Seattle School Board Special Meeting - Sept 23, 2026

slash 9% tax on annual individual income over $1 million.

Prohibit tax measured by individual income and taxes on individual income or the receipt of individual income and defined income.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Any board comments?

Second.

Oh, thank you.

Yep, thank you, Director Ms. Roy.

Any discussion or comments?

Okay, then call for the student representative vote, please.

Student representative Fonts.

I advise yes.

Student representative Mangelson.

I advise yes.

Student representative Michael.

I advise yes.

Student representative Segizob.

I advise yes.

All right, we are again at a minute and a half.

So the time spent in support of the resolution was a minute and 30 seconds.

As provided per RCW 29B45010, the board will now provide the members of the public an opportunity to express the opposite view.

Our one speaker will have a minute and a half to provide their remarks.

Staff, would you please call on the speaker for this evening?

Our first speaker is Chris Jackins.

Proceed.

Thank you.

My name, surprise, is still Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124, on board resolution 2026-27-7 declaring opposition to initiative measure IP 26645 related to repeal of a tax on annual individual income over $1 million.

Eight points.

Number one, there are multiple views embodied in the proposed resolution.

I do not oppose all of these views.

Number two, for example, The resolution states a perhaps universally swell sentiment, again, that, quote, Washington should be a state where children and families can thrive in urban, suburban, and rural communities, unquote.

Number three, I oppose the resolution because it's being introduced and voted on at the same meeting.

Number four, it would seem valuable if the resolution helped to clarify and inform.

This resolution does a little of that.

It thereby comes across as a, yes, we always want more money approach.

Number five, at the September 16th board meeting, the board approved items without public discussion which okayed district expenditures which had not received required prior approval by the board.

Number six, the board has never responded to testimony at the annual budget hearing, which indicated that just getting currently enrolled students to attend school will balance district budgets.

Number seven, I am reluctant to follow the board's lead on financial issues.

Number eight, I oppose the resolution on these grounds.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for being here.

All right.

Staff, please call the vote.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Aye Director Smith?

Aye Director Song?

Yes Vice President Briggs?

Aye Director Lavallee?

Aye President Taup?

Yes This motion is passed unanimously

All right, thank you everyone.

We just passed three very important resolutions.

I know that the policy committee put some work in here beforehand and I wanna give policy members opportunity first to kind of talk through the process and any comments they may have.

Joe, or Director Mizrahi, Liza.

Hi, I love Director Hurd.

to talk about our approach.

The first two came directly through the policy committee knowing that these were going to come before our body and also knowing that it's not super often that a school board has a direct interest in the content of an initiative.

There are lots of initiatives that go before voters for a lot of different reasons.

These three have a very specific and direct impact on students that we serve and our ability to serve them well and in a way that meets with the values of our community and the values of many people across Washington State.

So I first brought the idea of this to the policy committee several months ago so that we would have enough time to understand the process of bringing forward a resolution on initiative because there are some different, there's some specific legal requirements as you just saw demonstrated by President Topp in providing time for pros and cons.

And since we haven't done that in a while as a body here, I wanted to give a lot of time to do that and also to ensure that our full board had the opportunity to participate in crafting language or having priorities stated in there.

So that's how we approached the first two.

And then the one that addresses mostly the millionaire's tax, I approached President Topp as the board president and also a tax attorney and Director Song as chair of our finance committee to see if we wanted to bring this forward together.

So that was a little bit outside the committee process But given that we had unanimous passage on that We felt as we were developing it that it would adequately and accurately Summarize a common view held across the board I'm not sure is there anything else that maybe we haven't mentioned that I should I?

Anybody?

I guess the last thing I'll say is that the thing that was important here is not actually just for us to say, we feel this way and we support these things, but to try and be really clear about the real impact that it would have to our students.

This is actually, even though we heard testimony to the contrary, not simply a bare political statement, but wanting to be clear about when we're all surrounded with lots of different spin and different objectives out there in the public about these initiatives, we wanted to focus on what it would actually mean for our students and be really clear about that, that there are, in addition to very real personal safety and dignity issues for individual students, also implications in all three of these policies for our system as a whole.

and so policy committee thought this was a very appropriate way for us to weigh in and I'm grateful for everyone's collaboration and I really hope that our community will feel affirmed and seen by us taking these positions and also that it can hopefully help provide in a very factual way really what the impacts are regardless of the other stuff out there should people decide to read through it.

Yeah, I'm really grateful to be part of a board that took this approach very thoughtfully and deliberately and to have passage of all three of these.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

Thank you for taking the time to herd the cats and help get us there.

Do other directors have any comments they'd like to make?

I'll just echo I think that these are all things that affect our students and so I think taking a stance as a board is meaningful and something I don't think I've seen us do on initiatives in a very long time as a board.

So I'm excited that we were able to flex this muscle.

With that, we are going to move right on into our study session, and we're going to start with WASDA.

We will move to the tables, and I will introduce our guests, and we will stay at the U for the rest of the evening, so go ahead and bring your stuff.

All right, so the first half, we've got the wonderful Dr. Heather Curl here, who apparently started a PhD program with our superintendent.

I guess he did not, he's working.

Yes, I say, she's Dr. Curl and you're not, so.

And then we also have Patty Wood with us here this evening.

So they're going to do the first hour here of this training.

We will take then a quick break and then our general counsel and our board staff, Julia, will come and do the sort of second portion here specific to our policies layering on top.

So with that, I'll pass it on over.

Oh, there it is.

And then I guess we'll just keep it on the whole time.

I saw you all shifting off and on, but we can keep it on.

Okay, excellent.

It keeps going out, but that's okay.

I'll get close.

Thanks everyone for having us and we're excited today to just work with your board again.

We were here in February and I love that you have followed up with work that you want to do, some new learning and engagement.

So thanks for having us.

Thanks for the introductions as well.

Gina, Patty, do you want to say anything about you before we move on?

And I think you're not on, are you?

Oh.

I served on a local school board for about 15 years and then went over to State Board of Education for eight years and then I've had the opportunity as Executive Director of Educational Policy to be the leader of a board so I feel like I've been able to sit on both ends and so that's where I've gotten my governance experience and running meetings.

Excellent.

Thanks, Patty.

Our goals are here.

We're going to go quickly through this hour, and we're watching time.

We're going to talk a bit about the purpose and principles and a bit of the role of the chair because that's really useful for the whole team to know.

We're talking about making a motion.

We just saw y'all rock that, of course, so we know that you know that.

We'll also talk a bit about agenda setting and changes, actually, to the agenda at the beginning of a meeting.

and we'll have a scenario that supports that.

We'll also talk about proposing an amendment and kind of the order of operations there.

We'll talk about some secondary motions as well, laying something on the table for instance, postponing a motion, those kinds of things.

We'll just make sure we're clear on all those.

And then we'll end with some resources.

I've actually given them to you now so that you have them.

Parliamentary Procedure is a resource that WASDA produces.

We just brought a copy for all of you, but you have a PDF available at any time.

of this, and then the other's just the resource slide that we'll close with.

I thought I'd make a printout for you.

So you have it.

Let's just start here.

How do you feel about Robert's Rules?

Again, I saw y'all rock it pretty well, so some of you might be in the four or five range, but we would just love to see with a show of hands where each of you feel on Robert's Rules.

It's just a good kind of point for us.

So think, think, think, and then I'm gonna have you put it up right now.

Oh, we got here.

One, please don't make eye contact with me.

I don't know how.

And number five, give me the gavel.

I'm ready.

Where are we at?

We got some excellent threes.

Okay, all right.

I love the people who refuse to follow the rules.

They're like, no, it's this.

No, it's this.

No, it's this.

Don't put me in a box.

I hear you.

Yes.

That's really helpful for us to know going in.

Sound good?

Yep.

Alright, take it away Patti, I think that one of yours works.

Okay, I have to say even though I do this at conference and stuff, I often don't make eye contact with me, so it's okay, wherever you sit.

So just a real quick little history lesson here.

We often use parliamentary procedures and Robert's rules of order interchanged, and they're not exactly the same thing.

Principles of parliamentary law were from the English Parliament, and all large legislative bodies have to have rules by which they operate to stay civil such as ties on the floor or no food or that sort of thing.

However, you're not the UN General Counsel or US Congress and so most smaller boards use Robert's Rules of Order which Henry Roberts started back in 1876 and developed this and that is pretty much the common stay practice.

It is not a state law, however, it is often in your policy that you'll use Robert's Rules of Order.

If you wanted to write all your own rules, you could.

I highly recommend you use Robert's Rules of Order.

but it's a very long book.

It can be very daunting but if you just remember the principles of that which it is majority decision, minority rights are preserved, everybody has equal access to information and equality of rights.

It's basically how to do things fairly in an organized manner which keeps things under control moving along.

So, Robert's Rules of Order, again, I'll let Harry here.

Yeah, so those are the principles that kind of undergird or serve the foundation.

The purpose, though, is to help you get your work done, okay?

So there's a reason, a rhyme to this kind of reason why it feels so tedious sometimes, but there's a point to it.

The first is to transact your business and promote cooperation and harmony.

That's going to be our goal.

It enables us to consider one item of business at a time, one person at a time, one time per meeting.

So it just supports us to have all the debate about one thing in order of everybody being able to talk actions on that, and then we move over, right?

We move along.

So there's a reason why, and that's really key.

The next one is to have free and full debate.

That's to ensure that every voice can be heard.

So this is where the chair plays a role.

If we've only heard from two people the whole night, this is the chair's role to stop and say, can we hear from you, director?

Can we hear from you, director?

Do you have anything to say?

So that's embedded in Robert's rules to ensure that everyone has a voice.

We're channeling business through that leader, to support group action, right?

Because you don't have any power without a quorum.

And then it enables clear recording of action so that the person taking minutes is really, they can focus and understand what the action is and record it.

So these are the reasons why we're doing all these special words.

Sound okay?

I just chatted a bit about role of chair, go for it.

Sure, and one other little caveat, these Robert's Rules of Orders are often for all sorts of boards and you are actually considered a small board.

I don't think we, a small board is anything under 12 and there's some rules that you don't need to stand and be recognized in order to speak.

So we are not getting into much of the arcane, but just to let you know that some of the rules that you might be familiar with, that you might have learned in school, don't apply to small boards.

And if you have questions on that, just let us know.

So as Heather introduced, the role of the chair is pretty important.

They don't need to be a parliamentary expert on the law of Robert's Rules.

However, they're responsible for running the meeting along and keeping it flowing.

and as she also said, it's not making sure that everybody speaks and that one person doesn't dominate.

They need to call the meeting to order and make sure there's a quorum, which we heard President Top do earlier today, and recognize the speakers and call them up to speak when they are asked to speak.

They also announced the vote afterwards and we'll be working through a motion on that.

and they also need to enforce the public meeting rules which you saw again when recognizing on how to take public comment.

Unfortunately sometimes that also means keeping the conversation on task which might be setting down public comment and making sure that the public is able to participate in a reasonable and civil manner.

So anyway, the chair also will make decisions on some of the votes if you call a question of privilege, but they do not have any more affordability of right.

They have the same vote, and their vote counts only once, but they are insured for making sure that the meeting is effective and productive.

And I just want to highlight that we brought you a resource that we've taught, just so that you have it there.

We just gave it to Director Topp, but there's a resource available.

So we did have a couple questions when we talked to Director Topp ahead of time about the agenda and how you can set agenda.

And there are multiple ways of doing this.

Obviously you have the agenda setting meeting where the chair meets with the superintendent.

I'm assuming about a week or two before your board meeting.

Every district is a little bit differently.

and at that point you have the agenda created.

Every board member has a right to request items be placed on the agenda.

How you do that in your district is up to you through your own policy.

Once the agenda comes to you as a board member, you approve it at the board.

However, and we'll practice this a little bit later, you can make some minor changes to the agenda the day of.

That is fine to do.

It depends on if it's a regular or special meeting.

We'll cover that in a little bit.

but calendaring it goes on with the superintendent of the meeting and you also try to keep our meetings under two and a half hours and I'm assuming, is that?

It's a noble effort.

Yeah, not every board can do that but we do wanna protect people's time and make sure that time is focused on students, et cetera.

So we're just gonna start with a scenario here, making a motion to pull an agenda item so that you have a sense of what that can look like.

And generally, well we'll just do the motion if that makes sense, give everyone a second to read it.

This is a scenario, so I'll set the scene for you.

It's the start of a regular board meeting.

The agenda includes an item to approve the proposed three year facilities maintenance contract with Adams Building Services, right?

kind of been the plan what we're doing now here's a series of and we can see from director when a question comes up so I'll let you all read it can you read it is it too small is it okay all right excellent I'm gonna let everyone read And I'm going to have some hands raised for who would like to be President Reyes.

We're going to say it out loud as well so we can hear it.

Can I have a volunteer for someone who feels like acting?

Yes, no?

I'll be President Reyes.

I am so grateful.

Who's President Nguyen?

I mean Director Nguyen.

Come on, guys.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And who will be Director Lopez?

You love to second.

I appreciate that, Liza.

All right.

And scene.

Go for it.

Okay.

It is moved and seconded that the board adopt the agenda as presented.

Is there any discussion?

Madam President, I move to amend the agenda by striking the facilities maintenance contract item.

We haven't received a cost comparison with other vendors or any references and I'm not comfortable voting on it tonight.

Second.

It is moved and seconded to strike the facilities maintenance contract item from the agenda.

Is there any debate on the amendment?

Okay, we're gonna stop here and I'm gonna have you in pairs with the person next to you.

There's gonna be a group of three and a group of two.

I want you to talk what's the next step here using Robert's Rules and this question, how does this fit with agenda setting in your district?

What does agenda setting look like and how do you interact with the agenda at the meeting?

Does that sound okay?

And then we'll just hear from a few folks.

Go for it.

Is it this slide or the next slide that we discussed that you can't take action other than a regular meeting if you change the agenda?

I think here.

Okay, we're gonna come on back.

Let's start with what's the next step?

Did anyone in their small groups discuss that?

Go for it.

Director Briggs, thank you.

We thought that the next step would be then for the motion to be debated.

and then voted upon.

And then voted upon.

So whenever there's a call, right, a motion and it's seconded to remove an agenda item, it must be voted on, right?

That's different than the consent agenda, right?

You can just ask for something to be removed to discuss later, right?

You don't have to vote on that, but this you do have to vote, okay?

Anything else to add for what comes next before we talk about how this tracks with your team?

Okay, any reflection on how does this compare with what you do in Seattle or any other insights from your small groups?

Does Liza have something to say?

She does.

Something she said before.

We don't approve the agenda as the first order of business and I believe that we should.

Interestingly, for some time we have done it in committees and Vivian and I were just having a little side conversation.

I can't remember when it was taken off of like our template, but at some point I personally had the awareness of, oh wow, this is a thing that we don't do that we should.

I think what happened is we used to have executive committee.

The executive committee would work with the superintendent and they would vote to approve the agenda.

And then when the board adopted a student outcomes focused governance, Liza actually served on the ad hoc implementation committee.

The recommendation was that the board president and the superintendent work together to approve the agenda.

But somehow we have just naturally defaulted to a norm where there are essentially one, two, or three board members meeting with the superintendent.

I don't know if you're all doing a formal vote.

But either way, my personal take is still whether it is you know establish an executive committee or with the chair the first order of business still should be approval of the agenda by the full board so that the full board owns it that's I think that yeah that we probably and I would be interesting to look back and see like when there was an executive committee did they still take that approval of the agenda vote because I can't remember

I mean I kind of get it because it's like Robert's rules is what we do but I don't know what I'm just trying to understand like what do you think would practically change because if we don't have I'm trying to understand yeah if we don't have a process where we're approving the agenda does that mean we can't amend the agenda within the meeting

So someone would have to bring it up, so they'd have to raise it, so they would have a right to bring forth a vote, and you'd have to still vote on it, so whether you change it.

Typically what is unique about your district is that a lot of boards don't literally vote on approving the agenda, however the chair will stay if there's no objection, the agenda passes.

and they just wait a second and see if anybody has anything to say.

So there is no vote on it, but it gives a pause and 30 seconds for people to say, yes, actually, I do have an issue I want to raise.

And that we just share that so that you know common practice across the state.

A lot of people do that.

I like that, personally.

It's not the, we must vote on it, because it's in Robert Jules' thing that's important to me.

What's important, I think, is the kind of collective ownership consent to move ahead with the meeting and the opportunity for someone to say, actually, there's something that's not on here that I thought would be on here.

And if you have one member of the board who does that at every meeting, it might be kind of annoying and a problem, but there's also mechanisms to say, actually, the rest of the board doesn't approve amending the agenda.

because you have to vote on it.

And we do notice that we put pulling an agenda item because, and the reason here is because there's not enough information for us to take action, right?

So again, we're focused on action.

We didn't have an example of adding an agenda item, even though that is possible, you can, but we don't have that as an exemplar because it's not great to do that because so much goes into putting an agenda item on, right?

There's work and prep and all those things and you can't take action on something that has just been added.

Right, so that's a distinction.

To clarify that, you can, not recommended, you can take action if you're at a regular meeting to an agenda item that's been added, not at a special meeting.

So like if you change the agenda tonight and they want to take action, that you cannot do that.

However, in smaller districts, maybe we have, you might add another retirement, and it's pretty, it's mundane things, and so it does happen.

It shouldn't be practiced, but it can happen, and timing is something if you have to wait two weeks on retirements or resignations or whatever.

However, like I said, you should be very cautious about taking action on anything that's added.

Pulling for information, should be rare, but not that rare.

It's in your power to do that.

Your hand was also up before.

Did you want to say anything, Gina?

No?

Okay.

What are the risks that we should be aware of when we add something to agenda and want to take action?

Because sometimes I can imagine things come up and we just want to quickly act on something, but what are risks that we're taking?

So the risks is you haven't had a chance for the public to really hear about it.

So if it is truly operational and he brings in a couple more warrants to pay for the pizza party at one of the high schools, you're probably okay getting away with that and approving that.

However, if it's something a little more significant like improving the hiring of a new employee or implementing a new program, you really should be diligent and genuine in your public information and transparency.

So the risk would be the public finds out afterwards that you did something and did not really give proper notice.

So that's why you'd want to keep it to kind of the mundane operational things

Yeah, and I know that your district has a lot of work that goes into all of the work that happens at each of your meetings, and so you'd want to be respectful of that operations work, too, and not, you know, suddenly sideline it.

And also, as you know, information is everything, and if you just bring something up onto the agenda that night, you probably don't have all the information you need, if not everybody, at least.

If two of you introduced it and knew what you were talking about, the rest of you probably wouldn't have all the information that you would find necessary.

Yeah.

Uh oh.

So does that imply, though, that you can only add something?

I mean, what if you want to add something to the agenda that doesn't need to be voted on?

That's like, this is something that I would like us to discuss, and the only time we can all do that is in a public meeting.

Is that permissible?

I mean, because you don't really need to have, if you're not voting on it, then it's okay if it's just being talked about for the first time that night.

So is that a thing you could do?

You just said for the first time that night, so that to me was what I'm going, well sure, especially if you're going to have other further conversation, but if you're going to have a one-off conversation that is something that staff and community is going to want to be involved in, you probably shouldn't add it to the agenda that night and make that the only conversation you have about it.

Yeah, I guess maybe the better way to ask my question is, are you cautioning against adding something that night if it's something you have to vote on?

Otherwise if you don't have to vote on it, it's fine to bring it.

I'm cautioning you against adding anything that would be a public or staff interest.

that they would feel like they got caught off guard and didn't have a chance to attend the meeting to find out about information.

So if it is truly operational, you've got an extra person wanted to put in retirement in the June board pack and you got a couple extra retirements, go for it.

But if it's substance, we wanna make sure that the community has a chance to see the agenda topics in advance and prep to be there for the public meeting.

So that's OPMA, it dictates that.

And it's just really important also that you never would just bring something up, right?

No surprises is key, so there's a key process that you wanna follow, so that's why.

I have seen boards have something happen like that afternoon or the day before and they bring it up as this is might be an issue they have a conversation to put it on a future agenda so they put it on the agenda to say this is rising to the level of an agenda item we need to talk about this in the future awesome yeah so definitely be responsive but yeah

I hope I'm not like stealing future thunder but there's also something that is typical of boards which is to have the last item be anything for the good of the order which would be a time to say oh I just remembered we had talked about this thing and I'm wondering when we're going to talk about that again and then that allows some time on the agenda for the board president to say, oh yeah, thank you so much for the reminder.

I just had the conversation with so-and-so today and that's on the agenda for such and such.

And then you'd be able to say, great.

Because there's, and you might be talking about this in the future, there's the legal allowances and then there's also best practice.

I would hope that we will be talking about maybe with Julia afterwards is looking at our policy and our own policy for how we do our work should probably include something like all efforts will be made for any additions to the agenda to come with at least 48 hours notice or something like that.

or we could even make our own rule for ourselves that there will be no changes to the agenda within 48 hours.

We can decide what the limit is, but there's best practice and then there's the technical, yes it's allowed, probably still shouldn't do some of those but there is that opportunity for is there anything else for the good of the order kind of thing we forgot that usually takes five or ten minutes at the most and a lot of times there's nobody has anything but that's something we could talk about adding.

And I said at the beginning, every board member has a right to request items to be put on the agenda.

However, you can have one board member, only one better board member adamant we need to change the school colors at Chief Sealth High School, right?

Nobody else wants to do that, so you're not going to have that happen.

So they could request to Gina, put it on the agenda for a future meeting, and she could say, no, we're not going to do it.

at good of the order, they could publicly say, I want to put this on.

And if they keep bringing it up, you could say, take a vote.

No, you're not going to do it.

But they'd have their chance using parliamentary procedures to be publicly heard and seen.

Can we move on?

Great.

You already know how to make a motion.

We're gonna talk through that quickly.

Go ahead.

So I'm gonna talk through this really quickly.

There's six steps and I'm gonna go to the next slide.

So there's a motion, a second, the chair restates the motion, debate, chair announces results and votes.

The point I wanna make on this is once the chair restates the motion, it's now owned by the board.

and so that board, that motion cannot be changed without a vote.

So I'm getting at is sometimes people do friendly amendments.

You technically can't do that.

You can modify a motion before it's been stated by the chair.

So if you make a motion and then you second it, at that point it's two individual board members proposing a motion.

when the chair states the motion that is owned by the board and what the chair says is the motion so if the chair misspeaks that's the motion you're voting on So if there's, so no pressure, but yeah, so this is important if there is any nuance and if you state a long motion and there was just a little thing left off, you'd want to clarify that.

The chair's restating it for the purpose of also for the secretary who's recording it.

They're going to be listening to what the chair says, not to the motion makers.

So the point is that that's pretty important.

And you guys already do this, but the main motion needs to be stated fully.

I move.

It doesn't count.

It doesn't move.

But I know this is a practice you already do.

The second, however, does not need to be fully stated.

So that's fine.

and I probably shouldn't have kept that up.

You actually don't technically need a second in small boards, but it's a good practice to have, so you don't.

Yeah, anyway, so, but anyway, once you restate it, Gina, that's when you're really important to go on from there.

and I always like to say that once the motion's been stated the floor is open for discussion and some people talk can you have a discussion before a motion's made and versus after the motion's made before a motion is made you're often getting information from staff and it is more than fine to ask for clarifying questions I don't know your practices here but that's when you ask for clarifying questions but you really should not be having the board to board dialogue until after the motion's stated, mainly because you don't know what you're voting on until the motion's been stated.

So information gathering, clarifying questions before the motion, that's fine because you need to be able to have information so you can have an informed discussion.

After the motion's made, then it's kind of board to board discussion.

I don't know if they might just repeated what you already know since you guys are pretty good at this.

That actually brought up something that I think is important that we have had a practice of the motions are actually pre-written for us.

That's great.

Which is great and helpful in terms of stating the proper wording.

However, it presupposes that we want to make that motion.

So we did that at the State Board of Education and when I went in I'm like, whoa, wait, you're doing work outside.

I don't view it that way.

You're getting it so you have basically a draft motion.

Think of it as a draft motion.

And then when you get all the information from the staff and the update from the superintendent and everything, that motion might be perfectly adequate or you might tweak it just a little bit.

But it is nice to have it there.

It is nice to have, but here's the second part, is we typically, when we have action items, what I believe we should shift our practice to is saying, next on the agenda is approval of the three-year contract for whatever.

Who is introducing this item, or staff, would you please introduce this item?

then have that information gathering and then have the motion.

Our practice has been to get to the item on the agenda.

The chair asks for a motion kind of to introduce the item and that's, I'm wondering, I think we should have that, this is the next item, the information gathering part and then the motion as opposed to making the motion to start the introduction of the item.

And that's a board discussion for the Seattle School Board.

It can be helpful.

Some boards like to do that so that they can model, even if they already know some of the information because they've received it, it can be helpful for the public to hear the information as well.

So that is a reason that some boards elect to do that order.

So the downfall of doing it that way was if you get information and you want to make changes, then you'll need to do an amendment.

Where if you just hold off, but honestly, this is your practice.

This is a conversation that Heather and I go away

Yeah absolutely.

So within the bounds of what's legal starting the conversation by making the motion and then having the informational conversation is okay.

It's just that if we discover in the process actually we don't want to make that motion right now, we would have to take action to either amend the motion or table as opposed to if we had the information item and then said, okay, yes, we do want to make this motion, we wouldn't have to do those extra steps.

But either way is not a legal issue.

Both are fine.

It's about efficiency.

Yeah, and how you want to communicate with the community around decision making.

It's a good segue to amendments, actually.

So shall we do that?

Sure.

So amendments, as you know, are meant to change the motion, the main motion, the original motion.

And an amendment can be anything as little as a comma to an entire paragraph.

and so it could be a correction or it could change the whole context of the motion.

Highly recommend you don't.

Like if you are trying to change the direction of the motion, vote it down and state a new motion.

But if you're trying to enhance, improve, clarify or correct, an amendment's the way to go.

So the big thing is, and we'll practice this, when you do make an amendment, Think of it as train cars.

You have a motion on the floor and then you've got this going and then the amendment comes in and you're addressing that first.

Actually the example I normally use is everybody's trying to get out the door to soccer practice and the point is to get everybody in the car but then somebody wants to know what toy to bring.

You cannot get everybody in the car now because you have to address the current motion on the floor which is what toy are you going to bring.

you address that first once that's addressed then you can go back to the main motion was get in the car and so if you kind of view it that way it kind of helps and that is the role of the chair to make sure it's clear to the audience and to the board what are we voting on and so that is your job to, you can be repetitive, it's great to say this is the motion on the floor to make the amendment and you vote on that and then once it's done, you would take the vote again, the main motion as amended or the main motion as originally stands.

So one other thing is you can't amend amendments.

It gets really complicated real fast.

Just don't do that.

And amendments must be germane.

You're not Congress.

Don't try to tack on something for your local district.

So make it germane to the original motion.

And I just want to highlight that it does say in Robert's Rules literally to it should be an amendment that's supportive of and not opposite.

So that is kind of if you it's not just best practice.

That's literally what it says in there.

Yes, exactly.

Because that's not toward the spirit of Robert's Rules.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Next one.

So, yes, so ways to amend and with you have a more structured board.

I don't know if you have some writing down and having staff writing it down.

That is great.

You can have them read it back.

You can correct them.

You can write it down on paper and make sure the staff reads it back to you as it's written and even take the time to put it up, depending on how complex it is, onto your screen.

Take the time to do that.

Like you can offer, you cannot offer a friendly or formal amendment during, after the board owns it.

You can do that ahead of time before the main motion is made.

And like I said, you then debate the amendment, you vote on the amendment, and then you vote on either the amended motion or the original motion depending on whether the amendment passed or not.

Yeah, okay.

So let's practice.

Scenario two, amendments.

Uh-oh, it seems too small, but can you read it okay?

Sorry, friends.

We have director, so I'm gonna let y'all read it first, and then I'm gonna take volunteers to read them again, okay?

Give us one second.

The setting is that the chair has stated the motion, it was moved by director, I can't read that, Patel, is it?

Okay.

That the board conduct a family survey on the proposed change to school start times.

And now it's open to debate.

So we're going to take some volunteers for Director Ruiz.

Anyone?

People closest to the screen.

Yes.

You got it.

Thank you.

And what about Director Chen?

Excellent.

Director Reyes again?

President Reyes?

My bad.

Who wants to be president?

It is a big job.

Thank you, Liza.

And then that's all we need.

So Director Ruiz, let's take it away.

I move to amend the motion by adding the words and report the results at the December regular meeting.

Second.

Good job.

it is moved and seconded to add the words quote and report the results at the December regular meeting end quote if the amended if the amendment is adopted the original motion will read that the board conduct a family survey on the proposed change to school start times and report the results at the December regular meeting the motion being voted on is the amended wording is there any debate The board votes on amendment.

The amendment passes.

The motion to amend has passed.

We will now vote on the original motion as amended.

We are voting to conduct a family survey on the proposed change to school start times and report the results at the December regular meeting.

Okay, excellent reading, everyone.

I feel like I have to say for anybody who may be just tuning in, we are not talking about changing school at all times in this meeting.

This is a scenario, a training.

Good call.

Thank you.

And the point to notice on this is how repetitive she was because it can be confusing to folks.

And so it's okay to be repetitive on what you're voting on and how the motion will read.

So a few questions here.

Can the board modify a motion without taking a vote?

Question.

Does anyone have a response?

That first question, can the board modify a motion without taking a vote?

It's always like kind of tricky nuance.

If you're missing a comma, if there's a typo, no, I mean, really, it's...

But if you're adding an entire sentence and paragraph, changing anything like that,

There has to be a vote, yeah?

Director Briggs, what were you going to say?

Yeah, nice job, excellent.

So yes, before the chair states it, you can modify votes because then they aren't noticed.

So I think that, again, this is about public transparency and if you're a smaller district someplace, you can probably slide on this a little bit more easily on the casualness of it, but it's, I think, The point of having parliamentary procedures and Robert's Rules is that everybody understands them, abides by them, both the audience and the board, and so having structure in place and being consistent with applying it is a good practice.

Okay, we're gonna move along to talk about laying it on the table or tabling a motion.

Robert's Rules uses the word lay it on the table instead of tabling, but tabling is commonly used.

So tabling versus postponing.

And we just wanna talk about the purposes of these.

These are pretty different.

Does Seattle ever use these?

This is something that you do.

They're called kind of secondary motions.

Once or twice, yeah.

Is it okay if we go through it?

Does it make sense?

Okay, great.

And so there's really different purposes here.

Tabling is to set aside something briefly for something urgent.

So say that you're talking about something, you're in the middle of discussion or debate, and someone needs to run to get a train, or somebody's family had an emergency.

Smoke alarm goes off.

Right, the fire alarm goes on, excellent.

We are laying this on the table.

We are tabling this until we come back, right?

Or we're tabling this until next meeting, okay?

Because we don't have time.

Something came up and we can't address it now.

Does that make sense?

You don't have a return time though because sometimes the building's on fire and you don't have time to debate a return time, right?

So there isn't necessarily a set return time whenever the board takes it from the table, okay?

So the language there is, okay, I'd like to, I would like to take it, it's laying it on the table and taking it off the table, okay?

And that's when you re-engage the conversation and you continue to the discussion again.

Question?

Yeah, does this, would this apply to any item that's been designated on the agenda or only items that are being, where there's going to be action?

It's just the current thing that's happening right then.

So it could even be like say after this we go to the safety and security update smoke alarm goes off, we are tabling a safety security update to the board to the next time it can be scheduled.

That's correct.

So we have to take that step even if it's not something that's being voted on.

Yes, because it was on agenda and you didn't finish the agenda topic and so this supports the record keeping to know that you didn't finish that and it's still work to do.

The problem with tabling is that it has to happen after the next business meeting.

If it doesn't come off the table then, it is off now.

it's no longer an item for business.

So that's why tabling is not the same as postponing.

Okay, and it would also not be the same as like, so say we, again with the same example, we're not gonna have the Ben's update today, we're tabling it, our next meeting's agenda is already set, so then it's off the table, but we could put it back on an agenda in the future.

Always, you can just add it as a new agenda item.

So is this kind of as like, it's there, I mean it's literally like it's I'm assuming since this is from 18 whatever we're literally talking about we're gonna set that down and the next time we come back it's still on it's still exactly okay and then but you have to take it from the right you have to take it down and then okay we're gonna address it again okay

and i think yeah heather will get into postpone because that's a different this is truly meant for a disruption that has nothing to do with the motion so most common that's really helpful okay so it's like an outside disruption it's not a we want to talk about this right this has nothing to do with the motion it's nothing to do with information and the most common thing is a disruptive audience and you need to lay it on the table so you can gain control of the meeting or this or a fire alarm or somebody's, you know, whatever.

So this is not anything to do with content.

Post.

Yeah, my favorite was there was a flood and a pipe burst and we had to lay it on the table because we had to leave the room.

Literally.

Actually, we had something like that too, yeah.

Oh no!

Yeah.

So this is different than the postponement, right?

So when you postpone something, it means that, okay, listen, we have some ideas still.

There's some new information that surfaced.

We're gonna postpone this to, and then you determine the time, right?

When you postpone, that becomes what you debate.

Not anymore of the content, but you debate, okay, when is it?

Oh, I think probably December makes sense because then we'll get the survey results.

Let's postpone it to December.

then we vote on that.

Make sure that we're all in agreement of when we're postponing to and that becomes the record and then we know it's in the December meeting.

Does that make sense?

This is also a way you can, it's very rarely used and I wouldn't recommend it, to kill an item because you can postpone indefinitely.

Because the important thing is you can say you need to state a time.

And it doesn't have to be five o'clock, it could be our next regular meeting.

But if you postpone indefinitely, that means you're throwing it into the vacuum and it's not coming back.

also not recommended.

It's much better to vote on things, right?

To take the action, to have clarity and move on.

Make sense, those distinctions?

Okay.

And then there's a few other kind of miscellaneous options here.

I think this is you, go for it.

Yeah, so you probably heard these.

Call the question is, you call the question meaning you're calling for the vote to be taken.

Couple important things here is that you can't just call the question and you don't vote.

You have to vote on whether you're gonna call the question.

The problem with this is that it's often used because people are frustrated because the meeting hasn't been controlled and they are just tired and they just want to get it over with.

Don't try to control the meeting through Robert's rules.

It's not an effective way.

If you're having dynamic issues with the board or frustrated with the discussion, address that.

Don't try to manipulate it by calling out arcane rules.

It's just not a very protective way to run a meeting.

However, once the question's called, and you do need to be recognized, then you vote, are we going to vote on the question or not.

Ends debate, and that means there's no more discussion.

So you can't go, oh, one more thing, conversation's over.

and we just talked about postponing and laying it on the table and making sure it's for a defined time point of order is the one thing that you truly can interrupt on and that could be that the president has not maybe followed a correct procedure maybe they didn't get a second maybe they forgot after the conversation to actually call for the vote you go point of order we actually never voted on this that actually happened

so point of order is to clarify things or say something somebody wants to lay it on the table and you know it should be a postponement so point of order I think we should be postponing this and not laying it on the table and that's something can I add one thing to that too when there's a contentious debate or something going on with the community something's going on it can be really helpful for other board members to do a point of order if for instance the public comment protocol and procedures not being followed Right?

Anyone, not just the board chair, but anyone can do a point of order.

So when something's out of line, you can also say point of order, you know, we're past the three minutes or point of order or something else.

And that sometimes you can have your chairs back.

in that way during a really difficult time if that's happening with the public.

So that's another tool that you can use Robert's Rules for.

I'd say that's probably one of the most common reasons I've seen in the state and it can be if somebody is aggressive during public testimony too.

Point of order, this is violating our policy on public testimony.

So like Heather said, it's a way to kind of support your leader.

So the other two things, this will be a fun trick question here.

So abstentions are when a member doesn't vote.

So it doesn't count as yay, it doesn't count as nay.

Couple items that are important here are you generally abstain if there's a conflict of interest.

However, you cannot require anybody to abstain.

However, if a person doesn't abstain and there's a conflict of interest, they could be personally liable for violating ethics laws in the states.

So while you shouldn't be voting on it and your board members say you shouldn't be voting on it and you vote on it anyway, you have to let them vote, but that they can be personally liable.

Like I said, doesn't add as a yay or nay, so now instead of six voting board, seven, you have six voting board members.

So if there's a tie, the motion fails because you need a majority to pass a motion.

So Seattle has seven board members.

Trick question.

What's the minimum number of votes needed to pass something?

I told you it's a trick question.

Actually, I think it's two, but we'll un-wrestle this one out.

So, what's a quorum?

Four.

Somebody abstains.

There's only three voting members.

What do you need to get a majority?

So, this is, don't recommend it unless it's something, like, do not do that to hire a new superintendent.

Like, don't.

So, that's not a good move.

So if you have three people abstaining, you only have one person voting?

There are very crazy ways that it could be one.

Yeah, yeah.

You can have one.

All seven members.

And I would say don't ever do any of it.

Don't ever do any of it.

That's right.

But what we've had is some problems in smaller districts with approving contracts, where because people's spouses or kids are in the district, they've had to abstain, and you end up having two people voting to approve the teacher's contract because you're in a small district.

So anyway, that was kind of a rabbit hole we didn't need to run down, but it was kind of fun.

And then we did skip point of information.

Some people say point of clarification, and this also can happen at any point when you're just asking a question and you don't know what's happening.

You're more than welcome to ask clarifying what's going on.

Can I ask this?

It's okay to do that at any point.

Like, are we voting on the amendment or the main motion?

Exactly.

Just clarifying.

And that can be really helpful for everyone, including the audience.

If you're confused, you might not be the only person, right?

So point of order and point of information can happen at any point, and they're really beneficial for everyone to know what's kind of happening.

Sound good?

So we have a few more scenarios to get us through.

On timing, we're at 547, so we're at a good pace.

We'll finish everything and be within time.

Sound okay?

And we'll have a little bit of time for questions if there's anything that we didn't address that's like on your mind or you're wanting to talk through.

So we're gonna postpone or table something, okay?

The setting is the board holds regular meetings monthly.

The motion is pending and being debated.

That the board adopt the revised attendance policy.

Again, this is a scenario.

There is no revised attendance policy happening in Seattle.

Can we have a hand raise for Director Nguyen, Director Lopez?

Okay, great.

So Director Nguyen, thank you.

Director Lopez?

Excellent.

President Reyes?

Excellent.

And Director Chen?

Is there anyone who hasn't gone yet?

Excellent, thank you.

Okay, Director Nguyen, take it away.

Before we vote, the full year attendance data won't be finalized until after tonight.

I'd rather decide with the data in hand.

Madam President, I move to postpone this motion to our next regular meeting.

Second.

it is moved and seconded to postpone the demotion to the next regular meeting is there any debate can we make it January instead so staff has time to do a thorough analysis

All right, so there's a few direct questions.

Is Director Chen's suggestion in order?

What are the next steps for the motion to postpone?

And if it's adopted, what happens to the attendance policy motion?

So here's just some logistical, okay?

I now want you to talk in your same groups, two and three.

Answer those questions.

Was Director Chen in order?

Okay, what are the next steps?

And what happens to the motion?

Go for it.

Yeah.

okay we're gonna come back let's talk let's talk about let's talk about Director Chen okay what are they are they are they in line no come on Director Chen is Director Chen's suggestion in order what do we think we have some yeses but I heard some no's too let's hear Why now?

I think the thought process that I was having was because you have to vote on the motion that's at hand, you can have conversation being like, I'd actually like to delay in January instead, but then you have to vote down that December one and then propose a new motion for January and then approve that one.

Does everyone get that?

So it's like, I, you know, I like that, you know, it's Director Chen being like, okay, thank you, that's a great thing, I agree with you in this many ways.

I think we might need even more time.

I'm going to be voting no on the motion so that I can provide a new one.

Remember getting the kids in the car?

That motion is actually December.

You've got to address that first, and then the point might be great, but you have to address the motions on the table.

But also, when calling, that's why I'm out of order, because that is the time for discussion on it, so if Director Chen is like, no, we should be doing it in January, bring it up, then you still have to apply that first, but being like, I think it should be in January, after we vote on this, I'm going to provide a motion for January.

Yeah, exactly.

So that people know your intentions.

Yeah, yeah.

Could they?

Well, we were talking that asking the question is totally valid and also that they would have to amend the motion.

So I don't know, is it kind of dealer's choice on what's more effective to vote it down and propose a new one or to amend?

You have options.

If the motion's already been made and seconded, then the motion is on the floor for a vote.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you can't amend it because it's already seconded.

Good job, yep.

Yeah, so you would have to vote on that motion that's already been seconded as an up for discussion, and then you can make a new one for January that you guys all vote for.

So the desire is correct, but you just have to be like, I think it should actually be January, I'll make another motion.

So if she had said that before the second, or afterwards, she said it afterwards, she's going to say, I'm going to be voting no because...

But the second happens so fast.

It does.

So can I ask this question?

So what happens if you don't get a second?

Here.

Actually, what happens if you have a vote and you read a motion and it's crickets, no second?

motion doesn't go to a vote because you didn't get a second actually the motion because small boards it goes to a vote what I've advised boards to do is just vote on if it doesn't get a second do you think it's gonna pass So, if you don't vote on it, you're basically keeping that content up for public discussion and you're bringing it back and you're gonna keep having the conversation.

If it doesn't get a second and you just vote on it, you're addressing the issue and you're basically putting it to bed.

so if you have somebody who is adamant that they want to change the school mascot they're the only ones and they make a motion and they don't get a second that's fine vote on it is that up to the purview of the chair

because it's a small board, they have autonomy in that way.

So my point is a lot of times people would rather argue over whether or not you need a second and then debate over it.

You can put it to bed in three minutes.

What are the next steps here?

We talked about them, right?

But was that clear for everyone?

So if they do want to actually change it to January instead, do they have to, can they just amend the motion that they just passed or what is the mechanism?

They have two options.

You could either amend the motion that's passed or vote it down and then have a new motion for January.

What does voting it down look like?

You would vote on the original motion to have it postpone the meeting, and then vote no, and then she would bring forward another motion with the January date, not the December date.

I was thinking undoing the after.

Never mind.

Got it.

Great.

So, and one real quick thing, I've had this happen at a WASDA board meeting where I just wanted to get the discussion going, so I made the motion, and then I voted no.

And people are like, you can't do that, and it's like, yes I can, I wanted to have a conversation, I got a motion on the floor so we could have a discussion, we could address it.

That doesn't mean I supported it, but it meant that we could get our business and action done.

So again, we keep using Robert's rules to move forward action for the district, right?

I'm gonna move us along because of time.

We did have a scenario for point of information or clarification.

The point of it is just that you can do it at any time, right?

You don't necessarily have to wait for any moment.

So this is just a final reflection question, thinking about your recent board meetings, what worked well in terms of procedures and participation, and are there any changes or considerations that you might want to make to improve your board meetings?

I know you're going to talk about policy after this, so we'll move past, but know that that's your work now to kind of consider what that means.

And then I just want to share that there's a few resources that I've shared with you, a quick reference of kind of when you do something, if it needs a second, that kind of thing, so that you have that to refer to in case it's helpful.

And yep, you have that.

And that there's also some other resources that Jurassic Parliament has a lot of kind of handouts that you can engage with.

We sometimes use them in some of our materials.

The Roberts Rules book is the best.

option.

That's right there.

And that's, you know, it's a lot, but it's most conclusive.

Actually, that one's really nice.

She's going to show you.

This is Patty's favorite.

And then there's also an official Robert's Rules website.

So that can be helpful to kind of break it down in a little more clear way.

Because what we find is that it's most important to know some of this in the moment and in the action and learning it like this.

We try to make it applicable with scenarios, but Really you're like at the moment and like I don't know what to do, right?

So having something to reference quickly can be really helpful.

I recommend having this on the district office because you don't need the 900 page 13th edition of it in full and this is pretty great.

You can read it on the train going home.

which Patti might do tonight as she goes back.

And then just last, WASDA is here.

WASDA is too, frankly, but I am from WASDA.

We are here to support you in any way you need.

The student reps, we support y'all.

We support board members.

Anything we can do to help you, just reach out and let us know.

and thank you for having us, Gina.

Thank you so much for joining us this evening and providing us this training very helpful and I think hopefully helped in our learning and we will all, most of us will be at the annual conference in Spokane and I think there's more training there as well.

Yes.

So thank you, thank you and I think we will call up, oh, question?

so my question isn't super relevant to the presentation but I was wondering so I know today's special meeting was a little bit odd especially with the public testimony but I did feel like it was kind of if I felt like there wasn't really enough time for the public to give public testimony and I understand they only have as much time as we deliberate like to give to opposing opposing views but it almost felt maybe a little predatory to me that we're deciding not to deliberate as much just so the public doesn't have as much time to speak so I'm just wondering is there like rules around that or how is that allowed to happen because it feels

So there are rules, yeah, there's very rules and I'm assuming you got guidance from your attorney on this too.

The rules are very specific and I do wanna say that one thing, the public is always able to submit written testimony and they can always come back at future meetings and I saw your public testimony today did do that.

and so even if you have regular public testimony where you might be limited to three minutes or 90 seconds if you go to Olympia for that and we can never get our full voice in 90 seconds in Olympia we'll submit written testimony because in today's 280 character tweet world we don't often have the time that we need to get our point across and so encouraging people to submit written testimony is a good

and I would just say OPMA allows the board to determine they must have public comment and they can't say no one can do it but they have the autonomy in OPMA to determine how they do it in order to manage their board meetings so that is all lawful whatever your board determines however to organize a public comment they just have to make sure they have it and that your policy is consistent and adhered to and that's probably the most important thing but it seems like a discussion in your team will be great.

Thank you, thank you.

So board directors, we're going to have the next 20 minutes.

I think Julia is going to come present on what our current policy is around agenda setting and amendments.

Just kind of keeping a little bit of a bounce on this, not sort of, Director Rankin, what we want our policy to be.

Okay.

Okay, in policy committee, what our current policy says so people can better access it and use our current rules.

We're gonna just keep this to 20 minutes, then we'll take a 10 minute break because we do have many folks here for our final informational study session item.

So I wanna try to keep us on schedule.

So we will have 20 minutes for this.

With a 10 minute break, we will start the next item at 6.30.

And with that, I'll pass it over to Julia.

Julia's looking for the clicker.

I never get to use the clicker, so I was very excited about this opportunity.

Good evening, directors.

Julia Worth, director of board relations and strategic initiatives.

Building on the training that you all just received, taking this opportunity to go through what your board policies say that build on the concepts of Robert's rules and may add some additional requirements to agenda setting policies and things like that.

So first, we'll quickly review which of your policies are related to board meetings and agenda items.

Then we'll talk through the agenda setting process, amendments to the agenda, policy action items, because your policies differentiate between a policy action item versus another type of business item, and then amending action items.

There are four board policies that all kind of intersect here and provide for the various processes and roles for board meetings, how the agenda is set, and agenda items themselves.

These are board policy number 1220, which is about board officers and duties.

Board policy number 1240, which is your committee's policy.

Board Policy 1310 on Board Policies, Manuals and Superintendent Procedures and Board Policy 1440 Board Meetings So agenda setting and posting.

In your policy, and as was already discussed, it is the board president and the superintendent who set your regular meeting agendas.

They also set your special meeting agendas, but the policy focuses most on the regular meeting agendas.

This is in 1220, the board officer policy.

Any director, as was noted earlier, can request that an item be put on the agenda.

So board directors in policy 1220, it states that you can request an item be on the agenda.

It is requested that you do that at least two weeks in advance from when board materials are due.

So this is where your weekly forecast becomes very important.

All of those dates are on your weekly forecast.

So when the agenda setting meetings are for the superintendent and board president, when agenda item requests are due, and when we will be posting the agenda.

Things are perhaps not always on the exact timeline, but we do request that around two weeks in advance of when materials would be due because that's around when the agenda setting meeting happens for the superintendent and the president.

The superintendent, obviously, also requests items to be placed on agenda that are staff-driven items.

The regular board meeting agenda is set approximately one month prior to the board meeting, with materials due about two weeks after that.

And just to note, that timeline is not in policy.

That's just our practice to make sure that things can get to committee.

For the agenda, setting and posting continued.

Items for board action are reviewed by committees.

So within the committee charters, it specifies which board action items go to which committee for review.

This is specified in policy 1240. The committees then vote on items to move forward to the board, either with a recommendation for approval or without a recommendation.

And policy 1240 also specifies that a committee can't stop an item from moving forward.

But you can say we don't recommend approval.

Final regular board meetings are posted seven days in advance of the regular board meeting and this is per policy 1400. State law requires 24 hours.

And your policy also says that materials for action items must be posted at least three days before the meeting.

So I think in your conversation on Robert's rules, you talked about state law versus best practice.

This is where your policy goes beyond state law.

I think in an attempt towards best practice of if we're going to be taking an action on something, we need to have the materials at least three days and the public needs to have access to those materials at least three days before we vote on it.

All right.

Agenda amendments.

So, as was noted, it is not the current practice of the board to approve the agenda at the beginning of the regular board meeting.

However, your policy does provide for agenda amendments in policy number 1400. A reminder, that's your board meeting policy.

It specifies that items may be added or removed.

And that a director who would like to amend the agenda can make the motion after the meeting is called to order.

So even though there's not an agenda approval motion, a motion to approve the agenda can be requested immediately after the meeting begins.

Your policy does state that this motion would need to be seconded, and then a vote would be called to either add or remove that item.

And then as was already noted, if it's something that's on the consent agenda, any director can ask that that be removed from the consent agenda for debate in the meeting.

Also in policy 1400. Yes.

Just really quick, wanted to add that that is something that is at our discretion.

I've seen other boards that require of themselves that a motion to move something from the consent agenda has to be taken up by a vote of the board or has to be second or has something.

Other constraints around it, but it seems to have worked pretty well for us to just say If you want to request something, be pulled separately.

It can be.

So that's important that that's in our policy because that's something that we have made the decision to do.

All right.

So policy action items.

So as I mentioned earlier, your policy on policies, 1310, does differentiate how policy action items are treated from other types of business items.

So policy action items, according to your policy, will go through two board meetings.

and so there is one meeting where it is introduced or some bodies will call this a first reading.

Neither of these terms are actually specified in the policy but our practice has been referred to it as introduction or action instead of the readings but obviously at your discretion if you'd like to change our terminology.

So introduction at one regular board meeting and then action to be taken at a subsequent board meeting.

And that is in your policy 1310. 1310 also says that if the board determines that immediate action is necessary, Then the board can decide to take a vote on that policy in the same meeting that it was introduced.

And so this is where you'll see in our motion language, immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

And this is where that language comes from, is your policy 1310. The other way that a policy may be voted on in the same meeting it was introduced is if it went through committee and received a unanimous vote to recommend it for approval to the full board.

So it wouldn't necessarily go on consent, but it would be eligible for action in the same meeting it was introduced at if a committee had felt that it had taken a unanimous vote.

And then amending action items.

You all just went through this in your Robert's Rules training but did want to note that in policy 1400, it basically lays out what Robert's Rules says about this.

So a director may offer an amendment to an action item during the board meeting.

The amendment would be offered after the item had been moved and seconded.

and then if the amendment passes, the underlying item needs to be moved and seconded again as it was amended.

And if it fails, then the underlying item goes forward as it was.

At one point, the amendments had to be in writing.

Did we get rid of that?

Do we know?

There is not currently language in your policy 1400 that says it has to be in writing.

Your policy on policies, 1310, does talk about needing to provide policy language in writing in advance and I think that when we were having amendments to policies, the best practice would be to have it in writing.

This is why we changed policy amendment to policy revision as well in your policy language because things are a bit redundant and confusing.

And I think that is it.

So I'm happy to take any questions.

in committee when we've been voting to recommend items to go to the agenda for the full board I just been casually being like oh I'm making a motion to put it on the consent agenda but I actually don't know what is that okay is that So I can make a motion like that.

And we could also make a motion just to recommend.

Yes.

And your policy on board meetings also, so 1400 also talks about what types of items go on the consent agenda.

So there are some that just will kind of default there.

So your personnel report, your warrants reports, minutes from previous meetings.

and many of your other routine approvals.

So a lot of the capital process, this has to be approved so we can get to the next phase of that project.

And so it might not be necessary to specify in your motion consent because it would have already wound up on consent.

but if it's something that is not routine but the committee feels like consent would be appropriate, you can add it to your motion.

I just have a sort of question.

When you presented it, it seemed like you were presenting it as the board agenda gets set and then that's what drives the work committees take up in order to approve agenda items for the next meeting as opposed to committees like the committee chair choosing what work to do and then if that aligns with items to go to the next board meeting.

I think we've had conversations about this previously, but what drives committee content?

The committee or the board agenda?

So both things are true.

So for the board action reports that appear on a committee agenda, those are driven by the regular board meeting agenda that's been set by the board president and superintendent because those items are ready for that board meeting and in 1240 it specifies that those items now go to committee for discussion and then would move forward from the committee to the full board at the next regular board meeting.

The other items would be at the discretion of the committee chair and their lead staff to put on.

So some of those larger conversations that will ultimately result in a board action, but the board action isn't ready to go yet, those would be conversations that the board chair would determine when that comes to committee.

and then obviously if the committee has a board action report in front of them and it does not seem like it is ready for prime time, especially if it's a staff item, I think the superintendent has indicated that he would likely take that back to rework it and bring it again.

All right.

Thank you, Julia.

All right.

Well, hopefully folks found the sort of training informative and sort of helped us fulfill what we felt we needed in February.

And I think, again, this is just a baseline.

I hope folks will look at the WASDA agenda and see what might be helpful, what trainings would be helpful to continue their professional development.

we're gonna take just a five minute break so we're gonna come back and we're gonna start at 620 because we have many guests here and I want to be respectful of their time so a five minute break we will come back at 620. Alright, we're gonna come back together here.

Okay the final item on today's agenda is a presentation from I think Nathan Hale High School principal Grims and Rainier Beach High School

Absolutely.

Well, first of all, good afternoon or good evening, depending on how you look at it.

I am really appreciative of the time.

As I think we all remember, I started my job on February 1st, which was right before or right certainly after two of our students were murdered at a bus stop.

and safety and security has always been an incredibly important piece of what it means to be a superintendent.

Making sure that our children are safe and of course our staff as well is a really important if not the most important duty as a superintendent.

I've now been here for seven months and 23 days and what I've seen is a community throughout the city that cares deeply about trying to address safety and security.

But I think one of the things that sometimes is lacking is the voice of the actual schools.

I think that hearing directly from leaders as well as students is probably a really important step for us to start to address ways that we can help make our schools even safer.

and so I'd really love to invite Nathan Hale, the wonderful Principal Grimes and her wonderful student leaders.

I think that you're here with the students and those are of course the people we want to hear.

So if you wouldn't mind coming up to grab the mic, that would be lovely.

Thank you.

So I will certainly turn it over to our wonderful principal of Nathan Hale because you probably know the names of these wonderful students.

But so with that, thank you so much and we look forward to hearing from you.

Good evening board, thank you for allowing us to be here this evening.

At this time, I'm going to let our wonderful student leaders who lead everything at Nathan Hale introduce themselves, but I'm Jolene Grimes, proud principal of Nathan Hale High School, here with my fabulous ASNH leaders.

I am Alayah LaShera O'Connor, the president of class of 2029.

Good evening, I'm Betty Marfaumwina, I'm the ASNH secretary.

Hello, I'm Kayla Roos and I'm the senior class president.

Oh, okay, okay.

Good evening, Superintendent Schuldner, board members, and everyone here tonight.

My name's Alayla Sarokana, and I'm the class of 29 president at Nathan Hill High School.

I'm joined by Kayla Ruse, our senior class president, and Petemara Falmina, secretary of AS&H.

We are here as student leaders representing our classmates and the student leadership groups in which we serve.

We care deeply about ensuring that students and staff feel safe in our school communities.

Tonight we want to share our interest in hosting the weapon detection pilot at Nathan Hale, and most importantly, how the district can learn from our experience.

The current plan is to pilot the weapon detection system during the second quarter, December 6th.

A pilot gives our school community an opportunity to experience the system and collect real data.

will also gather direct feedback from the students and staff who experience the system each day, including how the entry process works, how students experience coming into the building, what concerns or questions arise, and what students and staff observe throughout the pilot.

With that information, the district will have data to make longer term decisions.

Student voices should remain part of the process from beginning to end.

As student leaders, we can communicate with our classmates, gather their experiences and observations, and share that information with the district leaders.

We're not here to suggest that we already know what the final decision should be.

We're asking the district to use this pilot as a genuine learning opportunity.

Decisions about the future weapon detection system should be informed by evidence from the pilot and the experience of the Nathan Hill community.

What the district learns can help guide future conversations about school safety and different needs of individual schools and how additional resources should be directed toward creating safer learning environments.

Our goal is to help create schools where students and staff feel safe, supported, and are able to focus on learning and participating fully in their school community.

Thank you for listening, for including students in this process, and for giving us this opportunity to represent our classmates.

Hello, I'm Kayla.

Thank you, Alea.

I just want to add a second voice.

I'm also in support of piloting the weapons detection device at Nathan Hale for the second semester of the school year and then getting input from students and staff at the end before making a final decision.

The way I see the device is there's no harm in it.

The device will only serve to further protect our community and keep our students safe, which I believe is a priority.

This device allows students to focus on education and socialization without fear of weapons within the school.

I think it is also reassurance to families too, as they know their students will be safe when they go to school.

The metal detection device centers students and their safety, so I think that's important.

I also think that testing the system will be helpful in addressing certain uncertainties such as determining how accurate the machines are and how long it will take in the morning for students to pass through them.

I also believe this is more effective than presence of either police or other security staff which I feel like is more likely to create stress and maybe also avoids biases as well as increases efficiency.

Thank you.

So, alongside my own opinion, I will also be sharing another student's opinion as well.

Okay, forgive me, I'm going to be reading from the paper itself.

and I'm very sorry I'm not able to attend, but still it is an honor to share my thoughts.

I served on Mayor Katie Wilson's transition team and held youth listening sessions.

Along with that, I talk with youth throughout the city and many students have expressed concerns about safety and cited mental health resources inside schools as a solution.

When bringing up metal detectors, the mentality is, what's the harm?

They do not have the bias that you would say as a police officer does, and they generally keep students safe.

Thank you for your time.

My own personal opinion for piloting these metal detectors, speaking on behalf of Nathan Hale, we have first-handedly experienced not only a shooting within our school, but a student personally last year, but we've also experienced a neighboring school shooting within the years 2023 to 2024. inside the school building itself where the shooter later went to Nathan Hill and tried to enter our school building.

So I feel like as someone or a school who's experienced it first-handedly, I believe that we feel very strongly with metal detectors.

Not only will it keep our students safe, but it gives our students the safe of mind that they can go to school and they don't have to worry about whether or not their lives are at risk, rather their education, which is the sole purpose of education.

Thank you.

Wow.

Thank you so much for those really wonderful words.

I certainly will turn it back over to Principal Grimes if there's anything you'd like to add.

And if the students feel comfortable allowing for questions from the board, I'm sure they have lots of thoughts on this matter.

I would just like to add that this is a priority for us at Nathan Hale just making sure that our learning environment is safe not only for our students but also for our staff and anytime we have ideas of changing anything or the landscape at Nathan Hale students are always at the table and they are at the center of the leadership so I'm really proud of these young leaders who are expressing how they feel in terms of making our school community safe because I know that's a priority

Thank you.

And we will take questions.

President Top, I always turn it over to you.

Director Rankin.

Well, I first have to own my bias towards Nathan Hale because my son is a senior at Nathan Hale.

So it's the best high school.

Totally, totally unbiased.

Something that I think is that I want to share with the rest of the board that you might not know about Nathan Hale is that they I think are the only high school that has a student senate that is incorporated into the way the school functions.

So when Principal Grimes talks about, you know, student voice as part of any changes we make, that's not like a like a, oh, we listen to students, they actually have a full, like the student government structure is pretty robust and students really are consulted and included in school-based decisions as just a foundational way that that building operates.

So it makes sense that you might be one of the first to pilot this and think about it.

I think I'm wondering how, like, how much of the rest of the community has been included in this conversation.

If it's a lot of conversation, or if students are kind of like, whatever.

And then I have logistical questions, which I don't think is really what we're talking about.

I just went to the Mariners game yesterday.

I walked through a thing.

It's no big deal.

It doesn't slow you down.

There's also a lot of staff there that would need to respond if something was detected So I'm wondering how that works at a high school as opposed to a giant baseball game But the first question is the one I think is yeah

So the first question, like I said, we don't do anything without student leaders being involved.

I would not come here by myself, you know, and so I made sure that I spoke with our student leaders.

I also shared this with Senate, our Senate, two weeks ago so that they know that we are coming here and the idea that we have for a safer school.

So I also randomly, you know, pulled parents like at football practice and in the school like, what would you think if this is something we asked to have?

And I have a whole bunch of notes with a lot of families saying, you know, there's no harm.

and that peace of mind.

So I do have some of that data.

But did I poll the whole community?

No.

But do I believe our student leaders represent our core values of what we want and feel like they could do a great job of making sure our community understands the why?

Because the why is what's important.

I will actually also defer to Principal Grimes.

You can be present too.

To answer your second question about how it would go logistically, certainly from a superintendent standpoint, I would of course work with the schools.

But Nathan Hale actually has used them before at graduation and certainly at our football games.

and those go through thousands of people.

And certainly I would defer to the principal to talk about her experience during graduation, which had hundreds if not thousands of people at.

I feel the experience at graduation last year with the weapons detection devices was very smooth and I actually received not a hundred but a handful of emails from parents for thanking the school for making it a very safe experience going into a graduation with thousands of people.

and so I felt like it was really smooth and everybody got in and it was safe and just from the few emails that I did get with families thanking us for that and for being able to go to graduation and feel safe, I felt really proud about it.

and now that we also use it for our football games it becomes it's becoming a norm in terms of event safety on behalf of Seattle Public Schools and working alongside our safety specialists it makes the events even more safe because we're doing it together as a community

I guess my question, this is a pilot, second semester.

You're gonna be looking at the feedback.

What sort of feedback would you be looking for to say, oh, we need to move this from a pilot to a full-blown part of our program versus feedback that you would say, oh wait, no, this is not something we should move forward.

Yes.

Some things that come to mind is, of course, the feeling.

Do you feel more safe and secure first semester without the metal detector, second semester with them?

Efficiency, do you feel super slowed down in the morning?

Is there a big line out the door because students can't get in fast enough?

So that was definitely indicators of whether it's working well and if we need to adjust some things, or whether, yeah, we should keep them in for coming years.

Any of the other two?

I definitely agree with what Kayla just said.

And to be honest, I mean, I agree with those indicators, and I feel like that's part of the pilot.

We get to pilot to determine, you know, what are the things that are going to help make sure students are in school on time.

If they're already late, we can't blame it on the weapons detection devices.

If they're late, they're late, right?

And so I would hope not to see long lines because, you know, our expectation is that they should get to school on time.

And so we would be looking at, yes, do students feel a lot safer?

Do we have any incidences in the school where weapons got in, you know, with a system?

Things like that.

And then what are parents' experiences when they come into the school?

I'm not sure if you're aware, but with all of our high schools, we have one entryway now.

And when you have 13 entrances into Nathan Hale High School, having a weapons detection device in a main entrance is going to be something that will be really nice.

Representative Mangelson.

Hi.

I just wanted to say really quickly that it's really great to have students presenting something.

I think that's awesome.

I think this program sounds really great, and I'm excited to hear the feedback and see what happens.

But I just have a quick question, because I haven't heard of this previously up until this point.

I'm curious, is the plan for if the pilot goes well to eventually implement this in other schools, and I'm not If you don't have that answer, then that's also totally OK.

But is the intention behind it to implement it in some other schools or all schools?

I'm just kind of curious.

Thank you for the question.

I think if the decision is to go forward with the pilot and then we have feedback, we'll certainly have conversations with the principals and the schools.

I've been pretty clear, certainly from a superintendent standpoint, I want to make sure that our schools are as safe as I possibly can, but I also don't want to force something onto a school community that doesn't want it.

So what I appreciate is Nathan Hale, as you can see, is asking to be part of a pilot.

We're happy to help them if that's the decision to be made.

But in terms of all 11 comprehensive high schools, I think those are going to be individual conversations with the schools themselves so that they don't feel like something is being forced on them.

The other thing, and I want to be really clear about this, Nathan Hale is built in a way that makes it much easier.

If you know the building well, they can have a single point of entry.

Some of our buildings have multiple buildings within the high school, and so it's very hard to do that.

In order to then have single point of entries, we'd have to do things like build fences and stuff like that.

So some of these schools, it might take a while if they so choose anyway.

I go to West Seattle, where we have quite a few entrances that you can go through all the time.

So I was just thinking through how that would work in my head, even though I think that sounds really great.

But thank you.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Sorry, I have a follow-up question, which in addition to the indicators about student climate and feedback, something that I would be interested in knowing throughout the pilot is the impact on discipline, and especially if there's disproportionate discipline.

What do we...

what do we do when there is a weapon detected and how does that impact students?

And then I would also be interested to see kind of comparison data.

I don't know if you're already confiscating a lot of weapons or if students are encountering those in the building.

I would be interested in knowing kind of a before and after, which I would assume is part of what we're doing here.

But I also, so my son, accidentally brought a pocket knife to school and thought he was, this was a couple years ago, but it was a hail, thought he was being super helpful offering somebody scissors in class, not even thinking about it.

And of course, it was confiscated.

Now, it's, you know, pocket knife this big, he still definitely should not have it at school.

And we absolutely had that conversation at home and when I had to, you know, go retrieve it from the office.

But it was appropriately handled in that it was an honest mistake, it was taken and he was allowed for a parent to collect it.

I'm wondering more about kind of the, is the expectation from the district that there are going, are there going to be kind of standards or guidelines around, so I'm concerned about student safety, I don't want weapons in our schools and I'm concerned about maybe over-discipline or over-consequencing things that are going to keep students out of school who should we want there?

So I mean, the discipline policies haven't changed, right?

So whatever happened with your child or any other child- It was handled very appropriately.

would still be the same leadership and the same rules, right?

The idea of a pilot program doesn't change the student handbook or the student disciplinary action.

So this is about a tool that would allow students possibly to feel safer, to stop things from being brought into the school.

Director Song.

I have a comment and a question.

One, I think my kind of experience as a child growing up in the suburbs in the 80s and 90s is very different from the experience of my own children in Seattle.

So their awareness of guns is very different.

I just wanted to provide that context for our community.

My question is, what is the device?

So we're happy to show it to you.

Also, if anybody wants to go to a football game, you will go through it.

They are what are called open gate, so it's very much what you would see at a Mariners game or a Seahawks game.

It's not an airport-style thing where you're going through You're putting your bags in the conveyor belt or where it's kind of super onerous.

They are, in essence, two pylons, and they are weapons detectors.

And so you can also set the level of severity.

So right now, for instance, at our football games, you can walk in with keys.

You can walk in with cell phones, depending on how big your cell phone is. but it's also, it is taking account to very dense material, mainly metal.

So for instance, a laptop would beep because of the battery being a very dense thing.

So we're happy to show the board it and certainly I would I urge you all to go to a football game with me to go see it.

But, you know, they are the open gate.

You can go through hundreds of people every minute.

We use it at graduation.

We use it at our sports.

And it's very, very similar to the one that you see at a Mariners game or, honestly, at Nordstrom that's like, you know, downtown.

So, yeah.

Director Smith.

I just want to comment I've heard about the possibility of doing weapons detection at schools from our superintendent previously and I'm certainly willing to hear him out on that but it is incredibly compelling hearing from the students coming to speak to us so thank you very much for that

I also wanted to add, I know the superintendent mentioned that we had it at our graduations.

It's super easy.

You just walk straight through.

And the probability of you actually getting something detected is pretty low.

So it's like, as you just mentioned, I think 100 people could pass by through one minute.

It's really no difference with having one there and not having one there.

The only difference is, Our safety is like, he's ensuring our safety, not him in general, but Seattle Public Schools as a whole.

I just thought that was useful.

Director Lavallee.

Yeah, in your conversations that you've had with other students on kind of the safety and security of your school as you've been talking about this, what are other things that you've heard from your peers that also kind of would help you feel safer?

Is there any other topics that have been brought up?

Or were you just asking and discussing on this topic only?

If I'm understanding your question correctly, I brought up this topic, the metal detectors in general, to several students that I know.

The general consensus is, what's the harm?

That's kind of the big, everybody's just like, yeah, I don't see any, I see a lot of benefits, I don't see a lot of harm for that.

For other security measures, I personally haven't brought up any and I haven't heard feedback from any students about a desire for a different security measure to be taken on Ethan Hale.

if that's interesting.

Kind of also adding on to what Kayla just said, the biggest concern I hear students saying when we do ask, like, how would you feel about having metal detectors at school is kind of like more so the aestheticness of having metal detectors.

So I don't really think the aestheticness of metal detectors matter more so like opinion-wise.

I just think, I mean, would you rather be safer or sorry?

So yeah.

to our representative folks.

Okay, so this is a question for the superintendent.

So you mentioned that if the pilot gets put in place and then moves to more permanent, you would want to know the climate of individual schools.

So I'm wondering what is the plan to make sure you're getting like a balanced perspective from the students and also would that conversation include parents too?

Sure.

That's a great question.

I mean, you know, as a superintendent, I like to listen to when schools ask me for things rather than me force it on stuff.

So I think what we're going to hear from Nathan Ayle is how it's going.

I would urge them to ask students, faculty, and parents.

And then once they have a kind of a report on it, I think we could talk about it.

I'd invite them back and have that conversation.

And then if another school I won't name one because I don't want to put that out there in the ether.

But if another school, a principal, or students say, hey, superintendent, we'd really like to be part of the pilot, we would have them do a presentation the same way.

And then we would get the data on that.

And we would want parents and faculty and students to be part of it.

But it's interesting.

As a superintendent, I probably legally have the authority to just do this to begin with.

But I wouldn't want to.

I would want to make sure that the schools themselves want it.

I'm hearing from one school.

They want it.

What's the harm, as they keep saying?

Happy to do that.

But I think in terms of making it not a pilot but real or in perpetuity, I think that would have to be a longer conversation with many stakeholders.

You can't get everybody all on the same page, but I think having voices from students and faculty and parents and community makes a lot of sense.

So it's a great question.

I also do want to say there is another school that does want to speak, so you might have similar questions to them.

So I just defer to President Topf, but I just want to be respectful of the people behind me.

We'll do one more.

Representative Mangelson.

Super quick, clarifying question.

But I'm just wondering, I wasn't really clear on whether or not this was an initiative started from the district in asking Nathan Hale.

So this was started, this is something that the school asked for?

Yeah, I would defer to the principal.

I think that we did it for graduation, and there was a sense from folks that they liked it.

I talk to everybody.

I visit all the high schools.

It's like, hey, what do you think?

And what was nice is that this was them.

I've been trying to be really clear about this.

This is one that I think is a good idea, but can be fraught with history and with other issues.

And so I'm not trying to force this on anybody.

It's the school's prerogative to come and bring it to us.

or me, I guess.

And it really did come from them.

I certainly was curious how their experience during graduation went.

And I certainly heard some pretty positive things.

But no, it's just more work for me.

So I'm not asking.

I want to make sure that they want it before I say yes to anything.

You bet.

and a pilot is how we do things at Nathan Hale.

So even to change things like the bell schedule, we pilot things and then we make a senate decision on whether or not this is something we want to move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate you coming today to share your perspective with us and how to keep your school community safer.

Really appreciate it.

Okay, so the next school that it is my honor to invite up here is Rainier Beach High School.

The great principal, Patu, will lead the charge, as it were, but I want to make sure that her logistics are fine.

Sorry.

No, no, no, of course, take your time.

No, we're going to grab some more chairs and we can make more space here, too.

Yeah, you can just pull your...

Yeah.

Pull whatever you want.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Yeah, come on.

We can make space here if folks want to come on in.

Yeah, absolutely.

I promise I don't smell too bad.

So, you know, just with the introduction to Nathan Hale, the same thing of which, of course, goes with Rainier Beach.

I've really gotten to know Principal Patu quite well in the seven months and somewhat days that I've been here.

And safety and security has always been on the mind of Principal Patu.

And sadly, of course, with what happened when I started in the district, safety and security, of course, has always really been front and center.

but what I will say unlike with Nathan Hale really ever since I've been coming to Rainier Beach students have continuously asked me about safety and security asking me over and over again what can we do to help support them and so So I just want to really shout out Principal Patu and the entire Rainier Beach community for always being so thoughtful and so welcoming and so caring around dealing with their safety issues as well as everything else.

So again, I will defer to the principal to introduce everybody and then certainly you can say whatever you want.

So Principal Patu, thank you for being here.

Thank you, Superintendent Schultner, and thank you all for giving us this opportunity to come and share our thoughts and our experiences around safety in general at Rainier Beach.

Introduce myself, Annie Patu, proud principal, Rainier Beach High School, and I'm in my third year at Rainier Beach, and I'll go ahead and introduce Ms. Landry, our parents.

Hi, my name is Lanisha Landry and I am the parent of Xavier Landry who was murdered in 2024.

Hello, my name is Christian Gil-Slack.

I am a senior in Raina Beach High School and I'm also part of the Youth Safety Ambassador Program.

Hi, I'm Tiffany.

I'm a junior, and I'm also a part of the Youth Safety Ambassador Program.

Hi, my name is Marie, and I'm also a senior at Wayne Beach, and I'm also a part of the Youth Safety Ambassador Program, also known as YSA.

Hi, I'm Eric.

This is my second year of Youth Safety Ambassador, but is that on?

Okay.

Hi, my name's Eric.

This is my second year of Youth Safety Ambassador, and I am a junior 11th grade.

Hi, my name is Alicia Dossa, parent of five Seattle Public School students.

Two who graduated from Rainier Beach and a current sophomore at Rainier Beach.

And I'm also the mother of Connor Dossa-Holland who was murdered in Rainier Beach on Mother's Day of 2020.

Hi, I'm James Dossa.

I'm the father of Connor Dossa-Holland.

We're just here to give our two cents.

on this subject.

Thank you so much, and Principal Patu, please, the mic is yours.

Thank you.

So I'd like to give the opportunity for our students to share their thoughts around this implementing or piloting this system, and then we can hear from the parents, and then I can conclude.

Hi, my name is Marie, and like I said, I am a senior at Rainier Beach High School.

I'm a full IB student, and I'm a Youth Safety Ambassador.

And I'm not sure if you know what Youth Safety Ambassador is.

I will tell you a little about it.

So basically, we are the voice to implement safety rules at our school.

We also like a way to tell the resources to our peers about where they can find mental health resources and where they can go to if they feel like their safety is threatened.

I would like to add on to Marie.

As Youth Safety Ambassadors, we are...

Thank you.

We are a guide to mental health resources and safety.

Resources such as free therapy locations and safety leader adults around the school and community.

So one of our...

The start to our solution to having a safe environment at Rainier Beach is, first off, the metal detectors like the superintendent was talking about.

And so...

and so one of the ways that we're trying to do is get the metal detectors at like every single entrance at Rainier Beach so it's a process so it doesn't take too much time or time off the students' classes and another way is to stop strangers from entering the school is one using the student passes, the student IDs.

We already started implementing that right now.

As soon as every student gets the student ID, we will start using the student ID to check in so you can enter the school

I would like to add on to what she was saying earlier by saying I think the student IDs are a good idea because me, I'm part of the Viking drumline and we usually go into a building Sometimes people aren't there to let us in so we have to wait for a little while and just having our IDs on us and we just scan it to go in is a good idea.

Yes, and we will be implementing hallway monitoring because some students do go to the bathroom and have vapes and weapons and so we want to make sure as the student goes into the bathroom they have nothing on them and they spend less than 10 minutes in the bathroom to ensure the safety of all the students in the school.

In addition, we plan to tint our windows so that we can see what's going on outside but the people outside can't see what's going on inside our building to have more privacy.

Yes, this way we can detect dangers outside and stop it from coming into the school before it gets closer to the school.

Also, we don't only take care of safety, we also take care of the mental health.

Like we said before, we have resources for students in case they need therapy, like free therapy for ages 12 to 24, I believe.

And we do have tablings at events most times to share this information with teens and adults, young adults ages 24 and down below.

And yeah, thanks.

The Youth Safety Ambassador Program gives students a voice in Seattle's mental health and school safety decisions.

Students help shape programs and share important resources with their peers.

So if you have any questions, do come to the Youth Safety Leaders, Adults, or Principal Plot, too.

Thank you.

I got that.

Thank you.

I'm just going to read a little bit that I wrote.

Good evening.

My name is Lanisha Landry.

I am asking the school board to seriously consider installing metal detectors at Rainier Beach.

I believe in being proactive, not reactive.

We should not have to wait until a shooting happens inside one of our schools before we strengthen security.

We should not have to wait until a child is injured or killed.

to say now we need to do something.

I'm a mother who lost her 16-year-old son, Xavier Landry, to gun violence.

He would have been a senior at Rainier Beach this year.

I know what it feels like to live with tragedy that cannot be undone.

This is why I'm asking to do everything within our control to prevent another family from experiencing this kind of pain.

I understand metal detectors will not solve every problem, but if they can prevent a weapon from entering the school, they deserve serious consideration as part of a broader safety plan.

Let Rainer Beach be an example of prevention.

Let's be proactive instead of reactive.

and I want to say this again.

Let's not say this hasn't happened.

It can happen.

Guns are real.

School shootings are real.

We should not wait for a tragedy to prove that prevention was necessary.

Our children deserve for us to do everything within our control to protect them.

Thank you.

I'm going to read from my phone.

Hello, my name is Alicia Dossa and this is my husband James Dossa.

We are the parents of five Seattle Public School students, two Rainer Beach graduates and one current at Rainer Beach as a sophomore.

We're here today to ask for support with a pilot program at Beach that would be adding metal detectors to the toolbox of options we have to keep our kids safe at school.

Asking for metal detectors, as we all know, has been an emotional topic.

So let's talk about that emotion for a minute.

We all see the news and understand the impact of gun violence not only in our communities but across the country.

We've heard people speak after school shootings saying they never thought it would be them, they never thought it would happen in their school or in their town.

I can say I was that person.

I never thought it would happen to me.

But as we stand, sit, here today, asking for options to help keep our youngest child safe, we're also here as the parents of Connor Dasa-Holland, Rainer Beach grad who was murdered in front of our home in Rainer Beach on Mother's Day of 2020, less than a year after graduating and only two blocks from the school.

We should also remember that it's already happening here on the grounds of Seattle Public Schools.

Ebenezer Hale was shot and killed in the hallway at Ingram High School.

Amar Murphy Payne was shot and killed on the steps of Garfield High School.

And just last week, a shelter in place at South Shore K-8 because there was a kid on the school premises with a gun.

Last year there was a shooting on the first day of school, right behind Rainer Beach involving students from Southlake with a field full of football players practicing.

And lastly, as we're all aware, we lost Trevay and Tijon at a bus stop just outside of South Shore K-8 right after school in January, shot and killed in front of children leaving school for the day.

At what point do we look at what's already happening and continues to happen?

What number of children need to be killed or harmed before we start thinking out of the box?

What do those children need to look like before action is taken?

I would also like to remind people that metal detectors are used to enhance safety at sporting events, federal, county, and city buildings, and even hospitals in our city.

I would ask why those spaces are more important than our schools.

Rainier Beach is asking for the board to support our school, our students, parents, and community in taking the emotion out of the decision around metal detectors.

We're asking for this pilot so we can collect data that will help us make an informed decision that's best for our students and our school.

We understand this may not be the right choice for all Seattle Public Schools, but we ask that people respect our ask for data.

Our own data.

Data that comes from real experience in our school.

Data that will come from this pilot.

The kids in our community don't have the luxury of always feeling safe in their own neighborhood.

But we have the option of putting things in place to make them feel safe while they're at school.

So while there's a lot of emotion around this topic, let's set that aside, collect the data, and make an informed decision.

Thank you for taking the time to hear us.

And really, the most important voice in the room are all the young people that spoke before us.

Thank you.

Wow, I didn't know you guys were going to help me monitor bathrooms.

I'm really excited right now.

But thank you for sharing.

Thank you, Alicia and Lanisha, for sharing your story and supporting this.

This ask came from parents around metal detectors.

If you didn't know, Rainier Beach, my first year, we have been putting a comprehensive strategy around safety.

It didn't start with medical detectors.

It started with us closing our campus.

And we, as many of you know, gun violence has become in Rainier Beach, I hate to say it's second nature, but it is something that we unfortunately feel like we have to live with and get used to.

And I've lived in that community for over four decades.

And I'm happy to say that the work that we're doing around safety, starting with closing our campus, because that's what we needed to keep our kids safe.

doing that with cell phones and this is a comprehensive strategy.

The metal detectors are just one component.

It's not the solution.

It's just another layer of what we're doing to help keep our kids safe and you heard from our students We're not just thinking about the metal detectors, but like mental health, all of the things that help support students feeling safe in school and giving parents and families peace of mind.

So again, over the last year after the shootings, we have been very active in initiating a safety forum that started actually before the shootings with engaging stakeholders in the community, community organizations, school board members, King County police, sounded the alarm that this can't keep happening in our neighborhood.

and coming together, having those meetings around what we were going to do as a collective.

It can't be just on us.

It can't be just a principal.

It can't be just a school.

It has to be all of us working together to address this.

I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that this is not a new thing, this is something that added another layer of the comprehensive plan that we have and our students talked about as ambassadors their job is to to get data from their peers.

I have spoken with multiple students about the detectors.

We already used them at our football games, and we used them for our multicultural event last year, and that was successful.

For us, again, just another layer of this year, we launched a campaign for attendance, so our kids have to check in, and we're like Nathan Hale, it's a one-way in for entry, and we're taking data on attendance, so they're kind of already used to getting interrupted in the morning.

But again, around tardiness, but also this would kind of help kids see it's not so different.

But, I mean, other than that, I've gotten positive feedback from kids around just wanting to feel safe at school.

I think presence and that we're responding proactively with the detectors.

We use Outside of just sports games, we use the wands quite a bit.

So the weapons detection just would be a lot easier for us for other events at Rainer Beach.

I think that's it.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you so much, Principal Batu, and really all the speakers, the parents, thank you.

I'm really sorry for your loss, but it means a lot to hear your voice and to hear your stories, and of course the students, we're here for you, so thank you for sharing.

With that, I'll turn it over to President Topp.

Principal Batu, looking to you.

Are you all willing to take questions this evening?

Oh, yes.

All right, then I will open it up to board directors for questions, student representatives.

Representative Mangelson?

Is comments okay?

I have a quick comment.

I don't really have any questions.

I think it sounds really great.

It sounds like there's a really comprehensive plan and ask.

But I just want to say thank you again.

Thank you especially to students.

Thank you for everyone for being here and speaking and making this ask.

and making it possible and making safety possible.

Just echoing again, being proactive instead of reactive is so important.

And it really means a lot to see people making that a reality and realizing that and putting it into our schools.

So thank you.

I guess I have two questions similar to my previous question I asked, but my first question is how do you become a youth safety ambassador?

What's that process?

And then my second question is as you implement this pilot, what does success and what look like?

What does it not look like and how will you make that decision?

Well, I think I can answer this for being a youth safety ambassador, how you can become one.

It's this program that is like reached out to a bunch of priority schools, let's say Nathan Hill, Rainier Beach, Garfield, Franklin, et cetera, but not Cleveland yet though.

but when I first got to it it was just a website my mom found scrolling through the Seattle Public Schools pages and it was a QR code and like basically you do like a little survey talking about like what you've done in the community and what you invest in and your time into and then you're sent into an interview with these two people Amelia, she's not with us anymore.

She works somewhere else now.

Sorry, sorry.

And then Jetay, who is our main boss, they work for the Seattle Youth, not Seattle Youth, Seattle Humans Health Department, and they interview you, they basically ask you the same kind of questions, but also ask you your skills, what you can do around the community, and if you do good, if they like you, you're put into a slot of four available slots for each school.

So each school has four slots.

And as you can see, Marie, Tiffany, Christian, and me made all the four available slots.

And it was really competitive this year.

There was like 30, almost like 20 students who were trying to get into Youth Safety Ambassador Last year when I first got in, it was pretty simple because it wasn't as popular.

It's like it's first year ever running.

But this second year is getting more popular.

I've been telling all my friends, telling each other's friends, and all these schools are now I hope the YSA becomes an even more bigger thing as it continues to grow because I feel like we're accomplishing a lot especially last year at the end of our our year basically we got to speak up with the mayor in the Rainier Beach Community Center and we were talking about like things we want to see in our city like even I said that I think we should get school buses for high schoolers because A lot of us don't have rides, a lot of us get late, a lot of times we have family issues, family problems, and if we could get a ride from home, a safe ride, we would be able to attend school and come back and forth, and especially with what happened in the bus stop with those kids.

Imagine if they had a safe transportation home, But yeah, that's the answer to how to become a white safety ambassador.

Use safety ambassador, Jill.

Thank you, Eric.

Yeah, it's a part of a program through the city of Seattle, through the mayor's office around safety, peer education around safety in the schools.

And to respond to your question around what it would look like, Nathan Hale said it, data, data from the students first and foremost, feedback from families.

Right now we already collect a lot of data and surveys around safety, belonging in our school and I think collecting that information would be important to how students feel about that.

Yeah, I just want to say, first of all, thank you guys so much for being here.

And I think that Rainier Beach is the best not.

But, you know, whatever.

We can have our little regional divides.

Not going to fight you on it, but I'd win.

So thank you guys all so much for being here.

I'm really excited to hear.

I know that you mentioned outside of just the Outside of having a device to, you know, a weapons detection device, you know, looking at, like, being able to badge yourselves into the building to make it more secure, I know that's something that I heard at the mayor's, the Seattle Neighborhood Group forum with the mayor that some students were asking for and really pushing to be like, how can we get more measures like that?

When she was there two, three weeks ago?

So I really want to thank you guys for bringing that forward as well as a thing that I have too heard from students.

The question that I have for the students right now is, you said that you were going to be in charge of collecting some information from your peers in how and everybody thought this was going.

What ways are you doing that data collection?

Because I know there's so much survey fatigue in the amount of surveys that the district sends out, especially to high school students.

So what are the ways that you're hoping to get feedback from your peers on this thing?

Is it surveys?

Is it conversations?

I'd love to hear about how you're doing that.

So, we plan to just act around in the school building, you know, maybe interview a few people, maybe have online surveys and, you know, if they participate in the surveys, you might give them little gifts, little gadgets, you know, something that keeps them, you know, busy and off their phones.

So, I think that's.

I think that would be a good idea for that, and I'll let Marie.

But you want to answer this.

Oh, yeah.

Because I do kind of have a plan.

I still need to talk to Principal Pitu about it.

But basically, since I am a part of clubs like BSU and HOSA, I do want to implement, actually, Before, as we come into the club, I do want to have them fill a survey, not just a survey, as part of the check-in to ask them how will they feel safe around the school and what ways we can help them feel safe and what already makes them feel safe right now.

And that's what I do when the clubs do start.

That's one of the things I do want to implement.

Thank you.

Also, I have one more thing to add.

As the parents were talking about, like, the shootings, and one of the things I do want the most, because my friend, she was at the shooting that happened earlier.

She was, like, at the bus stop when he got shot, and to this day, she still can't bring herself to, like, go to the bus stop.

and so one of the things I do want to see is like I want to make sure she feels safe enough to go to that bus stop.

That's one of the things I want to see the most right now and yeah.

Thank you for sharing that.

I'm going to look for other board directors, Director Rankin.

Thank you so much.

I really just want to thank and appreciate you all and you all for coming and talking to us about this and Superintendent Shoulder for creating this space and President Topp creating this space in this meeting.

This is the type of conversation that we should be having with our community about what do our schools need from us?

How can we support them?

And I'm also just, I'm so, so sorry that this is something that you all have to think about.

It's heartbreaking that this is a part of going to school and for the parents that you have to come and share your loss with us to get action.

What I also wanted to point out was how much I appreciate that for both of you this isn't a magical thing that will somehow happen and somebody else will take care of it.

how committed you all are to this kind of ecosystem of safety and Helping us understand how this is a piece of your overall strategy As opposed to just like you know, oh if you do this thing then we don't then nobody has to think about it anymore I mean we know that that's not the case I guess I'm wondering I can already anticipate the opposition to this idea that's going to come from people who are not part of your communities.

who have very strong opinions about it, who are not going to be personally impacted by it.

Everybody's allowed to have their opinion.

That's totally fine.

What can we do together?

What are you thinking about in terms of when that might come towards you?

How could you ask this?

How could you do this?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

What are some kind of, and I'm not asking you again to sort of state your case, but I'm just thinking about as a whole system, are we prepared for that conversation?

How do we think we can move forward in that conversation?

And what are things that maybe you've already thought about as this moves forward, how to respond to?

This is one of those issues that's going to be either people are for it or against it.

and that gets really, can be really divisive.

So I don't know if anybody has thoughts about that but how we can kind of walk that conversation together and if you're thinking about that as a strategy for engagement at all.

we're thinking about just talking to the community itself and seeing what we can do to be able to agree with both sides and so there's no problems if on the other community side there's no problems here we're safe and you know we can trust each other

And I would just like to just back Christian.

He's someone that I've known since a baby.

He went to daycare with my son Xavier.

So when he's saying community conversations, I'm like, yes, like it takes for him and me and us to sit at tables like this and have conversations for people to get both sides of things and not just think with one side and how they don't want it to happen to them because it happens.

Yeah, and I would say, like Principal Grimes, you know, community and buy-in from our community that are the most impacted matters.

And I would say, you know, if you're not a part of that community, then I would invite you in to come and see and hear from our young people and our families of what we're experiencing and how this, again, is just a piece of the solution.

It is not the entire, yeah, it's not the end all be all for safety at Rainier Beach.

Thank you all, thank you all for giving up your time this evening to share your perspectives and your stories and again, how are we going to make our school community safe?

We really appreciate you sharing and being in dialogue with us, thank you.

We'll adjourn here.

We did a lot this evening.

We went from passing three very important resolutions that will be on our positions on ballot initiatives that will be on the ballot this November.

We did some professional development as we learned about Robert's Rules and our own policy and how they work together.

We also had a very in-depth, I think, safety dialogue and discussion.

So, there is no more business on the agenda.

The meeting stands adjourned at 7-21.

Thank you, everyone.

There's been a request for some to take pictures.