We are here today to ask you to please pass amendments 5A and 6A which allow Cedar Park to be an option school and thereby alleviate many of the equity concerns for that school as well as the diversity issues that would be caused for Sacagawea, John Rogers, Olympic Hills and others.

We have seen evidence that option schools can be highly successful with Hazel Wolf as a prime example.

Passing amendments 5A and 6A would remove the unnecessary disruption and cascading boundary impacts for so many of our students and would absolutely be in their best interest.

If for some reason you are not able to pass 5A and 6A we also support amendments 5B and 6B to a somewhat lesser extent.

While they don't fully mitigate all concerns allowing for grandfathering in all grades will help the enrollment shifts happen gradually and will limit the amount of disruption and inequities that would occur.

Please vote in favor of amendments 5A and 6A creating Cedar Park as an option school and removing the need for the boundary changes in areas 18, 128, 117, 90, 93, 101, 122 and 120. Thank you.

Thank you.

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

I'm grateful to the board for exploring middle school grandfathering including transportation.

However I'm uncertain about amendment nine.

It doesn't fix the enrollment imbalance between the three schools.

Many of our families will be blocks away from Eagle Staff.

It's hard to predict each family's preference.

Many may actually be happy to attend Eagle Staff to be closer to home or together with siblings.

My concern is the October 1 cutoff and having students choose to move to Eagle Staff or from Eagle Staff back to Whitman.

This becomes a hardship if there are special education services required and the dollars do not follow.

I'd like to see both schools start up prepared to meet the needs of all the students.

I cede the remainder of my time to Susan Huber.

Hi there.

I'm Susan Huber.

I'm a parent of a fifth grader at Cascadia and an eighth grader at Hamilton.

Please vote no on amendment nine which would grandfather eighth graders at Hamilton and Whitman.

It breaks the precedent set by the board just three years ago with the opening of Jane Addams Middle School.

That opened as a comprehensive middle school with all three grades and a full Northeast HCC cohort.

JAMS was in fact a success thanks to great hires, mitigation funds and the community that rallied together.

Grandfathering eighth graders at Hamilton and Whitman has huge implications that have not been publicly discussed.

It is a vote of no confidence in the new Eagle Staff middle school to meet the needs of the students it is meant to serve.

Starting Eagle Staff as a full comprehensive school regardless of who is placed there gives it the best chance of a successful start.

The entire Northwest HCC cohort has known for three years that Hamilton would not be available in 2017. This is a surprise to no one but breaking up the Northwest HCC cohort will undermine the success of a new site and is a breach in the promise and purpose of the HCC cohort.

Although some 7th grade parents are vocally advocating many are not.

They have expected their children to move for 8th grade and understand it's important to give their new school the best chance of starting strong for their own children and for other families too.

Please vote no on amendment 9. Thank you.

Thank you.

After Ms. Pailthorpe we will have Aiden Carroll, Sarah Sense Wilson and Karen Elliott.

Hi I'm Melissa Pailthorpe I'm a parent at Washington Middle School and actually secretary of the PTSA board and late for a meeting there.

I wanted to come tonight in support of Director Harris's motion.

I sent you all a letter last week about this.

My rationale is not dissimilar from some of what you are hearing tonight which is boundary changes have all kinds of impacts and I think in the central area Frankly we are not as organized and we are just waking up to what that might be and what that might look like.

I think the good news is we have a small transition team of parents, teachers and school leadership who set the goal of helping to make two schools evolve strong.

To do that though we need your support and we need information.

And we know there is mitigation funds and planning assistance for Meany but we would like to see the same kind of attention given to Washington.

It will be a smaller school that has some real advantages but the socioeconomic base of the school will shift drastically.

At some of that top of the air we don't know where HCC families will choose to go but that makes a big difference in our school.

Our schools typically raised about $350,000 of support for supplemental programming that affects all kids.

With the changes a big piece of that shifts to Meany.

That's great news in many ways but it also creates some real challenges for those families who stay at Washington and for the teachers who serve the kids.

I have no doubt that the teachers will welcome every kid that comes in the door and do their best to teach to every kid but I think we need some support for some really planful transition and we would really like your collaboration in that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I cede my time to Mrs. Whitehawk.

Good evening.

First of all thank you for having me here.

I know we are all here out of concern for the children so my respects to each and every one of you for having all the kids' concern as a priority.

I can speak as a parent and I can also speak as a former student of Seattle Public Schools.

I was a statistic, high school dropout, a native student and as a native individual we live two worlds.

We live a contemporary world and we live a traditional world that is how we survive.

In history books you can read about our people but we are still here.

And we all carry that historical trauma that has been put upon us.

We have children, I have children.

I do not want my kids to go through the same experiences that I did or my parents did or my grandparents did.

My oldest one his great-grandfather survived Carlisle Indian school.

in his old age he refused to even speak English because of what he went through.

I am here to ask you to please consider Indian Heritage High School.

We are not just a number on paper.

Our children deserve this.

When your loved ones become statistics in suicide, dropping out of school, addictions, That is not just a number on paper.

Those are your loved ones.

So whatever decision that you take upon yourself I ask you to please consider that.

That those are my children, those are nieces, nephews you know and so I am speaking to you as a parent to please have Indian heritage high school for our children.

Don't let them become a statistic.

Thank you.

Good evening my name is Sarah Sense-Wilson Oglala Sioux community volunteer and UNEA member.

On issues of boundaries we encourage the board to carefully consider race, equity and diversity in your boundary decisions.

On the issue of tobacco free environment we hope you are considering the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 and honor our cultural ceremonial practices of use of tobacco as a federally protected right.

We are gathered here today to move forward our proposal to restore Indian Heritage High School a native focused alternative option high school to serve an educational continuum for Licton Springs K-8.

and as a visibly quality school to successfully lift up native students seeking native focused culturally responsive education.

The current system is fundamentally flawed and dysfunctional as illuminated in the data and native student experience and testimonies.

Native focused high school would not deplete resources from other native learners.

We will not tolerate nor participate in recent divisive tactics instigated by Seattle Public leadership and staff.

We will not engage in the apparent efforts by Seattle Public Schools to polarize our community.

We are not in competition with your programs or committees.

In actuality we are enriching Indian education bringing resources to native learners working with some of the most marginalized high needs students.

Students without a voice and without representation.

We support Huchoosedah and their staff.

We are hopeful for a healthy partnership grounded in trust, cooperation and mutual respect.

We need a superintendent with shared values and vision for carrying forward our proposed native focused high school.

Furthermore and finally we stand with black lives matter.

We support black African-American task force for black student success and we stand for standing rock and water is life movement.

Thank you.

Thank you.

After Ms. Elliott we will have Carol Simmons, Thomas Spear and Lisa Saunders.

Hi my name is Karen Elliott.

I am a Seattle Public Schools survivor and I have two Seattle Public Schools survivors and two students still in your public schools.

I am here to ask for support to get our Indian heritage back.

I have this sign here that says that our native student lives matter.

Every student lives matter.

Our future matters and our students are a part of the future.

And I'm asking you guys to put in our high school with native teachers, native staff, native administrators and a native principal who understands our children and who understands their way of life.

So I'm asking that you guys put up our high school back and let our students know that their lives matter.

So in conclusion it's not just their lives our native student learners lives matter it's their minds.

Their minds matter into this society and you guys keep missing out on native minds.

They're very very creative and they're very to learning new things and they have learned to walk two lives like I've heard earlier.

So I want to thank you for listening to us because their minds matter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In the Seattle Public School District many attempts have been made to destroy native culture.

We closed successful native schools, did not allow presentations of indigenous people's day assemblies, used biased curriculum, stole native lands, disproportionately disciplined native students.

disproportionately place Native students in special education programs, plan to destroy Native murals, and sabotage positive board action by currently stealing Native classrooms.

The board directed the superintendent in 2013 to develop a partnered school with Indian Heritage now named Licton Springs to be located at Licton High School until moved to the Wilson Pacific Campus.

The statement of issue included this directive.

The project in the Lincoln High School South wing is providing 14 classrooms for interim use through 2017. Capacity assuming a K-8 population is approximately 350. The board action has been completely modified without board approval.

Licton Springs school enrollment was capped at Lincoln at 149 and only 10 classrooms are identified in the special ed in the ed specs for the new building with staff now saying that only seven classrooms will be available.

This is another broken promise and a blatant violation of the board action.

Capping enrollment at 149 students makes it impossible for the school to meet the students educational needs and demonstrates a total disregard for the native community.

A motion must be approved to postpone growth boundary decisions until the staff adheres to the previous board action and while doing so includes a plan for the restoration of Indian heritage high school.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening my name is Tom Spear.

I'm a member of the Duwamish tribe.

I'm an older parent, U.S. veteran, business owner and I'd like to cede my time to the Honorable Al Rebus who was one of the founders of Indian Heritage High School and the first principal.

Excuse me, first chairman.

Sorry I thought I was in court again you know I've been going to court since 1967 fighting for Native American rights.

I'm not an Indian I come from the Blackfeet Nation.

Before my time starts would you please give me a chance to introduce myself because I think it's going to be very important not just now but in the future too.

So would you please give me that opportunity and I came 800 miles from the Blackfeet Nation to speak.

I rode my buffalo over here four days and the funny guy here so.

But anyway my first name in my Blackfeet language is Kaakitupi which means the bear rider.

Our culture is based on our sacred animals and then later on I was renamed about eight months later I was named after another animal about this big.

and there's no one all over the world.

So I spoke in several big colleges and they always ask me what is that animal?

I was named after a chipmunk called Alvin.

But I came from the city of Yakima, I sat on the Title IV Indian Education Board down there when I moved to Seattle here.

I went to a Title IV Indian education meeting and became vice chairman and a week later I was chairman.

Our school was down at Rainier Beach, just two little trailer homes.

And I united the community and we built Indian heritage, I was chairman for 18 years.

We took it from two little trail houses to the first and largest all Native American school in a city in the whole United States.

So I was very sad to hear that one of my best friends who was our principal who I was instrumental in hiring Bob Eagle Staff had passed away.

And what made me even more sad was finally finding out that The school board was doing away with our school.

We were probably the most successful school in the city because of the culture that we used in it.

And when I got a call in 1995 when I moved back home, Bob, he said that the school was being accused of cheating.

And I came back up.

The first place I went was to the school administration and I wanted my kids to be tested again.

And I said if they are just a little higher or a little lower you are going to have the biggest suit that you have ever seen.

So they wouldn't test them and I really wanted them tested because of the cost of the battle.

Would you please give me a couple of minutes?

I came 800 miles.

You live here and I have to come back and fight again and I will be back.

But what we did is we united the whole community and By doing that we wrote a big article if you are not ashamed to have a drop of Native American blood we need you at our meeting.

And one of the most important persons that was there was Jim Street.

I don't know if you knew who he was, he was chairman of the Seattle City Council.

And from that time on we were the most successful, our school was so successful that how we did that is we used our elders.

We put them in every classroom out in the halls and we had some very good Native American classes that was way beyond no other school that matched us.

But what I'm saying is all these people here I didn't know about this meeting I just came from Montana to University of Washington Hospital and I found out about what was going on here.

So but I did call a lot of the old leaders here today and they are going to get back together again and we are going to unite this community again like we did and all the grants that comes in based on the headcount of every student we are going to win that money back and we are going to start that school.

And don't worry I got some of the best lawyers in the nation that I work with and we will Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Lisa Saunders and I am here to urge you to please vote yes on amendment nine which would grandfather current seventh graders who will be eighth graders next year at their current middle schools.

It is very hard for kids to be moved in the last year of middle school In addition, current 7th graders are the direct group of kids to be affected by Amendment 9. These families deserve the choice to grandfather.

Many HCC kids moved from neighborhood school to Lowell then again to Cascadia Lincoln.

They would theoretically be moved from Hamilton to Eagle Staff and 8th.

Then again from their ninth grade high school to Lincoln for 10th grade in my opinion it would be unconscionable to expect one group of children to attend at least six to seven different schools without any choice of grandfathering.

That and also expect them to endure possible matriculation, course alignment and other issues along the way.

Grandfathering will also keep more kids in Whitman for another year providing more stability for that school next year.

Hamilton will be full like this year but it should be able to be accommodated with the portables.

It will also help ease enrollment for Eagle Staff next year which otherwise may be too full with feeder schools.

I know a long-term solution still needs to be made to balance middle school feeder patterns but grandfathering is one solution for next year.

I know other parents strongly support this amendment of grandfathering eighth graders.

Thank you so much for your support and your hard work.

Thank you.

And I will concede the rest of my time.

Cheryl Briggs, Kathleen Zeger and Vicki Pinkham.

First I would like to thank the Duwamish tribe for allowing us to be on their land.

I am half Navajo and half Cheyenne.

I am from Arizona.

I came up here in 1994 with my youngest son.

And I would like to ask all of you up there, you were once six years old.

Imagine being taken away from your parents or your parents had to give you up.

You had no choice.

That is what we dealt with.

That is what I dealt with.

I had spent 12 years in a boarding school.

So coming up here I was so glad to hear that there was a native school that my son could go to.

He went to Indian heritage beginning in 1994 when Bob Eagle Staff was still there.

So please restore native heritage school.

And I say native heritage school instead of Indian heritage school because you know we are not Indians.

I always keep saying that we are natives.

Our students learn better and have a healthier sense of self-esteem when they are not discriminated against, being bullied or pushed out of your system.

Our graduation rate of 55% is totally unacceptable.

when it was 100% under Bob Eagle Staff.

Please give our high school back where the curriculum is geared to teach all who attend to share our values of respect and love for Mother Earth and all of her inheritance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi Kathleen Zagers from Olympic View.

I'm not here to say anything that you haven't really heard me say before but I wanted to tell you that we hosted a meeting in September and we didn't stop there.

In the last few days we've taken yet another survey just to check in with our Olympic View families.

122 families responded across all of the change areas and there are a lot of them for Olympic View.

and we want to keep our school together.

95% of our families think this is too much change too fast.

95% of our families think that fourth and fifth graders need to be grandfathered.

90% of our families think that all of the students need to be grandfathered.

We understand that is a big lift for our school and a full 70% of our families think that we are willing to host three more portables on top of the three portables we already have at our school.

So we get what we are saying and we want to keep our school together.

We also know that busing and childcare are extremely important to our families.

If you need it you don't just kind of need it, it's really really important.

And so we respectfully ask you to make adjustments to busing and our childcare space only as a last resort.

90% of us are supportive of being very creative of some solutions for those spaces.

We are a really reasonable group of parents.

I even went so far for Mr. Burke and 11 people are very excited about the possibility of opening Cedar Park as an option school, planning it and sending their child there.

And that is from Olympic View which isn't actually all that close to Cedar Park.

This process has been a little bit crazy and we get to keep going as Olympic View because we are middle school affected by the student assignment plan.

We are okay with a split.

We are okay delaying the middle school stuff tonight but do not start Eagle Staff with the incorrect mix of kids.

You don't want to move us twice.

That is what we want.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Vicki Pinkham I am the UNEA secretary and wife to the school board member Scott Pinkham.

I am a mother and I am a survivor of Seattle Public Schools.

And I have to say that as a volunteer for UNEA the Urban Native Education Alliance we have worked nine years to make it successful.

We are all volunteers.

We are all, we put in thousands of hours of time.

We put in so much that our graduation rate is 100%.

We need you to hear that because we are part of this school district.

Our students are part of your districts.

They come from all over.

They come from shoreline, the south end, anywhere, everywhere to be a part of our school district.

To be a part of our afterschool tutoring program where we engage them with culture and tradition and history, the correct history.

Not the history that you are seeing in the history books.

We were here last year.

We are going to be here again next year until you hear us.

We want you to know that our graduation rates are high but overall for the school district we are so low.

Our numbers are low.

We are asking that you be part of this solution in the sense that we want the Indian heritage high school back.

We need that back.

We need the boundaries to be continued as they are.

We don't need the segregation that is going to develop and you heard this all night from other parents saying that this boundary issue is something that you need to address.

and thank you.

We would like also new leadership.

We need a superintendent who is going to hear our voices and not divide us.

We need a superintendent who will stand with us.

Not just for the American Indians but for all districts with all students.

And we have heard this time and time again that he is dividing us.

Once you divide us then you conquer us.

we are not going to stand for that again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last two speakers today are Erin Napton and Stephanie Franz.

Hi my name is Erin Napton I am a parent at Viewlands Elementary which is our assigned school.

My family and the Viewlands community have asked for your help and you have listened.

Thank you to the board members who worked hard to create amendments that are responsive to the needs of families in our community.

And thank you to district staff who have listened.

As a parent I am new to this game.

I'm not a demographer, I'm not privy to the inner workings of the district but I do know it's complicated, difficult to navigate and much larger than my family and school community.

As a piece of the larger picture we want to advocate for what is best for our kids and our school community at Viewlands.

What makes sense for Viewlands is to grandfather all current Viewlands students to keep our young school intact.

We've just been started for about four or five years.

It makes sense to redraw the boundary in area 117 so that west of 99 remains in the Viewlands attendance area.

This is smart because it keeps families from crossing highway 99 I5 and the Northgate park and ride to get to school.

The portion of area 117 to the east of 99 where my family lives could stay with Viewlands as we go on or change to Olympic View but please make the smart decision that won't overload Viewlands or Olympic View but will grandfather all current Viewlands students to maintain our Viewlands community.

At the middle school level this area is walking distance to Eagle Staff.

It will split Viewlands between Eagle Staff and Whitman but it makes sense to consider the walkability.

You hold the data to support that decision, as a parent I don't.

We want a smart decision that keeps creative kids as our onsite childcare.

They currently use one of 11 portables at Viewlands, we value what they provide as part of our community and we are willing to help find solutions but we need to know how we can help.

We want a smart decision that will not be changed when Loyal Heights reopens.

Boundaries must be changed at Viewlands, please make the change only once.

so that families can feel secure and able to commit to supporting their neighborhood school.

Please factor grandfathering into future boundary proposals so that what has happened to families repeatedly over the years does not continue to happen.

The best options for the Viewlands community are either amendment 6A alone or paired with amendments 6B and 7 together.

You and the district hold all the data.

Please use it to make the decision that will be least impactful to the Viewlands community.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening board members, board directors.

My name is Stephanie Franz I'm an Olympic Hills parent.

As Anne Hillman already testified our extensive community outreach revealed a strong consensus in support of amendment 5A opening Cedar Park next year as an option school.

I want to speak to the equity concerns regarding option schools.

I too share these concerns.

Next year I will have a kindergartner and a second grader attending Cedar Park and diversity is a huge priority for our family.

But let me encourage you to consider something.

That opening Cedar Park as an option school is actually an opportunity to increase equitable access to an option school among disadvantaged families in Lake City.

Demand for option schools is huge as demonstrated by the popularity of Hazel Wolf but access can be challenging.

Diversity dropped drastically at Hazel Wolf when they moved to Green Lake away from the lower income families of Northeast Seattle.

Lake City has a high number of low income and ELL families concentrated in a small geographical area that is more or less equidistant between Cedar Park and Olympic Hills.

This is what made it so very difficult to redraw the boundaries in the first place.

But this is also an opportunity for equity.

If Cedar Park opens as an option school it will be right in the community.

The kids with the greatest needs would be equidistant between two great schools, a brand-new assignment school and a brand-new option school.

This is a unique opportunity for these families.

Also one of the huge concerns with Cedar Park was capacity.

As an option school capacity can be capped and the quality of education can be guaranteed.

So the demand there, the location is great but still the question of access.

I hope that our extensive outreach with our community has shown you the dedication and the drive for equity and access in our community.

This is an opportunity for the district to step into a well-developed community network to effectively work with families to inform and enroll families in a new option school for North Northeast Seattle.

Thank you very much.

Please support amendment 5A.

Thank you.

This is the last public testimony we are now ending our public testimony and we are going to move on to board comments.

Scott Pinkham.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you and Táˀc kulé-wit.

Good evening.

I just want to start off that we are still in Duwamish land here and I want to acknowledge that and thank one of the speakers for bringing that up.

And also we are, this is Native American Heritage Month so acknowledge that as well.

Urban Native Education Alliance I appreciate your help although it looks like they stepped out at the moment.

I too am a supporter of trying to bring back American heritage high school.

You know what we can do, yes I know there is budget issues to think about enrollment issues and things but for me it is like a priority issue if we want to look at eliminating the opportunity gap this is one way to do it.

I would rather see this as a priority issue versus a budget issue so I hope to get support and just get the discussion going again.

I know this was brought up in previous years during November but I wasn't on the board then I didn't see too much action so I think now I want to see if we can start moving on this and make some action happen with what truly can be done to bring back American high school, what can truly be done to bring back the African-American academy to bring back middle college sites that provided the alternative for our students that were struggling in our other schools.

When we put them in schools where they feel welcome, they feel appreciated, they succeed.

As was stated by UNEA, of the students that are involved with their program it is 100% graduation rate.

Because they get that, they are welcome.

You know they can be who they culturally are.

So as we look at eliminating the opportunity gap let's look at the models at work.

Let's get them back going and it's not just a benefit for the underrepresented population it's a benefit for everyone.

Because our society isn't just one particular society it's many societies and as people learn different views and perspectives everyone gets enriched.

So again thank you UNEA and all the other supporters that were here.

Thank you to David Bean, Stokes and Nancy Shippentower from the Puyallup tribes showing that what has gone you know historical trauma that we've encountered for the native population.

that Seattle school district we can play a role in helping alleviate that.

If we have to be the leader in that, be the first in the state, first in the nation, let's be bold.

Let's see what we can do.

So as I work with my colleagues here, let's sit down and talk about this, work with everyone here in the district, what can be done, work with the community as well because your input is valuable as well.

I also want to make sure I thank Ben Essel.

for their performance and what they did, they did a song called about the ghost dance and I also want to share information about the ghost dance, where that came from.

Wovoka who was a Paiute spiritual leader came up with a dance and it was a dance to try to revive the native population.

to get their pride and who they were and actually the US government saw the rise of the native people with the ghost dance.

Not just the Paiutes but other tribes and the government banned the dance.

And the reason for that, excuse me, they were afraid that the natives were going to get organized and drive them out.

So, excuse me, I just want to let people know, you know, find out more history about that dance and you know, if it wasn't for that dance it would lead to Wounded Knee, you know, the first, not the first but the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and just the things that have gone on there and I appreciate that Van Esselt is able to bring that school into their community and let them learn about it.

I want to welcome John Kroll to our office and thank you Tom Aaron for what you provided on the McCleary.

we should get the legislators in here and also them to look at it to understand what is going on here and what we need to do to fully fund our schools.

You know that is their paramount duty and the paramount duty to amply fund our schools.

you know so when they break that promise and are not fully funding it you know we need to hold them accountable.

Julie Jackson from Ballard High School thank you for being here and sharing your views and perspectives you know that we got to hear our student voices as well and your vice president that was our first speaker Samantha what was blue thank her as well for coming up here.

Thank you to all the students that were part of the comments as well that came up and all the families that come up and sharing your insights and views that we need to make sure we keep that face, that public face who we are here to serve and how things change and impact them with the growth boundaries.

I see this, what we have to do is look at this with the lens that we are not just filling up buildings until they are at capacity, we are moving families and children around that are going to impact them.

and the less impact, the less disruption and that is one of the things that we try to do with this is to minimize that.

So as we work more with the communities at my district our community meetings I hear your voices and I want to work with everyone to make sure that we minimize that impact.

Let's see here what else.

I also want to remind I guess I will continue with my district one committee meeting on November 19 this Saturday from 345 to 515 at Northgate library.

I was thinking about canceling it because I got another session I got a meeting down at Highline College but I will leave there at 2 and try to get back here hopefully by 345. So, if I'm late for community members that are here that might be there, bear with me, I'm going to get there as soon as I can.

But again, thank you all for your voice, your words.

I'm here to listen, I'm here to do the best that's good for the school district and good for our families.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you.

to everyone in the room and who has been in the room and has left or stepped out, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here.

This matter's policy is made by people who are sitting in the chairs.

Several things, the Van Asselt music makers they were beyond delightful to watch and I always think about how important the arts are in our schools and I believe it is under introduction we are going to talk some about a pretty extraordinary grant for the creative, there is creative advantage nomenclature which expands what we can offer our kids.

Now whether or not we can offer that to our kids with the funding issues across the board we all know that's a farce.

But we're trying hard.

To the support professionals and the remaining psychologists in our district this is your week and thank you.

Do we have enough of y'all?

No.

Are we paying you enough?

No but we thank you because you are as much a part of the team as anybody up here or staff in this building or principals or teachers and you don't get recognized enough so thank you.

Thank you to the LGBTQ family dinner and Lisa Love and her team.

It was a blast to go.

My hope is that we can have Lisa and her team present perhaps in January or February because they are working on critical curriculum.

And this is curriculum that became that much more important last Tuesday.

Because our kids and our families are valued by the Seattle Public Schools.

And we will stand and we will hold hands and will do appropriate curriculum that is put together by people in the know.

Front page of the website sign up for the task force put your time and your effort where your passions lie.

I said it before Tom Ahern you are a hero of mine And I really thank you because what you have done matters to so very very many people and 30 years from now if we are also lucky to be here we will be using your name in quotes.

And I think that is a beautiful thing.

And if you could put together a really cool graphic like you did up here to show the unfunded mandates on the bar charts we would be really grateful because that would be a great lobbying piece.

in Olympia where our families and our parents and our teachers are going to join us in Olympia making it clear that enough is enough.

Mentioned it before $45.8 million.

I pride myself in mentioning that in my board comments every meeting that I can.

Boundary changes I supported a motion to table this until such time as we did it by my perception in an organized systemic matter.

Now do I think that that is going to happen?

No.

But then maybe a meteorite can hit us tonight.

But really really good people have been working really really hard on this.

And they are not incognizant that we are talking about messing around in the lives of at least 800 kids.

Nobody here has taken that for granted.

But the devil is in the details and it's like throwing the rock in the pond where you have the expanding ripples that affect folks.

And some of the folks on the wall here have Rubik's cubes on their desk because that's really what this is.

Now I remember during the closure wars when the police were here when people were being violent and vile and it was the same kinds of feelings.

And I'm really pleased that we have figured out better ways to communicate since then.

But the issues are no less important.

We're still messing with families and because of our budgetary issues we're still pitting school communities against each other.

And we've got to figure out a better way.

I believe that we can open up Cedar Park as an option school.

I believe it will be a heavy quick lift but I believe that this is one of those ways that we can prove our mettle for community engagement.

And I'm kind of excited about making that happen because again there are brilliant people in this building.

People that care deeply.

My colleagues up here have worked extraordinarily hard on amendments.

Flip Herndon, Ashley Davies, They've been elegant and timely with questions and feedback with respect to information we've requested.

Now do we have the consequences with respect to children of color and lower socioeconomic of any of these proposed changes.

Am I comfortable with it?

I'm absolutely not.

The other shout out would be to Nate Van Duzer board staff who though might strenuously disagree with a board member's vision on an amendment has done a yeoman's job on making it happen and I really appreciate that.

It's brilliant staff work on your behalf.

Appreciate it.

I do not have a community meeting scheduled and I did not last month because I'm going to trial on Monday, Ben continued twice, new theories, my life is upside down and I can't find a library to hold them in.

So Scott I might join you and hold hands and they will get two for one.

I also want to say as an analogy here Boren K-7 didn't rise up and become the successful school that it is because folks in this building said hey what a great idea let's have a STEM school.

It was capacity management because Northwest Seattle was blowing up because we closed schools because we moved folks around.

And you know they held hands they got support from the district and they made it happen and it's very exciting to me and we can do as much or better.

Thank you ever so much.

Director Burke.

I want to also extend my thanks and gratitude to everyone who has joined us today for speaking, for listening, for participating.

To the Van Asselt music makers, one of the things I really like about that is the synergy of the music with Woodshop which I've been accused of promoting.

So that's a great combo.

I want to thank Ms. Jackson, a fellow Ballard beaver, knuckle bump.

I can do that because I'm sitting here.

The I want to welcome John Kroll as you know heading up the dots group I'm super super excited to work with you learn more about your vision figure out how we integrate the power of technology into both our internal systems and our classroom work in an appropriate and balanced way.

I want to share my gratitude also with Thomas Ahern for coming out and taking the time and what you shared was both informative and entertaining and that really makes light of it because the stakes are so high and it is critically important so that combination of informative entertaining and dang I don't know just critical.

What can I say.

So thank you for that work that you do and continue to do.

I'm with Director Harris holding you in high regard.

I want to also specifically acknowledge and thank the native community for coming out today for their presentations, for their thoughtful words, for their passionate calls for an education system that serves their community better than what we are offering now.

And I think it is a reminder that we have to look at what we are offering and we have to look at how we are serving those communities and we have to do right by our families.

So I look forward to further conversations on that and understanding how we can help reduce the past pain and make things better in the future and support that community in a better way.

Some of the things that I have had the pleasure to participate in over the last month, I got to attend the state of the district meeting at Franklin high school and got a little inside view tour of the school by a fellow math fan that showed me a classroom that actually had chalkboards.

It was amazing it made me smile.

And some really awesome high school math content.

But after that you know to hear the presentation from Dr. Nyland and the way it was structured it truly was a production it wasn't just I'm going to stand up and deliver a PowerPoint.

It really engaged a lot of different aspects of the district.

So I thought that was a super super cool thing so thanks to Dr. Nyland and the rest of the team that helped put that together.

Dr. Nyland mentioned the educational specifications meeting.

Our high schools are based on a common Ed spec as are our middle schools and our elementary schools.

And that is not to say they are all the same because they are not.

But the core DNA that is built into the design and the spaces and how they are developed starts from these educational specifications.

So it was really great to see the work that folks have done around our high school educational specs.

and how it incorporates additional science rooms, dedicated maker space, dedicated spaces for our skill centers as well as a really comprehensive set of classrooms and classroom offerings and support systems.

So I'm super excited that that document can form the basis for our future projects not just for Lincoln high school but also for the work at Ingram and any subsequent projects that we do.

The boundary discussion, there is going to be a lot more conversation on it but I want to really share my gratitude for everybody who has participated.

My colleagues on the board, we have had amazing conversations, all the people from the community.

It is so hard from our position, we want to help everybody with everything and find a solution that fixes all concerns, doesn't uproot any families, provides amazing educational opportunities for folks and is cost neutral.

But we haven't found that yet.

So people have been so thoughtful in providing their input, their candid input but also their willingness to flex and to take one for the team a little bit.

We are going to go through this work we are going to go through our action we are going to come up with a good plan and we are going to also build forward in subsequent years.

I stood before the families of Cascadia last night and I shared with them that this is my first year going through the process in great detail because last year it happened right after we started and it seemed pretty straightforward.

And what I learned this year is that this is a big deal.

This is hard and it really you know the work the staff has done to lay the groundwork for this and provide enough options that we can find combinations to minimize impact and both in capacity and in disruption.

It's really tough.

In closing I will say I also haven't scheduled my next community meeting so that will be coming soon.

And my last point was to say happy birthday Allie B. Save me some cake.

Director Geary.

Thank you Julia Jackson for coming.

Thank you to our VAM musicians always a highlight of our meeting clearly to see our kids come before us and share their talents.

And that young budding musician and instrument maker I mean couldn't you see him 10 years from now like just continuing to work music and it being his passion.

I'm so touched by that.

Thank you to all our support professionals for your work and welcome Mr. Cole.

I think you'll have a heavy lift here in a lot of ways obviously the budget issues are going to be very tricky and then managing the vision of this board with regard to technology will also be you know a really interesting thing to watch unfold and I think for us to develop with you as a partner so that is great.

I had my community meeting and of course much of the discussion was about boundaries but clearly I mean we are not acknowledging it that much but there is a lot of stress and anxiety in our world right now based upon the election process that we just went through.

Regardless of the outcome even I think it was a really traumatic process.

And I am so thankful for the teacher who came to my meeting to say our kids are traumatized by this.

And our teachers are in the classroom having to deal with this.

And it's a huge list.

So thank you to our teachers for being there for our kids.

And I just encourage all of us to continue to remember that we need to wrap around them to guide them through this.

And we have no idea at this point how this is going to play out in our media.

We have no assurances that it is going to calm down, that what they are going to be seeing is going to reassure them about their future.

And so it is our job as the people who surround these children every day right now to try to do what we can to make them feel safe.

We have to think locally, we have to act locally to support all of our kids.

Every single student, every single child you see on the street right now we all have that job.

So that is the again as usual one of the views that I look at when I do this work up here.

Thank you to the 5000 students who exercised their civic right and the dignity and restraint that they did it.

And thank you to all the people who supported them in the appropriate way be the schools who set the appropriate boundaries with regard to the consequences that they may face appropriately for having leaved unexcused from school.

To the Seattle Police Department that provided the escorts to keep them safe and to the people who did the work in this building anticipating that, talking and making sure that our city wrapped around them so it was a successful demonstration and a successful activity.

I like to think that every one of those students will leave high school ready to vote, ready to participate because we did it well.

So thank you everybody for that.

Thank you to the Washington voters who kept our Supreme Court justices in their positions.

There is so much money out there that is willing to take away our right as the voters within our community, our community voice.

They will work to suppress it and we don't let that.

Over and over this community will fight that money influx and I appreciate that so much so keep it up and thank you Mr. Ahern of course for all your work, your dedication And I will say this, that I love that graphic and I just live in fear that even if we got our dream, even if we got all that money, that there are those pockets of students, be it our special ed students, be it our Native American students, be it our students who are traumatized that still aren't being fully factored into those equations.

And how we are going to do the heavy lift of getting them to meet the common core standards.

Because that has been, you are right, that has been defined as our basic floor of educational opportunity.

And having come from the special ed world, watching people try to change that basic floor for them and lower that floor for them over and over again, I just, we have to continue to remember that basic floor applies to everybody.

And it's a much bigger lift in certain communities and we need to identify what's going to get up that lift.

And that gets me to our Native American population and people who came and talked to us today.

And we clearly have to do something different to change those statistics to change those numbers.

I being one who want to welcome every voice who want them our students to feel welcome and appreciated and to succeed I need to talk more with them because I don't know if a special school for them means that they are separate from our general population right when we have been asked required to bring in a curriculum that will demand their voices and participation for all of our students.

And I don't know how to make that work for them so that they feel included, they feel welcome, appreciated and to succeed but I don't want to give up on that.

And so how we carve out space for them to deeply dive into their culture and their needs for their learning while making sure that we are all there with them to some degree in changing our perspective so that it is a broader wider perspective.

That's a heavy lift and I'm open to those conversations and I don't want us to move too quickly and I don't want us to give up on that vision because that is the model that we use for every student and we should.

And thank you to all of the people who are coming out on the boundaries.

It's been quite a process.

I'm going to give out a special thank you to the Olympic Hills people because at our last meeting I said you guys are so organized and doing so much community outreach and I asked specifically for them to get their people together and answer a question for us and they did it.

They got together and they provided us the information like that.

arranged, went out, talked to people, went to you know the bus stops, did everything they needed to do to get us that information.

So that was two weeks ago.

Thank you so much for doing that for me.

And so my next big ask for you all, if we build this option school, you help us design it to meet your needs and you make sure that we fill it with your kids.

because that's what we want to do.

So we will hear you, we will work with you, you help us to make it a success and meet the need of our kids.

And as for my next community meeting I haven't set it up yet.

December is a tough time and if I really did it December 30 would people come?

We'll see.

All right.

Thank you everybody.

Director Peters.

Okay my colleagues are a very hard act to follow.

I do want to thank all the people who came out tonight.

A special shout out to our students that's Julia Jackson our ASB president at Ballard and good luck to you in your future as a teacher that's fantastic.

Also to Sammy Blue also from Ballard high school and thanks for keeping on our radar the fact that Ballard is very very crowded.

And to the Van Asselt music makers, charming presentation today and of course to the musician inventor Milo who brought his creations and played them for us, fantastic.

And to Tom Ahern this is the second time I've had the honor of hearing your presentation.

Thank you so much you bring such a vivid recounting of the whole McCleary dilemma or tragedy depending on how you look at it.

But with energy like yours behind this I feel optimistic that we at least are keeping this on people's radar and that we can ultimately have a positive outcome.

To all of the Native American community that came out here tonight thank you again for reminding us of your history and your goals and I too am haunted by the closures we've had in this district of various schools and programs and the Indian heritage school is one of them.

So, to what extent we can revisit that and reestablish some sort of special program or school that addresses the needs of our Native American students.

I would be very interested in looking into that as well.

I had a meeting recently with Blaine K8 I was invited to join them at a special meeting at their school just Tuesday I think it was and Peggy McEvoy and Carrie Campbell were also there.

Thank you both for coming out.

Their community wanted to talk about bell times especially in light of the fact that we will be adding 20 minutes to the school day and they have been placed in the third tier of bell times for the last three years and they were able to explain to us what a hardship this has been for many of them.

It requires them to add extra childcare before school and after school.

Students are going home in the dark.

Some students are not able to do any after school activities now because by the time they get out of school after 4 o'clock the classes, the sports activities, everything is already finished or it's too dark.

Some students can't make crucial appointments.

So I have never been a fan of the third tier.

I've always thought it was too late.

We do have an opportunity.

next year to think about establishing a two-tier system that has always been my preference.

I believe there is a lot of community support for that but with many things there is a big price tag attached to that.

Right now the price tag is $3.8 million but I understand that Peggy McEvoy is going to take a closer look and see if there is some creative way to bring that price down.

In the case of a school like Blaine it turns out not that many kids even use the bus.

So we should be taking a closer look at individual schools and see if there are some economies that can be made at the macro level as well, I mean the micro level for the school.

I also want to bring to everybody's attention the fact that we are having discussions about the budget.

We are looking at a potential deficit of 71, is it 71 or 73, $71 million if all things That is the worst-case scenario.

And so we do have to have a conversation as a community about if we do need to cut back on things what will that be?

What do we consider essential and fundamental?

And I welcome input from the community on those issues to help us all focus on what are the essential elements of a successful enriching school district.

Hopefully we won't have to cut that deeply but we do have to have these conversations and it's not a bad exercise to take a look at a district like ours and say what is essential, what isn't?

Are we focusing in the right places?

The amendments to the boundary decisions have as has been mentioned before have taken a lot of thought and energy and I would like to thank my colleagues and staff and the community for weighing in on these.

I know we are going to try our best to try and be make decisions that are the least disruptive to the least number of students while at the same time recognizing that we have capacity challenges and we do need to open new schools and take advantage of new space for students.

So that conversation will be continued I also want to tell people in terms of some of my amendments they were rooted in the history of this district and past closures where students were uprooted before.

And I'm very mindful of how that went and how difficult that was and so one of the things I'm trying to do And I think some of my colleagues are also trying to do in terms of grandfathering is try to mitigate against that and to create a transition year so we don't uproot students all at once but we have more of a gradual transition to the new schools.

And so that is one of our goals.

I would like to thank Superintendent Nyland for sending out a note to students earlier in the week in response to the election.

I know it has been a difficult time for a lot of our students and for a lot of the parents.

And that always happens when something unexpected happens on a national level.

But I also want to encourage everybody to take this time to talk to our students about what our country is, who we are as a nation because we are not all one type of people.

We have lots of different perspectives and to try to understand also in a historic perspective what is going on.

I love history, history helps ease the pain of the moment because you take a look and you see that there is a trajectory that ebbs and flows and you know we need to learn from the election and it could be actually a time, an opportunity for greatly energizing progressives in this nation and those who feel that they haven't been heard very well by either one of our two main parties.

So there are opportunities here and to Director Geary you mentioned common core who knows that might not be an issue for us in the future since the president-elect is not a big fan of common core.

So there is a lot of unknowns ahead of us with regards to education.

My next community meeting will be in early December and I will post the specific date.

It will probably be in one of the libraries either Magnolia or Queen Anne library.

And I think that is everything I have for tonight.

Thank you.

The board is now going to recess for 10 minutes and then we will be back and continue on.

No we will continue on when we come back.

Thank you.

Hahaha!