Seattle Schools Board Meeting Jan. 22, 2025

call the meeting to order momentarily and SPS TV will begin broadcasting the January 22nd 2025 regular board meeting is now called to order at 502 we would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people miss Wilson-Jones please call the roll

Vice President Briggs.

Here.

Director Clark.

Present.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

It looks like we don't yet have Director Mizrahi, Director Rankin.

PRESENT.

DIRECTOR SARJU.

PRESENT.

PRESENT.

DIRECTOR MISRAHI HAS ENTERED THE AUDITORIUM.

DIRECTOR BRAGG.

HERE.

DIRECTOR ILLIAS.

HERE.

AND PRESIDENT TOP.

HERE.

YEAH.

SO IT IS 5.03.

WE'RE GOING TO We're going to have a few.

I'll open this meeting here real fast with a few comments.

We'll go to superintendent comments, and then we're going to jump right into testimony here so folks don't have to wait.

Just tonight, we're going to open our meeting with monitoring our goals.

We are also sharpening our focus and underscoring our commitments through a development of a work plan to improve and fulfill our governance responsibilities.

This is something we worked on at our retreat.

So if you haven't checked out our work plan for the year, please take a look at it.

provide transparency to community on what we are going to accomplish so you see overall our goals and trying to rebuild some of this trust with community.

We're also going to be looking at our draft goals and guardrails and setting our new district goals and guardrails, which we will discuss tonight and will end through a self-reflection during our quarterly evaluations.

Before we go to the superintendent comments, I want to highlight two more things for our community.

First, we want to recognize the passing of former school board director Janice Kumasaki late last year.

Jan served two terms on the school board from 1997 to 2005. She was a graduate of our schools and a champion for our students.

And I would invite our community in reading more about her leadership.

And the other thing I want to highlight is our upcoming special election and remind our community to please vote.

The Seattle School is asking voters to consider renewing two levies.

These levies provide continued funding for education, safety and well-being of our students.

Ballots are due by Election Day, which is February 11th.

And more information about their levies is on our website.

That I'll give it over to Dr. Jones.

All right.

Thank you, President Topp.

Thank you for everyone for participating today.

Welcome to 2025. This is our first board meeting of the new year.

And congratulations to President Topp for being President and Vice President Briggs for being Vice President and Member at large, Ms. Rahi, for stepping up into those roles.

As President Topp mentioned, today our board will discuss goals and guardrails for the next strategic plan.

The process that we have is that our board determines the ends and the superintendent comes up with the means to achieve the goals.

Our board has engaged with the community in the development of these goals and are incorporating the feedback that they get into a final set of goals and guardrails.

After that, my team will be working to develop interim goals and guardrails so that we can align and stay focused and make strategic plans along the way so that we can be accountable.

In so doing, we have progress monitoring.

And we do this progress monitoring monthly.

And this month's progress monitoring is on college and career readiness and our graduation rates.

I'm proud of the progress that we've made over the last five years for all students, including African-American males and students of color furthest from educational justice.

What we'll also be presenting today is some preliminary budget recommendations.

And in this session, we'll be giving an overview of the current state and make it clear that what will be on the table for the budget that the board will ultimately approve in July.

Between now and July, we are working to ensure that we have a balanced budget and ensure that we have a down payment of resources set aside for funding our goal work within the forthcoming strategic plan.

Part of us making sure our budget is stable is the legislative session has begun.

And we are counting on our state leaders to come through for us in key areas.

We have been coordinated and precise in our efforts to emphasize our needs.

And what is helpful this session is that other districts are really aligned along along with us in terms of requests and needs.

and we are hopeful and banking on really positive outcomes.

Last weekend, we attended the WASDA and WASA Legislative Conference to learn about how we can be in a best position to strongly advocate for the resources that we need to fund and resource our schools.

And as recent as today, I testified on several bills around special education, our MSOC, which is materials, supplies, and operating costs, just to ensure that we're having a presence at the legislature.

uh as president top mentioned we have critical levies on february 11th we have the epno levy which is the educational programs and operations levy that's that provides student safety and support such as school security special education multilingual and support staff supports student services and programs such as healthy student meals and student transportation and also fund student opportunities, athletics, arts, music, and drama, for a few examples.

We also have the capital levy renewal, which is really focused on replacements, renovations, and repairs.

Safety and security improvements are included in that, heating and ventilation, energy and conservation, just to say a few.

This is about 16% of our total budgets.

Ballots drop in the mail today, and we are hopeful that everyone votes.

Also, we are coming up around the corner to Black Lives Matter at Schools Week, and this week we join schools across the nation in recognizing Black Lives Matter at Schools Week of Action.

This is a time for us to reflect on the importance of educational justice.

It's about affirming the value of black students, families, and educators while committing to create a school environment where everyone feels seen, heard, and supported.

You should be clapping about that because that's a really important piece.

This encourages us to engage in meaningful conversations, hold diverse perspectives, and work together to build a better future.

I'd like to pass it over to our student board members to read a proclamation into the record for Black Lives That Matter School Week, please.

A proclamation of Seattle School District number one, King County, Seattle, Washington, declaring the lives of black student matter, black students matter and recognizing and encouraging participation district wide in the national 2025 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, February 3rd through 7th, 2025 and year of purpose 2024 through 2025. Whereas the Black Lives Matter at school movement began in Seattle in fall of 2016 through the leadership of educators and...

Whereas the Seattle School Board has repeatedly recognized and encouraged participation in Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action and the Year of Purpose and...

Whereas the Seattle School Board has also recognized that throughout our nation's history institutional structural racism and injustices have led to deepening racial disparities across all sectors of our society and have lasting negative consequences for our communities city and nation and.

Whereas as a public school district, we are facilitators of the limitless growth potential of human beings with a charge to guide our youth in finding and achieving their purpose with a belief that every human being deserves to live with dignity.

Whereas in board policy number zero zero thirty ensuring educational and equity educational and racial equity Seattle Public Schools makes a commitment to success of every student in each of our schools in charge of our district staff and charge our district staff administrators and instructioners communities and family in this broadly shared responsibility and.

Whereas in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and countless black named and unnamed victims, the Seattle School Board adopted resolution number 2019 through 2038 to affirm Seattle Public Schools is committed to the safety of black students and resolves that black lives don't just matter, they are worthy, beloved and needed and

Therefore Seattle Public Schools declares that the lives of black students matter and hereby proclaims February 3rd through 7th 2025 as black lives at school week of action and encourages participation district wide throughout discussion in classrooms and in home throughout this week of action and the 2025 year of purpose.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And to further express our commitment to creating environments that are safe and healthy.

Let me let's be reminded that school districts educate school age residents regardless of the immigration status of students and their families to that end.

To that end, state law directs districts to limit immigration enforcement to the fullest extent possible, consistent with federal and state law, and we are currently reviewing our relevant policies and procedures to that end to ensure we continue to provide clear information for students, their families, and SPS staff.

Back to you, President Topp.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dr. Jones.

Really appreciate those updates.

And thank you to the student board members for the wonderful reading of the proclamation.

We're going to move into public testimony right now.

We've reached the portion of testimony.

Board procedure 1430 BP provides our rules for testimony.

The board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself.

As board president, I have the right to and I will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standards of civility required by our procedure.

A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave this meeting.

I'll now pass it to staff to summarize a few additional points and read off the testimony speakers.

Ms. Wilson-Jones.

Thank you, President Topp.

The board will take testimony today from those on the testimony list and will go to the waiting list if we are missing speakers.

Please wait until call to approach the podium or unmute.

And only one person may speak at a time.

The board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak about.

Speakers may cede their time to another person, but this must be done when the listed speaker is called.

Time isn't restarted and the total time remains two minutes.

The timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for speakers here in person.

When the light is red and a beep sounds, it means that your time has been exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

For those joining by phone, the beep will be the indication that time has been exhausted.

Moving into our list now, for those joining by phone, please press star six to unmute on the conference call line when your name is called.

For everyone, please also reintroduce yourself when called as I may miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list.

The first speaker today is .

WHO WILL BE FOLLOWED BY CHRISTI DUANG AND THEN HERMELA MAMO.

WAIT JUST A SEC, WE'LL GET THE MICROPHONE WORKING.

WE ARE NOT, THIS IS NOT PART OF YOUR TWO MINUTES.

All right, go ahead when you're ready.

Hi, my name is Johnna Sable Hutchinson, and I'm representing West Seattle High School appreciation for library resource and desire to see them funded in the future.

It has come to my attention in August 2024, Proceeded defunding my school library.

I understand that schools and my education are underfunded in general, meaning you must cut something.

I understand that this is a hard choice for you to make, but I hope you know that over 200 people who signed my petition deeply care about our librarians and library access.

One person on my survey said, the library is so important to helping students take control of their education.

and be independent it's a safe place for many and having a library encourages kids to read in a society with constantly decreasing literacy rates by cutting the library of funding you would be breaking your promise to ensure me and my peers a decent education librarians are essential to our schools as we can rely on them for not just books but a study space technology help meeting spaces games, drawing and refuge in a stressful day.

Our school is already overpopulated so taking important space from active learners will become harder to students to get back into their academic mindset.

Another person I surveyed, said students need a place to explore new ideas, new authors, create and form opinions about current events.

And that's what librarians and libraries bring.

It's unbelievable defunding is even being considered.

We understand that something in Seattle public schools needs to be cut, but we ask you please not to cut the jobs and resources that directly interact with students on a day-by-day basis.

Once again, I'm just a student up here, but I hope today you know I represent the student body of Seattle schools as well as SPS students who are fighting for space atmosphere, a place for new opportunities, or a place just to hang out with peers.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Christy Duong.

After Christy will be Hermilla and then Jasmine.

Hello, my name is Christy Young.

I'm a student and member of the Washington NAACP Youth Council.

Ethnic studies has been a consistent community demand for years and continues to be a demand from educators, youth, families, and organizations like the ones here today.

As the Black Lives Matter at Schools resolution passed today, we need to keep in mind that one of the demands is to mandate ethnic studies.

A demand for the superintendent is to make sure that ethnic studies is one of the priorities for developing the strategies to achieve the goals for the next strategic plan.

Without ethnic studies, students don't have access to instruction that is diverse, meaningful, and shows the truth and roots of our communities of color.

Ethnic studies is our truth, healing, and medicine.

In your proposal guardrails, it states, the superintendent will not allow adult behavior in school buildings and classrooms that are misaligned with the anti-racist values of SPS.

In order to teach in an ethnic studies framework, there must be a requirement to have anti-racist training.

Anti-racist training pushes our educators to challenge the system and also helps them recognize their biases and gives them the tools to teach and understand ethnic studies.

With ethnic studies in every classroom, it allows youth to feel that they can be themselves and see themselves in their curriculum.

This benefits everybody.

Ethnic studies helps our students learn and grow in ways that inspires us to make change in our local communities.

All of our demands shared today go hand in hand and represent the change we want to see in our education.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Ramila Mamo.

Hi, my name is Hermel Lamamo.

I'm a student and member of the NAACP Youth Council.

I'm here today to also remind you of all of the importance of ethnic studies as not only an elective class or a class you can merely opt out of, but implemented into all educational curricula.

Ethnic study helps students find points of views that correlate to their personal lives.

It brings students of color to understand something beyond their identities and understand how we can create a change and recognize issues within our communities.

When listening about continuous stories and lessons taught to us that often villainize our BIPOC communities, it's hard to recognize the truth and roots of our histories.

These stories are being taken away from us and disregard our educational rights, which is why ethnic studies is so important and needs to be valued not only by students, but by our educators.

This points out the need to hire and retain black educators, which is one of the demands for the Black Lives Matters at school.

There are students like myself who had never had a teacher that looked like them, never had a teacher that understood them, or even a teacher that they could look up to.

So it's important to have support not only of students, but teachers and community members for ethnic studies, because ethnic studies should be a priority.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Jasmine Azzam.

After Jasmine will be Rowan Harper and then Michelle Campbell.

Hello.

My name is Jasmine Azzam.

My pronouns are she, her, and I'm the president of the Washington State NAACP Youth Council.

I'm here today to speak about the Black Lives Matter at School demand, solidarity with Palestine, no genocide, and scholasticize.

It is so important now more than ever that Seattle Public Schools takes a firm stance against the genocide school outside happening in Palestine.

Our schools hold the responsibility to prepare students with the knowledge to engage the world critically and ethically, and that begins with naming and addressing injustice where we see it on a global scale.

The deliberate destruction of schools and systematic denial of Palestinian children's right to an education are huge violations of human rights.

The United Nations reported that over 80% of schools in Gaza were destroyed and thousands of students and hundreds of teachers have been killed.

This information and Palestinian stories need to be taught to our own students.

It also ties into our goal of implementing ethnic studies into the education of Seattle public school students.

Ethnic studies courses aim to foster global awareness and understanding by centering the stories of marginalized communities.

Teaching about Palestine teaches students more about global justice as well as how it connects to our own communities.

FTS classrooms should incorporate lessons and discussions about the current and historical context of Palestine.

Educators could include literature and poetry written by Palestinian authors and could facilitate open discussions about global human rights issues.

Though I am recently graduated from Seattle Public High School, just this past June, my younger sister and many members of the NAACC Youth Council are still attending Seattle Public Schools throughout the district.

As members of this community, we recognize the profound role education plays in fostering positive change and equity.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Rowan Harper.

After Rowan is Michelle Campbell and Manuela Slay.

Hi everyone.

My name is Rowan Harper and I'm currently a junior at Ballard High School.

I'm speaking on behalf of my book club and as well as the 1600 students that currently access our school library.

We love our school library.

Out of curiosity, how many of you had utilized your local library or school library when you were around my age?

Well, whatever it may be, your answer reflects on where you stand right now in this debate.

Here I have with me a petition that Ryan Sanders and I had started last week.

As you can see, it is a big stack of papers.

And just so you know, this is just from our school, let alone.

There are a total of 104 schools in this district and thousands of students within these schools.

Aren't your goals as the SPS board to provide resources to students, prioritize these students' mental health, and create a safe space for them?

Our outgoing Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has recently emphasized his concern over the US's mental health.

His main recommendation for how Americans can cultivate health, happiness, and fulfillment is by building a strong community.

That is what a school library means to me and the other students in this district.

Libraries provide a safe space for students.

Libraries also provide free math tutoring, access to printers, free school supplies, a quiet place to focus, security, and more.

These are all crucial components of the SPS board's motto.

If you cut our librarians hours in half, you're basically taking these opportunities straight out of the hands of your students right in front of them.

I can't believe I'm standing here along with many others making this point in front of you, that I as a student have to advocate for resources that you would have been outraged to lose.

For my own education, for others' education, for your children's education, that is who I'm currently representing as a stand-up here.

I hope you know that the futures of the SPS students and the next generation are in your hands.

So in the eyes of an SPS student, how would you feel if the adults on your side are taking away the hours of such a crucial, reliable community resource?

Thank you so much for your time.

the next speaker is michelle campbell and i misspoke earlier um after michelle will be chris jackins and then we'll get to manuel's life hello we can hear you hello can you hear me yes we can hear you

Hi, good evening, Superintendent Jones and school board directors.

My name is Michelle Campbell, and I'm a parent of a third grader in SPS and co-secretary of Seattle Council PTSA.

From Senate Bill 5180, which was in public hearing just yesterday, I quote, the legislature finds that Washington State has long been at the forefront of recognizing that student success is dependent on providing every student with a safe and inclusive learning environment, free of harassment and discrimination in all forms.

Here in Seattle, we too espouse the importance of a safe and inclusive learning environment, free of harassment and discrimination in all forms.

And we see this reflected in the goals and guard rails, which will be voted on tonight.

Despite our good intentions, students across our district continue to share with us that they are not safe.

that their environment is not inclusive, and that they experience harassment and discrimination.

In conversations with students across the district, we encounter enthusiastic children who want to learn but see disparities in their treatment and in their access to education.

In the Leading Edge Advisors School Counseling Study, presented at an audit meeting in December, elementary school attendance shows increasing disparities by race, ethnicity, Attendance drops in middle school.

Disparities by race, ethnicities persist.

Attendance rates plummet in high school.

Disparities by race and ethnicity persist.

Discipline data shows disparities by race and ethnicity across all school levels.

At Sandpoint Elementary, 44% of third grade students are proficient in ELA.

but 0% of third grade African-American males are proficient.

At Hazel Wolf K-8, 77% of seventh grade students are proficient in ELA, but 0% of seventh grade African-American males are proficient.

At Roosevelt High School, 81% of 10th grade students are proficient in ELA.

Your time has been exhausted.

If you would please conclude your remarks.

Yes, but only 35% of African- American males are proficient.

These are critical important numbers and they are unacceptable.

I applaud you for commissioning the study and we look forward to, as the study suggests, trust building through transparent and open dialogue about these findings.

We should be looking at these numbers with everything that we do in the next five years.

They should be front and center.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Chris Jackins.

After Chris will be Manuel Eslay and then Laura Marie Rivera.

Excuse me.

My name is Chris Jackins.

Box 84063 Seattle 98124. On the $744,000 construction change order for Raina Beach High School and on the Viewlands Building Commissioning Report.

Two points.

Number one, the fundamental documents were not timely provided.

Number two, I contacted multiple district staff about the documents.

One suggestion was to do a public records request.

Please vote no.

On my opposition to Proposition 2, the capital levy on the February 11th ballot, more mega schools mean more school closures.

Four points number one I attended district presentations on Prop 2. Number two at Kimball a recent parent at the school noted that she would never have approved making the school into a mega size school.

Number three parents from Graham Hill asserted that repairs to schools made more sense than spending over 148 million dollars each on two proposed mega schools.

Number four, more mega schools mean more school closures.

The public should vote no.

On the adoption of goals and guardrails, the board is the public's elected voice.

The board's failure to properly exercise this power makes the goals and guardrails hollow.

Please vote no.

ON THE NOVEMBER 2024 FINANCIAL REPORT, ON PAGE TWO OF THE REPORT STATES GENERAL FUND CASH AT NOVEMBER 2024 IS $199.7.2 MILLION.

THIS SEEMS TO BE A TYPO.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THE NEXT SPEAKER IS MEL WALLACE LAY.

Thank you.

This is and I send my time to Liz Berry.

Is Liz in the room or online?

Hi, can you hear me?

We can hear you, Liz.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Liz Berry, a longtime SPS dual language teacher at Benny, as well as a current Concord parent.

I am asking you to explore our enrollment processes and specifically wait lists to ensure that they're transparent for all students, families, and staff.

This is imperative for all students to receive the best education.

Dual language programs, DL, must be accessible to all MLL and heritage and native speakers who want to participate.

Denny has room in its program to expand.

Last year, there were multiple students who went through the open enrollment process and the DL evaluation.

They were put on the wait list, which never moved.

Families were frustrated with the lack of responses from enrollment.

They moved children to private school and to the Highline dual language programs.

As long as Denia is under-enrolled, students who qualify and want dual language should be admitted whenever there is space.

Second, the district waitlist and the enrollment process impact school budgets and staffing.

These are directly tied to student outcomes as they lead to teacher displacement and program reduction.

Third, as a parent of a kindergartner, I went through the enrollment process last year.

Like many children in single-parent families, my children's lives have unique complications which limits where they can attend school.

During open enrollment, I request that she be at Concord with her brother.

In April 2024, there were seven students on the waitlist for kindergarten at Concord.

Five of them had older siblings at Concord.

The staff and administration expected students from the waitlist to be admitted, and this expectation was passed along to families.

several families contacted enrollment and received no or little response some were denied upon appeal by the time school started and despite concord's projected enrollment being down the only two that were admitted were children of sps employees in the pathway in conclusion i am asking you to one determine if there are policies of enrollment that are preventing students from being admitted from the waitlist Two, ensure that there is transparency for families and school-based staff around how wait lists be treated, clear explanations of how students are admitted, and communication that is both respectful and accessible for families.

Three, for the benefit of our students and schools, insist on district enrollment processes that ensure that the maximum number of students are enrolled in the schools they've requested.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker is Laura Marie Rivera.

Laura Marie will be followed by Amy Vattuoni and then Robert Femiano.

Perfect.

And before Laura Marie Rivera, I just want to remind folks, we're going to try to keep it to two minutes, please, so we can get through everyone and be respectful through this process.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Laura Marie Rivera.

I think the proposed goals are attainable, but I know that our Seattle students are capable of so much more than learning to read and satisfying those graduation requirements.

We need to give them the best possible public education and ensure that they have the tools they'll need to succeed in the future.

I find the proposed guardrails are frustratingly vague, only saying what the superintendent will not do.

But I'm hopeful that my generous read on them will prove to be the case.

Number one, for example, should mean that we will increase educational opportunities for all Seattle students, including access to transportation, special education, advanced learning, dual language immersion, and much more.

We need to make sure these programs are offered and available for students from all over the district, especially in the areas that have been historically underserved.

But there's a more pressing need, and it pertains to guardrail number two.

Of course, I share the SPS commitment of a safe and welcoming environment for Seattle students.

As we look to what has sadly become the national agenda, our most vulnerable groups are being targeted.

We must protect our students receiving special education services as the White House removes their accessibility statement.

We must protect our LGBTQIA plus children, especially trans students, as the administration attempts to deny their existence.

We must protect our children that are new to the country.

The promise of a safe and welcoming environment extends to all of our students regardless of where they were born.

Individually and collectively, we must stand with our marginalized students.

In the words of our new governor, Bob Ferguson, quote, it's important for all of us, no matter what role we have as an individual, to make sure we're doing everything we can to ensure that folks are treated with dignity and respect.

I'm calling on our district leaders and all of our community members to recommit their efforts to not only serving those students furthest from educational justice, but protecting our most vulnerable students and giving all of our Seattle students their best chance at a successful future.

To quote the bishop from the other Washington, we must demonstrate, quote, the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Amy Vatuloni.

After Amy will be Robert Femiano and then Skylar Trapp.

Hi, I would like to cede my time to Lee Pixton, a student at West Seattle High School.

Thank you.

Growing up, I found my love of reading in the diverse shelves of the public library.

My father used to take me there whenever he needed a new CD, so we were constantly in the library.

Before I was even in grade school, I had found my place among the shelves of books in the library.

When I went to grade school, it was like getting my own personal library.

Hang on, sorry, that's the wrong document.

It was so much closer than the one my father and I went to, and it was much cozier as well.

The school library was decorated differently for each season, and it even had bean bag chairs and string lights.

So as an avid reader, I would consistently go there and swap out books each week, learning new words, concepts, and ideas.

The library was a magical place with book fairs and my favorite librarian.

Then I went to middle school.

It was intimidating to say the least.

Not only was I going to a new school, but this was the first time I had gone to school in months because of COVID-19.

During classes, everyone had masks on and their voices were muffled.

We had to sit away from each other.

Everyone's intense.

But that year, the Madison Library became my sanctuary.

With a much more extensive library and books at higher reading levels than the ones in grade school, I was ecstatic.

In seventh grade, I became a library TA.

I had a whole hour every day to walk along gliding my fingers over the plastic book covers like I was walking through a maze.

Now, as a high schooler, I seem to go more than ever.

I can't go a day without winding up in the library, either because of the constant tech issues I face with school laptops or as an escape from the rest of the noisy school when everything just feels like it's too much.

I use the library to print essential documents from my classes, and I often do this during lunch.

However, if the library is only open a few days a week, that time might conflict with my busy schedule, and I might not be able to print these documents at all.

Though the libraries may only be closed for a few days a week, I am scared three days may become four.

I am scared we will forget just how important the library is, and that a group of first graders will see that the place that used to stay open all the time is now open less and less.

They might think that this is because library is not important, that reading must not be that important after all.

I'm worried the magic I found when I was young will be lost on them.

And then there are the studies.

So many studies that show the statistics.

But I'll give you an example.

The NAPLAN literacy study showed that schools that spent less money on their libraries had lower literacy rates.

To put it bluntly.

One final thought.

Yes, thank you.

If school libraries are no longer convenient, then there will be less people going to them.

Less bright young readers will have access to the tools they need and the ability to further their education.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Robert followed by Skyler and then Mariko Fujita.

Good evening, my name is Robert Femiano and I was a first second grade teacher for 30 years with this district.

Imagine a teacher testifying in September that they're okay with one out of every three students not being able to read on grain level by June.

Not acceptable, right?

So why is the board setting such low expectations itself?

In my final three years of teaching, the district began using the map computerized tests to measure reading progress.

In each of those years, despite 70% of my students qualifying for free lunch, the classroom average reading growth more than doubled the district's average.

Your dashboard will show that no student of mine ever scored less than a year's growth, including ELL and special needs children.

It's a simple fact I've proven over and over.

If a child can speak, they can be taught to read.

The science of reading tells us the key to success is twofold.

The teacher, A, needs to understand how speech and print are interconnected via phonics, and then, B, how to systematically and effectively lay that out so students have the foundation to become fluent readers.

Furthermore, this can be accomplished in a cognitively engaging manner with little money and no special textbooks, as I can show you.

I've written three books and taught classes through Seattle Pacific University on beginning reading methods.

This is not the first time I've offered training to the district without charge.

But each time, I'm told the district is making satisfactory progress.

Nonetheless, I offer my assistance again, for free, because if a student can speak, there's no reason they can't learn to read 100% of the time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Skylar Trapp, followed by Mariko Fujita, and then Caroline Shelton.

Skylar, if you're online, please press star six to unmute on the conference line.

Doesn't look like we have Skylar with us yet.

Moving to the next speaker, Mariko Fujita.

Do we have Mariko in person?

I'm going to go to the next speaker.

I will come back and call names again at the end.

Wilson, Joan, she's walking up.

Thank you.

Hello, I cede my time to Crystal Pryor.

My name is Crystal Pryor.

My older daughter attends John Stanford International Elementary School, and my younger daughter is in the Seattle Public Preschool Program.

My mother is from the countryside in Miye, Japan.

Growing up, she didn't teach me Japanese, even though I'd expressed interest from an early age.

This was the 1980s.

Bilingualism wasn't really valued, and my mother was concerned that my American father wouldn't be able to understand our conversations.

So my sophomore year of high school, I elected to go to an option public high school that offered Japanese, continued in college, studied abroad my junior year, and ultimately moved to Japan for intensive language study.

I completed a master's in Japanese politics at the University of Tokyo with a scholarship from the Japanese government and worked at the US Embassy in Tokyo before returning to the United States.

Many US-Japan-focused organizations invested in my education and supported my ability to reconnect with my heritage.

A major factor in choosing Seattle for my family was the connection to Japan at the University of Washington and in Seattle.

I wish I could have learned Japanese as a child, so it's important to me that my daughters have this opportunity.

SPS is unique in the country in having two option elementary schools offering Japanese language immersion.

We've lived in San Diego and Honolulu, and even there, they don't have public Japanese language programs.

You have to be a native or heritage speaker to attend the programs they do have, which are private and not affordable to a single mother of two.

Just across the bridge in Bellevue, they're expanding their DLI programs because their superintendent understands that while neighborhood schools are valuable, more options are needed to respond to today's challenges.

They have made their popular programs such as DLI more accessible district-wide and enrollment has increased to the point where they will not need to close any more schools.

I hope SPS will similarly support families' options and that my children will grow and thrive in environments that support their connection to Japanese language and culture.

Thank you.

Next is Caroline Shelton.

Hi.

I'm the parent of a first grader in the Japanese language cohort at John Stanford International School.

Last fall, the district proposed eliminating option schools, a change that would have greatly limited who has access to our school and fundamentally changed the dual language immersion program model.

We became concerned that the two Japanese DLI programs, which are attended by families throughout the city, are at risk.

So a few of us wrote a letter about what this program means to us and why it's important for the community and future generations to preserve it.

Over 500 people signed our letter, including hundreds of parents, some who benefit directly from these programs, and many other parents who do not.

Leaders of state and local organizations signed this letter, including Japan America Society of Washington, Japanese Community and Culture Center of Western Washington, Densho, Japanese American Citizens League, Nisei Vets, and many other organizations I unfortunately don't have time to name.

Educators from 40 organizations within Washington and across the country signed.

Faculty from 20 higher ed institutions also signed this letter.

As you can see this letter resonated with many and we hope it will speak to you as well.

We also come, so I have the letter.

We also come bringing a gift for you.

These 1,001 cranes, here's one, were made by parents and children of John Stanford International School.

The whole school, including members of our Spanish language cohort, came together and learned how to make origami cranes to bring to you.

Cranes symbolize peace, unity, and healing.

In this new year, we offer them to you as a gesture of renewed partnership in working together with district leaders to make our schools stronger for every kid and every family in Seattle.

We believe that programs like ours can serve as a model and are part of this solution.

We hope that our DLI option schools can serve as a model for the expansion of new programs.

The parents of JSIS stand ready to partner with you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Alexander Feldman.

Hi.

My name is Alex Feldman.

I'm a parent of two high cap students in Seattle Public Schools.

I'd like to make a brief statement about advanced learning services and have shared a more detailed version with board members and the superintendent with handouts and email.

Expanding advanced learning in neighborhood schools is a great goal, but until that program is ready, the highly capable cohort program sunsetting should be paused.

Today, the neighborhood school recommendation of in-class differentiation has no curriculum, and for this year's first graders, we've replaced a full-fledged program with what amounts to best intentions.

Our kids cannot afford to wait for a program to be devised while their learning needs are not met.

So please consider reopening Cascadia and other HCC schools to high cap students while developing a scalable program for neighborhood schools.

Thank you.

Next is David Furman.

After David will be Yana Parker and then Ashley Gross.

Hi, y'all.

My name is David Furman.

I'm a special education teacher at Ballard High School, and I'm here with the library cohort.

There's more than a few of us here.

I'm here because I want to talk about kind of two parts of why the library is so important.

First, I actually started a book club with my group, with my students, a queer pride book club, right when COVID shut us down.

Because we had students who were so excited for their first Pride ever.

Like, they were thrilled.

They knew they had just come out.

They were going to Pride.

And all of a sudden, everything was canceled.

They needed to be seen, they needed community, they needed to have a group to come together.

So we, with our librarians, with our teachers, put something together.

And that only happens with librarians.

Our Pride book club still exists.

We've had probably 100 students, more than that, over the years we've been doing it.

We have books.

And our books that we bring in are now being read in ELA classes for choice reading.

So our students, whether they're in the queer or trans community or not, have an opportunity to see into the windows of each other's lives and have more empathy for our students who struggle on a daily basis because they don't get seen by their other peers.

The other part I want to talk about is as a teacher of students with intellectual disability, our library is a safe place and a place that we can practice community.

We can practice community access.

We can practice going up and checking a book out.

We can practice just going around and being in a place safely.

And our libraries offer that.

And they only offer that if they're open, if students are available, if the teachers are available, the librarians are available, sorry.

I can get there.

But our librarians are available and people can support them.

Every single day, I bring students to the library.

because it's so important that they get that opportunity to see a place like that where they may feel scared, they may not feel welcome, because maybe they can't read all that well, but our library welcomes them in and they need to feel that safety and that welcoming community.

So thank you very much.

The next speaker is Yana Parker.

Good evening.

Before I begin my testimony, I would like to request that we put on closed captioning because the meeting is inaccessible as of now.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Yana Parker and I am the president of Seattle Special Education PTSA.

I'm here to share concerns about systemic challenges faced by students with disabilities that should be considered as you adopt the new guardrails and goals and the new strategic plan.

Families frequently report low quality special education evaluations, late identifications of needs, early access from services, and dismissal of needs, Issues often affecting low-income families, disabled or neurodivergent BIPOC students.

Key data such as absenteeism and parent input are often excluded from evaluations contributing to low graduation rates, students dropping out, and families leaving public schools.

Direct services like speech and occupational therapy are increasingly replaced by staff consultations or observations, which fails to teach students needed skills.

Parents are often unaware services aren't provided until they request records, which they often don't know to do, and many face barriers to participation.

including lack of transparency and respect for the parental input.

The district's practices of filing due process lawsuits against parents, particularly those without resources who request independent educational evaluations, also called IEEs, that creates additional burden.

One recent example involved a native student who was prematurely exited from services with the district suing a single parent to avoid covering an IEE.

OSPI data shows that self-representing families rarely succeed in due process.

When this parent requested short extension to submit their closing brief due to a medical emergency, the district's publicly funded private attorney said that the district disagreed with the extension.

Imagine how the parent was feeling.

Kudos to the judge for allowing the extension anyway.

We propose, and apologies for the extended time, but we propose following solutions.

Number one, develop a policy granting IEEs to low-income students upon request to prevent inequity.

Increase staffing for therapy providers and prioritize direct services and based on student needs.

Last bullet point and you can put it.

Yeah, it's the last one actually.

Requires standardized training for administrators on special education laws and practices including building principles so that we don't hear, we don't see what you see, parents.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker is Ashley Gross.

After Ashley will be Helen Lindell and then Sabrina Burr.

Hello, school board and Superintendent Jones.

My name is Ashley Gross.

I'm the mother of two high schoolers, one's at the Center School and one's at Nova High School.

And I've watched with a lot of interest that some schools in the district, like Hamilton and Robert Eagle Staff, have adopted a way for the day cell phone policies.

This is something that the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, recommended last year when he issued his advisory on the detrimental effects of social media on adolescents' mental health.

But I've been frustrated to see Seattle only implement this on a school-by-school basis.

My kids' schools do not have policies requiring that phones be put away.

And I just don't think it's fair that some kids are learning in a distraction-free environment and other kids are not.

More than 600 of us have signed a change.org petition urging Seattle to restrict cell phones in classrooms.

This is happening across the country.

Schools and districts have been doing this and they're seeing benefits.

North Clackamas School District in Oregon, OPB reports they're seeing fewer fights, fewer discipline issues, better concentration and better social interaction.

And one great thing about that is I think North Clackamas has restricted phones during lunch as well.

These kids have grown up in the pandemic and they need as many opportunities to develop friends and social skills as possible.

My friend who wrote the petition, she says we're at a moment like we were with cigarettes in 1965 when the Surgeon General put the warning labels on cigarettes.

Just like tobacco, social media, smartphones, they're addictive and we need to protect kids' brains and do what we can to protect their mental health.

I encourage SPS.

to support HB 1122 in Olympia, which would put in place a requirement for school districts across the state to have policies by 2026. But I think Seattle, as the largest district in the state, has to show leadership and implement a policy restricting cell phones and classes by the fall.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Helen Lundell.

Helen Lundell.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Perfect.

Hi, I'm Helen Mundell.

I'm a parent of two kids at Cascadia, and I want to ask the board also to pause the sunsetting of the highly capable cohorts.

Programs for highly capable students are a legally mandated part of basic education for a reason.

They are necessary.

Next year, FTS's HC cohorts are being rolled up, with schools like Cascadia set to serve only third grade and up next year and fourth grade and up the year after, and so on.

For Cascadia, this is a problem.

It's not yet being refilled by neighborhood students because the boundary changes the plan was based on never happened.

So if this plan continues, we'll see a new, high-capacity building grow ever emptier, the teachers displaced, and a community uncertain about its future.

But the more fundamental issue is that the highly capable cohort was meant to be replaced with programs in neighborhood schools.

I support any plan that develops meaningful differentiation with neighborhood schools, but we're not hearing any evidence that this is actually happening.

What we are hearing is that the burden of moving highly capable programming into neighborhood schools will be put on individual teachers with little or no additional training or resources.

We are hearing that some neighborhood schools are able to plug the gap with money and time from their community, while others aren't.

We are hearing lots of families saying that they now feel like they have to leave the district or would leave the district if they could.

And we are hearing Superintendent Jones admitting that the concerns about a gap in implementation at neighborhood schools are justified.

The cohorts are being dismantled because they offered inequitable access to the program.

Universal screening was a step in the right direction, but there's no doubt that there's still a lot of work to be done.

But closing highly capable cohorts with no viable alternative and leaving only those with ample resources to fill the void, that feels like a step in the wrong direction.

So I ask you again, pause the sunsetting of the cohorts for a year, or even better, as long as it takes to come up with a real plan for what happens next.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sabrina Burr.

After Sabrina will be Samantha Fogg, John Parker, and Tuesday Chambers.

Good evening, Superintendent and School Board Directors.

As you know, I am Sabrina Burr, the co-president of Seattle Council PTSA.

A child's future should not be a matter of luck.

It is our moral responsibility to be about their safety, well-being, educational foundation for each student who enters this district, regardless of their zip code, identity, or how they learn and what they need to be academically solid.

to be able to read, write, and compute, and to be critical thinkers.

We must tell the truth about where we are.

We must be honest about the students and families we have failed generationally.

We must partner with these families and communities in partnership and for solutions.

If you have not read the Leading Edge report by the Audit Committee, you need to do so immediately.

How do we have students with no job and no degree six years, yes, six years after graduating from Seattle Public Schools?

It's unacceptable.

In 2016, when I was Seattle Council PTSA president, the John Muir sexual assault case from a substitute who taught in Southeast schools was something That was very hard for our community.

We failed families.

We learned from them.

and with them.

We put practices in place and here we are in 2025 and there are no defined procedures or practices to keep students safe.

How to work with school communities once we learn harm has happened to a child.

The John Muir case is back in the public as a law firm is looking for victims from the 2010s who were harmed by this individual who was arrested in 2018. I want to say despite your efforts for engagement around the guardrails, there are far too many communities that we have missed.

And I believe that you need to go back to those communities and hear from them before you put together guardrails for the next five years.

And we have to have high expectations and high supports.

Because what is happening to students in Seattle Public Schools, especially black, brown, native, is unacceptable and we can do better.

The next speaker is Samantha Fogg.

You'll need to press star six to unmute on the line.

Oh, looks like you're unmuted.

Superintendent Jones and members of the board, my name is Samantha Fox.

Recently, Representative Stonier shared, quote, when kids don't feel safe at school, they aren't focusing on the book in front of them or the lesson being taught in the classroom.

They're focused on what they're feeling, fear, anxiety, and loneliness that come from discrimination, harassment, bullying, and abuse, end quote.

In December, I had a conversation with a black male student where he expressed that in his experience, the majority of the teachers at his high school cannot teach about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. without causing harm.

He expressed that good intentions were not matched with necessary skills.

At this student's high school in the 22-23 school year, 33% of the 10th graders at this school were proficient in math, but only 3% of the African American males were proficient.

The discomfort of students with the teachers and the way they are being taught has an impact on their academic outcome.

As we wrap up first semester, I am hearing from multiple students who are on wait lists to take Black Studies, but who cannot get into the class because it is full.

There is no remote option being offered, and for many of these students, no other social studies class is being offered.

Life activities walking is not an acceptable substitute for taking Black Studies.

It is not unusual for students to be denied access to a world language and I've even heard from a high school student who was put on a late waitlist for math class.

Several years ago I was told that due to anticipated declines in enrollment in order to serve students Seattle Public Schools was planning to align high school schedules so that classes could be taught in a hybrid format by Seattle Public Schools teachers who were skilled with students at multiple schools interacting at once.

This would allow students at all of our high schools to continue to access a wide range of classes.

What happened to that strategy?

What has replaced it?

Why are we telling high school students that they cannot access social studies?

As you look at budget cuts and changes, I implore you, center the needs of students, both academic and civil rights, and to recognize that we have central office staff who are working to protect students' civil rights and support students.

We need to look at our cuts and align them with the outcomes that we need.

Thank you.

We will need to move on to the next speaker.

Thank you.

The next speaker is John Parker.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, we can hear you.

Good evening, directors.

My name is John Parker.

I have two neurodivergent, highly capable sons with multiple disabilities each.

Parents need to be a part of a child's education team and need to have a say in their child's educational placement.

One of our sons graduated last year in spite of the district's impact on his mental health and their failure to appropriately and timely identify his needs and teach him the basic skills that he needs to be ready in life after high school.

My youngest son is in the eighth grade and he's heading to high school in the fall.

The same school psychologist who was involved in our eldest years ago has predetermined that our son does not meet the criteria for special education.

He based his decision not to qualify him on an atrocious reevaluation.

He did not administer any testing because our son refused to engage with him.

The district would not disclose what they were using as eligibility criteria, keeping his parents in the dark.

This school psychologist has a history of refusing accommodations to my wife.

and has tried to manipulate outcomes by saying that she could not participate because she had English as a second language.

Before the revealing the evaluation, we asked for another school psychologist who would not be biased against her family, and the district refused.

We pointed out that we cannot sign informed consent evaluations without knowing what the evaluation procedures are.

The district refused to provide any of this information and threatened to sue us if we didn't sign to consent.

Cohercing families to consent to evaluation is illegal.

The district sued us to bully us to bully their way into us saying, we have a right to decide what works for your child, ignoring the trauma that my family experienced at the hands of this psychologist and his supervisor.

As a result, these staff members have predetermined that our son is not eligible.

IDEA requires that parents input and ours was not allowed.

Thank you.

Special education decisions need to be a team decision, and parents are a part of that team.

According to the psychologist, the school district didn't consider the student's potential.

We're going to ask you to please conclude your remarks.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, can we move on to the next speaker here?

The next speaker is Tuesday Chambers.

Folks, I want to please remind you just to stay to the two-minute time limit.

We are trying to be fair and consistent with everyone.

So I'm sorry that I'm cutting folks off, but just trying to make sure that we are consistent.

Folks, my name is Tuesday Chambers.

I'm the Ballard High School librarian.

I'm here regarding well-resourced schools and specifically how that includes librarians.

I am not here on a rumor.

You have a waiting staffing standards committee that prioritized budget cuts.

Those cuts need to be shared.

I cede my time to Ryan.

Hello, I'm Ryan Sander.

I spoke at the previous board meeting about saving our libraries.

At the time, I spoke as a singular voice, representing my library as a TA.

That is not the same today.

Today, I come to you unified, backed by hundreds of Ballard students who support me when I say, we need our libraries.

My fellow speaker, Rowan Harper, and I created a petition titled Save Our Libraries.

With this petition, we gathered signatures from over half the student body.

Ballard has 1,600 students, meaning over 800 signed their names in support of our libraries, in support of its resources, and in support of its created safe space.

I'm the voice of these collective students who speak the same message.

Our libraries matter.

The fact that I even have to make this point is baffling.

Libraries culminate so many resources into one space, printers and computers, free math and science tutors, art supplies and textbooks, a safe space to study and eat.

This access opens so many educational opportunities for under-resourced students.

Removing libraries removes equal access and equal opportunity.

My fellow peers stood where I stand now and reiterated how important our libraries are.

The question is if you will choose to listen.

And if you still cannot see the value of our libraries from your desk, I ask that you step out from behind it.

I ask you to come to Ballard.

In fact, I invite you.

I invite you to enter our library, to put yourself in a student's shoes, and to see our library through a student's eyes.

I invite you to look upon the space that you plan to remove to see why students are fighting so hard to protect it.

Let us show you why we care.

As a student, I am asking you not to disrupt the ecosystem of Ballard.

I don't often get the chance to speak to people in power or to say words that will perhaps influence their decisions, but I have this chance today and I hope that you will listen.

I hope you will listen to the hundreds of students I am representing, the students who are directly impacted by your actions as a board.

My generation has the power to shape the future, but cannot do so if you take away the resources that foster our education.

Please do not cut our libraries.

The next speaker will be Claire Scott, followed by Sarah Fellows.

Thank you so much for doing the work that you do, especially in creating these robust goals and guardrails to ensure equitable education in SPS, to make sure that we do not depend on wealthy neighborhoods to fund resources like libraries in some schools and not others.

Many students, families, staff, and community members have come together here and recently to celebrate their school libraries, their central role as the heart of a school community, a refuge where students can bring their whole selves without leaving things behind at the door, recognizing the librarian as an instructional partner in the curriculum across all content areas, their role as teachers of information and media literacy, something that could not be more important in our current media and political climate.

I was thrilled to hear from our school board directors last month and at the community listening session last week that cuts to libraries have not yet been proposed.

That's a huge relief for students, staff and families, especially as reducing secondary librarians to halftime was specifically listed on the board's budget study session slideshow from August 28th.

Given that, I would ask the board and superintendent to share the current recommended priority list for cuts and staffing standards from the weighted staffing standards committee.

Scenario one in the superintendent's presentation today mentions zero to $28 million in staffing reductions.

That is quite a range.

Without supporting documentation detailing what those cuts may entail.

Finally, I have heard from board members that you also prioritize the safe spaces, vital information, literacy learning, and opportunities for exercising deep, active intellectual freedom that libraries provide and librarians provide.

I respectfully ask if the board would be willing to put those priorities and commitments in writing.

Thanks to all of you for your deep commitment to our students.

The next speaker is Sarah Fellows.

Do we have Sarah Fellows in the room?

Yes.

My name is Sarah Fellows, and I am a single parent of a first grader in the Japanese Dual Language Immersion Program at John Stanford International School.

I'm here to talk about why these programs are so important and why they need to remain option programs.

My daughter and I live in an apartment that is not in the JSIS Geo Zone.

Like many families, we can't afford to move to Wallingford.

If JSIS was converted to a neighborhood school, as was proposed earlier this year, my child would have never had the opportunity to attend this incredible program.

We are not alone.

The majority of her classmates, including many Japanese heritage families, do not live in the neighborhood and only had this opportunity because it was an option school.

Over the past year, I've heard a lot of comments from district staff framing dual language immersion programs as programs for multilingual learners.

Of course, DLI programs have amazing benefits for multilingual learners, but I fear we're losing the big picture when we talk about them only in this context.

The literature is clear that all students in DLI programs, both multilingual learners and native English speakers, outperform their non-DLI peers on standardized tests.

and they do this while also learning another language from a young age.

JSIS is one of the highest performing elementary schools in the state, but beyond these academic benefits, my daughter is learning to value and respect other languages and cultures, something our world needs more of.

All students should have the opportunity to attend these programs, and making them neighborhood schools where only a tiny percentage of families who live in a particular neighborhood can access them is not equitable.

Dual language programs are also incredibly popular.

The long wait lists at JSIS tell only part of the story.

I can't tell you how many parents I've spoken to who did not even apply because they didn't think there was any chance of getting in.

We need to expand these programs to more schools, both to expand access, but also to attract more families back to the district.

Schools don't need to be just a neighborhood school or just an option school.

In many other districts, option programs exist side by side with regular neighborhood classrooms in the same school.

Please look at the list of under-enrolled schools you were considering for closure earlier this year and add a dual language option program at some of those sites.

We can increase enrollment in our district by offering programs that families value, and that should be our goal and our focus in these challenging times.

Thank you.

I WANT TO DO ONE MORE CHECK TO MAKE SURE WE DON'T HAVE SCHYLER TRAP WITH US IN THE ROOM.

SCHYLER IN THE ROOM?

OKAY.

I'M GOING TO GO TO THE WAIT LIST.

WE'VE ALREADY HEARD FROM A COUPLE OF FOLKS, SO WE'LL GO TO STACIA BELL.

I THINK YOU MAY BE ON THE LINE.

MAYBE I MADE THAT UP.

MAYBE YOU'RE IN THE ROOM.

All right, my name is Stacia Bell, and I'm a librarian at Madison Middle School in West Seattle.

Today, you've heard from several SPS students about the devastating impact that closing library doors would have on our youth, and how much they rely on open doors each and every day for books, technology, resources, and above all, community.

Today, I'd like to focus on those students who rely on the library as a safe haven.

The school library is not just a place for books, it is a sanctuary.

For some, it's the only space during the school day where they feel at ease and free to be themselves.

Every morning, around 150 students choose to start their school day in our Madison Library, and every day at lunch, we are filled with students.

Why?

Because it's become their smaller, safer community within a very large 1,000-plus student school.

A decision to reduce librarians to part-time would effectively close the doors to this safe haven for 2.5 days every week, cutting off thousands of Seattle public school students from the opportunities to learn, connect, and find refuge in these nurturing spaces.

I recently received an email from a former parent that illustrates this impact.

Her twin daughters, both now thriving post-college, were exceptional and creative students during their time at Madison, but socially they struggled.

They endured relentless bullying and isolation challenges that could have derailed their academic and personal growth.

But as their mother wrote to me, it was the library that saved them.

Quote, I just want you to know how important the library was to both of my girls.

Having you on their side and providing them a place to seek refuge during the school day helped them to survive their two years at Madison.

I honestly do not know how my two would have survived, let alone thrived, without a couple of caring adults like you who accepted them for exactly who they were and let them be exactly who they needed to be.

Fourth through eighth grades were really quite traumatic for them socially with bullying and exclusion and humiliations that were never addressed properly by schools.

Without safe harbors like you provided, I think they could have easily gone down a very different path.

Stories like this remind me why I do this work.

It's not just about books or technology, it's about creating a safe space where every student can feel seen, supported, and valued.

As you're making decisions around staffing for next year, I urge you to maintain full-time secondary librarian positions.

By making librarians part-time, you're not just cutting hours, you're closing doors on student growth, safety, and potential.

Our students deserve well-resourced schools with open doors, not just in classrooms, but in the spaces where they find refuge and belonging.

Thank you.

President Topp, that was our 25th speaker to conclude testimony today.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

And thank you to everyone who gave their time this evening.

We had, I think, a record number, at least in my time, on the board of students speaking tonight, about 30%, which was really amazing to see.

So I appreciate them all coming and hearing from them.

We are going to now move into student board member comments as well.

So student board members joining us for a comment tonight.

Director Ilyas, Director Bray, either of you?

Nope.

Nope.

All right.

Perfect.

It's all right.

Well, then we will move right on to our board committee and liaison reports.

Do board director chairs or liaisons have any board reports for this evening?

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I have an update as legislative liaison.

It's attached to the meeting materials as an information item.

Sorry, I'm trying to open my.

So yes, I encourage you to read it.

trying to save time by putting it in writing instead of having to read all of it.

But legislative session has started.

And it's just, there's no easing into it.

It just starts.

And so I've included in this memo the items that Dr. Jones spoke on our behalf in support of Executive Director Tricia Lubach of WASDA, Washington State School Director Association, who also represents us.

Also spoke in favor as did a number of other superintendents and community members.

Those high priority school funding bills that Dr. Jones mentioned also are aligned with what some people call the big three that a lot of districts are aligning around that address the three largest sources of school district deficits across the state, which is transportation, special education, and MSOC.

That stands for materials, supplies, and operating costs.

For our district, special education is the largest deficit, source of deficit, student transportation is second, and then MSOC.

For a lot of other districts across the state, MSOC is the bigger deficit, and transportation is less of an issue for them, but they're collectively our kind of big three across the state.

The rest of what I included, Here is a compilation of rights and protections that we have in place for LGBTQ plus students and for immigrant students.

As one of our speakers said and Dr. Jones noted, these are two student populations that are likely to and already have been had their safety, security, identity, and access to education threatened.

And so I pulled together some data about students and our existing rights protections and policies that we have for gender inclusive schools, including the information that the WIAA Gender Diverse Youth Sports Inclusivity Toolkit is supported by every major professional sports team in our area and has been in place since 2007. In that time, there have been fewer than 10 complaints regarding transgender athletes, and almost all of them were resolved as being unfounded or inaccurate, which is to say, we don't need to speculate whether or not having transgender students playing sports that align with their gender identity harms other students.

We know that it doesn't.

We already know that.

And, in fact, not allowing those students to participate as they identify does harm them.

So there's more that you can find on our website, more that we've already said in policy, a little bit more.

We also signed in supporting two bills that pertain to protections and rights, including gender diversity.

And you can find more about that.

Regarding immigrant students, we have a policy already in existence that if a law enforcement officer comes to the school, they need to contact the principal.

And unless there is an exigent or emergency circumstance, a judicial warrant is required and must be reviewed by legal counsel, SPS legal counsel, before an immigration agent is permitted to access a district school.

OSPI, we're waiting for an updated statement and guidance from OSPI to support further protections and further adjustments that we need to make based on the that things may change.

But in this moment in time, and I know that our values and commitments are aligned with maintaining those rights and protections for students in Washington State and Seattle Public Schools.

So more about that in that update.

And I'm also going to send a version of this to our legislators.

So as different bills come to them, they can speak specifically on behalf of Seattle students.

And that is my update.

Thank you, Director Rankin, and thank you for your work in this legislative session.

It's critical as we try to get funding for our students.

Other directors have reports, board or committee reports or liaison reports.

Director Clark.

Yeah, so as the liaison for the city of Seattle, King County, and the FAP levy, I just wanted to let the board know that the first meeting is tomorrow that I'm attending, not of the committee.

They've been meeting for a while.

And so I'll have updates for you next month.

Thanks.

Thank you so much, Director Clark.

Looking at other directors.

All right, we are going to move to the tables.

Please bring your microphones to do our progress monitoring.

And then after progress monitoring, we'll take a quick recess and break.

All right.

Well, Director Hersey is going to be our progress monitoring lead and will facilitate this portion, but I will pass it over to Superintendent Jones now to begin in collaboration with Director Hersey.

All right, thank you.

We're moving into progress monitoring.

This is something we do monthly.

We're talking about college and career readiness.

And I have Drs.

Caleb Perkins and Dr. Mike Starofsky here as my copilots in this journey.

And I'm really pleased to talk about college and career readiness.

It's something that we've been very intentional about as we move through our current goals.

And this is one that we're seeing some good progress on.

I'd like to talk about this as our seventh formal opportunity to review student outcomes.

And during tonight's presentation, I want to summarize our theory of action for both for the goals and also share results.

And then I'll review what the data is telling us, particularly in the areas of graduation, advanced coursework, and waivers, and how it's informing the strategies that we are taking.

Slide two, please.

Tonight, for the class of 2024, we will be reporting on the progress that we've made with the four-year graduation rate, the top-line measure, which is the percentage of students who graduate on time and complete at least one advanced course, the percentage of students who passed at least one advanced ELA course, and the percentage of students who passed at least one advanced math course.

You all received memos last week, and as a result, I'm going to proceed with outlining our theory of action for helping students graduate college, career, and life ready before highlighting the executive summary and sharing the data and discussing what we are seeing.

Slide three, please.

So let me start by reading our theory of action for helping students graduate college and career life ready.

If Seattle Public Schools central office staff, school leaders, and educators provide high quality tier one instruction, remove systemic barriers, and leverage Seattle's many assets, then African American boys and teens will experience improved access to and succeed success in core courses, advanced courses, and graduation pathways.

This will increase their likelihood of success in a variety of post-secondary pathways and careers after graduating from SPS.

More recently, we have focused on the following specific levers to improve college and career related student outcomes within five broad areas.

Inclusionary practices, curriculum embedded assessments, the use of CCR, college and career readiness data, continuous school improvement plans, or as we refer to them as CSIPs, that are aligned with school strategies and grading for equity.

These five areas are directly connected to the advanced coursework and graduation data in this memo, particularly with respect to improving tier one instruction in these grades and will be the focus of the analysis for this progress monitoring update.

there is a direct connect between the work being done in our schools in these five areas and our top line measure.

So in an aggregate, we believe that these are working.

And we track these specific levers through inputs, outputs, and outcome data.

I will now quickly review the executive summary before sharing data and discussing what we are seeing.

One, we are focused on graduation data and advanced coursework completion, the two components of our top line measure, and given their correlation with post-secondary success.

So we believe the graduation data combined with advanced coursework completion has impact on post-secondary readiness.

In looking at SPS data for our top-line measure, we've exceeded the strategic plan's five-year target for African-American male students.

For students of color furthest from educational justice, we have missed the five-year target by 1.1%.

The data also indicates that African-American male students have had more success in accessing and completing advanced coursework.

I think that's important to talk about not just access, but also completion.

in both ELA and math.

For math in particular, African-American male students and students of color furthest from educational justice have increased their percentage of completing advanced courses by 4.3% and 1.2, respectively, from 2023 to 2024. Given this tremendous progress, I want to pause and thank all of the school leaders, educators, and staff, community members, and families who have helped put our students on the path to this tremendous progress.

I think this is something that we don't do at Seattle Public Schools too often is celebrate progress, even if it's incremental.

At the same time, our average overall graduation rate for the class of 2024 decreased, bless you, decreased by 1.5% when compared to the graduation rate for the class of 2023, though there was a small increase for African American students.

This is at least in part due to the welcome reduction in the use of state waivers for the class of 2024 when compared to the class of 2023. We will share more about that in later slides.

Next slide, please.

Let's look more closely at the trend over the past five years in our top-line measure, on-time graduation having completed at least one advanced course.

This chart, while it's not legible from where we're sitting, hopefully you have those at your desk, this chart illustrates the progress that we've made over the last five years and shows that we've exceeded the strategic plan's five-year target for African-American students, African-American male students.

The slight decline in students meeting graduation and advanced coursework, the key performance indicators from the class of 2023 to the class of 2024, is largely due to the decreases in students meeting the on-time graduation requirement than changes in students taking advanced courses.

Next slide, please.

So most impressively, we've made huge progress in students' access and success in advanced math over the past five years.

This increase has a number of positive effects for students, including that they are much more likely and able to enroll directly in college-bearing math courses when they start college, and thus will be more likely to compete in their degrees.

Just a note on that, many of our students enter into the community college system taking not college level courses, but more remedial courses.

And so them taking college level courses when they enter is very important.

So based on the previous analyses, the increase in math advanced coursework in math is largely due to an increase in the number of students who met the math pathway through college and high school coursework, including business math and pre-calculus.

One more.

Next slide, please.

So looking at slide seven, we shared a preview of this graduation data at our November 19th board meeting.

To reiterate, our overall graduation rate for the class of 2024 decreased by 1.5% when compared to the graduation rate of the class for 2023. Comparing 2024 to 2023 in other areas, there was a 0.8 increase for African American male students, a 2.5 decrease for students of color furthest from educational justice, and a 0.5 decrease for students with IEPs, and a 3.7 decrease for multilingual learners.

The trend in graduation rates for SPS students resembles that of other large urban districts who we compare ourselves to in other states.

This rate has gone up over the last several years, but has shown some recent declines.

Moreover, as we see in the next slides, the slight decreases are closely connected to a positive trend that SPS students are relying less on state waivers implemented during COVID.

Before we look at waiver data, I'd like to make it a point for everyone, including our community members who have tuned in on the role of waivers when it comes to students graduating from high school.

I'd like Dr. Perkins to kind of speak more about that, please.

Thank you very much, Dr. Jones.

Really grateful for the opportunity, given that there's been a number of comments and references to waivers over the last couple of board meetings, and I thought it would be helpful to provide this orientation.

So most notably, waiving graduation requirements has been something that's been available for decades for our high schools, usually in very specific, narrow circumstances, emergencies or logistical challenges.

And we've obviously tried to limit those waivers over the years to try to ensure that students' readiness is not being affected for post-secondary opportunities.

But just to give you a quick example, if a student transfers into Seattle Public Schools and did not follow the exact Seattle Public Schools scope and sequence for science, they might waive the very specific classes that we have because they've met the state requirements taking other science classes, meaning that they're still ready for post-secondary opportunities.

They just haven't followed those specific pieces.

That said, this chart really tries to highlight the use of waivers in the past few years, which have changed and will change again very soon, given the changes from the state that are happening right now.

The first two rows I'd like to draw your attention to.

These are the ones, the waivers that were implemented during the pandemic when the state decided to provide the option of having students have some core requirements and the new graduation pathways to be waived.

It should be noted that we as a system could not just hand these out.

We had to go through a very formal process, in particular documenting that these students had the opportunity to meet these requirements.

So there was a high bar already.

At the same time, I want to also note that these first two waivers are no longer available.

The class of 2024 was the last group to access these, which is important, as we think, obviously, about the goals you're considering tonight.

Finally, I just want to share, regardless of whether these are available, we should not rely on these going forward, even if they are, given our collective concern about readiness.

We want students to complete core requirements as well as the graduation pathway.

That's why we've labeled that connection to readiness in terms of high and red, in terms of something we want to make sure going forward we do not rely on.

The next row is also about state waivers, but it's related to elective credits.

This is the challenge of having students meet 24 credits when in most of our schools they only have 24 credit earning opportunities.

We also want to limit these waivers.

They're not as concerning as the top two rows, but still concerning.

But it's because it's important for students to have success in both their electives and core requirements.

Other waivers, we attest, are less connected to readiness.

They're more about like that science example I gave you, where students are transferring in from all other districts or states, and we enable them to meet the state graduation requirements without meeting some specific local requirements.

And finally, I'll note that there is the service learning waiver that has been heavily relied on since the start of COVID and has continued over the last couple of years.

This expanded significantly given the challenge in providing service learning opportunities.

I do believe it warrants, as some board members have said in the past, a longer conversation.

That's not the focus tonight, but I think it's a healthy conversation for future board meetings.

So with that, I would like to turn to the actual data.

So hopefully this orientation is helpful in terms of there's a basic sense of some kinds of waivers are perfectly appropriate and not connected to readiness and others that we really want to make sure we limit, especially as we think forward to the future goals.

With your permission, Dr. Jones, I'll continue.

Along with meeting our top line measure, if we can go to the next slide, the really encouraging thing that we're seeing from the class of 2023, which is really kind of a high watermark in terms of relying on waivers, to the class of 2024 is schools are already adjusting.

They're adjusting to the fact that they know waivers are going away, that the state is making them more restrictive for the class of 2024. And you can see this significant drop.

So this is just for pathways, the graduation pathways, which is a reminder that's either passing ELA and math test or getting advanced coursework in those two areas or CTE or things like the ASVAB military test.

And we see schools across our district who made sure that the class of 2024 had many more opportunities.

They improved their scheduling, in part because of the focus from the board, but also their own work.

So you see that, just as an example, overall for African-American male students, 21.7% of African-American male students who graduated in the class of 2023 got a pathway waiver, and that dropped significantly to 7.8%.

And it will need to fall to 0% for the class of 2024. And if I could just take a moment, I'll share just in one of my reviews and visits to schools, I had a great conversation with Principal Morales and Rachel Evans at Chief Self High School, and they are already well ahead of the game in terms of making sure that the class of 2025 has many more opportunities so that these waivers are not necessary.

So with that, I think there's a lot more work to be done.

We just have to keep an eye on this.

As these waivers go away, we're going to have to double down on the strategies.

If we go to the final slide.

I'll take it.

And so since our last progress monitoring update, we want to share some of the latest lessons learned with different strategic levers that are in use.

First being inclusionary practices.

So not surprisingly, schools who have moved to an inclusive approach to advanced course scheduling have shown significant increases in advanced coursework completion.

A couple of examples, IB for All at Ingram with Chief Self, what Dr. Perkins just talked about, and Rainier Beach.

Second is the implementation of curriculum embedded assessments.

You've heard us talk about that, and we've really tried to push into that.

This has given us the ability to collect more system-wide data on how students are doing in algebra, geometry, algebra 2, and chemistry courses, given the regular district-wide administration of curriculum embedded assessments.

This data will enable us to better support students in completing these credits.

Third, as a part of our CSIP aligned school strategies, our schools are successfully using tutoring, mentoring, and other additional supports to encourage students to take advanced courses and support them in completing those courses.

Finally, ATLAS data usage reports illustrate that school staff rely heavily on these reports to ensure students are on track to graduate, particularly during second semester.

So before I transition to Director Hersey for discussion and questions, I want to conclude by thanking the board for providing a framework in which we can formally monitor how our students are doing.

By establishing a robust assessment portfolio of measures and implementing curriculum embedded assessments, our system is able to do better and have better understanding of student learning, which helps to inform us around what type of supports we need to provide.

So now I'll transition to Director Hersey to facilitate some questions and discussions.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Thank you, Superintendent Jones and senior staff, board members.

You know the protocol.

If you would just turn your name placard upward if you have a question, and I will be more than happy to acknowledge you.

Director Mizrahi.

You mentioned on slide seven that the slight dip in the overall graduation data was in line with similar districts.

And I'm wondering about if that is also true of the more successful data on page six and page five, if we're seeing a national trend or if we're really setting the trend with the success.

So I think we're seeing some districts have better success, but I think that's unique to us in terms of the trends.

So Dr. Perkins, if you can add some color to that, I think there's some specific things that we're doing that other districts aren't, and that's why we're seeing some of that success.

But correct me if I'm wrong there.

Spot on.

In terms of the graduation rate, it's a slight dip that we're seeing across, like the graduation rates have been going up across urban districts.

What is unique for Seattle is that our increase in access to advanced coursework significantly outpaces our comparable districts.

I mean, the statistic that we went from about, I think it's about 17% of African-American male students six years ago to now about 51% who take and pass advanced math classes, that's well beyond most of our comparable districts.

And I think that combination of take and pass is something also unique to Seattle.

We pride ourselves, even when I was an honor student, to take the courses.

But we didn't necessarily have that intentionality behind completing those courses.

And I think that's a really important element that we're doing that's not necessarily unique to Seattle, but it's rare.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate that distinction too.

It's not just having access, but being prepared to take advantage of the access and getting to the end of it to get the benefit of that learning is really important.

I...

This is a question I'm sure we probably addressed at some point, and I have just forgotten what the answer is, and I asked it ahead of time, but I didn't see it, so forgive me if I missed it.

When we're looking at these, the percentage of students who graduate on time, Are we looking at the percentage of students who start their senior year and complete that year, or are we looking at them starting their ninth grade year and graduating on time, or something else?

I feel like that's something I should already know.

But I just realized I either don't know or can't remember.

And that seems important.

I don't know the answer to that question.

And I want Dr. Perkins to address it.

I was going to say, somebody here knows.

But I also want to ask a provocative question around what is it that we value about on-time graduation?

That's something I think is a question that we want to start to ask internally.

Why are we holding that as so valuable on time?

We understand we want students to persist, but I think through community college, We used to call them two-year institutions.

Now they're not two-year because most students take more than two years, even the traditional four-year institutions.

If you're an adult student coming back to school, you're probably going to take longer because of other obligations.

I don't know if that applies to us, but it's a question.

It's kind of a policy question that we might want to start asking.

But regarding the specific start date and stop date from when we're talking about the four years, if you have data on that, please.

Yeah, and it's so precise.

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

I'm going to read straight from our business intelligence team, who has the definition that was actually developed, I think, during the Obama administration, if Dr. Anderson might know this, to be standardized because of all the, frankly, game planning beforehand around how do we calculate.

So here it is.

Graduation rate is based on a cohort of students.

The cohort is made up of all students who start ninth grade together.

Students who transfer into or out of a school are added or removed from the cohort.

If students stop attending school, they're counted as dropouts.

If students have met graduation requirements, they were counted as graduates.

If students don't graduate but are still attending, they're considered continuing.

Anyway, I won't read all of it, but it's a very precise definition that we have to follow per the feds.

So just to reflect back, to make sure that I get tracking, so the, you know, what is the top?

86.5%, that's the number of students who graduated on time their senior year from the cohort that started with them in ninth grade.

So that would, that number, the number of students who didn't graduate on time would encompass students who left school before finishing and students who may not have finished graduation requirements are continuing.

Okay, thank you, thank you.

And to follow up with what Dr. Jones brought up, that was gonna be my next question, is on time graduation.

What that means and on time according to who, Especially with, I know I'm particularly interested in what that means for students with disabilities who have services extending past 18. What on time means for them and what we still provide and even what graduation means for them and whether or not those students are included.

That may just be an out loud wonder about our next goal.

We don't currently have on time in there, and I think that's probably good.

But also, What are, I guess, maybe this is more applicable to the goals conversation.

But, you know, we do, the kind of standard expectation is four years before you turn 19, I think.

So we don't want to penalize students who are going to take longer, but what impacts also would that have on funding and services for different groups of students?

So how do we, yeah, I guess I'm seconding your, what does on time mean and is that?

But I'm particularly interested in students with disabilities who have, who are in, I think right now there's a learning certificate instead of a diploma, which I find really is a problem.

But what graduation standards do we have for those students?

When do we expect on time to mean for them?

How do we ensure that they have met?

a standard of graduation, and then how do we kind of mesh the, there's legislation now to require services to continue to be provided for students with disabilities to the end of the school year if they turn 22 during the school year.

So that's maybe, I'm way out of our protocol on this, but that's sort of what this is bringing up, is what do we mean by on time, and then if we're going to consider something different for the next, or we already don't have on time, all those different factors.

So apologies, I have taken us far afield.

If I may, I think that's extraordinarily appropriate for what we're talking about in light of the conversation we're going to have about goals.

And when we started talking about college and career readiness, it's tremendously important that we understand what that means.

If we have artificial time barriers, to get our students ready.

Did we create those, or is there something behind that?

When we start talking about waivers, I think we have used waivers in order to meet that four-year commitment.

But maybe our students didn't get, we didn't serve them fully along the way.

I think this is something that we can continue to think about.

I think it's provocative.

I think it's something that we can be a leader in.

I know our partners down south in Kent, they created a school called the iGrad school for that purpose, for kind of capturing students when their needs haven't been met fully by the Kent School District in that case.

And so I applaud them for having that foresight, and they did that about 10 years ago.

And they've seen good results from that.

So we can learn from our neighbors.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, so looking at the first strategic lever, the inclusionary practices, and you were speaking to this earlier with the success we've had of students not just enrolling but passing.

And it makes sense that if you brought in the access to rigorous course load that we're going to see an increase in numbers.

The way that that's worded, the schools who have moved to an inclusive approach, implies to me that there are schools that haven't yet.

And I'm wondering if there's a plan to broaden that out to other schools since it is seemingly successful.

And I think the implication that some schools are more committed to others may have been maybe misstated.

But there are mechanisms such as IB, college in a high school, that high schools have taken on that are yielding that is synonymous with commitment to a different path.

Other high schools are absolutely committed to this.

But these schools actually have mechanisms for students' pathways for them to get on that track.

And so I think that's really what we're talking about in terms of commitment.

And so I also believe that there's All of our high schools have this commitment for students to persist, for them to matriculate.

But again, those who have these unique, special, progressive programs, we're seeing the best outcomes.

Do you have something, Ed?

The danger of the EG is that it makes that implication that's not accurate.

Nearly every one of our other high schools has also shown a dramatic increase just through college and the high school or advanced placement, not IB.

Director Clark.

Hello.

So I just, on page three of the memo, and I guess looking at also the data on slide, is it two, looking at the interim goals, I was just curious if you could say a little bit more about why you chose the status of yellow.

which says interim metrics indicate conflicting evidence regarding whether results will be delivered.

Thank you.

It's just being a bit cautious in the sense that we actually exceeded the target by 12% for African-American male students.

We missed it by 1.1% for students of color for some educational justice.

So perhaps we were too conservative there.

And yeah, that's awesome.

OK.

But what about for the interim measures?

The interim measures based on the November update we shared with you were a little below our targets.

So that's also what contributes to the let's write.

OK.

Thank you for reminding me.

Director, do you have it?

OK.

Any other questions for the superintendent?

OK.

Seeing none, we may proceed.

All right, we are going to take a seven-minute recess.

We'll reconvene at 7 o'clock back up on the dais.

So you will need to bring your microphone back up and reconvene at 7. Thank you.

We have now reached the consent portion of our agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

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

All right, seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

The consent agenda has passed unanimously.

Thank you.

We are going to now move back to the tables with our microphones to do the goals and guardrails, our evaluation, and everything else for this evening.

So one more move, and then we'll stay down there.

All right.

We will now move into the action item on today's agenda, the adoption of board policy number 0020, goals for the district, and 0025, guardrails for the district, and an amendment to board policy number 1010, oversight and progress monitoring.

Can I have a motion for this item?

Oh, boy, hold on.

I don't know what I'm supposed to say, but I'm just going to say I move to, oh, there we go.

Okay.

I move that the school board adopt board policy numbers 0020 and 0025 setting new goals and guardrails for the district and amend board policy number 1010 as attached to the board action report.

Second.

All right, thank you Vice President Briggs for the motion and for Director Mizrahi for the second.

Last year we worked through a sort of a multi-month process to hear from community about the vision for our students and the values for our district that serves them.

Director Rankin helped set that up and really led that deep engagement process.

And we heard really about a strong start, the need to prioritize equitable access to high quality instruction, the importance of social emotional learning and social justice, and preparing our students to be global citizens, achieve their goals.

We then kicked off our work to develop our goals and guardrails reflective of what we heard from the community.

And all this work accumulated into Director Rankin's sponsorship of the board action report that is before us, with two proposed district goals and five proposed guardrails.

We reviewed these for introduction at our December meeting, and then from there we conducted additional engagement.

This engagement included It was very fast, and it wasn't as perfect as I think we all would have preferred.

We tried to reach back out to the organizations that we'd previously reached out.

We had a few misfires there, but trying to make up for some of that.

We put an online survey out there for 10 days that had a surprising number of feedback as well as three engagement sessions two in person one in the north one in the south and one online session the themes from these engagement sessions were pulled together by staff and collated and sent out to board directors and they've also been posted online as part of the board action report And some of the sort of themes that we heard, again, was this strong start, strong finish, a little bit about targets being more ambitious.

Community members were also largely supportive of the guardrails, but maybe concerned about some of the vague language, how the guardrail for equitable access might be interpreted by a about interpreted to reduce programming opportunities.

I think there was some concern about what happened to the math goal, a range of things.

And in order for us to try to show that we are doing authentic engagement and listening to what we and reflecting upon what we heard, I hope that tonight we will have a discussion more on refining our goals and guardrails based on this most recent engagement.

And that while we do not have formal amendments before us tonight, we work through some of this language and get to a place where we feel comfortable.

And then I intend to call a special meeting next week to finalize our goals and guardrails based on tonight's discussion and proposed changes.

To that end, I'm going to plan that at the end of tonight's discussion, we make a vote and a motion to postpone action on this item to a board special meeting to be scheduled for January 29, 2025. With that, I want to kind of start going through our discussion.

We have staff here to help us with some of the technical questions that we may have, and I'm just gonna go in order with goal one, goal two, any additional goals that we may want to discuss, and then we'll go to the guardrails.

So with that, let's start with goal.

President Topp, sorry.

I have a procedural question, if I may, that may have already been addressed, and I just missed it.

because we have to consider a motion, we have to, you know, motion the action item and second it, would it be appropriate to make a motion to table the vote right now and kind of close that and then have the discussion?

Or do we need to wait?

We don't need to table it.

So what we will do at the end here is, I'm looking for my language, We don't need to table it.

We need to postpone it.

So at the end of our discussion, I will ask for a motion to postpone the action item and second, and we will vote then.

Perfect.

Got it.

Thank you.

So with that, let's move to the goal one, our second grade literacy goal.

Some of the things that we heard were really about the clarification, or really was 10% ambitious enough.

And Director Rankin, this is something that you really heard and brought up.

And I'm wondering if you will speak to this potential change.

Yes, thank you.

I'd be happy to.

I would like us to consider, and I know Director Briggs had the same consideration, that 10%, in reflection with what our community said, is not ambitious enough, and would that 10%, I would argue that the 10% would not push the changes to our system that we want to see and that our community is asking for, and that a 15% goal would be more appropriate.

I would actually argue for higher than that, but I want it to be reachable.

I also, in looking at the breakdown of, did a little Excel spreadsheet analysis on what it would look like across different student groups for a 10% increase across all student groups consistently.

making significant changes and a 10% growth across students from educational justice first, or what would happen if we had 10% growth and it reached the groups of students who tend to be already meeting those goals first before it reached other students.

And from that kind of...

came to the conclusion that a 10% goal could be met without significant change to students of color and students in poverty, and that if we want to see our system make this shift towards closing that gap, a 15% goal would push more change to improve outcomes for all groups, but to make sure that we're not excluding groups.

So based on that, plus just what we heard from community of, like, our kids really need us to make big changes to support them.

I feel like 15 is the minimum we should expect at the end of five years.

For, yeah.

Do folks have comments or thoughts on that?

Director Briggs.

This is a question I actually submitted that didn't get answered.

It might sound crazy, but it actually echoes what somebody, one of the commenters tonight, one of the public testimony speakers, said, which was that the one who was like a 30 year first grade teacher, and he said all kids can learn how to read, and so would we accept, would it be acceptable for a classroom teacher to say, oh, a third of my class can't read?

I really, I really feel like that number should be like closer to 95%, frankly, and if, you know, If it's not a shortcoming of the students, which we know it's not, then it means we're not allocating resources to provide that level of instruction that would get us to that level.

So I'm asking, what would a budget look like that made it a priority to ensure that all second and third grade kids knew how to read?

And it's sort of hypothetical, but also not really.

I mean, I'm saying it's hypothetical because it's an extreme jump from what we're talking about, but I actually, I'm having a hard time accepting the lower bar.

Director Briggs, just to clarify, is that a question you want staff to address?

Yeah, and I don't mean like what a line item budget.

I understand that's not practical right now and that's not the stage of budget planning that we're at.

But like I would love high level to know what would need to shift in our budget to allocate enough resources such that we were ensuring literacy for something like 95% of kids in our system.

Dr. Jones.

That's a world peace question, but I'm going to ask Dr. Anderson to kind of speak to it from a statistical perspective and what's kind of how we came up with 2% per year.

And then ultimately, Dr. Buddleman will kind of speak to some of the trade-offs that we'll need to make.

Not now, not now.

I was thinking in the budget presentation part.

But if you'd like him to speak now, that's fine too.

But Dr. Anderson, kind of speak to Director Briggs' statement.

Dr. Anderson, can we get there?

Sorry, before we do that, is there any way we could put the text of the proposed goal up on the screen?

Ms. Wilson-Jones, is that at all possible?

Yes, looks like we're going to have it here shortly.

Can you guys hear me?

Okay, Eric Anderson, Director of Research and Evaluation, good to be here.

So I think the first key point to recognize is that the goal or the target is not the vision.

The vision is we want all or 95%, probably 100% of our students to be successful in early literacy, et cetera.

The goal is how much progress we're going to make towards that vision over the next five years, right?

And so that's one way to take the edge off of this feeling like, wait a minute, this is all we can do.

And I think one of the things that I thought personally resonated with me a lot having been in the school district for about 15 years and never seen us really reach, we've made some progress in certain areas, so don't get me wrong, but really like hit it out of the park with something is that you guys said one of the reasons why we want one goal or two goals is we want to really prove that we can be successful.

And being successful means you have to set something that's ambitious but also realistic.

And so obviously, it's your job to balance that.

And that's what this discussion was for.

But I think keeping those things in mind can maybe help you get to a place of understanding that this is not the end all of where we're going.

This is a journey, Dr. Jones often says.

And with your permission, I'd just like to speak just a little bit to the analysis that was provided by Director Rankin, because it was super helpful.

So thank you for doing that.

put together some data from OSPI around our students in grades three through eight in the LA, and basically looked through a couple scenarios on how targets might play out, assuming, like, different thresholds.

So based on the way you did it, it kind of says, well, this doesn't seem to be playing out very well.

But I think there is something you guys want to consider that would be maybe consistent with how sometimes this is done is...

you have a universal goal for all students, and it might be 10 points, but then you have differential targets for other student groups based on their starting point.

And so actually, if you play this out, it might be, it turns out, just using the data that you gave us, I think it was a 64% baseline for all students.

Sorry, could we actually...

make it available for, I don't know if it matters, for people to see what we're talking about so it doesn't sound like there's some secret document that I sent you?

Yeah, I don't know that it'll help to visualize because there's a lot of numbers, but let me just see if I can boil it down really quickly.

And then we can provide it to board directors after and include it in our meeting minutes.

So...

I think the baseline for all students in the example you had was 64%.

So a 10-point gain over five years would be 74%, right?

But then you looked at what if we set targets for low-income free and reduced lunch students versus non-FRL students, right?

If you had a differential approach, first of all, the baseline for non-FRL students is already 86%.

It's above what the five-year target would be.

So it might be reasonable to say, we want all students to grow, but do we need those students to grow by 10 points, by two points every year.

It might be reasonable to say, we want them to at least grow one point a year and make it to close to 90%, right?

And that would be a pretty high percentage.

It turns out mathematically, if you said, what if they only grew by 5%, how much would the FRL students need to grow over the same period?

It turns out mathematically, they'd have to grow by 20%.

And so that all of a sudden seems like, okay, what didn't seem very ambitious through the lens of all students, but really the target is, We need to grow by 20 points, which is four points consistently every year compounded with our target group.

And so that was really how we approached, because I've looked at data for years.

I know that moving the numbers with all students is really hard.

It is also hard with targeted groups, but to close the gap, which is we want all students to improve, but we also want to close the gap.

And that way, all kids are improving, but you're also narrowing the point.

It turns out that if we did hit that target, a 20-point target for FRL and a five-point target for non-FRL, we would close the gap from 43 points to 28 points, and both groups would improve.

The other thing we have to remember is that it's new students every year.

So you're not looking at the kids who are in third grade making that growth every year.

You're looking at a new group, or second grade, excuse me, a new group of second graders.

But what I think is important is basically, how do we need to say it in the goal to make sure that we're clear that it's about all students and it's about students, it's about the gap.

And then so, because what we want to do is drive change in services, supports, and the experience of students in kindergarten and first grade so that three years from now, That group of second graders closes the gap because they've had the benefit of whatever is being provided in kindergarten and first grade.

So I guess the question would be, does just changing it from 10% to 15% help with that or not?

Does staff have a response and then I want to get to Director Hersey.

Go ahead.

I mean, again, through the lens of the goals, the targets you're setting, I played that out.

If it's you 15%, it might be that we would go for a 10-point target for FRL, and then mathematically, that would equate you to a 25-point target for, I'm sorry, 10-point for non-FRL and 25%.

points, that's five points every year.

That's pretty significant improvement.

You've seen how those numbers have changed over the last five years with our current goal, even though we're putting some significant investment.

So again, these are the things you need to do.

Is it about saying what our aspirations are?

Is it about trying to set a goal that we can achieve?

And then it's up to these guys to tell you, not my job, what we're going to do and how we're going to do it.

Director Hersey.

Go ahead.

So I wanted to also just touch on the how much it's going to cost scenario, and I want Dr. Starofsky to speak to that, and then please.

So this is just speaking generally.

For a 5% increase, we would be increasing the amount of instructional coaching that we would be having for our teachers.

We would have to scale the infrastructure to be able to do just now just this 5%, I'm just talking going from 10 to 15%.

DIBELS expansion, also curriculum adoption, after school learning, personalized learning for our students, not yet at standard, high dosage kinder tutoring.

So just having an expansive, taking what we're trying to do at the second grade already, what we've already shared, for potential investment, this would cost between 16 to 23 million dollars just to do this expansion, let alone getting to 20, 25%.

So when we're looking at the amount of investment that it would take that's impacting infrastructure, professional development, curriculum, is what we projected out and we have some of that a little bit detailed for you right now as we're sitting here today.

I appreciate that.

And I think that puts real numbers around what that additional 5% will cost us as we look at our budget.

Director Hersey?

Yeah.

And a lot of what I was going to share was pretty well articulated in the conversation.

But I just want folks to keep a couple of things in mind.

A, a 5% increase doesn't exist exclusively in a vacuum of this conversation.

And when we're thinking about what it looks like for us to attain a goal, We know full well that our students are very capable of really great and amazing growth.

As a second grade teacher, I've seen students make a year and a half of growth over the course of six months.

It depends on who the teacher is.

What I want folks to know, though, is that when we are looking at this, this isn't really a goal for our students as much as it is a goal for our systems and the way that we deliver education and the way that we are tracking how the strategies that we are utilizing are actually being implemented in the classroom.

Where I really want us to stay focused is that it is very easy to receive the feedback, and I am, you know, Subject to this as well, we should be going farther.

Our kids deserve better.

They 100% do.

They also deserve for us to be able to meet our goals in a capacity that we say that we're going to do them.

And I'm not certain that before, especially not before student outcomes focused governance, but for the time that I've been involved with the district, that we have done that.

And we have been able to say very clearly that the programs and the strategies that we've been putting in place have worked on a system-wide level.

So again, I am, and I know that this is probably not a shared sentiment, but I am really in the camp of figuring out, because in my mind, we have committed to the structure of student outcomes focused governance, We are now in a place to where if we are going to do this, we need to see in terms of the infrastructure that we build around it, how do we get from point A to B?

And as we learned from the goals that we set back in 2021 that were incredibly lofty, and yet we are still making progress too in some ways, but are still very much so not making progress in others.

And in fact, we're retreating from where we need to be.

It really brings me pause to see that, okay, we have experts that have done a lot of study and a lot of thought around what does it look like for our system to go from where we are now to a reasonable and realistic goal to now because of a conversation that we are having, we are pushing back and raising that goal.

I think that...

If we are in that position, we also as a board need to be really courageous because we have had several conversations with our coaches from the Council of Great City Schools that have quite frankly said, the best way to reach a goal in a specific grade is to reduce resources in another.

And what I mean by that, is that it has been suggested that, okay, if you want to increase your reading comprehension scores or whatever the case may be in second grade, that means that the top end of the scale, 12th and 11th grade or whatever grade, you are going to have to pull resources from somewhere.

I don't know what that looks like.

I don't know what that means or how that would actually show up in a conversation that we would need to be having.

But what I'm saying is it's almost like receiving an unfunded mandate from, you know, everybody's favorite branch of government here in Washington.

You can't just say, oh, you have to do X, but then we're not going to actually make the move in allocating additional resources to that.

So I just want to be super clear that I am all for increasing a specific goal that we have set out.

I think we also need to be really clear on, does our board and our community have the courage necessary to double down on this?

Because what I don't want to be is in a situation to where we have pushed a goal so high or to a point to where now we are in a situation where we are not going to meet this goal, right, that we've set that is higher than what we anticipated, and our system is not changing at a pace necessary to even get close to it.

I would much rather look at this as an opportunity to cement our structures, to really dig into what does it mean to implement and succeed in a goal in a specific timeline.

Because quite frankly, we don't have a lot of good track record and experience in doing that.

So I just want to offer that as a person who has spent a considerable amount of my career in the classroom.

Anecdotally, yes, students can make growth 30 40 50 percent and sometimes even greater than that over the course of a year a massive 1.5 billion dollar system with a lot of adults that have their own opinions and their own paces and how they do things when you're looking at systems of that scale seeing that type of growth is rare it is incredibly rare and i i can't think of a good example of a district that's been able to do that

Thank you, Director Hersey before, Director Briggs or Rankin, directors who we haven't heard from anything.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, Dr. Anderson, what you were saying about the differentiation, is that something that you think could or should be spelled out in a goal?

Or do you think that if we were to set a target of 10% or 15%, that that would be implicit in how you all would be receiving direction on how to achieve that goal?

It probably could be done either way, but I think given where we are, and if you would give us the latitude, we would come back with you.

This is how we're planning to report our progress, and this is how we plan to differentiate those targets.

But you guys would formally approve the top line all students goal, and we would build from there.

But it's a question for you whether you want to add that structure to the goal itself.

That's your call probably.

I mean, I think we want to do it, we want to replicate that in parallel with the interims.

So however we're approaching the top line, we would do it similarly.

And one thing, so that was my question.

I think, Director Hersey, I think that I agree with what you were saying around, you know, I think it's hard for us to look at each other, look at community, think about ourselves as like, we want to set this goal that doesn't get to where we think students deserve to be.

However, I think we also need something that we can You were saying it from the positive standpoint of something that we can achieve.

I agree with that, but I'll also frame it from the negative.

Something that we can hold ourselves accountable to.

Because if your goal is too ambitious, it makes it impossible for us to say we didn't meet it.

Because they say, well, we didn't meet it, but we always knew that we couldn't meet this anyway.

It was an aspirational goal.

I want something that we can achieve.

And then also that if we don't achieve it, we can say, well, what the heck happened?

So I'm just, generally, I'm really on the fence right now.

I'm hearing both good arguments and good comments from everybody around the table.

One thing that you said, Director Hersey, that kind of gave me pause, was just talking about the length of time that you've been serving in the role that you have and that we still haven't narrowed down on really getting an understanding of what are the interventions that we're doing that are actually working and that It's our responsibility to do that.

Narrowing down on those targets, that's how we're gonna help increase student outcomes, is by understanding what those exact interventions are.

I don't have...

a good sense of whether or not increasing the, keeping the percentage for the same or increasing it is going to impede our ability to be able to hone in on what strategies are working, what strategies aren't working.

But I just wanted to share my thoughts on that.

Director Rankin.

Thanks.

Well, let's see.

We know that I'm not here to be liked.

we haven't been brave enough, like flat out.

We haven't made progress because we haven't held anybody accountable to making progress.

We have, we adopted SOFG three years ago, but we didn't start, we didn't start doing regular progress monitoring until last year.

We didn't start asking the questions about what's working and what's not and what do we need to do to move the needle.

We didn't start doing that three years ago.

We've just gotten in the practice of that.

We also had a board that was totally misaligned and even agreeing what the role of board governance was, much less actually adhering to the commitments in the framework that we've adopted.

So we haven't succeeded because we haven't been doing it.

We're in a place, a much better place now where we're actually doing it.

And I do want to know what would it take to improve the students by this percentage?

And then we can talk about if we're willing to give those things up.

How much did we think we could get by closing and consolidating however many schools, 20 whatever million dollars?

That's a lot of second grade reading.

And we didn't do it.

We didn't have the real conversation about the trade-offs, about smaller number of schools, larger number of schools.

That whole conversation was not to close the budget gap.

That was to free up resources for children.

And we blew it.

So I don't care if it's 10% or 15%.

I want to know, what does it take to meet the needs of students?

And what changes are we willing to make as a system to give kids the access to the education that they deserve?

And how do we do that within the budget that we have?

Whether we get money from the legislature or not, our obligation to kids doesn't change.

But right now, what we've done is not actually talked about it, increased class sizes in secondary, Way overcrowded in secondary.

Kids don't have access to electives and all this stuff because we sort of shuffled numbers around to balance a budget without thinking about the impact to students and the student outcomes.

So 10%, 15%, you know, it doesn't matter.

What matters is that we're actually holding ourselves to a standard of making the changes we need to make to yield changes in student outcomes.

Because if we do everything the same way we've always done it, we're going to have the same results.

All right, I see lots of cards.

We're only on goal one.

So I want, yeah, okay, there's two.

Yeah, but you two will say something and more cards will pop up.

But I do, I both want you to, I want to give you both an opportunity to speak, but I want to then, as we move through these other goals, we are not taking, reminding folks, we're not taking action tonight.

This is a discussion.

We will take action in about a week.

So, and have an opportunity to kind of vote on some amendments here to some language.

So, with that, Director Briggs.

Thank you.

I mostly...

The majority of what I wanted to say was already stated by Liza.

I think the point I just really want to drill down on is that this conversation is so important because where we put our resources is where we will see change.

And that's really what I'm driving at right now.

So we need to know, yes, we do need to know what are the strategies that we're doing that are working, that are having an impact.

We can get there faster if we put more resources toward figuring that out.

And we do need to have concrete numbers so that community and us can know what is the tradeoff because I am under no delusion that there won't be major tradeoffs involved because we have finite resources.

But we still need to know what does that actually look like.

If we want to move the needle, this much, then what does that cost us and what do we have to sacrifice?

And that is exactly the conversation that this is.

That is exactly what this conversation is.

And it is so critical that we know exactly what we're talking about here.

Because, again, where we put our resources is where we will see change.

Director Hersey.

Yeah, really quickly, and with love, I just want to push back a little bit on the last part of what you were sharing, Liza, because it's like, I think that's where we got into trouble last time, or at least where I'm holding myself accountable, is that like, to me, it does matter on whether it's like 10 or 15%, because like, again this conversation just cannot exist in a vacuum of the boardroom right like there as we just heard is a massive financial difference between having a goal of 10 and 15 and so that's what i just want us as a board and really to like lift up evan's point it's like the this conversation is critical and i just don't want it to be like oh like you know, yes, you are right.

We are not pushing our system far enough to get the outcomes that we need to get for students because it's just, it's much more complicated than that, especially when you take into consideration how implementing systems year over year compound for the instructional quality that a student receives depending on the grade level.

I just want us to be really cognizant about what that five point difference is over the course of five years and what that actually looks like in terms of resource allocation for the system.

And also, do we have any examples of districts in our financial situation with our current data like size with the same or similar numbers of free and reduced lunch of districts that have made that type of growth?

do we have a model that we can look to to potentially replicate or at least use as a guide for how we need to get there, what steps need to happen in any particular year?

It's just as much more complicated than raising a goal from, and I'm not saying that anybody is minimizing this, but just I want to put it on the table that it's much more complicated than raising a goal from 10% to 15% for a system of this size.

Director Hersey, is that a question for staff that staff wants?

No.

No, okay.

I know I put another thing up, but it'll be really quick.

So the next one we're going to talk about is very similar.

So maybe you could go say it next, or is it specific?

It's specific to what Director Hersey just said, which is not to say that I don't think it matters if we have 10. I just want to clarify.

I'm not saying I don't think it matters.

I get that there have different implications.

The reason that I'm proposing a change is not because I feel very strongly about 15% over 10%.

It's because I feel very strongly about a meaningful target that's going to allow us to hold the system accountable for the change that we want to see.

If we think we can do that with 10%, fine.

If we need 15% to push us a little more, And really what we're looking for is not perfection, but progress.

When we do progress monitoring, it's to see growth.

So we're not gonna give everybody an F if we don't hit the target, but we're all going to have failed if we can't make changes to make progress.

So just to clarify, the Tether 15 to me is, I wanna know what the right target is for us to move the needle in a meaningful way.

All right.

Thank you.

So we're going to move on to goal two, which is the life-ready goal.

And some of the themes we heard from community, again, is around the percentage change.

Is 10% enough?

Should we, for this one, move to 15?

And I think, Liza, again, this is a suggestion that you've brought forward.

So I will give you the opportunity to speak to it.

Thank you.

Yeah, kind of similar.

How do we make sure that we're actually going to push the system to make changes for the students for whom we want to see the growth?

I am...

I have other questions about this, too.

I actually proposed, well, if we were going to vote tonight, it would have been proposed as an amendment, but since...

Wait, wait, let's...

Oh, are we going to...

Yeah, that will be...

So I have questions about, that I'll wait for, that have to do with, depending on what our baseline is going to be, whether or not 10% or 15%...

feels right.

But I was getting at the same thing.

Does 10% push us enough or would 15% be more meaningful in progress?

Does anyone have any additional comments they want to add to this sort of percentage here in the life ready?

Then why don't you talk to your second proposal, Director Incan.

Thank you.

Is there a way to put the suggested language up on the board so people can see it as well as...

So while we're looking at that maybe, the question that I had was in December, and it was addressed a little bit during progress monitoring, but in December, the conversation that we had, or where we had arrived at, was that it seemed as though by the time we got the version that was introduced, officially introduction, we all seemed to align around the fact that what we're looking for is not just that you graduate, but that students are prepared and that we were all kind of in agreement or shared understanding that specifying without waivers would help us make that distinction between simply graduating or actually being prepared.

But then we learned more about waivers, both in our board retreat and again tonight.

And so the question, I'm not suggesting that we change what the goal is, but what I really want to understand, because I want to, again, make sure that we are asking the question in the right way to drive the change that we want, is waivers don't seem to, the waiver that's being used the most is the service learning waiver.

And I definitely wouldn't want to put in something that would keep students from graduating.

I don't want to say, like, they have to graduate without waivers, and then for the unintended consequence to that be, we're not allowing waivers for the service learning, and now a third of kids are not going to graduate if they haven't done 60 community service hours.

So that, and then also...

the High School and Beyond Plan has a whole bunch of measures built into it, and a statewide tool is being rolled out and paid for by the state that we don't have access to now, but we will.

And so would the way that the high, in your, in the opinion of the professionals who work with these things every day, is does having the consistent with the high school and beyond plan already build in the readiness portion that we're looking for?

And maybe did waivers become sort of a distraction?

Like, how do we want to make sure that kids are ready And if waivers isn't the right thing to do that, I don't want to have it in there.

I want to make sure that we have the right measure for how do we know that students are ready, know what they want to do next, and are prepared to take steps.

Can I paraphrase the question for staff?

Please do.

So I think the question is, from what we've learned from waivers, which I think has been extremely helpful, I think the wording in our current goal is not quite what we want it to be.

What would your professional recommendation be, knowing that what we want to measure is, you know, is a student ready?

Yes.

I do.

And it's obviously an important question and a challenging one.

For what it's worth, just by putting in waivers, we're not preventing anybody from graduating.

Just like our top line measure said, graduation and having completed an advanced course.

We didn't block anybody from graduating if they didn't get an advanced course.

Just to clarify that.

But that said, I hear your point.

I will say that the state changes its mind almost every year in terms of how things are.

So I think moving away from waivers is a generally healthy thing.

But let me say two points about the High School Beyond Plan and then how you think about it.

Because what I've heard very clearly from our conversations is that you want students not only to meet the graduation requirements, of course, but to have a plan and to start implementing it, meaning to show that they're actually ready.

Those three things.

In terms of the second, just to orient everybody, the High School and Beyond Plan requires you have to have students identify career goals and interests, post-secondary education and training goals, an academic plan to do that, knowledge of financial aid, and a resume.

So do we want all of our students to be able to do those things?

And would it be helpful to have that be part of a top line goal?

I think so.

Have we fully leveraged the power of that?

Absolutely not.

And could this really galvanize that?

I think so.

If you're asking, I think it would be great to include the High School and Beyond Plan and those really very specific components and do a better job of ensuring, given our student board members who talked the last time about how they didn't even hear about it, right?

The additional piece that I'll just put out there is what do you want to look for to see a student is already showing that they're ready to start doing it?

And is that coursework completion in a particular area?

Is that a work-based learning experience?

Is that a post-secondary application?

All of those are measurable.

All those are doable.

And those are the options I think you have in terms of whether you want to add that component.

Something that they do something specific to show that they're actually starting to implement that plan.

And so that part is or isn't already kind of baked into the high school and beyond plan.

In my estimation, it's not.

By simply identifying your career interests, identifying your plans, you're not necessarily starting to implement those plans.

It would be an additional step.

So updated language would look like those components of the high school and beyond plan plus implementation in one of these three measurable ways.

Well, I think if we, I mean if the high school and beyond, I'm sorry, If the High School and Beyond Plan is already in there, we don't need to list out the bullets.

My question is really, the High School and Beyond Plan, the measures that are contained in that already, is that sufficient to demonstrate readiness, or do we need something else?

And then similar to the waivers, because it seems like we could either leave it as it is or remove the waiver part, unless we're just so far off.

But I would love to hear what a student has to say, too, about that.

Let's do staff and then we'll go to students here real fast.

So just I asked Dr. Perkins to say what those four elements again are so we can hear it again.

Are these kind of readiness criterion?

So please.

So identification of career goals, identification of post-secondary plans, a course taking plan for the time they're in middle and high school, knowledge of financial aid, and a resume.

The only thing in there that's actually doing pieces is the resume component.

So that's it.

Director Bragg?

Yeah, I immediately heard that and went, I don't think it does.

I don't think that currently, especially being a student who lives day to day and goes into mentorship class and it's like, we're going on Naviance today.

I don't think currently the action is being taken.

I feel like there's a lot that is said in the high school and readiness plan, which is really good for the prep, but actually saying that students are ready to go into that, I don't think is contained within the high school and beyond plan.

A lot is said in that plan, but none of it is actually followed through with.

I remember I did this internship this summer with a ton of private school kids, and I just remember them telling me about how their schools set them up with the you know jobs and like companies after graduation or during the summer or during the school year and I just feel like we need that resource and we need something to write on our resumes I mean there's resumes but what do we write on the resumes if you guys don't give us opportunities

Director Rankin, one last time.

Yeah, so, I mean, I'm the parent of a 10th grader and a 7th grader, neither of whom have any idea what I'm talking about when I say high school and beyond plan.

I know, sorry, Caleb.

So the other question is, is it an implementation?

Okay.

Okay.

If we think the high school and beyond plan were it to be implemented consistently would provide us the information about student readiness, it feels to me like we don't need to add anything else.

That that's an implementation issue.

Now, my wonder is if what's in there is the right question to ask to know if students five years from now will be more ready for life after graduation than students today.

Dr. Perkins, could you list off the four implementation things that you had again?

Yes.

So the high school plan plan being the plan, the initial list of proposed ways to showing a student is actually able to start implementing the plan is taking dual credit work, i.e. college level credit in the area of their interest, a formal work-based learning experience, like the internship the student board member just referenced, FAFSA, WAFSA application completion, or a post-secondary program application completion, which could include college or work.

So that would give us more information about steps actually being taken to get to their next thing.

So it would be high school and beyond plus this readiness step.

Now, would that apply?

Is there something in one of those four things that could apply to any student, maybe if they don't have college aspirations?

Well, there's the work.

Yeah, there's two.

One is a work-based learning experience, which Brian Day, our head of CTE in STEM, is making a more formal set of record keeping about that.

And then there's the applying to a work-based program as opposed to a college.

I really like that.

without the name, but that's what we wanted, so that's fine.

But it's less complicated.

All right.

I'm wondering if we can move on to the next one.

Oh, sorry, sorry, Director Elis.

Yeah, there's all these, like, steps and all.

But, you know, being in high school and seeing, you know, my peers being, well, all of us are pretty much discouraged from taking dual credits or doing CTE or Pathways, which sucks.

And a lot of students find it quite daunting.

So I wish there was, like, more support to help these students go into so this plan eventually works and students know what they want to do.

All right.

So the next topic for discussion really focuses around some of the feedback we got about the concern that we've gone down from three goals to two goals and that we need to somehow add a math goal back in.

And I'm going to let Director Clark speak to this one a little bit.

Okay.

Well, I just felt like this was a theme that we heard pretty loud and clear from the community, that they want a math goal, and, you know, We live in an area where we have so much innovation in our backyard, and I personally feel like it's our responsibility to prepare our students to take advantage of those opportunities, to increase their quality of life.

And I don't see how we can do that if we're not focusing on math, which is really a core part of these industries of the future that are here now.

I'm thinking about AI, life sciences, all different kinds of opportunities.

And thinking about our needs assessment that we received last fall, I definitely noticed and I think I brought up the drop in the math scores that we saw from fifth grade going into sixth grade.

And so I wanted to bring up for consideration actually a fourth grade math goal that the percentage of fourth graders scoring proficient or above in math on the SBA assessment would increase from whatever spring 2025 baseline is plus 10 or 15 percentage points by June 2030.

There we go.

I don't know who put up their card first, but Director Hersey?

Yes, so I am not opposed to a math goal.

My inclination, though, and I would be really curious if we could get some information about this, is why did the math scores go down?

What did you mention, fifth and sixth?

I have a hunch that it probably is linked to word problems and being able to understand what a lot of the tests are asking them, or at least that's what I've seen as a teacher.

Because even when we went through this the first time, Another reason that we had the third grade goal lead into the seventh grade math goal was because, or at least what I know from my experience, is that it becomes more difficult in math specifically because the instruction sets and problem sets get more difficult in terms of how they are presented to the child.

And so I would just like to know before committing to it, and again, I am not opposed to it.

I think having a math goal is great.

I think I share the same concerns as adding 5% on top of the 10%.

If it is going to be a resource drain on the district, if we can improve potentially our math goal through really doubling down on reading, that would be my preference personally.

But I don't have enough information to know why we saw a dip in math in those grades.

So that would help me be a stronger advocate for adding an additional goal, if I could see some information or some insights into why that happened.

So the third grade literacy, seventh grade math, college, and career readiness was and is all connected.

And we believe early literacy connected to being able to do math at seventh grade.

And those are getting us ready to be able to take those advanced courses, to be able to be college and career ready.

So Dr. Perkins, you have a capture on what happened at fifth grade.

And I want you to be able to speak to that pursuant to Director Hersey's comments or question.

Yeah, I'll do my best to kind of channel our math manager.

And just talk about the difference between a fourth grade math goal and a seventh grade math goal.

What's the fundamental difference?

So I think the rationale why we brought the recommended seventh grade math goal was very much to, Director Clark, your point about how are we setting kids up for being able to access STEM careers if they so choose, if they want to.

And so where we see the unfortunate gatekeeping, if you will, happens so much more in middle school.

We see the scores dropping at the middle school level most precipitously.

Students accessing their, you know, in students of color for some educational justice accessing advanced coursework.

They're less likely to if they don't succeed in middle school.

That is the linchpin.

Now, I think I know there's interest from the board to potentially revisit and think about it in a new way, but to your point, Director Hersey, there are definitely things getting more complex, more word problems, and that's to Dr. Jones's connection between the reading and math piece, but if I were to say where is that linchpin, it's the middle school math experience that ends up correlating highly with how well they're gonna do in high school and beyond in math.

Director Mizrahi.

So I just want to double down on the point that I feel like what we heard in the community feedback was around having a middle grade math goal.

I think that when we were originally discussing this and decided to go down from three goals to two goals, I like the idea of being more focused in what we are progress monitoring.

I also felt like somewhat swayed by the argument that in order to meet goal two, we would have to have interim goals that measured middle school mathematics.

I would say, though, that if we're talking about actually engaging in authentic community engagement, when we kind of, in the conversation, gave that explanation, people were like, yeah, but we still want a middle school math goal.

I think people want to see it written out.

And some of that is just good communication from the district, that people want to see that this is something that we are valuing, and they want to see it as a goal.

So I feel like I would be inclined to add it.

I would also be inclined to defer to the experts on when we should be measuring it.

But I think that we should have that math goal back in.

Director Briggs.

Yeah, I just, I mean, I really understand wanting the math goal and that all makes sense.

And my concern is really around spreading ourselves too thin and having an inability to focus our efforts.

And in the spirit of reverse engineering, the career and college readiness goal, like, would it be possible to have an interim goal that tracked school math so that there was some accountability around specifically how kids are doing in middle school as they head into high school without making it a stand-alone goal.

So I'm just throwing that out.

I don't know what the experts think about that idea, but it seems like a way to that priority while also not overextending ourselves in the goal realm.

I mean, absolutely, that's another option.

And just to show how consequential your conversations are, Director Clark and others made that reference, I think, in the prior meeting earlier in January.

And so we've already been brainstorming with lots of help potential middle school interims that focus on math, whether it be Completion of algebra, whether it be the SBA scores.

Anyway, we've had a lot of robust conversations with the same thinking that you're sharing, that it's a critical component about determining readiness.

So it would be a very logical interim, as well as aligned to what you're hearing from the community.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I, you know, when we first decided to go down to two from three, the idea being do, you know, the board that focuses on everything focuses on nothing and the fewer goals you have, the more likely you are to achieve those goals.

I can't remember what it is, but basically once you get above five, you're not going to meet any, which is different than three.

But I think what I heard about the math goal that I just wanted to sort of point out, the missing of the math goal, I think may actually be...

desire for just increased transparency around just how students are doing, which we can do in ways, like setting the goals is our way of saying here's how we're gonna evaluate the success of the district.

not here are the only things that we're paying attention to.

And we do, there are required assessments at various times.

We should still be talking about those and looking at how are students doing?

Hey, these results of these assessments came in, this is how kids are doing.

Here board, here public, this is where things are at.

That was kind of my, interpretation of what i was hearing from community was they just really wanted to know more how are kids doing in math what is the result of that and are we going in one direction or the other um And, so I'm not going to be helpful because I could go, I could kind of go either way, at it or not.

But I also do think it's, you know, this is, monitoring math is not a brand new, is not really adding this whole new body of work.

We haven't decided that a new goal should be that every kid has their scuba license for open water and deep water.

Like, we're doing math, so monitoring it, There's not a lot of downsides to it.

Yeah, like I said, not helpful.

So I am going to concur with Director Mizrahi that through this engagement process folks made it very clear to me at least that they would like to see a math goal and I would like to try to be responsive to some of the feedback that we are hearing.

I'm also through our monitoring sessions really curious why all of a sudden we're seeing a big jump in our math scores and wondering what the underlying what we are doing or what was the change that got us there so interested in just kind of continuing to track that, though open to a different grade level.

And I know we will still track things, but to be here in front of the board and see that, I think it would be really interesting.

Anything else?

Oh, Director Hersey, did you put your card back up on?

Just really quickly.

So two light questions.

So was there a specific reason that you opted for like a fourth or fifth grade goal?

Yeah, I was discussing it with Director Rankin, and I think there was some concern that by the time students get to middle school, that they're already behind.

Got it.

That makes a ton of sense to me.

So with that, I'm also interested to see what caused a significant jump in our seventh grade scores.

And then maybe there is a compromise somewhere in there to either pay attention to the grade immediately before or after seventh grade, whether it's more, do y'all think impactful to focus in on sixth or eighth to support the transition into high school, which would then essentially be like, OK, if we can replicate what we did in seventh, can we do it in eighth and just continue to track that same cohort of students for a little bit.

Maybe there's some value there.

I don't know.

But I think, like, making a big jump to the fourth grade would probably be almost a reinvention of the wheel.

And I think we could probably use a lot of the learning that we got from the great outcomes that we got in math more effectively in a sixth or an eighth grade goal.

So if y'all could give us some information or clarity around whether that would be useful, that would be great.

Turn to staff here.

So something to consider is building on the investment that's already happened in seventh grade math is the opportunity.

If we were going to go to fourth grade, the focus areas that we would be going on in our measurements and our behaviors that we would be looking for and supporting for our adults may be similar, but they may be different.

So a different theory of action.

The opportunity for us, if we were to go with seventh grade, still can take into account the sixth grade transition and the eighth grade transition into high school as being a clear theory of action.

So I think the opportunity for us is to build on what's already the investment that's already been made, and then also to build on some of the strategies that look and appear to be promising at seventh grade, which is why, and it's in our past documents that we sent to you advocating for seventh grade math.

Any, Director Rankin.

Wait, I don't understand.

Sorry.

No.

Sorry.

Are you saying that you would want to continue tracking seventh grade as just a reinstatement of that goal going forward?

Or are you saying that you would want to see a sixth or eighth grade

The first part, the second grade.

So just continue what we're doing?

Continue that as a focus priority goal.

And maybe continuing the things that are, or not maybe, continue to do the things that are working, that are promising, and then try on new things that we want to expand on the goal to get better at.

Are we meeting our seventh grade goal for the most part?

We had a huge jump in our last progress monitoring.

Oh, so we're trying to see if that's a fluke or not.

OK, cool.

Got it.

Got it.

Cool.

It was like a 7% or 8% jump, I believe, that was not what I was expecting in our progress monitoring.

So we, Director Sarge.

I'm trying to remember the presentation, but that seventh grade jump, was that data disaggregated, or was it all students?

I believe it was just our current goal, which is on black males.

Okay, that was the question.

So we don't know why.

We don't know if that's going to be sustainable.

I think if we're gonna add a third goal, and I'm just, I have been thinking about everything that's been said, and I, you know, this idea of, I struggle waiting until seventh grade, because then we're in intervention mode, which is why we landed on second grade instead of third grade.

The people who suffer the most from intervention are Black, Indigenous, and other students of color historically, like not just 2023 or 2022 or 20. We're talking decades.

it's a catch-up game that we lose at no that's that kids lose at and so if we're going to add a third goal i want it to be promotion and prevention focused not intervention by the time a kid gets to seventh grade if they're not doing well in math it's critical it we're not setting them up for success with an intervention strategy.

And so I'm not excited about a third goal, but I could get behind a third goal that is promotion and prevention focused, which means an earlier measurement, not a later measurement.

So any goal that we have should always be focused on the quality of the Tier 1 instruction that's happening, that we're not starting off at a deficit mindset or deficit space with our students.

It's what are the adults going to be doing differently, or continue to be doing, because it's working for students.

So if we choose to use this goal, and we've done it in the past, it would be about the quality of the teaching that is happening, the planning that it takes to do such high quality teaching, and the leading that it takes to support that teaching.

that is responsive and quickly gives students authentic feedback on how well they're doing in math.

And many of our students are doing very well.

Some of our students are struggling, but part of that plan has to be tier one interventions, for our students.

It's what our teachers are expected to do and we want to support them in doing that.

So we will always start off on these goals as being about supporting high quality tier one instruction in the content area that we're choosing to focus on and report back out to you, whether it's a top line measure or it's an interim.

Director Rankin.

What was the, what year did we adopt the current K-5 math curriculum?

I think it was four years ago.

I think it was four years ago.

Yeah, 2021.

Oh, okay.

I just...

would theorize that having a common curriculum in elementary school has contributed to the jump in seventh grade.

Because prior to that, we had kids getting to sixth grade, and sixth grade math teachers having to figure out, like, whoa, whoa, where did, you know, where was everybody at?

And different schools were doing, you know, Some kids were coming in not knowing fractions, and some kids were coming in ready for division and all kinds of stuff.

So I don't know if there is a correlation there, but I would feel pretty strongly placing a little bit of money on the fact that the common curriculum created that jump.

I strongly agree.

And so I wouldn't expect that we would see repeated jump, but that will sustain, if that's the contributing factor, that will kind of sustain that level of growth.

So I mean, I think that's a pretty significant and meaningful shift that was made that we won't continue to make, if that makes sense.

If we do have, add back a third goal, I would, in echoing what Director Clark and Director Sarju said, be really interested in seeing it at the fourth or fifth grade level.

moving from elementary school, I mean, looking at some other districts and some of what we're doing, too, the idea of kindergartners taking kindergarten math, first graders taking first grade math, but when you move into middle school and you're already taking, you know, have the opportunity for different schedules, there is a lot more opportunity to not expect one teacher to do everything and to make sure that kids are prepared to take math at their level and kids who want to go more and, you know, do more can But we want to make sure that all kids have the preparedness and opportunity to do that and that we're not limiting access to advanced learning by what elementary school you went to.

And I feel like looking at fourth or fifth grade would give us a better idea of the level of preparedness for kids and also maybe help identify too, is it reading that's interfering with the math readiness or is it really just the foundational math skills?

It seems like looking at that earlier, I think would be, I would support.

OK.

Dr. Jones, and then I want to wrap up the goal conversation and move to guardrails, because it's getting late.

Right.

So I just want to kind of express this to my team.

The board started this original set of goals with a notion of a strong start and a strong finish.

with some reassurances at the front end that things were shored up so that by the time they got to middle school and high school, they had such a strong, solid start that they could get there.

So when you hear them talking about, well, let's start that math goal in fourth grade, or let's have the literacy goal in second grade instead of third grade, it is the desire, and you all correct me if I'm wrong, to have some reassurance at the front end that everything's in place.

So the creativity that we're hearing from the board around second grade, fourth grade, is that desire, correct me if I'm wrong, that desire to have some ironclad reassurance that no one's fallen through the cracks, the system is robust enough in the first couple of grades.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

So to meet that need and desire of the board, Can we still achieve that at the fourth grade math, second grade?

Can we work that around so that we can give reassurances?

Or is there another way to give reassurances early on?

I think that's the essential question.

Because I remember Director Briggs and Clark and Topp, we were all on the same team.

And we were talking about maybe we need one goal.

But then the other team was talking about, well, we need an early goal.

We were saying, no, it just should be college and career readiness.

And they said, no, we have to have a fast start, strong finish, and some reassurances.

If that's incorrect, correct me if I'm wrong.

But I'm just kind of posing that to the team.

How do we achieve that or what can we advise and recommend so that they can get that reassurance?

I don't know if that's possible to construct that tonight, but I just wanted to plant that.

Can I just, I'm so sorry.

This is a very specific technical question.

I'm wondering, Dr. Perkins, what you, like, so you're saying that seventh or middle school is when people kind of almost get tracked in a way, like math or not.

And I mean, that was my experience for sure.

So I'm wondering, do you have a concern that if we are monitoring this at fourth grade, that it actually won't be predictive of, that somebody could, students could test well in fourth grade and then still experience derailment in middle school?

I guess that's my concern.

In brief, yes.

Is fourth grade super important?

Of course.

But that's just looking at the data, which I realize that you need to probably propose language tonight.

But if there was any opportunity to share some of the additional data of why the concern really comes in.

And maybe it's sixth grade, to the point.

Maybe it's a little earlier in middle school, to Director Rankin's point, before students start going down these different roads of math.

They should have a common sixth grade experience.

Anyway, but that's why, because the data show that that's where we see the bigger drop.

All right.

I want to move to guardrails now, unless anyone has any burning last minute desire to talk about something in the goals.

All right.

Moving to the guardrails.

So one of the things that I heard, I think we heard in the themes was sort of that the guardrails were a little vague.

I think that One of the things that happens next with these guardrails is they get interim guardrails from the superintendent, which are the more specific things that we actually measure that help us lead to some of these top line goals.

And that's part of the hard part here with these guardrails.

But I think that there was some feedback that I do want to follow up on from just on a vagueness or interpretation standpoint, which would be on guardrail one, the equitable access to high quality opportunities and instruction.

I think Does this language need to be modified to clarify that equity will be achieved by increasing access, not removing it, is essentially the question.

I think that Director Rankin, you proposed this.

I want to let you speak to it momentarily.

Yeah, so we, you know, in looking at this and in hearing feedback from community about this, I remembered a time at some point in the drafting where we talked about not limiting opportunity.

And...

I just wanted to make sure that we were very clear that a way to not allow inequitable access to high-quality educational opportunities is to make sure that nobody has them, which is definitely not what we're trying to get at.

So it's equitable.

Nobody has it.

But that's definitely not what our intention was as a board, and it's definitely not what we heard from our community.

Let's see, is it in writing somewhere here?

I mean, I feel like we also have opportunity when we get interims.

If one of the interim goals is there will be no unique or advanced programs, we would be like, oh, no, no, that's not what we meant.

I'll read the language I think that clarifies it.

The superintendent will not allow a student's school assignment, family income, race, or ethnicity need or identity to determine access to high-quality standards, rigorous programming, high-quality teaching, and support.

I think that clarifies language.

So that's a recommended revisiting of that first one that also, I think, harkens back to August when we were talking about school assignment not determining access.

And what we're really trying to get at is that we don't say to any kid, oh, you love this thing and are really good at it?

Sorry.

We don't have that at your school, which doesn't mean everything has to be exactly the same, but how do we provide the same opportunity and access to kids and not predetermine the quality of education that they will have by the attendance area they happen to live in?

Any comments?

All right.

Any comments on any of the other guardrails?

Right, so then reminding folks that we're not taking action tonight, or hopefully not, if I can get a motion to postpone this action item until January 29th, 2025.

You sure can.

Okay.

Oh, I move that the school board postpone action on action item number one until January 29th, 2025.

Second.

Vice President Briggs makes a motion.

Director Mizrahi seconds.

Dr. Wilson.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, will you please call the roll?

Yes, I will.

Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

Director Sarju.

Aye.

Vice President Briggs.

Aye.

Director Clark.

Aye.

Director Hersey?

Aye.

President Topp?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Great.

I really appreciate this discussion.

I think this was a very in-depth and good discussion and provided some clarity and I appreciate staff all the work you've done to answer the questions today and help us move forward in this conversation.

I'm really proud of this work.

We are going to move to a budget study session.

If you don't, you should have a big packet with you.

I brought mine back up to the dais.

I'm going to grab mine real fast as we, I think, transition a little bit of staff here.

But we're not going into recess.

We're going to keep going here.

I need water.

Well, luckily this is a super low stakes for the conversation.

I was pretty sure.

Oh.

Director Bragg.

You don't want that?

Director Bragg.

Come on.

You can't drop that.

Very important.

All right, Dr. Jones, I'm going to pass it over to you for our budget study session.

Okay, thank you.

Is the board's desire to hit all 43 of these slides?

And do you want us to kind of pick and choose?

I can truncate the first part.

To truncate?

I was asking, do you want us to hit all 43 slides or if we have opportunity just to truncate?

I think that the items that we've covered previously, like the snake, I think we can pass over.

But I do think there are some important slides in here.

Director Percy is looking at me like, yes, hurry up.

All right, let's jump right in without a preview and jump right into slide number five.

And we're going to get cracking with this.

I'm going to go?

Yeah.

Dr. Buttleman, please.

So here's an opportunity to truncate if we would like.

So this is the review of the annual report, the annual financial report that's required by board policy.

I've been presenting annual financial reports to boards like you for more than 20 years.

And their first question after my presentation of 15 minutes or 20 minutes is, what are the key takeaways?

So we could advance to slide 17 and get to the key takeaways, if you'd like.

Or I can go through all this information.

Your choice.

Do directors want to see the information, or do you...?

They are, it's like a little guy down there.

I support key takeaways because I think it's part of our obligation to read the information that we've been provided.

Yeah, and there's a more comprehensive report that's part of the packet.

So the key takeaways, and this is for the operations that ended August 31st of 2024, are here on the screen.

The first is the teaching and teaching support.

has increased as a percentage of the total spending of Seattle Public Schools.

So consistent with the discussions earlier around trying to invest more of the limited resources in the student outcomes, I think it goes without saying that teaching and teaching support are key to student outcomes.

And so the percentage of increase over the last three years has gone up on that item.

As we all know, again, has been discussed multiple times at this table.

And at most every board table across the state of Washington State, under funding continues to remain a significant issue, financial issue for Seattle Public Schools and other school districts.

Our fund balance, which has been relied on heavily the last few years in order to produce budgets that balanced technically, continues to decrease.

I want to provide a little more explanation on this, because it will become relevant in the proposals that we're going to share in a little bit.

At the end of last year, there's typically a little bit of extra money that's left of carry forward is what it's called.

And we've been projecting that to be around $30 million to carry forward and to help balancing the 25-26 budget or to repaying the rainy day fund or returning the funds to the capital fund.

That $30 million is $42 million when the books close and there's a few sort of major drivers of that.

One of them is there's a hiring freeze of sorts here in the district office and so departments like myself and others held off on refilling positions and there's some accumulated vacancy savings that hadn't sort of been anticipated at the beginning of the year that accounts for some of that.

The state provided some funding in the legislative session last year that was retroactive so it wasn't anticipated to help the 23-24 budget, and so that funding just sort of showed up and was for things that had already transpired that year.

Interest rates were higher than anticipated, so the cash that the district invests with the county treasurer earned a higher rate of interest than typically or was anticipated.

And then the enrollment drop wasn't as significant as was budgeted in the February projection of that year.

Those are some of the main things.

Most of those are one-time unique items, but I wanted to explain why that $30 million that we've been projecting had increased a little bit because they said it will become relevant in the proposals going forward.

The other part that I want to just highlight there is there was some ESSER funding.

So last year was the last year of ESSER funding, and the district expended all of that.

That funding is now gone, so that was another contributor to that one-time bump in the carry-forward amount.

Another key takeaway, student and family needs have increased.

If you look at the detail in the financial information, you see that a lot in the special education spending at Seattle Public Schools.

Again, another place that's underfunded, needs are increasing.

It's causing a large part of the structural problem.

Inflation can be a problem, insurance rates, things like that come out in the details of the report.

And then there's discussion around central administration.

So one of the places that the district has been intentional about trying to cut is central administration.

So the folks that work in this building to support schools, do the operational things in this building.

And the percentage of spending of that has gone down over the last three years.

So those are kind of the key takeaways from the report.

Like I said, the detailed information is available on the website.

One of the other things I want to highlight before we move on is the district has been pretty intentional about trying to provide more transparent financial information, especially in light of the budget conversations that have taken place over the last few years.

And so we've created a website.

where all this information is contained so that stakeholders, the public, everybody can access it in one place rather than trying to find it on OSPI's website or find it in different places in board meeting minutes and things like that.

Any questions on the financial report before we move on to the budget development for 25-26?

Thank you.

Okay, so now we're going to transition to an update on the budget development process for 25-26.

Not the long term, but short term, just this next year.

We're going to provide some background information.

If you turn to slide 21, please.

So our current budget situation, obviously we all know the structural deficit still exists.

This means our anticipated expenditures exceed our anticipated revenue.

The deficit is projected to be more than $94 million for 25, 26, for 23, 24. We use our rainy day fund to help balance the budget.

For 24-25, we borrowed 27 million from our capital fund to bridge the gap.

For 25-26, our one-time options are further limited.

So our general fund financial situation remains unsustainable unless further reductions are made and or other revenue is provided by our state.

So there's not a way forward essentially without some support, some significant support from the state and passing our levies.

Next slide please.

So the summary of the 23-24 changes here, Curt, if you could walk through these, this is something that the board is familiar with.

So hit on the high points on this, and then we'll keep going until we get to what we're going to do in 25-26.

Yeah, I think the high points you touched on.

Usualization of the rainy day reserve fund, the board has a current RESOLUTION IN PLACE TO START TO REPAY THAT IN THE COMING YEAR.

SO, AGAIN, THAT WILL BECOME RELEVANT IN THE PROPOSALS.

WE MAXIMIZED WHAT WE COULD IN TERMS OF CAPITAL AND GRANTS.

MOVED APPROPRIATE EXPENSES OVER TO CAPITAL FUNDS AND GRANTS FUNDING IN 23-24.

reductions at the Stanford Center in staff and non-staff items.

There were some school staffing changes in that year.

There was reductions in unnecessary or not sort of mission critical contracted services.

That was the year, I think the first or second year, the furloughs for the non-represented staff at the Stanford Center.

And that year, there were transportation changes at, I think, 12 schools where bell times or other shuttle services were discontinued.

So just sort of resetting the, reminding people of the history of how that year transpired.

We can go to the next slide, which is 2425. So this is the year we're currently in.

There was a $104 million challenge ahead of the board and the superintendent.

And this is the year the $27 million loan from the capital fund was executed.

Board chose to delay the first repayment of the rainy day fund, additional reductions in Stanford Center staff, reductions at the schools and custodial services, discretionary funding, some increases in secondary class sizes.

There were additional transportation reductions, mainly around skill center transportation.

The contingencies were reduced further.

This is sort of part of why we're here today is there's less of a margin for air or experimentation around the margins anymore.

We implemented convenience fees last year.

So people using a credit card to pay school district charges, they're charging the fee directly.

And voluntary athletic fees were implemented.

We've collected about $145,000 this year, much shorter than the million dollars that we were anticipating.

And then we utilized some capital fund interest for school supplies.

That was a $2 million solution for that.

All right, that gets us to baseline.

And one of our sources for revenue, so to speak, is around enrollment.

So I'm going to ask Chief Podesta to speak to our enrollment study update.

I'll just give a quick update of the status of the work.

You'll recall that in the last session the legislature appropriated funds to allow us to do a structured study.

The district long had a practice of doing kind of exit interview work where we studied opinions of folks who had unenrolled from the district.

So the study had two parts really.

Our internal team looked at the structure of enrollment patterns over a period since 2012 and really found that students unenrolling from the district during the course of their career has remained flat in all that period.

That our net decline enrollment is really about attracting fewer students, not losing students.

So that informed kind of the structure of the survey.

There was a representative survey of more than 1,400 caretakers of school-aged children in three populations.

Caretakers of children who are currently enrolled, caretakers of children who were formally enrolled but are still school-aged.

and caretakers of children that never contacted the district or enrolled.

The kind of key findings, one big thing to note is currently families with currently enrolled students indicated a satisfaction rate with Seattle Public Schools of 86%, which working with our survey professionals is high for an enterprise.

And they cited the kind of sense of community and belonging and many of the attributes that we think about with neighborhood schools.

Group, obviously the satisfaction rate of formally enrolled students is much lower, more at the 32% level.

And in both groups, whether they're currently enrolled or unenrolled, it is really informative to this discussion is concerns about class sizes, funding, and educational quality were the biggest concerns of anyone who's considered unenrolling or caretakers of students who have left.

So we've given an original quick briefing to the sponsor of the legislation.

We're going to brief our delegation next week because that's part of the funding was that we need to report back to the legislature.

And I think President Topp has asked for an in-depth briefing at a study session in the coming month.

There's still some technical work to do to correlate demographics to programs and services, so there's still some work massaging the data, but we really appreciate this funding, it allowed us to go much deeper than the district has ever gone on this subject.

86%.

So, Director Rankin, will you ask that question one more time?

Because we couldn't hear it.

He wants it really on the record.

I just really wanted to kind of make note that I, you know, usually we're here, as Dr. Jones has pointed out a lot of times, talking about things that are not going well.

And that it's very easy and tempting.

Honestly, it's a local pastime to bash on Seattle Public Schools.

I'll just, but that actually really hurts our children.

And so just to kind of cut through that, this was analysis done by an outside firm.

This wasn't a, you know, stacked finding that current families, the majority of current families are What was the description?

I don't know.

Is it satisfactory or had positive feelings or what is it?

It was about 55% were satisfied and then another 30% on top of that was very satisfied.

And I think we saw that, too, even through the angst of last year, how much people care about their schools and how much there are, as much as we want to see improvements for some populations, we have a lot of students and families that are very happy with Seattle Public Schools.

These questions were asked both in an open-ended and a structured way.

And really the positive feedback spoke to kind of the institution of schools and the relationships and the community building that schools do.

So we'll go into this in much more detail.

We have time in our February agenda that we will be able to have a discussion on this and actually dig into the results a little bit and share with community.

Yeah, keep going.

Just one last point.

What's really relative to this discussion is class sizes came up as an element.

And as you proceed through this presentation, that subject is going to come up again.

So that's probably the main reason to talk about this here.

I'm getting the eye from the president.

But 86%.

I know.

I'm getting an eye from President Topf.

My first meeting, we're going to go past 9. It's not a great look.

We're going to lose a quorum first.

That's the problem.

We can get it done before 9. So slide 25, please.

Preliminary budget proposal, then we're moving into that space.

The board gave direction through policy 0060, the educational program resolution.

This was approved in December.

Four main elements.

The budget proposal has to have ongoing solutions that support improving student outcomes and needs to align with how we're going to support our goals and guardrails, achievement of the goals and guardrails.

Needed to have a balanced budget proposal presented to the board around January 22nd today.

And then the preliminary balanced budget proposal shall include a scenario in which the district receives no additional funding from the legislature in a scenario where we do have funding from the legislature.

So herein, you'll see some of those next pieces.

The next slide, please.

Also, the superintendent is directed to continue to advocate with the board and collaborate with our legislative partners.

The superintendent is also directed to align recommendations with a task force that is being conceived now.

and the superintendent prior to introduction of the 25-26 operating budget in a regular meeting of the board will update the board on any significant variations in necessary program reductions.

So you'll see some of these things in the next couple of slides and those being developed further as we get to the final budget.

So with that said, I want to just focus quickly on the next slide.

You all have heard this concept of year zero.

This is the time that we're taking to do our analysis, to do the studies, such one as the enrollment study, to really get a good baseline on where are our gaps.

Next slide, please.

So Dr. Buttleman, if you can kind of speak to these budget development variables.

These are all things that are kind of pending right now that are kind of up in the air that are ultimately going to impact our budget.

Dr. Buttleman, please.

Yeah, I want to spend some time on this slide.

This is, I think, the meat of sort of the foundation we're trying to lay in.

I want to give a shout out to Jody in my office who put this together in a way that I think is understandable.

So this is the most important variables that are sort of in play this year in developing the budget for 25-26 and beyond.

And I'm gonna stress that and beyond.

So much of this work is foundational to achieve the goals of the strategic plan that you all have been discussing tonight.

So there's a legislative session.

It's significant.

K-12 is in the spotlight.

The colors aren't showing up there, but the timing of that is January through April.

SO THAT'S ONGOING RIGHT NOW.

WE'RE GETTING INFORMATION CONSISTENTLY FROM LEGISLATURE ON WHERE THOSE DISCUSSIONS ARE GOING.

OUR CAPITAL LEVIES ARE ON THE BALLOT.

BALLOTS WILL DROP TOMORROW.

OUR EP&O LEVY AND CAPITAL LEVIES ARE ON THE BALLOT.

SO ANOTHER HUGE SIGNIFICANT PIECE OF INFORMATION FOR SALE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

IT'S ABOUT 16% OF THE BUDGET.

WE GET OUR ENROLLMENT PROJECTIONS IN FEBRUARY TO HELP INFORM THE BUDGET DECISIONS FOR THE 25-6 YEAR AND BEYOND.

WE GET SOME ECONOMIC FORECAST INFORMATION.

THE LEGISLATURE'S BEEN PRETTY GLOOMY AND DOOMY AROUND THEIR FORECAST.

WE GET AN UPDATE ON THAT HOPEFULLY IN MARCH THAT INFORMS SOME OF THE COSTS OF LABOR HERE AT THE DISTRICT.

We get to the real exciting stuff next, which is strategic plans.

So once the board sort of sets the direction for the superintendent and staff to proceed on the strategic plan, putting together those initiatives, tying the budget decisions to those directly going forward in future years over the course of those five years is work that I think we're all here for.

Two, mechanical things are happening.

Between January and April, the Stanford Center budget process kicked off a couple weeks ago, starting to have decisions and conversations with budget managers here.

And then school budget process, which is a very complex process fed by lots of information, really gets underway in March once the February enrollment forecast is put forward.

The last three, I think are things that are intended, two of the last three are intended to inform that long-term budget for the Seattle Public Schools.

The street strategy and resource analysis, a consultant has been hired through funding from the Alliance to help the district make sure that it's using its resources most aligned with its strategic plan goals.

And so that work is underway.

They're gathering data now.

They're meeting with people.

They'll have some recommendations around that later this spring that will really inform the next sort of five years of budget decisions and how do we get to where we all want to be at that point.

In parallel with that and sort of using their expertise and the help from that consulting firm, there's a robust review of the weighted staffing standards model.

Typically, the weighted staffing standards group just makes some tweaks around the edges and the margins.

And this is the year that we're going to try and take advantage of the new strategic plan, the new direction, make sure that weighted staffing standards model is in line with the goals of the organization going forward.

And then last but not least, there's some significant labor negotiations on the horizon.

Preparation for that is beginning.

Anticipating those to wrap up by the end of August when the contracts expire on those.

Are there any questions on this?

I just don't want to move along from this one too quick.

There's nearly everything of significance that impacts a budget.

And a school district is in play right now at Seattle Public Schools.

So I just want to, this is a time for some significant action to happen to move the district forward, I think.

So it's an exciting time.

In spite of the deficit and all the problems, this is an exciting time.

This is an exciting slide.

Any variables that you think we left out that are significant?

I think this is a pretty good capture, but you might be seeing something that we missed.

But this is our rendering of what's out there.

The only flag I would make, and I made this flag last year, is that the school budget process happened and decisions were made before the board got to make some of the decisions on things.

So I want to flag that and want to make sure that that doesn't happen again this year.

Indeed, and to that point, if we're moving too fast or we're missing those opportunities, that is absolutely not our intent.

So we want to make sure that last year we had 13 budget sessions.

This year we have, I think, 10 or 11. Anytime we want to pause for a minute to make sure that you all are getting good information, good data, we're open to that.

Let's keep going.

I can interject just directly responsive to that question and to provide a little more background on the concerns brought forward by the librarians.

So part of the formative process of developing recommendations for the budget and around the school, I convene a, or by board policy, I'm the facilitator of the weighted staffing standards group.

And this year, and in many years, they talk about what sort of changes might happen in terms of that model and how it would allocate resources to schools.

And so this year, again, constrains lots of challenges for the budget.

We did an exercise to try and help inform these conversations for the superintendent and the board, where members of that group anonymously took a survey.

what are the things that you think would be the least impactful for student outcomes among class size increases, reductions in school staffing, assistant principals, librarians?

And so there was this formative exercise that we undertook, drafted memo to the superintendent per board policy, shared it with the group members of that group, the principals and SCA members who were part of that group.

There's a memo out there that talks about this topic, and we're trying to solicit feedback from those groups, those leaders in the schools, and the SCA members to help inform those conversations, to your point, around once decisions are made, but there has been no proposal on any of this.

This is just part of the formative process, trying to gather information from stakeholders most close to the action.

Sorry, I do have a question now.

Aligned with that which is and and I submitted some of these I had of the meeting There's always a little bit of a tail wagging the dog scenario that happens where I'm not going to say it's a not a good idea to ask people what they think about that, but that's a budget exercise we need to know a what are the, based on the vision and values we have for our students, based on our obligations to kids, what the recommended investments would be, and then talk about how the changes might be made.

And I've been through this enough times in SPS to know that stuff does get decided before it's decided.

And then it comes to the end and everybody's kind of stuck with what already got decided because school budgets have been set and whatnot.

So although I, in December, said, you know, we haven't made a proposal to reduce librarians and nobody's asked us to approve reduction to librarians, I 100% understand why people would be concerned that that might happen.

And then at some point, people will say, well, this is what the budget is.

So now the board has to approve it.

We just really need to not do that, which is easier said than done.

But part of having all these different meetings, and I would like to see much more concrete numbers about the scenarios of the two different things.

I understand that the scenarios are we might get funding from the state or we might not.

I need to know what those actually mean for us, the choices that would have to be made.

And so I'm not going to ask that tonight because we don't have this information, but when we come back to the next thing on the snake in February, I need a much better, you know, the reduction in staffing being between $128.6 million.

I need a lot more information about what staffing that means, what that would look like, what the options are, and what we can provide as feedback now as representatives of the community before it starts getting into building budgets, bargaining, and all of these things, because then it's a done deal.

And that's sort of what we want to start with.

What do our kids need?

How can we do that within our resources?

And now let's circle up with other folks and make sure that labor protections are in place and it's going to work.

But we have to start with the kids, and we're still starting with the adults.

And that's just, we're going to have a hard time voting yes on a budget that looks like that in June if we don't find a way to flip that around a little bit.

So President Rankin, we recognize that, and we're, I'm sorry, President Emeritus, Director Rankin, we recognize that, and that's kind of why we're showing these variables.

Stuff isn't set in stone yet.

This is really helpful, yeah.

Yeah, but I get what you and President Topp have said around Don't get too far ahead of ourselves.

Let's have the data out in front.

And so we've been talking internally around how can we give you all some more reassurance that we're not just talking in these general terms.

But when we start to get more solid on what actually is going to happen, we can put that in front of you.

But I'm making a commitment that we're not going to move before you all get a chance to weigh in.

So that's our commitment to this board.

So let's keep moving.

And we're going to move into the preliminary budget proposal.

This first one that we're going to talk about is one with no additional legislative funding.

And this is the one where Director Rankin was talking about, I want to see more specificity here.

So we're going to talk in probably uncomfortable general terms, and then we'll start to draw down at our next sessions together.

So Kirk, can you walk us through this, please?

Yeah.

Briefly, the one-time solution section we've talked about.

Those of you who are here, when I first started, these are the Legos, the red Legos that we don't like.

So that fund balance I was talking about.

So it could be a potential solution to balance the 25-6 budget, the $42 million.

And then if the board chooses to defer the repayment that we've already sort of made to the rainy day fund per the standing resolution and then defer another one, that's another $14 million.

the bullet point there, and there's sort of two changes between this and the other scenario you'll see.

This assumes no legislative funding, and so the central office, central administration reductions, like I said, this is an ongoing process right now.

Budget managers are meeting with their supervisors and with the budget team to come up with what the impact of further reductions would be and what those reductions would be should we choose to go forward with them.

And the way those are being framed is what would be the impact on students and families.

So trying to tie all the central administration reductions directly to how that would impact students and families.

strategic plan refinements.

So currently, the district spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 million on the targeted strategies for the current strategic plan.

So the idea here is with new goals, revisit that, see whether those strategies should persist or if there are new strategies that should come forward and if there's any savings that occur out of that.

Transportation changes, I don't know if Fred wants to touch on some of that overseas, but things such as three bell times, different ways of providing transportation.

There were other examples recently where Transportation services were truncated for a certain number of schools.

Skills Center, those 12 schools I mentioned earlier.

Fred, anything more to add on that?

Only to get to the upper end of the range that's expressed on the slide, that would include a three-tier bell schedule.

And then athletic fees is something we've talked about multiple times.

The voluntary athletic fee is not collecting the million dollars that we had hoped for.

And so to have a non-voluntary athletic fee for families who can afford it, we estimate the crew up to $2 million for the budget.

And then the thing there on the bottom is these reductions in school staffing.

And that would be librarians, increases in class size, assistance in the office, assistant principals, discretionary funding.

If you harken back to the fork in the road slide that we had probably, More than a year ago now around school consolidations and school staffing adjustments, this is the other side of that equation.

So those are the items that would become necessary should there be no legislative funding.

We can go to the next slide.

And it is an outline of some potential pros and cons of this scenario.

And Dr. Jones, do you want me to cover this, or do you want to lean into this?

So pros of this doesn't rely on the legislature to do anything for Seattle Public Schools.

Those school staffing reductions would be ongoing.

So it's the next bullet there is it's kind of in line with this long-term planning.

So those are pros that we've identified.

The cons are the significant part of this equation.

School staffing reductions would further destabilize schools and would have a negative impact on student learning outcomes.

So that item at the bottom, the school staffing reductions, significant con, obviously.

And it also doesn't meet the board's policy.

So you'll see it meets one side of the board policy on the pros.

This longer term planning doesn't meet the board's policy around making sure all reductions serve students.

This one and the other scenario doesn't provide adequate contingency funding going forward.

They both continue to erode the ability of the district office to provide adequate supports for students.

As Fred mentioned, diluting resources directly in schools could and probably would have potential negative impacts on Seattle Public Schools' future enrollment.

And then both scenarios contemplate the transportation impacts and athletic fees.

Are there questions on that?

We'll go to scenario two, which is the superintendent's recommendation.

Want to cover that, or you want me to run through it?

Please, Kurt.

So again, the two one-time solutions are consistent in both.

This one does contemplate some legislative funding between $30 and $60 million, and you'll see at the bottom that...

negates the need for those reductions in school staffing.

This also continues to contemplate those reductions at central office, strategic plan refinements, changes to transportation and athletic fees.

So the major change there is the school staffing and the legislative investment in Seattle Public Schools.

And if we go to the pros.

So bottom line, with legislative action, we're not looking at reductions at school staffing.

That's the fundamental difference between

And I imagine this is something that if we're on the lower end of the legislative action, there may be some requirement.

Is that right?

If we're more of the 30 million range of legislative action, then you may need to dip into some of that adjustment.

I think you're talking about scenario 1.5.

Yeah, exactly.

These scenarios aren't like the only two possible things that could happen.

Correct.

And some of those other items could be at the top end of their ranges instead of...

Yeah, so we're just trying to collect all the options now, so anticipating what the legislature will do.

Director Rankin?

So here, this is what I'm trying to get at or what I asked over email is, you know, I also recommend scenario two where we do receive money from the legislature, but that's not up to us necessarily.

We don't know.

And the most likely outcome is somewhere in between no funding and some funding.

So what I want to understand is what recommendations would be made to continue to meet the needs of students and make progress on our goals Should we not?

I think we need to have, I mean, I don't want, you know, side by side every detail, but we really need to understand what the options are and what choices will be made.

And we also really need to see that regardless of the level of our budget, we need to see a direct line towards living our values and still focusing on our obligations to students.

And so that's kind of, when we get to February, we, I mean, it is, I'll just, I would love nothing, everybody knows I love to be right.

I would love nothing more than to be wrong about this.

We're not going to get the money that we need.

We're not going to get the full amount to close the deficit.

It's not going to happen.

Love to be wrong, but it is extremely unlikely that the legislature is going to provide the full...

I mean, they're facing their own deficit and trying to reduce costs.

And so, I mean, we should have a plan for how we would...

you know, have a budget that had all the money that we needed, but more realistically, we need to have a plan for how we continue to serve students if we don't have that money.

And I would argue, too, that even if we do get all the money, for me, that doesn't mean fantastic, no changes are needed, because as we've seen, we still have progress that we want to make and changes we want to make for kids.

So we still have to have a conversation about, no matter how much the universe of dollars is, how to equitably serve students within whatever that might be.

And so that's, I'm just, I also prefer scenario two.

It's not necessarily going to be up to us.

We have to have a plan for what we're going to do under a scenario with the funding that we need to not make changes and with the funding where we're forced to make changes.

Director Sarju.

One of my concerns with this presentation is that it can lead the community to believe that there's going to be an infusion of cash, you know, when you look at 30 to 60 million.

And I guess I am...

I am trying to understand why there's optimism on behalf of the staff that we might get 30 to 60 million, particularly when in my day job, what I'm hearing is that there's no money.

And no money for much of anything.

So when I see this, I mean, first of all, a range of zero to 28 million, like that's not really a real range.

And it's not like zero to, there's some number between some number, not zero.

And so when I see zero to 11, Or if I were just a community member, I'd be like, oh, well, maybe it'll be zero.

Like, that's like a hope and a prayer.

That's not going to happen.

And so while I understand there isn't specificity, I'm really struggling to understand this belief that we might even get 30 million.

Like, where is that going?

Do we want to skip to the legislative update here to answer that and we can move on?

Does that work?

Yeah.

That's the next slide here and that might be helpful.

Yeah, so good call President Taub.

So Bev, can you kind of walk us through where we are with the proposals?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Talking about proposed optimism and why, I believe we all can see and have heard that there is increased attention on K-12 that is spreading.

I would like to believe that some of that is due to a lot of the advocacy that has come out of this city.

and to our current delegation.

As you know, both Governor Inslee and Governor Ferguson now have proposed budgets that highly feature education.

We're also in the proposal seasons for both sides of the legislature.

We're expecting those budget proposals to come through in March.

In between this time, we've actively worked with our delegation so that they understand We always do, but incredibly so this time to make sure that they fully understand exactly what we need and certainly partnering and making sure that we join in with other districts as much as possible to make sure that education continues to be lifted highly at the legislative body.

And of course you know that by the end of April, specifically April 27th, that the legislature will come through with its budget.

You've heard it all repeated several times tonight.

What are we looking for, the big three?

Special education, transportation, materials, supplies, operating costs.

I suppose we could get more into special education, but if there's increased funding there, that could offset costs and other things that we open up opportunities in other ways.

Also looking to support student learning and well-being and then accessing capital and levy funding.

Why be optimistic?

We have been so pessimistic.

Our kids deserve it.

Yes, so we're gonna push as hard as we possibly can.

Our legislative delegation asked us to put some faith in them that they're carrying our message.

We're absolutely doing that.

Yes, we are pushing harder than we ever have before.

Again, coupled with our levy, all of those things count.

Everything matters.

30 million to 60 million, we welcome it.

Yes, we're going to be optimistic.

Being on the other side of that, and I'm not saying that you're not bringing forth some realism.

But we've got to move people.

And moving them with a dose of realism and that optimism, we hope that's going to be that winning formula.

Just the little hard numbers to that in 23-24.

There was legislation primarily around special education sale, public schools, netted $24 million out of the legislative session in ongoing funding.

So the number 30 is not out of the realm of possibility.

24 was a couple of years ago in the major session.

That was a record for the state, though.

Yeah, 41 was the McCleary year, but 24 was that year.

And so there's...

It's not just made up from nowhere.

The district netted $24 million a couple of years ago.

That was the point I was going to make is that range, it's well taken the point that the state is facing its own budget deficit.

But beyond the big three agenda items, there does seem to be a lot of interest in raising operating levy caps.

And for us, just that 30 to 60 range could be accomplished with that.

Scenario two with that range of infusion doesn't necessarily even need state funding.

It could be local funding.

Not necessarily a sustainable solution for everything, but we are talking about the 25-26 budget in the midst of a lot of uncertainty and transition.

So we're trying to work on a scenario that might be feasible while all the other things in Dr. Buddleman's colorful chart kind of play out and we know where we're landing.

Director Hersey, and then I'll ask staff to maybe wrap us up.

Yeah.

Can we go back to Dr. Buddleman's magic chart?

Is that possible with all the pretty colors?

Great.

OK.

So it would be cool to see something similar to this that tracks any of the fiscal bills that pertain to us in the legislature.

So as we are moving through these sessions, we can know what's in play and what's not.

I think a lot of folks who are doing their advocacy down in Olympia, since we can't direct them, would also really benefit from having a visual aid to see what is in play and what's not.

So if that's something that our legislative liaison could work on with staff, I think that wouldn't just be a useful resource to the board, but also to the community.

Director Rankin?

Oh, I was just going to say, well, no, never mind.

There are a ton of organizations that have that available.

Yeah, bring it to the meeting.

If it already exists, don't do double work.

But I'm just saying, like, You're good.

What Director Rankin said, OK, there you go.

She's got another one.

Go for it.

I was just going to say, you know, I periodically send those things in updates to you all.

And when I can, remember to include them in the meeting minutes also.

But to your point, the district can provide information much more quickly and readily through different channels than I can.

And also...

we can't direct advocacy but we can share information yeah i mean that's all fine and good i think again the main point is just to see like as we are going through it and pertaining to the budget conversation if we could get a visual aid to see like all right if we are assuming that there is a potential of 120 million dollars based on all these different pieces of legislation and then next week after cut off whatever, that's a hypothetical.

Now there's $80 million that are available to us.

I think that a lot of people would find that helpful.

Yep.

So let's jump to just over one slide of 41 and talk about the next steps.

And I don't have a speech.

I want to just go ahead and close with you all seeing what's on the horizon.

We have the internal technical budget process.

Then we have the strategic plan task force advisory work that we're going to stand up that I mentioned to you.

Now we're working on the preliminary budget proposals to Director Rankin's advice and directive here.

We're going to have more detail for February.

And in February, obviously, we have our levies on the ballot.

April, legislature adopts their 25-27 biennial budget.

May, we have a budget session to study the superintendent's budget recommendation pending the outcome of the led session.

So it may change.

We're hoping for scenario two, obviously, the top end of that.

And in June and July, school board's scheduled to review the final budget recommendation.

And June is scheduled to vote for a final dispensation on July.

So any direction, questions, thoughts as we go forth and continue to develop and refine this?

I think I have a good capture of some of the things through the questions that you all ask.

But are there more things that we can do to mature this, make it stronger, more alignment, more integration?

I see a lot of cards, Director Sarju.

Director Hersey.

Oh, sorry.

Director Rankin.

I was just going to say that a reminder slash request that, you know, we hold these meetings in public.

but they're not meetings for the public, they're meetings for the board.

So a request slash reminder to provide this information also in a community-friendly, public-facing way that doesn't rely on them watching a board meeting.

There should be continual communication and education out to the community about where we are in our budget timeline, what it means, how we'll impact them, that I would really like to see happen, to just...

And again, I'm not trying to be super negative and pessimistic, but we also need to be realistic and honest about where we are.

And to Brandon's point, helping people understand when they can advocate, why should we care that there's a, why should anybody care that about the impact of $23 million in that range.

Well, it's a huge difference when you're talking to a legislator to say we really need this $20 million than it is to say my understanding is if this $20 million doesn't get received, my child's school will will lose their librarian or lose their class, whatever.

Giving the information to families that they need to not only understand more transparently what happens in the district, but also gives them the information to put their own personal connection to it to then go and advocate with.

And that is...

makes advocacy, that's just extremely effective to have board and superintendent giving that high level to legislators and have families tell their personal stories.

They can't do that as well if they're not getting the information and updates from SPS.

We are aligned.

Perfect.

I thought we might be.

Thank you.

And I just repeat, you know, the legislative session is going on.

This is a huge legislative session.

They are talking about education, and so we need to continue pushing and not take our foot off the gas there.

Thank you, staff, for this presentation.

We're going to move into our last budget item, which is our self-evaluation.

I texted many of the boards, some of who have left already a section of the evaluation for them to do.

I think Director Hersey has vision and goals.

Director Mizrahi has values and guardrails.

Director Rankin has monitoring and accountability.

And then I have now communication and collaboration, unity and trust, and continuous improvement.

So we're going to fill this chart out.

Staff is putting the rubric up on the screen.

So this is our quarterly self-evaluation.

Your directors have taken a look at various sections of the evaluation in preparation for our discussion.

We're going to work through that now.

and then once it's completed it will be on our consent next consent agenda we are also having uh hard copies passed out um and then what i would like directors to just highlight as they go through and uh score their section we we can all look at it but point out which item is the reason why we are not moving up and then any specific items that you really see that are in this section that we need to focus on that are about time use because that is the one area we said we were going to be focusing on and tracking closely and working towards our goals.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Director Hersey for vision and goals.

Yeah, so for the vision and goals, I gave us a 25 in coordinates with last quarter, just because we haven't done any, we're still utilizing the same goals and guardrails.

But I really do think, like I did a little preemptive study based on the process that Director Rankin put together for our new goals and guardrails and the process that we're going through now.

I feel pretty confident that in January and March, we're going to have a 35. So I'm excited to improve in that metric.

But again, for this quarter, I gave us another 25.

Any vision and goals.

Any disagreement?

All right.

It's being written on the screen up here.

There.

Right there.

All right.

Then we will move on to values and guardrails.

Director Mizrahi.

And I hadn't actually seen the previous numbers.