Seattle School Board Meeting 1272016 Part 3

Ingram high school.

This proposal requests approval of the naming of Ingram high school basketball court not the whole gymnasium just the basketball court itself in honor of Mr. Walt Milroy former basketball coach and long-term long-time teacher.

Principal Flo made the recommendation, wrote the letter to Dr. Nyland as prescribed.

The fiscal impact of this will be $400 to paint or install the lettering on the court itself.

This proposal strictly follows board policy and procedure 6970 and we've gone through that process.

Section 2 naming of a portion of a school building in this case the gymnasiums basketball court.

This action has come out of the community through Ingram high school community and now is coming to you as prescribed.

And principal Flo is going to talk to you about sections 7 and 11 in the BAR.

Thank you.

A Walt Melroy longtime teacher and coach in the Seattle Public Schools was a three-sport athlete at Roosevelt.

He taught from 1947 to 1959 at Queen Anne High School, coached there as well.

In 1959 when Ingram opened He transferred to Ingram high school where he taught history and was a counselor until 1980. Walt Milroy for many years was Seattle, was the state's winningest coach.

He also coached the 1969 state championship team that Governor Jay Inslee played on as well.

Mr. Milroy is currently in his mid-90s and currently still resides in the Puget Sound area.

Our goal is to be able to honor him at one of our last home basketball games here in early February.

Mr. Milroy's record was 278 wins and 159 losses again to become one of the state's most winningest coaches.

Through this process this was approved of and supported by the building leadership team, the staff, the student ASB and community residents as well as the governor of the state of Washington and many of the I believe you have many of the letters of support with you.

I upon the passage of this again we will place Mr. Milroy's name on the court surface at Ingram high school.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any questions or comments?

Director Burke.

Thank you for sharing that, that's a great success story and I appreciate the honor.

I'm curious the decision to name the court versus naming the gymnasium, what was the decision process around that?

Thank you the decision process was that Walt Milroy was again an outstanding basketball court coach.

We do in looking at the equity issue we also have one of the state's winningest female volleyball coaches that potentially in the future could be involved in the naming part of the volleyball court as well.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

During the discussion of this item by the operations committee on the 17th of November one of the issues that was brought up was the potential for the governor to actually be there for the naming ceremony and there was a question about that.

Do we have any clarification?

No clarification at this time of course he will be invited and has a number of times come to Ingram high school in support of not only the school but the athletic program and has come to the school with Walt Milroy and they are in communication and I'm sure he would love to attend.

Just one comment, I want to appreciate you for the broad base of support that the documentation that you provided that indicates that lots of folks across the spectrum of your school community have endorsed this idea and are supportive of this idea.

It makes it a whole lot easier to vote yes.

So I want to thank you and appreciate you for your work in stewarding that effort.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

All right thank you very much.

So our next item, item number two amending policy number 2415 high school graduation requirements.

Hi Dan Gallagher director of career and college readiness.

So the state law change requiring district students in the class of 2021 to earn 24 credits to graduate.

The current requirement is 21 credits to graduate.

Students in the class of 2021 are current 8th graders so they will be registering for high school classes soon.

So the motion to amend the policy is to change it so that it is just consistent with state law.

If you refer to the red line version it basically just switches the number required from 21 to And I'll note this was discussed in the September 28 board work session, October 10 and November 14 C&I committee meeting.

Are there any questions or comments?

Director Harris.

So many months ago we talked about having planning principles and trimester five credits, five classes a day etc. and we heard a lot from our constituents that that would have pretty significant impact.

Additionally it would have significant budgetary impact as I understand it.

Where are we on that continuum?

and where are we on credit retrieval opportunities because this is going to as I understand it compress the requirements for graduation and if we miss a class if a student misses a class then there will be real difficulty in making that up.

Can you speak to a little of that please?

Sure yeah so a couple things kind of timeline of how we've gotten to this point.

Last year and even before that there was work on analyzing what are we going to do to make sure all our students have the most opportunities to be successful.

A task force was created last year called the 24 credit task force and that's been published and is on our website.

It was the September 28 work session with you that we went through those recommendations and where we stand on those.

In broad strokes we have those recommendations and so now we are analyzing feasibility and kind of deeper dive in For example, schedule.

So that's where we are right now.

You also mentioned planning principals.

So West Seattle high school principal Ruth Metzger and Nathan Hale high school principal Jill Hudson are both on a half-time release.

That is their duties in the building are covered by an assistant principal where they spend half their time or the equivalent of a 1.0 principal FTE.

working with the entire high school principal core as well as representatives from the middle schools principals to look at actually all of the recommendations and to think about Okay we are trying to follow these recommendations for these credit numbers but just what opportunity do we have here to think about what are we trying to produce in our students?

Kind of how are we trying to re-envision what is high school about?

So that's the work going on right now as well as then the kind of more logistical thinking about schedule and costs.

I mean that's very real.

I'll say even just last week they and other principals as well as I believe there was a teacher and guidance counselor met with people from Kelso school district which is a school district that's on the trimester or three by five as we say that's five periods a day three trimesters to learn about So what are the implications?

What are the things we don't know about?

We can pencil out the numbers work this way but what else do we have to learn?

What else do we have to pay attention to?

That was actually just last week and there are other districts around that have been on the trimester.

There are also other neighboring districts that are considering a move just like us.

And I want to highlight those recommendations were recommendations it's not a foregone conclusion and we are still considering that even though it was the most recommended that's what we are looking at right now for feasibility.

Any other questions or comments?

Thank you.

Okay the next item.

is amending policy 4237 advertising and commercial activities.

This came before the ops on November 17, was there anything that the ops chair would like to share about this item?

Sure, I would be happy to.

This item was considered by the operations committee on the 17th and moved forward for approval.

Ronald Boy a senior assistant general counsel.

This policy amendment makes a couple changes to current board policy 4237 advertising and commercial activities.

Our current policy permits advertising on district property, on high school fields, stadiums and scoreboards.

As a result we found that that provides some inequities amongst all of our sports teams.

Teams such as tennis, track and field, are unable to receive the potential benefits that may come from advertising revenue.

As a result the suggested change is to remove the terms school fields, stadiums and scoreboards replacing with athletic venues to allow an equitable opportunity amongst all of our sports teams.

Additionally there are some grammatical errors or changes that were made to the policy and also the addition of marijuana to the prohibited advertising that would be allowed.

Any questions or comments?

I have a question.

So the advice to change the wording to athletic venues from the more specific field stadiums and scoreboards, where did that advice come from or what is that based on?

What drove that?

Well we found or actually the athletics department had voiced concerns that they were receiving requests from potential sponsors that didn't, that seemed appropriate but didn't fall into the policy like such as a a request from a potential sponsor for a basketball game that wouldn't be allowed under the current policy and they sent some unfairness there.

Whereas if it had been a football team the advertising would have been totally fine under the policy.

And so we felt that in discussing the options that athletic venues was the most appropriate term to use and it would fit into all of the scenarios that we could imagine we are advertising this request would come in for the sports teams.

How long is the list of words to describe athletic venues?

Is it really a long list that we couldn't just be more specific?

You know I think that when we were discussing options say like a site where a track and field meet or a cross-country actually.

The cross-country as far as like how you would describe that.

Is that not a field?

Actually a lot of times they occur like on golf courses or in more like natural areas.

In thinking about all of the options that would accurately describe where all of our sports teams would compete, athletic venues seem to be the most encompassing and appropriate considering all of the options.

And is this concerning permanent placement of advertising or temporary placement during an event?

Temporary, like in a situation of a cross-country obviously a temporary.

with you know a basketball again it would be temporary because at the time of we would need to make sure that a situation like a basketball gym it's also used for classes and things like that it's only an athletic venue during the time that the game is taking place that would be a temporary

So you are saying that you couldn't put up some kind of advertisement at a basketball court because it could be used for a classroom as well so you would not be putting advertising.

It would be temporary.

So in situations where it is a multiuse space it would be temporary.

Is that stated here?

In the bar, in the language of the policy.

I think that we may want to add a little bit more clarity to that.

That's what I'm thinking, temporary, multi-use, those seem like pretty key words in all this.

My concern about the term athletic venues is that it's wide open to interpretation.

So does that mean we're going to have advertising on a sidewalk where kids are doing skateboarding or advertising?

It just seems like it could be really open and what this does is open the door to us allowing advertising pretty much anywhere where anything kind of athletic is going on and is that what we want?

Do we just want to have more of that and just not have any restrictions?

Or I'm just wondering if by being too broad we're being vague to the point where we're unleashing something we might not have intended.

I think that's a valid comment.

as we discuss this I would say that we could consider adding an additional language as far as athletic venues where interscholastic competitions occur.

Athletic competitions occur something of that nature so to your point where athletic things in general take place wouldn't be included in that.

We could also work on a specific just a definition to add to the policy which would also be an option as well.

I would be interested in having more language like that added.

I'd be happy to work on that.

Director Burke and then Director Patu.

I appreciate President Peter's comments about the distinction between an athletic venue and something that is an academic space and so providing clarity around that academic venues that are co-located with athletic space.

that any advertisements shall be removed prior to the space being returned to its educational purpose.

And I have a question, has there been a superintendent procedure developed that accompanies this?

Yes, there is a superintendent procedure also 4237 SP.

Okay, I think that would be helpful if it could be attached as part of this or maybe I just didn't get there.

Yes and I think that as I work on the communication from tonight I think that we may find that some of the information may be more appropriate for that procedure but we may decide it's appropriate in the policy so we may definitely want to put both on the

Right I guess where I was going with that is that there is a list of prohibited activities, there is the definition of athletic venues, and there is something in here about wherever possible the superintendent or designee is encouraged to support local ventures.

So it implies that there is potentially some sort of selection process for advertisers.

And whether that's an individual or a committee, basically what the responsibility is for that, who holds the authority.

I just want to make sure that that's captured somewhere in our policy document or the procedure so that buildings have that guidance and that people don't overextend their authority.

And actually in leading to that notion that we make sure that we are actually not getting carried away in terms of our advertisement.

I had a conversation with the athletic team in terms of looking at advertisement mainly for the time that they were actually playing their games and looking at being self-sufficient in terms of budget wise because we have a budget deficit I feel that that's a department where we don't really put a lot of money into and having those advertisements to use to actually make them a little bit more self-sufficient in terms of bringing budget in for that particular department I think that's a good way to go but we also want to make sure that it's limited it's not to where everything you know is advertisement on a regular basis so I support the fact that we need to word it in a way that it's not all the time.

you know you're not having their advertisement 24 hours a day but actually doing events because I support the fact that they do need to have funds in order for them to be able to support that particular program.

Of course, thank you.

Are there any comments or questions?

All right thank you very much.

Thank you.

So the next item number three, sorry number four approval of 2016-17 international union of operating engineers IUEO local 609 nutrition services salary schedules one for 9-1-2016 through 12-31-2016.

effective 1-1-2017.

This came to the executive committee.

Betty do you remember anything specific about that other than the date?

Nothing has actually come forward with this particular item.

They were actually supposed to discuss it and bring it back to us but we haven't heard anything at this point from 609. Leslie?

That wasn't my recollection, I believe that we had moved this forward for approval.

For approval, that's right.

And we thanked the director of labor management and I'm not sure of your exact title and my apologies in advance.

I struggle with that myself.

That we were most appreciative of these issues that had been dialed up previously by HR and that we weren't attempting to balance the budget on the backs of the least paid of our district.

If I may, we are seeking approval of the schedules which were negotiated with local 609 covering nutrition services employees.

And to this point approximately 37% of the employees are in the situation where they are below the $15 minimum wage.

As another piece of background the collective bargaining agreement that we are currently under called for a wage survey to be conducted essentially last summer prior to the beginning of this school year.

And a survey was conducted but when we met with the union it became apparent that the bigger issue was compliance with the Seattle minimum wage which calls for a $15 per hour minimum wage for those who are not receiving health insurance contributions from the employer.

The negotiations involved a careful look at the salary schedule that we began the year with at September 1 which included the 1.8% that had previously been enacted.

We recognized that the salary schedules had structures or steps for moving employees from one level of responsibility to another.

There were incentives built into the system to promote that kind of development on the part of staff.

The resulting negotiations preserved the notion of that hierarchical progression but altered essentially because of cost considerations and the significant pressure that was resulting from the $15 minimum wage.

There are 225 workers covered by this schedule.

The additional cost for this fiscal year over the rates previously approved September 1 is $186,000.

The annualized cost since what I just referenced as a partial year cost is $279,000.

I would also like to note that if this, this is currently scheduled for final action on January 4, so I wanted to disclose that it's recommended to be effective January 1, so there is a short piece of retroactivity even though the actual payment of funds would not occur until February 1. but we wanted to disclose that.

The other point I would make is that this category of employees is 90% female and 55% persons of color.

And finally, that the financial impact is consistent with discussion we had with the board in closed session.

I'm prepared for any questions.

Well I think I am, I may not be.

Are there any questions or comments?

Did he say 75 female?

Well I don't see any questions or comments.

I personally support doing what we are doing here in terms of raising the wage and paying them fairly so this is necessary work we need to do so thank you.

Thank you.

All right next item is also a wage related one.

This is approval of minimum wage adjustments.

And this, is that the same?

This one came to the executive committee the same day and that also got advanced for approval.

Yes, thank you.

It's a related issue.

We have a significant number of nonrepresented employees that are on an hourly wage schedule and a significant number of them were subject to that minimum wage $15 issue as well.

So long story short we again have the relationship among the different positions and We are recommending an adjustment to the pay schedule to bring up the bottom to $15.

The relationship was somewhat adjusted due to considerations of cost, but the relationships were preserved in the sense of the relative rankings.

Again, these are positions that are 61% female, 40% persons of color.

The current fiscal year cost is $450,000 to $550,000 depending on whether you include the cost of related benefits.

The annualized cost is in the range of $695,000 to $850,000.

And again there is the retroactivity issue since final action is proposed for January 4 with payment occurring in February.

Director Blanford.

I am vaguely remembering part of the conversation that we had in the operations committee on this item and when you made the comment about we preserved the ranking but not necessarily the spread I interpreted that to be that there's some compression as a result of this but there's not one job function jumping ahead of a different job function.

That's correct.

Yes we maintained the relative relationships but not necessarily the size of the relationship.

The percentage difference between one and the other.

Correct.

Director Harris.

We just love your tie.

Well thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right the next item is item number six approval of a contract to Audio Eye Incorporated for web and technology accessibility.

This came to ops.

Which heard this item on November 17 and moved it forward for approval.

Good evening I'm Michael Miller I'm the accessibility coordinator for the district.

The action before you would approve a contract with Audio Eye in the amount of $287,000, $290,000.

This would be a new contract with a two-year initial term and an option for a third year.

The third year would only be needed if there are major changes in the district's website or regulations that govern accessibility changing dramatically.

Audio I would be engaged to assume the task of maintaining the website is required by applicable guidelines.

Specifically if approved, Audio I would assess the site, make all corrections to the site and then they would then certify the site as being accessible.

This contract will reduce the burden on current SPS resources, it will provide the certification and verification of our website being fully compliant and Audio I will indemnify the district if any of the work that they do on our website causes us to be out of compliance and a judgment being made against the district for monetary damages.

This will take us a huge step into complying with the major component of the consent decree that was signed in 2015. If you happen to answer any questions you

Director Blanford.

Not a question but a comment.

I remember very well the precipitating event that caused us to get to this point and it was one that as a school board director I was a little bit ashamed that we were in a position where we were denying unintentionally but denying access to critical information that a parent needed in order to support their kid, their student.

And so I'm very pleased that we've gotten to this point and we've identified a vendor that's willing to take on some of the risk and assure a high level of compliance with federal law.

And so.

I'm pleased to support this motion when it comes up for a vote.

Thank you.

Thanks for the introduction and I would like to I guess have a couple of clarifying questions.

First I just want to understand.

There is, this is a double function thing, one of them is that they, you know, Audio Eye is helping us do the right thing and the other is they are indemnifying us if something turns out to not be the right thing.

They are indemnifying us to the extent that the work that they do on the platform would bring us out of compliance.

So that drills into my second question, the work that they do or the conditions of our website?

The work that they do on the website.

district would still be responsible for the actual content the words on the page they would be responsible for the background on the platform.

Okay so they are more the delivery system the back end or the content management system making sure that that is compliant.

But if we put up content that is not compatible or compliant that is our risk.

if they create a system that perpetuates it or can't support it that's on them.

Thank you and then just to clarify for myself as well the two-year term at about $222,000 versus the third year at 65 is that actually a reduced service in the third year or is that more of a long-term discount if we stay with them?

It's actually looking at the amount of work that needs to be done.

majority of that work will be done probably in the first year some of it going on into the second year that third year again would be more maintenance or if there were any major changes in the regulations.

And if for some reason that work had some scope creep or were to shift.

Is this a fixed price thing with a fixed scope?

We would have to do an amendment to the contract and come back to you for approval.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right the next item is item number seven approval of the annual SAP software maintenance licensing agreement.

This also went to ops.

Yep which heard it at the same time on the 17th and moved it forward for approval.

Okay Mr. Kroll would you like to tell us a little bit about this item?

Yes this is a one-year renewal of our SAP platform which is used for finance, budget, HR.

It's used for processes as simple as payroll but very important.

This is for maintenance and licensing for one year.

It's a continuation of software that we've been using since 2000 and it's needed, the support and maintenance is needed to just make sure that we've got the company's support for any issues that might come up during the year with the software.

If there's any updates we'll get those automatically.

Any questions or comments?

Director Burke.

Sorry I don't want to keep everybody here all night but I'm trying to go into memory and so this will be before your time but perhaps somebody could refresh my memory.

Is the SAP license what we reviewed as a board a while ago looking at different levels of license, different levels of support?

And we looked at a more advanced support that would allow us to do an upgrade or was that power school?

Or something else?

I think you are thinking of power school because we recently did that I believe in June.

Okay.

So back up from that question.

I hear like any enterprise level software has its pros and cons and so I'm curious if from your point of view if this is something that the board should be looking at as a risk or if this is something that you see as an ongoing part of what we are doing here.

the concerns around the efficacy of this tool or this system for the long-term in Seattle.

Not that we want to invest in another one I want to be very clear about that but just understanding every time it comes up for a renewal is a chance for us to ask how are we doing on it?

So I wanted to just ask how are we doing on it?

That's a good point.

So one thing we are doing is we are doing the renewals on a year-by-year basis to keep our options open.

One thing we are also doing is we are looking for tools that augment SAP.

SAP has been a good foundation for us and it's one of one or two of the main enterprise level software for finance used across industries it is very well known.

That being said Sometimes there's parts that we want to plug something in differently so again something that happened a little bit ago before my time is for our substitute management system.

You know SAP is not, that's very narrow and very K-12 oriented and although they can handle it, it was better to go with a state of the art number one in substitute management and that plugs in nicely because SAP has all the hooks for hooking in other systems so we were able to get a really good system that's improving our management of substitutes.

but while still keeping the SAP as our core system.

Another example that we will be coming to the board with is we are looking at a budget development tool.

Now SAP might be the best solution for that but we are also looking at other modules that plug into SAP.

Any other questions or comments?

Seeing none, thank you very much.

Thank you.

And we have made our way to one of the highlights of the evening.

The approval of the student assignment plan for 2017-18.

That also went to the operations committee.

Which also heard it on the 17th of November and moved it forward for consideration.

Hi good afternoon everyone, I guess good evening at this point.

I do, my name is Ashley Davies I'm the director of enrollment planning here at Seattle Public Schools.

I know it's late in the evening but I do have a PowerPoint that I wanted to run through quickly to highlight the changes and also for us to have on record to talk about the student assignment plan changes I'll be discussing.

So this PowerPoint basically captures information that we were sharing at our community meetings across the city that we've had, we've had five of them at this point.

And I'll talk a little bit about the changes, a little bit about the feedback and then I know there are some amendments that I'm sure that you all want to discuss with us.

Okay great so I first want to start by mentioning that all the all the information that I'm sharing today are recommendations for changes to our student assignment plan which is different from our procedures so the student assignment plan for the 17-18 school year so nothing would be implemented this school year everything is for changes for the coming school year and these changes many of them also incorporate some information and decisions based upon the growth boundaries decisions from the 16th.

And so I'll talk about those and the relation of some of them.

So the first of which is the addition of three new schools, Cedar Park Elementary which will be listed as an option school in our student assignment plan, Meany Middle and Robert Eagle Staff Middle School.

So these are three new schools that will be added into the student assignment plan.

And then for the attendance area middles it will also have the reference to the elementary schools that feed into them within the plan.

The next is the truncation or the transition of Madrona from a K8 to a K5.

Again this means that Madrona which is currently one of our three attendance area K8 schools meaning that families have essentially two guaranteed options for the middle school grades that's the 6-8 portion of the K-8 if they live within that attendance area or the attendance area at middle school for which they live in that area.

So even with transitioning Madrona to a K-5 all those families would still have access and a guaranteed seat at Meany Middle School which is opening in 17-18.

So this is a result again of mini opening as well as the low enrollment at Madrona across their sixth grade they have about 15 students currently and roughly 60 students across all of their middle school grades.

We've had several community meetings specific to just that community.

I will also be having another meeting tomorrow night to speak with just the middle school families.

We've had the planning principal at meeting middle school also a part of all those conversations so that families understand the option for them that will be available if Madrona does transition to a K5.

Establishing a geozone for Licton Springs so currently Licton Springs is in the Lincoln building does not have a geozone and now that it is moving to a permanent location we need to establish a geozone for Licton Springs since all of our option schools do have a geozone surrounding them.

So this geozone would be drawn within Daniel Bagley, it is also included within the service area for Licton Springs so it would align with the transportation access that families could have if they live outside the walk zone to Licton Springs.

And again it would also help relieve capacity at Daniel Bagley.

So the geozone doesn't give someone a guaranteed assignment but it gives them a level of priority if they do want to apply.

updates to the highly capable cohort pathways at the elementary level.

So Cascadia will also be moving into its new building in 17-18 and the current size of that cohort is about 750 which cannot be fully accommodated in the new building which is planned for 660 students so the recommendation is to geo split that cohort meaning that we would utilize the Cascadia building as well as the Decatur building which is on the Thornton Creek campus and students would be assigned to one of those sites as a pathway site based on their home address.

So families that live essentially within the Eckstein service area would be assigned to Decatur and then families in all the other service areas in the north end would be assigned to Cascadia.

So the one piece to that that did have to be updated based on the approved boundary plan from the 16th is that the Eckstein service area itself is actually too large for all the students within that service area to be accommodated just at Decatur so it would be all of the attendance areas in Eckstein minus Wedgwood would likely be the recommendation.

And that would right size the Decatur building as well as the Cascadia and leave a little bit of room for growth between both buildings.

And then no other, there are no other recommendations for changes for any of the other elementary pathways.

I also want to mention this was recommended as well via the feedback that we got from families through school surveys.

So the district provided surveys to families outlining several options including this one and then the Cascadia community also created their own survey talking about the potential different options for accommodating all the students in the cohort.

With this as well we would have many families who would be able to walk to school now that they are at Decatur rather than having to travel to Cascadia and it would maximize walkability.

At the middle school level we have two changes the first of which would be establishing Eagle Staff as a pathway at the middle school level so as I mentioned Eagle Staff is opening up as a new attendance area middle school and currently all the eligible and enrolled students in the cohort within the Whitman, the McClure and the Hamilton service area all attend Hamilton.

And so with the opening of Eagle Staff families that live within the Whitman attendance area as well as the new Eagle Staff attendance area would be assigned to Eagle Staff and then families who lived within the McClure attendance area as well as the Hamilton attendance area would continue to be assigned to Hamilton for HCC.

other addition is establishing Madison middle school as a default pathway for HCC at the middle school level so currently Madison is an option site.

The default pathway for West Seattle is Washington middle school and this year actually the last two years we've had families opting into Madison who live in West Seattle and with this change we would be making that the default pathway.

Families would still have access to Washington through the school choice process if they did not want Madison and lived in West Seattle but it would no longer be a guaranteed pathway assignment.

And then all the other pathways at the middle school level would remain the same.

This chart just describes some of the changes as well as some of the other pathways that are staying the same.

The next change is establishing a dual language immersion pathway for families who are currently at Mercer in eighth grade so Mercer middle school offers the dual language immersion pathway and those students have articulated up to eighth grade and now need a continuation and so there is actually a task force that has been meeting for several months to talk about many different aspects of successful programs, budgeting as well as assignments and pathways for our international schools and looking specifically thinking about the options for families in the southeast.

And so that group did do some specific surveys for all the current 8th graders at Mercer as well as talk with the principals in that area about establishing a pathway in the southeast and at this time There is currently not a high school that has the capacity or ability to offer a successful program so the recommendation is to name Chief Sealth which is already a pathway for the Southwest Seattle as the pathway for those at Mercer who want to continue.

So of the outreach that was done to families who were at Mercer in that pathway the majority of them actually wanted to stay at their attendance area high school which would be Franklin and they have a diverse language offerings there so many would stay there but if they wanted to continue formally within the pathway that would be Chief Sealth for 17-18.

The next is in regard to our K-8's and the middle school portion of our K-8's.

So as I mentioned when I spoke about Madrona families who live within the attendance area of a K-8 have essentially two guaranteed assignments at the middle school level.

The 6-8 portion of their K-8 or the middle school attendance area and for some of our K-8's in particular Catherine Blaine comes to mind as they experience challenges at the middle school level with capacity it is difficult to continue to accept new students in those middle school grades despite the fact that they are guaranteed a seat.

So we are recommending to add a clause to that.

piece of the student assignment plan that says that new students who reside within the attendance area of a K-8 would be granted a seat in that 6-8 portion pending space availability as to prevent any type of overload for schools that don't have any more capacity.

So it wouldn't change any of those continuations for students who are currently there in fifth grade who want to articulate up to six.

would just be for new students who are coming into the area.

There's no seats available, they would just have the option of their attendance area in middle school.

The next is moving the waitlist dissolution date to August 31 from August 15 so as many of you may know we made a change to the dissolution date of the waitlist this year to August 15 as a way to provide schools some more stability and predictability for their classrooms for their planning configurations and such that there wasn't that movement into the school year as we had previously as well as add some finality for families in understanding what their assignment was going to be for the coming year.

So we did surveys to our school leaders asking for feedback around some of the changes to the student assignment plan in particular some of the dates and we got feedback that generally that date was preferable to move it ahead of the start of school but school leaders wanted a little bit more time to allow registrars to come back, do some more cleanup so we are recommending to move that to August 31. Next is piloting Nova as a service school from an option school.

So currently Nova is an option school and as an option school they are bound to the open enrollment timelines, the school choice timelines.

And that limits access for families for some of our nontraditional types of schools.

And so we have gotten specific feedback from school leadership at Nova around wanting to increase enrollment, wanting to allow continued access and so piloting Nova as a service school will allow us to do that.

The next is three small alignments based off of some of the misalignments after the growth boundaries plan was approved on the 16th.

So as a result of some of the elementary changes not being implemented We did end up with six elementary schools that don't feed into just one middle school.

Three of the areas are fairly large they cut between, they have significant portions that cut between two middle schools and then we have three other areas that are small.

Across those three other areas there are only 15 students who would be currently impacted and with this cleanup of the Eagle Staff and Eckstein boundaries that would allow all of those students within View Ridge to remain together and Wedgwood to remain together and go to Eckstein rather than just have a handful of students who would have to be separated from the rest of their cohort into Jane Addams.

And the same goes for Broadview Thompson with Eagle Staff.

So this just shows again some of those numbers.

Before I talk about the five community meetings that we've had I did want to mention three other updates that we did want to make based on some recent conversations in our two by twos with the board and so didn't have a chance to update them but these are mostly around kind of language that we would like to update and I just wanted to state that for the record.

So the first of which was moving the updated plan just says student assignment plan.

So we talked about potentially changing that back to student assignment transition plan.

The next of which was adding a little bit of information in the preface that talked about that 2009 document and the connection between this student assignment plan version for 17-18 and that 2009 document there has been conversation about us getting to a place where we can merge them, we are not there yet.

We want to be really thoughtful about that plan and give ourselves some time to do some really thoughtful engagement and make sure that nothing is left out and everything is transparent.

But do you want to recognize that that document contains information and references that may still be important for families.

And then the last of which was adding a separate section and designation for our alternative learning experience schools and taking those four schools that are now listed under service schools and listing them as ALEs rather than that.

So those were three changes that came from some of our conversations that staff felt we could also co-sign on and that wouldn't be controversial.

So we've had five community meetings across the city, one in every region to talk about these changes.

and also have explained to families during that time some of the key enrollment dates given the relevance and the tie-in with this information.

That's all I have.

No questions, no time for questions.

So I will let you take the floor then.

All right I'm just going to simply ask if there are any questions or comments.

And then I would love to touch on the amendments too at whatever point feels best for you all.

Director Blanford.

I have two questions.

The first, what time is the meeting scheduled for Medrona that's Medrona parents tomorrow?

The Madrona meeting is at 6 PM, I hear there will be pizza, it is in the library and yeah.

And my second question is I had a very brief conversation with Mark Perry who is the principal at Nova yesterday and it did not appear that he was comfortable with the idea, I'm writing him an email right now I'm not going to send it until we close this meeting but it didn't appear that he supported the idea of going to a service school.

So we had, I'll explain a little bit about that conversation and how we came to that collective decision about doing the pilot for a service school and I think that's the important about the fact that it's specific to call it the fact that it's a pilot for just one year.

So a lot of the feedback that principal Perry had about his school was he wanted to accept students into the school year with a cutoff date of September 30. And as an option school we still align all of our open enrollment and school choice dates with all the other schools.

So the only way to have a little bit more flexibility would be to have Nova as a service school.

So I think in the ideal world he would probably love to maybe stay in option school but just have a different waitlist cutoff date but just out of consistency for all of our schools we had talked about just trying out one year as a service school without having the rigidity of those timelines and then doing a reassessment of that.

my understanding based on being his school board director for three years now and every year consistently hearing his challenge with the fact that his enrollment comes in frequently after account dates and so he is then penalized but he consistently shows that over the course of the year he has enrollment that justifies the budget that he receives and so it's to my understanding it's not a matter of preference it's a matter of there's a historical background that requires that he serving a very needy population.

He was sharing with other principals at the principals meeting yesterday how vulnerable his population is of students and requiring a little bit of discretion in order to be able to to manage the complexity of the student population that he's dealing with.

And so I haven't had that conversation with him yet but it's something that I want to know more about where his concerns are.

and hopefully we'll be able to dialogue and if possible find some solution that is mutually agreeable to all parties.

Yeah and so I actually went and visited last week after just to have a follow-up on the conversation that we had had as a group and do recognize that His concerns really stem from just wanting us to think about his school and the uniqueness of it and it is challenging as a system for us to think about timelines and to think about processes and for principals to have really valid arguments around the fact that I understand the timelines and those processes but my school and my students need something different and so our conversation and the idea of the pilot was around well let's at least just try this.

Let's see if we can work within our guidelines and policies and then if that doesn't work figure out what we can kind of do next after that but at least give it a try before we create something outside of our typical policies and procedures.

Director Patu.

Can you give me a definition for service school?

Yeah so the definition for a service school is actually pretty broad.

For the most part it offers services and programs that are not traditionally offered at some of our more comprehensive schools.

And again with those in particular they are not bound to the open enrollment school choice timelines like the rest of our either attendance area schools or even option schools.

Thank you.

I think I saw Director Harris and then Director Burke.

If you could respond to the board offline I am going to put three questions out there if I might.

I thought that we had come to consensus about ALE schools and not calling them service schools.

because of the pejorative nature of that title and to call them ALE slash option schools which gives them the rolling enrollment flexibility.

I thought that we had some significant buy-in on that so I'm confused.

If I miss the memo I'll own it.

I've had some pretty rich discussions about for instance how middle college high school was changed back in the day under footnote number four from an option school to a service school and it had some pretty horrific consequences.

And I want to remind my fellow colleagues that middle school high school in 2009 had 500 and we are lucky if we break 150 now.

And again since we are talking about closing the opportunity gap I would like special consideration for these unique populations.

Interagency, Nova, middle college high school.

Second question and again happy to take the feedback offline as long as it's copied to the entirety of the board so that we are on literally the same page.

When did the Madison advanced learning change get daylighted?

And was there any community engagement on that fact?

And if so the details of the community engagement.

Third I maintain my offer to ride the buses from Southeast Seattle, international school areas, Beacon Hill, Dearborn Park, Asa Mercer to get to Chief Sealth international high school.

The east west bus connections are absurd and the pragmatic result of that I think needs to be taken into account.

Thank you very much for your hard work and I still remain in awe of you.

Director Burke.

Leslie's closure is my opening.

I want to start by thanking you for being amazing.

The data analysis, the communication, the outreach to schools, the oh yeah I'm going out to meet with that school tomorrow is refreshing and invigorating so thank you for that.

I wanted to just confirm a couple of things quickly to make sure that I'm understanding what was in the presentation.

In the slides there is the HCC transition, the idea is that all Eckstein students would move to Decatur except for Wedgwood.

Did I understand that properly?

And that's something that would be in future language, it's not in the current one or is that in the current language?

So it's not spelled out in the current language.

So that's in the anticipated coming soon list.

Yes.

And then there were two sort of pathways for dual language immersion students at Mercer and at the K-8 programs where there's two different options where they could go either their neighborhood schools or the Chief Sealth or the K-8's respectively.

Are both of those guaranteed assignments?

An international student could go to either their attendance area or Chief Sealth both guaranteed?

Yes, so a family always has a guarantee at their attendance area school and then if they are in the pathway at Mercer they would get that guarantee to Sealth.

Perfect, okay that's what I thought I understood.

And then one of the changes in this plan, the misalignment corrections to better adjust the pathways for Wedgwood, View Ridge and Viewlands I guess.

Small number of students impacted, are those students that would be actually moved or are those students that would be, would it be a roll-up or is it a grandfathered situation?

The recommendation for these areas would be to grandfather just because it is a cleanup after the fact.

We did have the boundary vote already and so we wouldn't want to make this change and then have to tell these families that they would have to move.

So all the families in these areas would stay, have the ability to be grandfathered.

And just to, that's grandfathering with transportation?

if were needed or not.

So that would technically be a board determination but given the small number we would say and given the previous approval of those other areas with the transportation we would say grandfathering with transportation.

I guess as part of Director Harris's questions if you could provide a recommendation to the board for if there is an amendment needed or if that is something that there is consensus on amongst staff for how to carry out that cleanup process with minimum impact on families.

Pegi McEvoy assistant superintendent operations.

I know that when the board asks for that type of cleanup you also are wanting to make sure that what the costs are for that so we will go ahead and do that analysis and as we move the transportation service standards forward we will make sure that we pay particular attention to that and make sure that we are giving you that information then also before you also do the updated student assignment plan.

Director Pinkham and then Director Blanford.

And I'd hopefully like to get some more information or some numbers on the impact that what would happen if Licton Springs was given you know the 14 rooms.

I recall like when we were working with actually Loyal Heights there were some issues as far as the number of floors and there are certain grades that can go on the top floors So I'm not sure if again that would impact trying to accommodate Licton Springs ask that again we can't have certain grade levels on the upper floors.

So right now I'd be thinking just kind of visualizing what would be the impact if Licton Springs was given all three floors in that southwest wing or whatever that they are in right now.

and how that may impact other assignment plans or even Robert Eagle Staff, how much does that take away from them?

I think there's five floors on that third floor I believe for the classrooms.

So you can start seeing what kind of things we can work with there.

if that's feasible if it's possible given again it's a K-8 we're trying to see but oh no we can't have third graders on this floor.

Those are the kind of questions I want to get hopefully clarified to see what kind of steps we can do to move forward to see if that's definitely feasible.

So just to clarify your question, you want to see the impact of if we allocated 14 rather than seven rooms to Licton Springs, the impact that it would have on Eagle Staff?

Yes, and possibly other, I guess that's the main, just that, I'll just ask for that right now to see what that impact would be.

And I guess right now just looking at it, if I said third floors I'd be 12 classrooms because the third floor did have five classrooms.

Director Blanford and then Director Burke.

I feel like I'm about to ask you a fairly dangerous question and so I apologize in advance.

And I'm hesitant to ask the question partially because I stand personally to benefit from it.

But going to the conversation about the immersion program and Chief Sealth.

Do we have any policy or have you received any guidance about what is done when before your time promises are made, promises or plans are made with regard to what we are going to do at some point in the future and then what happens when we don't follow through on those plans.

And the reason I ask that question is because I was a parent when we were choosing to enroll our daughter in at Beacon Hill international school and being very excited about the immersion program.

I was in a room with lots of other parents who remind me frequently of this promise that what was promised was that as our children move through elementary school into middle school into high school there would be a school designated for their so that they could stay in an immersion program with the idea that we were making a commitment to stay involved in and help them through the immersion and the growth of that and the district was making some sort of a promise that there would be a program that wasn't so far away that it was unworkable for most families.

that didn't happen and we received some feedback or testimony earlier today that other promises have been made and then parents are wondering what happened?

Is this a shell game?

And I know their best intentions and we are dealing with radically different conditions that are in place now than they were you know in 2009 when my daughter started school.

But what is our obligation to stay true to the promises or the plans that we have actually put out there because I believe that there is some measure of goodwill that we expect from our communities and when we erode that trust by putting something out there and then having to withdraw it that doesn't work.

I can tell you that there are a huge number of parents that are very dissatisfied with the idea that they would ship their kids from somewhere in Southeast where they live to Chief Sealth in order to continue the Mandarin immersion program or some immersion program.

And it's hard for me to go into their living rooms because many of them are personal friends and try to explain to them why this is the case.

And so I'm wondering and maybe this isn't a conversation that we can have right now but I would like to know at some point or maybe provide some advice as to what obligations we have when we have planned and announce to our communities things that we intend to do and then are not able to follow through on.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

I know I was rambling on for a while but I also know that there are a huge number of families that understand the complexity of this but also have a sense of disappointment.

Dr. Nyland.

might be more than what Ashley is up for although she is a fast learner and been doing good work for us.

The dual language task force completed a report that I think we sent to you but we will send it to you again.

It was very enlightening to me so after being here two years it was kind of like oh is that what we promised, intended, hoped for, whatever.

And the really short version is that the hoped for was 20 pathways and the reality is more like 10 pathways that as you note aren't complete.

And then Joe Lynn's budget work is showing us how much it costs us to try to stand up those programs and it does have a cost.

Yeah we are not fulfilling our promises and that is true not only for that program but many other programs and now with the budget crisis we face the difficulty of can we even continue to do what we currently are doing let alone what we said at one point in time that we were doing.

Director Burke.

I wanted to follow up some of Scott's line of questioning around Licton Springs and I had emailed some questions previously I'm not sure if folks had a chance to give it some thought.

I'm curious with the building in the current state of construction or work that it's in Is it viable to add movable partitions that would allow additional class spaces?

Does that provide sufficient educational space?

Does it meet legal requirements?

Would that be a possible bridge solution to help Licton Springs get from where they are now to a growth target?

So Richard Best director of capital projects and planning for Seattle Public Schools, Director Licton Springs now the southwest wing is nearing completion.

We have got gypsum wall board on the walls, gypsum wall boards being painted at this moment in time so revising to create operable walls I would say that ship has sailed.

Doesn't mean that there's not exploration going on we're looking at some alternatives exploring how to provide additional classrooms there.

I know conversations are occurring with building principals, Sherry Cox, myself, so we are aware of your email.

I didn't respond yet because I'm trying to collect some additional information but we are engaged in those conversations at this moment in time.

Thanks I really want to appreciate that and highlight that even if as you indicated the ship has sailed at some point there is the incremental capital cost but then there is also putting a small number of students in a full classroom that has sort of an ongoing operating capacity that in some cases maybe that would be a better investment as a change order.

to provide that capacity so I know that's on your mind.

And one of the things I will say that we talked about on the capital project side today is to try to get the folks at Licton Springs the building administrator and some of the staff there to come and tour Robert Eagle Staff Middle School.

Their reference point right now is Lincoln high school and previously it was the old Pioneers building.

We are talking a totally different teaching environment than those reference points.

And so having them see the classrooms and the sizes of the classrooms that we are talking about may also be an educational process which is the mission of our institution.

Michael Tolley associate superintendent for teaching and learning.

I wanted to respond a little bit to that email that you sent regarding the use of the facilities at Eagle Staff.

I did call together a meeting with Marty Campbell and Roy Murka to discuss the flexibility of space usage regarding this.

Particularly, we have a unique situation with a K-8 school in the same building as a middle school.

What is the opportunities available to maximize our services to students in that setting, particularly for the 6th through 8th grade level?

And both principals indicated that they of course would work very closely together to do two things, one serve our students with the way they need to be served as well as maintain integrity of both programs.

But because there is a middle school for comprehensive middle school on that site that gives you opportunities for example if you have a small number of middle school age students wanting to take Algebra I within Licton Spring well that it would make sense that they might attend classes with the Eagle Staff middle school.

And the opposite could also be true if you have a social studies program that has the social justice focus being taught within the Licton spring program there may be middle schoolers within Eagle Staff that might want to take advantage of that as well.

So that's a partnership that could be established and maintained within that one building.

while you are up at the dais, maybe for you maybe for Ashley, is it appropriate or is it something that the board can request to not have a cap of 150 on the program to either raise the cap or something so that there is not the perception that growth is limited on that program.

Is it something that we can put a little bit bigger box around to allow it to grow?

So based on enrollment historically for Licton Springs it's not had a cap and it hasn't been above it's been between 120 and 150 over the past few years.

And it wasn't until you know this year where we had a waitlist and that was just because we were trying to ensure that when the school does move into Eagle Staff that it would be able to fit.

But even typically without a cap it didn't even have a waitlist.

So you know we'd have to ensure that the students and the enrollment would fit with the classroom space that they have.

So that is likely going to be around 150. So I would be hesitant to commit to something above 200 unless we were talking about physically having additional space to ensure that if enrollment did go above 150 we had the space to accommodate.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

I think something we also have to be aware of with Licton Springs it has been a temporary site for these past few years that once I think families will see hey here is the permanent location you are going to see enrollment or demand increase.

So I think limiting right now to say just 150 isn't wise so I think if we are saying if we are going to vote for 150 we need more space I think that is something we definitely need to look at more space for Licton Springs at Eagle Staff.

I will mention that at the same, I mean we go through our process of open enrollment and school choice with all of our schools on the same timeline.

So at the same time we are seeing enrollment at Eagle Staff we will also be able to see demand for Licton Springs.

So you know this conversation we can continue to monitor those things at that time and see if kind of the amount of students who do apply and where we are with that.

Director Geary.

Hello thank you for your work of course.

I was glad to hear in terms of the updates that you are thinking about is reinserting transition I think as long as this plan is in flux that putting people on notice of that and then including a preface referencing the 2009 plan is also a good idea.

It occurs to me that also referencing the fact that we have something like Lincoln coming online within the foreseeable future and therefore is going to cause further adjustments to the assignment plan.

Maybe something that we need to think about putting on people, people on notice now and that sort of creating more a culture of putting people on notice of upcoming changes so that we are not having to address them when they say a promise has been broken, we put them on notice as they are going through the enrollment process that we know these changes are coming, they need to know these changes are coming too so that they have an opportunity to think it through, prepare themselves however they need to.

So that said, so those are a lot of my notes.

The creation of the school at Decatur as an assignment seems to me, that was an area with one school it was Decatur and then I think AE2 and then Thornton Creek and now Thornton Creek is in an entirely different building and we have an empty building called Decatur and it makes me think we are creating a self-contained school that we are disguising as an assignment plan.

And once that is created it will be very difficult to roll it back again because the promise of the space with this name becomes very fixed and I am concerned about that.

I know there is an amendment and I just want to daylight my concerns about just how we are going about rolling students into a building that appears to me we are creating a whole new school, self-contained school for highly capable students.

Can I just make a comment to that?

Sure.

So essentially that is what would be happening.

It just seems to do this in the context of an assignment plan, I don't know, it doesn't feel right to me.

It doesn't feel as thoughtful as I think the creation of a new school within our school district should be.

I have made it pretty clear I'm not really in favor of self-contained schools anyway.

And so we're creating a school to address a capacity issue that isn't really thinking about all other than it's really just focusing on capacity and not all the other ramifications around creating such a school and the long-term promises that come out of creating such a school should we in the future decide that we want to offer our families something that is better developed within our neighborhood schools under the MTSS structure with a diversified offering and or an option school that has a different focus that you don't have to test into it.

But we will have created this in this space that precludes other options.

So I'm very concerned about that and I know I've spoken to some people, I spoke with you and Michael Tully I believe about the idea that perhaps, no it was Michael Tully and some other people, about could we consider creating advanced learning options that people don't have to test into but they can opt into them with the commitment, the expectation.

We talk about creating expectations for people the expectation that those students are going to rise to the level of the curriculum that is being delivered without them having to face labeling, testing, all the things that we have identified as barriers for certain groups of people.

So I'm just concerned by this.

dynamic that we are creating for ourselves that is locking us into a model that I'm not sure we all philosophically agree to and is locking I think some of our highly capable families into a model that we've heard them express that they don't necessarily want such self-contained environments for their students.

So I raise that.

My other concern is that I still have concerns about the special ed language and I know you referenced that in one of the meetings and I talked to Wyatt Jesse about that and I do want to see that cleaned up somehow and he has assured me that he will work on that so I hope to see something soon enough that we can get it out and vet it.

And really my mind is that I know we have very complex procedures in other places about how we are going to place our students with IEPs and so I just want to make sure that we make this language very simple and reference the appropriate places for parents to do the deep dive because our parents of special ed students tend to be willing to do the deep dive.

And I don't want them having to try and reconcile a bunch of documents that look inconsistent because that's confusing and I think ultimately causes us to have to spend a lot more time explaining how all these documents work together when maybe we should just point them to the one document that we're really relying on.

And just to that point we have been working with special education.

They've been doing a lot of work around creating more of a family friendly guide to kind of navigate the process in a way that I think will just do a much better job than any context we could provide in our student assignment plan.

So the idea of keeping things minimal and then having a clear reference point we are working on that.

Okay so to the extent that if this document is just the board's instruction to the district on how we want to move forward let's make that as concisely stated as possible so that if parents are reading it they know they are to be referred to a different document that is much more helpful to them in terms of understanding how their child is going to be served within our schools.

Where is it that we explain how we cap option schools?

Because we talk about our option schools as classes that we can cap and yet I wonder if it wouldn't be helpful to us as a district in terms of balancing our capacity issues if there is some language somewhere that talks about tying those caps.

to the enrollment numbers of their neighboring schools to the extent it's feasible with their populations.

So or with what it is that they are trying to do within that school such that if a school needs small ratios based upon that population obviously we wouldn't want to be tying it to outside capacity issues.

But if there isn't that issue within the school population needing smaller amounts should we be falsely lowering those student enrollment while letting neighboring schools get very big or should we be doing some type of analysis to make sure that we are raising up the caps on the option schools so that they balance out.

I wonder if that exists, if it does or doesn't, where does it exist, where should it exist?

So that doesn't exist in the student assignment plan or with any particular document that we have publicly available.

The cap itself is essentially the number of classrooms multiplied by whatever the class size is for that particular grade so it's not a fixed number for a building or a fixed number for the program so all of our option schools as we went down to lower class sizes the cap changed because we have the same number of classrooms and the number of students per classroom that we could serve went down.

and as we raise the number of students per classroom that cap could go up.

But essentially the cap is based on how those schools program, how many we call them three up, four up depending on the classes they serve per grade.

But the reality of that then works out that the schools that can't cap, that you have a guaranteed seat in, they can start to become bursting and we can't even really offer relief through the option schools if they've been capped at a disproportionate level.

So I just, if we're not meeting it in one space, should we be meeting to the detriment of the overall picture?

And can we, can we think about that or should we think about that?

I raised that I don't know how to go forward with that discussion but it is something that occurs to me and we talk about that.

Those are my comments.

I think that is enough context for us to continue that discussion.

Okay it would be interesting to see some thoughts around that so it looks more fair in terms You have families come say our classrooms are so big but the option school gets you know this very contained environment I missed enroll, you know there's all sorts of things that go into that and it just doesn't, it's not helping our capacity issues.

Director Burke.

To build on what Jill had mentioned, I really support the idea of our option schools caps being part of the student assignment plan, recognizing that they are a tool for student assignment, a tool for capacity, they are related to the building, they are related to the programming, so there are multiple factors that go into it.

And it feels like an important piece of transparency that when if the community says well why are we waitlisted there's a board approved cap on that that's evaluated annually as part of our student assignment and so I just wanted to be on the record as thinking that's a good idea.

So the only one concern I would have and I guess this would we would have to think about any type of language with that but if we are thinking about utilizing our option schools in other ways that could help us with our capacity challenges we would want to build flexibility to see where we are once we go through open enrollment and near the beginning of the school year if an option school had the ability to add a classroom.

If we had to outline in the student assignment plan that has to go through this process what that cap was that would be very limiting.

And I didn't insist that it live here I just was wondering where it should live.

Right.

My comment was only just to state that.

Are there any other comments or questions?

I have a few.

Following up from Director Geary I also have had concerns about how we outline the special ed pathways in the student assignment plan and there have been members of the community who bring that up to us every year and so some suggested language has been sent to us that I can forward on to you that is more explicit about special ed students and how they are, their access to our option schools.

and their access to attendance area schools so I can send you that language because the feeling is that we are just not specific enough in our student assignment plan and there is not enough predictability for our special ed families.

And in one of our conversations we had in our meetings it was mentioned that the superintendent procedure accompanying the student assignment plan is a lengthy document and there might be some language in that that perhaps should be in the student assignment plan.

It's a little bit more explicit at least pertaining to special ed.

So if that's a place to look for some more language then maybe that's where we should go.

So I just like I said I will send this language to you and then we can add it to this conversation we are having about what exactly needs to be in the student assignment plan.

With all this talk about Robert Eagle Staff and possible adjustments and who is going to be there and who isn't I am guessing at this point we don't really know how many students are going to be there in the fall and I am wondering if you have any updated projections because if we are talking about adding more space for Licton Springs If it is true that the Whitman 8th graders will be allowed to stay at Whitman because there simply will be space available.

It sounds like we are talking about a pretty, a number that is in flux.

And so I don't expect you to have this answer right now I am just asking if you can give us some kind of update or some kind of multiple projections of different scenarios of what could happen with Robert Eagle Staff.

Because it seems like we are all, there is a number of us who are trying to envision what it is going to look like.

And it sounds like there's a lot of variables involved and it's hard to know how much space we are working with there.

So we did a breakout by feeder elementary of our current students assigned so I can pass that along.

I did share that with Director Burke just based off a conversation we just had so I just shared that today.

I will provide that to the rest of the board.

I would say a challenge with some of the grandfathering pieces in particular if we think about offering grandfathering for current seventh graders that could result in unpredictability within that cohort at Eagle Staff and that may not be able to provide a rich experience for everyone if those numbers aren't high.

So say for instance a small number decide to enroll at Eagle Staff most day that would just make some of that scheduling challenging for Eagle Staff particularly in that first year.

I do recognize that and sort of referencing now my amendment I think that whenever we do start a school there always is a bit of a roll-up aspect to it even when we try to fully start a school like with jams it's not all the pieces are in place the first year and I think that will necessarily be the case with any of our new schools.

They are going to grow over time and they will fill up over time.

and they might not have all the resources immediately.

So I think that's going to happen no matter what we do.

I would also like to know a little bit more about how the opening of Meany is going to impact McClure.

McClure is a school in my district and I would like to know how many students from McClure, it's my understanding that some of the students who live in the downtown area, the Belltown area are now being redirected to Meany and they used to go to McClure and I have been asked about that.

Yeah there's a small area I don't remember offhand I believe it was around 60 students but I want to check just to make sure but I can provide you the information there was just a small area that was included within the Lowell attendance area that used to go to McClure that is now moving to Meany.

Okay and I'd be interested also in knowing how many of them would be eighth graders next year because my understanding is that that particular group of students are students who are likely to be disadvantaged students and so the concept of moving them away from their middle school to another middle school for their final year concerns me.

And so I'd like that to be clarified as to what kind of impact this is making.

Because we haven't talked that much about McClure, we haven't talked that much about Mercer.

I think they also are being impacted by some of the changes.

So the points, the area of McClure I do believe that did come up.

That was area 66 when we had the boundary conversations.

And there was some particular feedback around the demographics of that population that we did discuss.

Okay.

So but based on the approved changes from the 16th that area still moved into Meany.

Right and so the fine point that I want to put on this is I'd like to know how many of those would be eighth graders because that would be, they would be impacted by what I'm proposing.

I also would like to know when Madison became a default option for HCC and I don't know, was there a community engagement done on this?

So it's a recommendation to become a default option, it's not a default option yet.

The recommendation here to the board is to make it a pathway.

There was a focus group that advanced learning had been working with parents from West Seattle to talk about not only this particular change but all the different pathways for West Seattle.

And this was part of the recommendation of that group.

And this focus group was it comprised of families, staff?

Yes it was.

It had staff, families, on that committee both administrator as well as teachers and then also had numerous parent committees and then within that was diversity looking also at 2E so that was parent engagement around that.

So that took place from spring of 2015 to that had their ultimate recommendations right into the summer of this year 2016. And then they also had a larger community engagement a couple of those and with over 100 parents in attendance with feedback questions engagement as well.

And then out of this came the recommendation that Madison become a default HCC pathway rather than optional.

So there's a number of recommendations you know and that's it's been you know obviously discussed but the recommendation is what do they need for that and then also the folks do want the default but the option right now so the thing is as Ashley was mentioning the ability to go to Washington but as they grow that as we are having conversations about growing programs.

And so that's exactly what they're doing so right now Madison is staged next year to do 678 for a highly capable so they're ready for that.

Okay when you say staged again are you saying that this would be a mandatory assignment or would it be an option for those who choose not to go to Washington?

So families who live within the Denny and Madison attendance area would have a guaranteed seat only at Madison if they are eligible for HCC.

They would have, they would be able to apply through school choice for Washington if they wanted but the default pathway means that that's their only guaranteed seat.

Okay, knowing that Washington is at capacity it doesn't sound like they would have a lot of opportunity with open enrollment so this does sound like it would be pretty much their only path would be Madison.

Is that about right?

I mean I wouldn't necessarily be able to speak to that without seeing where we ended up at open enrollment so I mean Washington is the enrollment is going to go down a little bit with the opening of Meany so I wouldn't necessarily close that off.

Alright well if you could share with the board maybe through Friday memo in conjunction with the question that Director Harris asked, if you could share with us the results of the focus groups and what led to your recommendation that Madison be an assignment rather than an option for the HCC students that would be very helpful to see how you arrived at that and what kind of community engagement you had.

Thank you.

And then let's see I noticed that there is some language that has changed in the student assignment plan around advanced learning and it seems like spectrum and advanced learning is being used somewhat interchangeably or that spectrum is a subcategory of advanced learning or to be honest it is not perfectly clear.

And so it's not clear whether spectrum still exists or whether it's being changed to something called advanced learning which is more, can you explain the nomenclature of this?

So as we are looking at that document We are saying that we are clarifying it as advanced learners as opposed to highly capable so underneath a department as we talked about advanced learning there is the designation in the student assignment plan for highly capable and then what we are calling advanced learners.

There is also as you will see in that designation above that is also the advanced learning opportunities which covers both highly capable and advanced learners in itself.

Those services and program are available at every single school so that we can provide those services by law we have to do that for highly capable and so that's the ability to underneath there to say advanced learners so that the students that were speaking of ALO also can cover those for spectrum and that's why you'll see that in the parentheses next to that.

Okay I'm a little concerned that's not super clear.

So in the fact that we now have ALO and advanced learning and they are abbreviated to ALO and AL I'm finding the two somewhat confusing and even though you just explained to us somewhat the difference I'm still not totally clear on that.

And you know you said that we offer this at all our schools and I'm not sure that we do.

You're saying we offer advanced learning at all our schools?

Yeah we do.

We do advanced learning so that's a differentiated approach for them.

It's different than the highly capable services which are mandated but if the student is at any school for highly capable we are mandated to meet their needs and so that's what we do there.

For advanced learning we provide those services as well in a differentiated approach in how it's constructed.

I think that's why I would also say maybe perhaps to your point Director Peters as we've discussed before that's why we have currently a project plan which we have already started to research specifically about how we define and structure spectrum services and so some of the legacy documents that we have out there and the processes do need to be cleared up and so there are some parts of this community that prefer saying it's advanced learning in some schools And some prefer spectrum even though we have spectrum designated schools but we are providing the same services at schools like I was saying across the district.

And so I am agreeing and that is why we do want to get it cleared up.

We do need to engage our stakeholders around just exactly what that is.

Okay where is there a definition of what services are offered for advanced learners whether we call it advanced learning or spectrum because I know that it is mandated.

I know in the CSIP schools are required so it is written down that they do but we have heard from the community that yeah it is written down but it isn't necessarily what is actually happening and it differs from school to school and it seems to be at the you know the principles who decide what that looks like.

So where do we have it written what it's supposed to look like what it does look like so that we can tell our parents yes we do have this this is what you can expect.

Some basic definitions are on our website and I think Again I feel very fortunate to be in front of you to know that we have a work plan to address this because I can't sit here and defend something that it does need absolutely that work.

I think things have changed over time.

you know inheriting situations where there is some level of inconsistency in how they are using the definition we do provide those services and we no longer have things like self-contained spectrum at the elementary sites so that's some of the things that happen those are things that we can reflect but also as we move forward what do folks want that to look like and how should it be defined.

Alright and then regarding Decatur I think this sounds like it's a conversation that we need to have about what that should look like.

You know I think what Director Geary said is something to be considered about how we start up a school like that and perhaps there is something more creative we could be doing over there and so perhaps Jill and I should have a conversation.

This also relates to what Director Burke is proposing regarding Cascadia so somewhere between the three of us.

And with staff maybe we can come up with something that would make sense and meet all the needs that we are trying to meet.

Do we know, I know there was a survey that was done of Cascadia parents I think and Thornton Creek parents.

Do we know if there is an interest in developing an HCC school at Decatur either within the community, the geographic community or the HCC community?

Yes that was the most preferred option of all the different scenarios outlined as part of the survey.

Creating one there and you know we have gotten feedback around families saying that Cascadia is too big.

It's our largest elementary school.

Families have raved about the services provided, the instruction, the leadership there but that's not necessarily what every family desires for their student to have an experience that big in a school that big.

Decatur also has its own cafeteria, its own gym, its own library.

Those families would not have to share the space with Thorn Creek and Cascadia again because of its size.

that physically can only seat 660 meaning that those shared spaces are going to continue to have pressure if there is more than that many students sharing the library, the gym, the gymnasium, the cafeteria.

Could you please send out to us the survey results again?

I know you've done it before but if you could send it out now in the context of the student assignment plan that would be very helpful.

Thank you.

Director, I thought I saw Director Harris did you have your hand up and then Director Geary?

Director Patu.

I was so hoping we could have this conversation offline.

But why is it that the HCC pathway was only serviced, surfaced excuse me a couple of weeks ago and when we say that Madison is ready to go again I don't understand where the training is in place etc. what we are offering and then I find out given the comment that was just made that we are going to ask parents what we want things to look like.

And I am really pleased to hear that statement but it feels a little late.

So I continue to be concerned and confused about how we deal with advanced learning in this city.

So I'll get a moment to clarify when I was talking about the question from Director Peters that's in reference to spectrum and advanced learning that's not the highly capable so those are two different things that we are discussing there.

The highly capable services for the pathway for Madison that process had taken over a year that had over 100 different people engaging and working through it.

That information again we will send it back out and we will move forward with that as we did do the engagement.

The thing I am talking about is the work plan in relation to specifically spectrum as it is commonly referred to which is different than the highly capable.

that we are going to go out and do stakeholder involvement with them and students and a whole bunch of other folks.

I'm glad I can separate, those are two separate things.

One has happened in the past here with Madison and then the other one relates to spectrum or advanced learning services across the district.

And then I will also follow up just quickly about the training.

We have already engaged the staff at Madison through training both at the national level, also they've gone for a week retreat through the UW Robinson Center and then also they've gone off and visited some of our highly capable services at our middle school sites to further learn from them.

So they have been going through the training, they are ready, they have been providing those services.

They are just going to continue to roll that up so that we go all the way 6 through 8.

Director Patu.

This is for Wyatt Jesse.

I know we met a couple of months ago and we talked about the criteria of actually getting more students of color into advanced learning or HCC and I haven't, you know you don't need to answer me right now but you can probably send me an email on a Friday to let me know exactly where are we with that when we talked about the qualification of our students to be able to enter into advanced learning at HCC.

And I guess I like the idea that Director Geary said that You know getting a school where kids do not have to take testing but allow them to be part of a program that actually and see where they land at because testing doesn't normally tell you exactly whether kids are gifted or not only to a certain extent.

And I believe that you know we need to look at more opportunities to how to get more kids involved into advanced learning or HCC in order for us to see exactly what talent a lot of these kids have.

Because I know for a fact that a lot of our kids of color are not, cannot be tested by test only.

A lot of them are very gifted and there's different ways of how to actually qualify them to be part of those advanced learning programs.

So, I'm hoping that as we continue on in that conversation that I would see a higher percentage of kids of color being more involved in HCC or advanced learning because I know that there's a lot of our kids out there that actually are qualified and would benefit from all of that.

Yeah, absolutely I can put that in a Friday memo to capture some of the things for you, definitely Director Patu.

Thank you.

Are there any other, oh Ashley did you want to respond?

I was wondering if you also wanted to go through the amendments.

I know that they were kind of touched upon.

I think that's a good idea.

We can go through them sequentially.

Mine is the first one and mine is a carryover from the growth boundaries discussion.

I first brought it out then and I decided I wanted to get more feedback and I still would like to hear more from the various schools and communities that would be affected by eighth grade grandfathering.

The idea is to let these students just matriculate, finish their middle school experience just the one last year and finish off and not have to be uprooted just for that one year.

And this would apply to all the schools that are affected by the two schools that are being opened, Meany and Robert Eagle Staff.

You know the more I learn about the different options here the more I think that we have to take a look at what is fair.

Through open enrollment certain students will be able to stay in their current school.

I think specifically Whitman does have space but the other schools might not be.

So you will have a group of students who will be able to be effectively grandfathered and others that won't unless we make a stipulation that grandfathering is allowed.

Now I know the negative side of this is that if we have the 8th graders staying where they are or it's something like 235 8th graders assigned to Eagle Staff who might be grandfathered.

If they stay where they are and not go to Eagle Staff we might not have a full group of 8th graders.

So what we would effectively have is like a 6th and 7th grade roll-up which we haven't really done in the past.

However, that doesn't mean that it's something that we shouldn't look into because if we have a robust 6th grade and 7th grade population in a new school we would still have, plus we'll have Licton Springs there, we would still have a considerable population in that school and so it's something that could work.

Parents, I had a meeting with some parents last night and I'm hoping to have more meetings where they share their different concerns about student stability.

Also their concerns about all the talk about what's happening with the budget and their concern that next year with possible dramatic cuts you may have to take the district won't have enough resources to offer the students at the new schools the comprehensive middle school experience that they expect.

And so that's why I've asked earlier for staff to explain what kind of budgeting and what kind of resources especially the planning principles that they have for the, in this case the two new middle schools, Meany and Eagle Staff so we can let our parents know exactly what they can expect.

Because right now there's some concern that they won't be able to have the full experience that first year.

And so if that's the case that does lend more credence to the idea of letting eighth graders stay put and finishing where they are at where the resources do exist.

So that's sort of, Ashley?

So just actually one point to what you just mentioned and that actually was really great for you to add a little bit more and have you talk through the amendment so I could get a little bit more clarity.

on that piece that you mentioned earlier during the night.

But as we think about kind of where we are budget-wise we are really going to be limited in mitigation.

So if we are not able to have cohorts at schools that are full there's not going to be probably as much support as we've had in the past to mitigate.

So I would think actually if we did allow for grandfathering that may have the adverse impact of us not being able to mitigate if we don't have that full cohort for the school.

So just kind of thinking through some of the other different potential implications of that too.

Right I understand so there's like lots of different models we could run on this and I feel like we have a lot of variables you know up in the air on this.

Anyway I was just trying to flesh out the pros and cons of what I'm proposing and again this is based on historically what the district has done and the concerns we had from the community.

There's people from the Jams, the Jane Addams middle school community who have brought to my attention the fact that Jane Addams was not done as a roll-up, it was 6th, 7th and 8th were all taken out of Hamilton and Eckstein I think it was and brought to Jams and how that It ultimately worked out but it was a difficult first year and I've been told by more than one person including the PTA there that it was especially hard on the eighth graders to have to leave Hamilton and Eckstein just for their eighth grade year.

And so I do remember the testimony from then and this is something that parents have brought up again.

So that's it for that first amendment.

Now the next one was from Directors Burke and Pinkham.

I'll speak briefly on this amendment and recognizing that it just was submitted and posted this morning and so staff did not have a chance to really vet it or do any analysis on it but I wanted to be very deliberate and get it part of the record to give us the full month essentially until January 4 to get the public dialogue to give staff time to weigh in.

This amendment really relates to the Robert Eagle Staff building.

When we look at North Seattle and we look at capacity and we look at some of the testimony we heard today the Eagle Staff building is the eye of the storm.

And when we you know it has five elementary feeder schools plus HCC plus Licton Springs.

And the feeder schools are guaranteed assignment.

And HCC is guaranteed assignment.

And so the concern is should there be growth this could potentially put a lot of pressure on Licton Springs.

We also as a result of this we have Whitman middle school which ends up under enrolled as compared to Robert Eagle Staff by a couple of hundred students.

And even over the course of the five-year projection doesn't catch up.

It does grow but it never gets up to the level of Robert Eagle Staff.

And so if we compare that to for example Hamilton, I believe Hamilton has three feeder schools plus HCC plus language immersion.

And so the more non feeder schools, non attendance area schools or non attendance area programs, functions, whatever we call them, we put into a middle school we have to scale back the other pieces and so the purpose of this amendment is to take two of the feeder schools Greenwood Elementary which is to the west of Aurora and move it to Whitman and Broadview Thompson K8 and also move that back to Whitman and when you look at it on the map both of them theoretically could make good sense.

I've heard feedback from the community that that would be a positive thing and so the idea is putting this out there to understand what are the unintended consequences of it because ultimately it has the intent of trying to balance the numbers between Whitman, Eagle Staff, improve the long-term viability for Licton Springs and the discussion today whether it's 10 classrooms whether it's 14. we want to make sure that we are not precluding the ability for that program to grow and be sustainable.

So that was the intent behind this amendment.

There's definitely going to be more dialogue at my community meetings or other opportunities to engage the public.

I've reached out to PTAs at both affected elementaries and I'm trying to set up designated times to meet with them.

enthusiastic with trying to collaborate with Director Pinkham as well to make sure that we are balancing as we span schools in the different director districts that we are taking a really deliberate approach to it.

Would you like to also speak to the next amendment?

Sure I will speak to the next amendment.

The next amendment is also a discussion topic that is put out there and recognizing this is the next one relates to Cascadia and currently it is entirely housed in the Lincoln building.

It is quite large it is quite full as you indicated and the student assignment plan has the directive to take that and pull the students that are in the Eckstein area less Wedgwood and put them into the Decatur building.

So I've heard from community that this is a great idea and I've heard from community that this is, that the Cascadia cohort should stay together.

I've also heard loud and clear that it could be a real challenge fitting into the new building.

And so this amendment is a way to bring the dialogue forward a little bit further to understand the pros and cons of that.

to understand the cost ramifications of having to put portables on site which is sounds like a very likely probability with you know costs and risks associated with it and make sure that that's part of the public dialogue when we go to make this decision.

So whichever way we go we are doing it with a level of deliberate transparency.

And so one thing I just want to note to that outside of the cost I think Flip had weighed in a little bit when you reached out about this amendment earlier today is that we'd have to go through a process likely they even place the portables that's not guaranteed.

That would just put us in a little bit of a bind if we did go through that and weren't able to place the portables.

Right.

Can you help me understand what the time duration is for that process and how much we can frontload it to give some certainty about that?

Richard Best, director of capital projects and planning.

We'd need a decision in January which we'd anticipate so that we can then begin working with the City of Seattle.

We did in our drawings when we submitted for permit indicate areas that we were looking at placing portables.

We, however, did not take that bid alternate for the placement of those portables because it required some construction of retaining walls so we'd have to look at either Reassessing and seeing if we could do the work regarding the retaining walls and then placing the portables in the original plan location or designating a new location and placing those portables.

Approximate cost for placing a portable is 160,000 bucks and that includes the technology and the furniture that we provide.

Thank you for that and just to clarify publicly as well this one also was just submitted today has not had staff financial analysis incorporated.

we will get that worked on over the next week or so and whenever you can work that in and have it formally added to the document.

And just to clarify one other tradeoff for this amendment is the cost and impact of moving the entire cohort to the Cascadia site with the associated challenges around portables and increased class size.

And then the flip side is much what Director Geary talked about of the cost, challenge, and uncertainty of spinning up a new school on a short timeline, getting a planning principal, staffing, you know all of the things that are associated with that.

So I think it's both of them have pros and cons.

The hope is that this amendment will help balance out that dialogue.

Okay and then the final amendment is also one of mine and I touched on it earlier and that is to make the assignment to Decatur an option, an optional path rather than I guess a default path for the North End HCC and this would be following the pattern of Fairmount Park and Ingram High School in that it would relieve capacity issues from the original school but it would offer families the option rather than the mandatory assignment.

And so this would only work if people were willing to go there and I am mindful of the sorts of issues that Director Geary brought up.

So mine is a variation on theme and I would like to take a look at the survey results again to understand whether there is an appetite for this.

I did bring this forth last month and I have received interest from various members of the community about this and when they didn't see it listed attached to the student assignment plan they wondered and so I brought it back out again so we can have this conversation so we can hear more from the community on this and then we can decide between now and when we vote on this what is the best way to approach the capacity challenges of Cascadia and how to make the best use of Decatur.

So I think our various amendments are all part of the same puzzle and hopefully we will come to a good solution there.

So I'm kind of hoping that we're done with this topic for now so that we can move along.

I can see it's just past 10 o'clock and I can see everybody's getting a little bit tired.

Thank you again Ms.

Ashley.

Thank you Ashley and your team and Flip for all the work you've been doing.

All right so we are down to the last few items.

We knew that was going to be the big item and that is item number nine BTA for EC Hughes elementary school renovation project value engineering report state funding assistance.

This went through ops.

Would you like to complete the story on what happened at ops Director Blanford?

This was considered in the ops committee on November 7 and moved forward for approval.

I'm just going to also point out that the next item seems like it's in the same.

I would be more than happy to indicate that all three items went through ops committee on November 17 and were moved forward for approval.

All right thank you.

Mr. Best.

So the E.C.

Hughes elementary school value engineering report is required to be viewed by the Board of Directors for state matching fund assistance.

It's part of our D7 form submittal to OSPI to receive state matching funds.

Ming analysis performed the value engineering for E.C.

Hughes elementary school back in May of 2016. They made a recommendation of 32 items that the design team should consider.

13 had potential cost savings, six of those that had cost savings were accepted for modifications.

The design team in consultation with the project manager believes that there is probably about $230,000 worth of savings.

Value engineering as I have articulated to the operations committee on several occasions is kind of just a brainstorming process.

you look at you bring in outside architects and engineers to look at the design that's being proposed by the firm that's been selected to see if there are other things that they should consider.

So you have the report in front of you and we are seeking your approval.

Open it up to questions.

Any questions or comments?

Thank you.

Let's move on to the next item.

That is the BTA IV award contract K1267 for master planning services to Bassetti Architects for BEX V capital levy planning.

As we noted it went through ops approval.

It is time to begin our BEX V capital levy planning even though we will not be voting on this as a community until February of 2019. The contract, we do have a project schedule and I want to draw that to your attention but this is approximately a yearlong effort.

We are going to be looking at 18 schools rather intensely and then we have left three placeholders where we do not know which school will be named but we know that the board, the public Teaching and learning capacity may request that we analyze a school as well.

And so we've got three to be determined placeholders in there.

We are anticipating that the SETI architects will complete this effort in September of 2017. We will then begin a programmatic environmental impact statement that will need to be complete by September of 2018. That process takes approximately one year and then the board can make a decision as to which schools they would like to move forward as part of BEX V. We are looking at more schools than we anticipate that you will move forward on.

The schools are listed in the background information.

I will note that there is one additional school that we have already completed this work on and that is McGilvra elementary school in the central region, Director Blanford.

And so just need this approval to begin this effort so that we remain on track for having schools that you can consider for BEX V levy in September of 2018.

Thank you are there any, oh Director Harris.

We heard during public testimony some pretty provocative allegations about conflicts of interest.

Can you address those?

Did you hear that?

I did.

I would not say that there is a conflict of interest.

Lauren McConnachie is previous chair for the landmarks committee.

He brings great insight to Seattle Public Schools and offers that concerning our older schools and whether they would be landmark, potentially landmark, what would be the landmark considerations that we should think about.

I think that's actually a resource that will help in the planning of these schools for BEX V. I don't see it as a conflict of interest at all.

I will note and you are aware that we are seeking exemption from landmark status but I will also say that the exemption that we are seeking would give the board the direction to direct capital projects to consider that building a landmark and so then you know we are just trying to give you the flexibility to make that determination.

Director Burke.

Would it be a correct assessment to say that this work is really planting the seeds for a levy that's going to help us prioritize buildings that's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars of ask to our taxpayers?

Yes that would be a correct assessment.

Let it be known this is important work.

And the schools that are recommending that we look at that are listed in the background information have had facilities conditions assessments done, educational adequacy assessments done.

low score is better these are the highest scoring schools in the districts we thought we needed to look at those given the work that we've already done through the Ming analysis study the OSPI study and survey documents that address educational adequacy that's how these schools were selected.

And along that line is it?

Is it a foregone conclusion or is it essentially a down select process from these schools for what goes on to the BEX V project list?

Or is this one of multiple factors?

We are going to have probably multiple conversations with you all.

give you information so you can determine what will go on the BEX V list.

We need to provide you with the information from a study standpoint so you can make that decision.

We also need to include probably a broader list in our programmatic environmental impact statement so we can have that work done knowing that probably every project will not move forward.

Brilliant thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much.

So now we will move on to the final item.

Extend contract terms and amend contract amounts for furniture procurement for 2016, bid number B09501.

This also went through operation committee November 17 for approval I understand.

Was there anything else to add?

So we are looking for a one-year extension of current existing contracts that we have in place with our furniture vendors and I am going to introduce Anita Hornby who is our furniture fixture and equipment manager to talk about this effort and this work that we are seeking approval for.

So Anita.

So we have this coming up here 2017 about the same level of work that we had in 2016. So in order to be able to facilitate the same improvements for the furniture standpoint we look to our existing contracts with our vendors and asked to see if they were interested in extending those contracts with us.

as a way to facilitate good pricing.

These contracts are not only eligible for our capital projects but they also provide our school districts with the ability to draw on that when they need school funded or PTA funded contracts.

support in providing furniture so it's not just capital project but the whole district that is able to draw on this and in addition these contracts are set up so that it's at our discretion as far as the amount of furniture that we are purchasing from any of the vendors so we are not obligated to take advantage of the full contract amount that is set out.

It's a discretionary contract.

Are there any questions or comments?

Director Geary.

Thank you, thank you so much for staying so late.

I would like to think that we would have noted and amended the agenda to put you earlier so you didn't have to sit through so much but I appreciate you being here.

Director Burke.

Since you were kind enough to stay so late I have one quick question.

In the fiscal impact revenue source it is indicated here that purchases will be made from various budgets.

Are those all capital budgets?

No that's a part of it is it is a contract that is set up for the whole district to be able to take advantage of.

So it could be general fund, it could be school budgets but we do set it up with those amounts assigned as a projection.

So an estimate that might address general fund purchases or school purchases.

I guess I'm just trying to understand what we as a board are approving.

Are we approving purchase authority up to this amount?

from either budget or since we kind of have a budget crisis going on or a budget thing we are looking down the throat of.

So these are not associated with a budget but they are associated with an estimated amount of procurement required across the projects that are known with a contingent amount for school purchase, PTA general fund purchase based on historical information.

So it is contracts with the estimated max amount per that vendor but we are not obligated to purchase that full amount.

But this gives us the latitude to be able to offer the value that that public bid brings to getting good pricing across the district outside of capital projects.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions?

No I don't think there are any more questions.

Thank you.

So before we close out the meeting Superintendent Nyland would like to say a few words.

Well thank you all for your patience and stamina tonight including our student from Garfield.

I don't think any student has stayed this late.

Did they tell you you could go home?

I would like to let the board know that I will be out of the district the next three workdays.

Steven will be here.

So it is possible to go to China for the weekend so I am doing the Confucius Institute representing Washington and no cost to the district and part of our dual language program.

Okay we will have a safe trip and if without any further comments or questions I call this meeting adjourned at what looks like to be 1016 PM.

Thank you everybody and have good holidays.