Seattle Schools Board Meeting Oct 7, 2026

Good afternoon, we will call the meeting to order momentarily and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

All right, the October 7th, 2026 regular board meeting is called to order at 4.30 p.m.

We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

The roll call, please.

Vice President Briggs.

Here.

Director Lavallee.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Here.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Smith.

Here.

Director Song.

Here.

President Topp.

Here.

Student Representative Fonts.

Here.

Here.

Student Representative Mangelson.

Here.

Student Representative Michael.

Here.

Student Representative Tsegazab.

Here.

Alright, thank you.

We get to start this meeting with a celebration.

We have some of our national merit semi-finalists joining us tonight and we want to recognize their academic achievement.

These students scored in the top 1% on the Washington State on their PSAT and we're so proud of them.

So we have, we talked a little bit about logistics here, we're gonna call names up, we're gonna shake hands, we've got a little certificate, and then at the end we're gonna ask all the students to come back up and all the board directors so we can get one large photo all together.

So again, hopefully that makes sense, but students will call you up individually.

As a former board member of mine used to say, if I mispronounce your name, please charge it to my head and not my heart.

I clearly want to be as respectful as possible.

So the first wonderful student we would call up, and they might not all be here today, but we want to recognize them, is Miriam Alloway.

Is Miriam here?

Yay!

The next student is Anthony Bruce.

The next is Grady Brush.

Alright.

Next, we have Henry Durin.

Let's see, Kayden Emmons.

No?

All right.

Aya Halaz.

But we know the next one might be here.

Angela He.

Ethan McKee, alright.

Congratulations.

I apologize.

No, I didn't even come close.

N-A-Y-E-L-I.

Okay, well thank you.

Congratulations to that.

Wonderful student.

Harper Peters.

And then Audrey Papaneu.

Okay.

Aiden Pressman.

Alright.

Avery Punn.

Congratulations.

and Zachary Punn, maybe related, I don't know.

All right, awesome.

Good job, family.

Impressive.

Audrey Wang.

and Brian Yang.

All right.

Could all our winners come back up and all the board come back up so we can take a big picture.

And congratulations everybody, this is really awesome.

Thank you so much, students, for joining and allowing us to celebrate a little bit with you.

We're going to continue rolling with our meeting agenda, and next on the agenda is our superintendent comments.

I'll pass it over to Superintendent Schultner.

Thank you so much, President Topp.

What can I say?

What a wonderful way to start our meetings.

As a superintendent, clearly one of my important jobs is to make sure the district can support our students to academic excellence.

Having 16 students be part of the national merit semifinalist list is really quite impressive.

There are school districts around the country that have zero.

There are school districts that have one or two.

To have 16 students meet that wonderful and very, very difficult threshold I think speaks volumes not only about those individual students, and I know how hard work it takes to get there, but it speaks volumes around our educators, our families, our schools in general.

to the parents that are out here and the family members that are out here, I want to thank you for being a part of your student success.

They do not get here without you.

And certainly to the students, the fact that you made this incredible threshold is really, really quite impressive.

And of course, to all the educators who might be watching, I don't know why they would, You know, if they are, I just want to thank our teachers and our paraprofessionals and our principals and just everybody that makes this work.

Seattle Public Schools is a really special school district and it has incredible excellence and I think what you saw today was part of that.

and national merit is one.

We also have incredible CTE programs and we have incredible sports and incredible music and incredible art and I think that as a district the more that we celebrate and value a holistic education the better and so I just really want to thank everybody for being there.

you know what else I can say we have a lot to get through certainly during today's board meeting but I do again want to acknowledge that we're still dealing with a couple of transportation issues in my previous superintendency I used to always give the number of students that couldn't be routed until we got to zero the cool thing is that this district we at least have routed everybody which I really appreciate, but I do want to acknowledge that we still have some buses that are late.

You know, it's our job and our responsibility to fix that, and certainly we need to do that.

And then also, I do want to acknowledge that there's been some new systems and structures put into place for things like after and before care, some nonprofit work, and we're kind of working through that.

So I say this all publicly to say, just like I wrote this week, If you as an individual family or a community are still struggling with some of these issues, be it transportation or aftercare, beforecare, please reach out to your principal.

Please feel free to reach out to me.

The structures of the system are actually really quite good, but they're not perfect.

and the more that we know about individual cases, the better that we can fix that.

Last year, I made mention around our volunteer process being relatively antiquated.

We're working pretty quickly on how to get that to be much better, but I just ask that one of the things I know works in a school district is to have family, community, volunteer, be in the schools, mentor, tutor, et cetera, but if we're making it hard to do that, that's on us.

We have been trying to fix it.

We're trying to streamline it.

But if anybody is having a difficulty trying to volunteer or work with us, please, please let us know.

It's now, you know, in October.

We're really in the full throes of the school system.

This is where we need as many volunteers, tutors, mentors as possible to get our kids to the excellent level that these wonderful 16 kids could get to.

So with that, I want to thank everybody that's here.

I look forward to public comment.

I look forward to the work that we're going to do today.

And then we'll move on towards great success for the school district.

So with that, thank you so much.

And I turn it back over to President Taub.

all right thank you superintendent schuldner for your update i'm going to look at our student representatives to see if they have comments this evening representative mangelson um this is not a planned comment but one of the people that was called for national merit semi-finalists was actually uh idan pressman who i met at a model un conference this past weekend so he's very nice uh but I just thought that was cool but just a couple updates for student reps one big thing that we're working on right now is we're starting to work on a student survey to get some input on what student what hopefully as many people as many students in the district that we can reach want to see from us and from the district what issues they're concerned with and maybe if they have some ideas of what we can do to serve them.

One other quick update is that we're working on updating our Instagram.

So we're gonna do that.

We're gonna be posting.

It's gonna be fun and engaging.

So keep an eye out for that.

And then also this past, not this past weekend, but the weekend before, we had our Superintendent Student Advisory Board orientation and so I'll hand it over to Eliana to talk a little bit more about that.

So at the first superintendent student advisory board meeting we heard from a lot of different students from across the district about their top two things that they care about in our district and a lot of problems we saw was students want more clear and consistent guidelines around artificial intelligence specifically for student use as well as teacher use and they also want an improvement of security and safety within schools and also transportation safety while we do have many bus routes that do work for students not all students feel safe taking public transportation to school and students also brought up a lack of consistent course availability especially for students performing at above a standard level and also specifically students at Lincoln High School have mentioned that there is a surplus of students leading to overcrowded hallways, difficulty getting to class on time and not enough classes to support the student body and we're looking forward to hearing more from them.

Any other student representatives?

Okay then we're gonna move on to our board committee chair and liaison reports and I know that our committees have been very busy it's hard keeping track of what you're all doing but who anyone want to volunteer to go first?

Yeah, well, Director Rankin actually chaired in my stead the last POCO meeting, so I'm hoping that you can give the update on that.

Our next meeting isn't on the schedule until November, so I think we will have to schedule another October meeting.

We're just working on our availability to figure that out, but go ahead, Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah and thanks also to Director Song for joining us as our third member of the committee on September 23rd.

We I'm trying to get the agenda to come up so I can remember.

There we go.

We talked about our guardrail policy our delegation policies and we had scheduled to talk about finance policies but we had to cut short a closed session was scheduled so we had to lose a half an hour but we could still make progress on those because one thing I wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page as is when we looked at our delegation policies drafts which is how the our expectations of the superintendent We have some sub-policy drafts, one of which is most applicable to the committee that Director Lavallee chairs.

One is most applicable to the finance and audit committee chaired by Director Song.

And so I just wasn't sure if what we thought in committee was that we would kind of send those over and I just wanted to make sure that that got communicated to everybody that we were on track for that because we would in the policy committee like to have those back so we can put that package together.

and then we reviewed two bars that are on the agenda today on the Niaglieri Screener for Highly Capable and the Annual Approval of Schools and I also realized that we deferred a approval of minutes and I forgot to go back and actually approve those minutes.

So at the next policy committee meeting we'll need to approve two sets of minutes.

I think that's it.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Director Lavallee.

Yeah, I have a little bit of a larger update.

We had a pretty packed meeting in our last operations committee meeting.

We had a back to school update that was provided by the staff.

First was culinary services about the rollout of universal school free meals for our schools.

We saw about a 50 percent increase in participation of those who didn't originally have meals.

We did see a higher increase in breakfast than we expected.

initially to have, so the team is working on making sure that we have everything to be able to supply the meals that kids are interested in eating.

We also have interactive menus that have been loaded up, and we are working on making sure that every school is able to use, so those menus on the school website, and it will come with the preloaded, preplanned menu, and then if there's a change two days before that change will be updated on the school's website.

Changes I believe don't happen super often but if they realize that something was wrong with one of the meals or something they can easily pivot and do something else and then update the website so that families know what their kids are going to be served.

We had an update on the SNEED form which is the free and reduced lunch form.

Those have shifted to prioritizing online sign up for that and that online option was pushed.

It ends up creating a lot better results for the district as we know who's gotten them in and can be much more responsive to it and try to get a much higher rate of people filling them out.

so we got an update on how that was going.

We then received an update on enrollment, which we had assumed there was going to be 48,883 students.

There ended up being 48,740.

and then there was a staffing shuffle that instead of getting pushed to October, it was able to happen much sooner in September, so I know that there was gratefulness in the community for that happening at a much sooner date.

Transportation was next.

We have two different companies.

One is First Students that is operating 20% of SPS.

We had a 95% of on-time arrivals for First Student.

Then Zoom is also at a 95% on-time arrival.

with 80% of the district.

That being said, as mentioned in the superintendent comments, there is a lot more that we can do.

A lot of those routes have been a little bit circuitous.

There's been a lot of issues popping up within them, and that 5% of kids does need to get to school on time.

so I know the department is working really hard to correct those issues and please reach out to your principals and to the superintendent or transportation department if you are consistently having more and more issues.

I know that they also mentioned that for the Zoom stuff, there's a new lot up north where the buses are stored so that it can provide a little bit better service.

However, as that one is new, that's been some of the learning curve as that gets set up.

We covered the student assignment transition plan policy that the committee was asked to look at, and we've gone over this a number of times.

We reviewed policy that was written and presented to the committee, which the first one, 3130, merges basically five policies into one to do a significant amount of cleanup.

Then there's 22 which has a number of clarifications within it, and 6883. within all of these we need the committee members to kind of review them and submit their feedback of their thoughts and comments hopefully this next week so that staff can go ahead and do more revisions and then we can bring it to the policy committee to take a look at potentially in a dual meeting of the committees.

Sorry, I've got two more things.

We reviewed how the levy lists are created and our policy surrounding that and how it has worked in the past and where we might want to look in the future.

Some of that also overlaps with what Director Rankin was talking about with some of the policy that the policy committee is working on.

we need to take a look at that in our next meeting as well.

We did discuss how ed specs have worked within that process before and how they might have missed the marks at times and how we can potentially look at doing better going forward.

We also reviewed the Eckstein lights and got an update from the district as to the lights that are going in there, the reasoning behind it, that all the turf fields that were built were planned to have lights on them.

Lights have already been added to Jane Addams, Whitman, Madison, and Robert Eagle Staff, that this is the last one with the turf field added, that lights are being put on.

that the lights that are being put tend to have a very low amount of glare, spill and sky glow, which are the terms that I'm now learning about lights.

So there's very little spillover into the neighbors' houses as what we were being shown.

And we were shown how it kind of has impacted other fields and neighborhoods in the past.

So we got an update onto that and then I know there was a community meeting in the past week or so about that as well.

So we look forward to getting updated if there's more information coming up about that.

Thank you so much.

And I'm so sorry for the longest update.

Oh, see, I said our committees were doing a lot of work and a lot of cross coordination work.

So I think it's great that everything everyone is updating everyone else.

And so we all know what's going on.

And please note that even if you're not on a committee, you can attend a committee meeting director song.

As your WASDA representative, I attended the Washington State School Directors Association General Assembly meeting on September 19th with Director Rankin.

At that meeting, we updated the advocacy platform I share the updated catalog with you.

The ask from WASDA was for each district to submit their top five positions based on the feedback I did receive.

Thank you directors who sent it to me.

I submitted our top five choices.

There was a September 22nd finance and audit committee meeting.

If you recall, Once a quarter, these meetings will take on an audit theme.

Board procedure 6550BP internal audit requires an announcement of completed internal audits.

As the finance and audit committee chair, I am announcing that at the September 22nd finance and audit committee meeting, the office of internal audit completed a disaster recovery internal audit.

All audit reports are included on a public finance and audit committee meeting agenda and the completed reports are posted for public viewing on today's agenda and on the Office of Internal Audit Department website.

So we spent this committee meeting reviewing and getting a presentation on this disaster recovery internal audit.

We also reviewed some board action reports ahead of today's board meeting and recommended them for your approval.

You will see those on the consent agenda.

our next finance and audit committee meeting is scheduled for November 2nd all right those were our committee and some liaison reports any other board directors okay we have six minutes until we're starting public testimony so we are going to take a six minute break we are going to start public testimony directly at five so please be back at five board directors thank you Alright, it's 5.01 and I said we were going to start right at 5 to be respectful for those who've come to public testimony.

So, we are now going into public testimony.

Board policy 1400 provides our rules for testimony.

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

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

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

Pass it off to staff now to summarize a few additional points and read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you President Topp.

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

Please wait until called to approach the podium or unmute and only one person may speak at a time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving into our list now, for those joining by phone, please press star six to unmute on the conference line.

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

The first speaker is Amy Carroll.

I'm Amy Carroll.

I'm the admin secretary at Green Lake Elementary.

I'm here to speak about transportation.

Multiple of you on the dais have already addressed it.

And I had prepared remarks, but I'm not going to read them because I'm confused by a couple things I heard from you.

One of them was that parents should contact their principal with transportation issues.

I can state with some authority that my boss and I, because I'm the one who answers the phone, do not control transportation.

All we can do is tell families to contact the transportation department.

When their children are lost, I'm the person who gets called and has to track them down.

I call transportation because I have a back line and parents can't get through.

I don't know what you think principals are going to do.

I feel like you all have very thankless jobs.

My principal has a thankless job, and bus drivers have the most thankless job of all.

I can't imagine doing what they do.

I wouldn't volunteer for it for all the money in the world, but they did choose to transport children, and in theory they would be delivering them on time.

Which leads me to my second question.

The data you quoted about buses being on time is mystifying to me.

This is the 25th day of school.

This is the first day that all eight of the buses, five special education and three large gen ed buses, have been at my school before the first bell.

Bear in mind, that's not on time.

On time is 15 minutes before that bell to allow students time to have breakfast.

They've never all been on time.

That's all I have to say.

I'm very frustrated.

I know it could get better.

I know it can get better, but we've lost the trust of a lot of parents, and I don't know if we'll get it back.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Angel Ignacio Claudio.

Hello, my name is Angel Claudio Ignacio.

Throughout my years in high school, I've learned many things, such as learning how to play in a soccer team, learning how to use MLA citations in ELA, and figuring out how to find X in algebra.

However, the knowledge I have learned in Skill Center still continues to be used in my everyday life.

During the beginning of my junior year, I had just lost my father and wasn't in the right headspace for school.

Because of this, walking through the school doors for the very first time made me uncertain on how the rest of the year would go.

I had a one-on-one with Mr. McCoy and I would tell them that I was laying my father to rest in Mexico and I would be back in a month.

Mr. McCoy understood my situation and despite not knowing who I was or much about me he had fought for me to stay in skill center and when I came back he put me right to work.

From learning how to frame walls and build up tiny houses, I enjoyed every bit of it, even mudding and doing drywall.

The environment in Skill Center was the absolute best out of any class in my high school.

I made new friends and worked alongside people for various different projects.

In Skill Center, I felt like I belonged.

Senior year came around and I became a mentor for year two of Skill Center.

I taught the new students of Skill Center how to properly use tools and look out for each other's safety as this is important because if you don't respect tools, then you could hurt yourself.

The skills I got from Skill Center helped me apply for internships, successfully landed me an internship into the trades, Skill Center offered me tons of certifications such as Stop the Bleed, CPR, OSHA 10, and more.

Mr. McCoy is an excellent teacher and mentor, and the way he runs Skill Center with such dedication to teach construction should be applauded.

Thanks to Skill Center, I have become better than who I once was.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker is Diane Tiao.

My name is Diane Tiao.

I teach second grade at Wing Luke Elementary.

I'm also a parent to a second grader and kindergartner at Wing Luke.

I want to talk about one of the three displacements happening this October.

Our staff found out September 24th that a classroom teacher would be displaced because we are under-enrolled by 31 students from what was projected.

I will email ideas I have around increasing enrollment.

The entire displacement process has been unclear and full of anxiety.

For over a week, no one received any news.

The displaced teacher, Mr. James, was a former student at Wing Luke.

The onus was placed on him to find another school to work at, continue teaching each day while holding on to news he was leaving.

A plan was created on the afternoon of October 2nd to split a kindergarten class between the other two K classes and move a K teacher, Ms. B, up to third grade.

K teachers stayed late Friday afternoon to reorganize classes.

Families were informed of these changes on Monday.

Teachers were allowed to tell their students on Monday.

Tuesday was Mr. James' last day.

He started his new school site today, and Miss B started teaching third grade today.

While all this is happening, the affected teachers had to teach the whole time.

They were not provided subs so they could pack and move, paid extra time, or even given boxes.

There was no time to process because there wasn't a moment given.

New classrooms need to be set up, new grades, new curriculum, midweek.

What I find most disappointing about this experience is how little we are valued, and that is shown by the lack of action to support us.

We are not the first October displacement, and we're only one of three this October, but how could there not be better systems put in place?

We take care of our own, though, and us teachers rallied alongside families to get it done, but it would have been nice to feel like the district was working with us, too.

So I end by inviting district officials, executive directors, to visit schools more often, have face time with staff, and work with us in service of students.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Erica Schutz David.

I cede to Mike Holm.

You cede your time to Mike Holm.

Hello, I have three kids in SPS and I'm here to speak on generative AI in the classroom.

I work as an advertising creative and outside of work, I'm a painter and illustrator.

I'm very familiar with Gen AI and how quickly it's becoming part of our daily lives.

To be clear, I'm not against AI.

I think it's an amazing tool that will help us advance in many areas of life.

However, I don't believe it will help us advance in creativity.

Creativity is our most unique and valuable skill as humans and crucial to develop at a young age.

It's often assumed to be an inherent trait, one you either have or you don't.

But in reality, it's something we have to learn and practice, a muscle to be developed and maintained throughout life.

Gen AI poses a serious threat to kids developing this muscle.

It robs them of the creative process, a process that values experience over perfection, trial and error, and the opportunity to cultivate resilience, growth mindset, and skill development.

Using AI skips this creative journey, jumping straight to the destination with the click of a button.

Studies show that it's homogenizing content at an alarming rate, reducing creative diversity across entire groups of people.

By forgoing the pencil and paper, we miss the valuable part of the process where we share our individual experience and point of view and put it into the work.

This homogenization is a major threat to a school setting where we celebrate diversity, different cultures, and individual voices.

So I ask you, what's the true benefit of giving the kids access to Gen AI in school?

And more importantly, what could it possibly be taking away from their learning experience?

It's not helping our kids to become more creative.

In fact, I think it's doing the exact opposite.

Let us protect and celebrate creativity, process over results, diversity over efficiency and opportunity for our kids to discover their own unique voices.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Hilary Patterson.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, I'm a parent and teacher and I am here to urge the leadership to educate our staff and families about the ineffectiveness and harm of technology in classrooms so that we can work together on decreasing and modifying text use in all grades, not just K-2.

A study found that college students working on laptops spent an average of two-thirds of their time off task.

So I wonder how much learning is happening for our younger learners on devices.

Many don't realize the learning lost when students are on devices because technology tricks us.

When you see a classroom of students working quietly on computers, they look like little professionals.

We even use pictures of them on laptops for marketing.

But as a teacher who's worked with students on Chromebooks, I can tell you that's not always the case.

So imagine you're a teacher and you instruct your students to do an online assignment because that's what the curriculum suggests, just like our Emerge curriculum.

The students get up their devices, you feel a sense of relief because everyone is quiet.

If your principal walks in, your class will look successful because it's peaceful.

You'll be able to confirm the students are learning because they're on the curriculum.

But here's what's actually happening is three kids are taking 10 minutes to log in or start their devices.

Five kids can't focus because they've got ten tabs open.

Two kids are playing Tetris.

One kid's writing a bullying email.

Ten kids are maybe guessing and checking to see how fast they can get through the lesson and getting distracted by the fun gamified thrills.

Two kids are probably asking Gemini for answers, which I'm pretty sure is allowed on our district devices.

And then one student is maybe watching YouTube.

So my point here is that a quiet classroom does not equal a learning classroom, but not everybody realizes this.

Many would disapprove of a loud classroom because it doesn't fit the picture of what they think learning is. the way that kids typing on laptops fits that picture.

But the most learning that I've seen time and time again comes from boisterous group work.

Far too many educators are with best intentions not realizing that technology they are using is less effective than an alternative method.

So what we need is clear, consistent education and instructions from leadership on how to intentionally use technology as you've asked for, because that understanding and implementation is differing so greatly across our schools, and that's inequitable.

So please help educators and families make this downshift in screen time by providing the time and resources for learning and reflection, allowing teachers to ask themselves, are my learning outcomes better with this technology or with an alternative, and by providing them with those alternatives, and email me if you want me to leave those professional development sessions.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Ashley Warobic.

My name is Ashley Warabek and as advocacy co-chair at Salmon Bay and a member of Seattle Families for Intentional Tech, I hear many anecdotes and concerns regarding student facing tech and AI in SPS.

The through line is that families want to trust their children and teachers but need SPS to provide a clear AI and tech policy centering students.

Families trying to opt out of tech and AI aim to help students be more present for learning and relationships strengthen their creative and critical thinking skills, protect their digital footprints, and reduce access to betting, porn, and games like Five Nights at Epstein's, which Salmon Bay students played last year.

We're reminded to center students, yet students are on the periphery when it comes to tech and AI.

We've adopted the tech mantra, move fast and break things for students, while bold families with awareness and bandwidth try to slow it down.

So I ask, what is the purpose of public education for children, their future, and our society?

Who is really choosing what, why, and how EdTech and AI are adopted?

How do proven results versus effective marketing influence adoption?

Yes, teach students about tech, media, and AI, what it is and how it works.

Teach them about bias, algorithms, safety, and privacy.

Teach them to type, offer coding and robotics.

But please center the students, not the tech.

Return computers to carts and labs to free attention for learning.

Vet student-facing tech to be safe, legal, and fit to the purpose, ensure it's more effective than pencil-to-paper and student-to-teacher, and pause gen AI.

A recent study shows bipartisan parent support at 78% for elementary to 73% for high school.

Teach tech, but prioritize guiding students to become empathetic and effective citizens, voters, doctors, developers, artists, scientists, chefs, and teachers, because there is so much more to their futures than their use of tech and AI.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Richard Furr.

Okay, the proposed project to install lights on the Eckstein playfield would significantly impact the quality of life in our residential neighborhood and therefore this project should be cancelled.

The negative impact of the lights themselves and the ambient noise have already been thoroughly discussed.

and it's noteworthy that I believe it was around August that the superintendent here has publicly stated, quote unquote, we are broke.

So if you're broke, what about 1.2 million to install the lights?

also a lit field is not going to primarily benefit Seattle Public Schools students and it's going to be private adult leagues for the large part and very importantly and I want to emphasize this there's going to be a significantly increased risk of speeding traffic late at night on our dark, rainy Seattle nights on our narrow residential streets.

We are already having that problem now and it's just going to get worse.

and I can predict that there will be accidents as a result, but then it'll be too late.

So I urge you to cancel the project now.

And nothing I have said was written with the help of AI.

The next speaker is Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the personnel report, I would like to thank Stephen Wright for his long service to the district.

Mr. Wright oversaw the district annual statistics book titled Data Profile District Summary.

The district idiotically canceled the book in 2013. On the Eckstein Field Lighting Project, for points number one, this project uses public school funds for a private purpose.

Number two the district itself states quote the primary use of the lighted fields is likely to be private school and non SPS recreational athletics unquote.

Number three the board president indicated that there would be a board discussion today on the project.

Today's board agenda included an item on Eckstein.

This item vanished.

Number four, please quickly cancel the project and save a million dollars.

On the John Marshall School project, two points.

The district should be proud to have such a landmark.

Number two, instead the project would demolish big chunks of the historic school.

The district's environmental review held zero public meetings.

And the district won't allow the city of Seattle to formally declare the school to be a landmark.

Please quickly address this issue.

On the special education voter contracts, questions on four points.

Number one, number of students served.

Number two start dates of September 1st being approved today.

Number three multiple amounts listed for two contracts.

Number four the contractor diversity sections.

Everyone who's been speaking from the public today has been wonderful and I've enjoyed the superintendent board too.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Michael Lorifis.

Hi, my name is Michael Lorifis.

I'm the parent of Amitai.

He's a third grader at Wing Luke Elementary.

He had James Doan as his teacher, but no longer does due to the October teacher displacement.

So due to the under enrollment at the school, Mr. James was transferred to Alkiah Elementary in West Seattle.

Mr. James is an incredible young and energetic male teacher who grew up in South Seattle and he went to Wing Luke as a student.

He's a passionate educator and advocate for these kids and families and he has deep community connections which now have been severed.

This is so destabilizing to the students, teachers, staff and families and I'm quite frustrated by this.

I know SPS has huge budget issues but destabilizing schools in this way with these reshuffles doesn't feel like the ultimate answer to the problem.

As a line item this may save some money but I think the human cost of this decision is so much greater.

So shuffling classrooms and teachers just adds layers of confusion schools were built on transparency stability consistency and trust but this is lost Our family is three plus years now in the Seattle Public Schools and they have been rocky to say the least.

We moved our son to Wing Luke after three tumultuous years at South Shore K-8.

Public safety issues including ramping gun violence, sexual predators in the school and poor leadership led us to make this move to Wing Luke where we were very impressed.

by the safe, quiet location, the tenure of teachers and staff, the supportive community and the beautiful facilities.

And now it's another huge disruption.

South Seattle schools and communities are unique and incredibly diverse but they're really struggling as you know.

This teacher displacement is another example of SPS removing very important resources from those most in need.

So please when concerning policy changes please consider all of these variables and continue to put students first.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sherry Vahey.

I'll bet you remember me.

My name is Sherry Vahy and I still live approximately 30 feet behind the eastern goal of the Eckstein Middle School field in a residence towards the top of a hill.

One of my chosen community tasks before a major rainstorm is to rake leaves and debris out of the curb gutters leading to storm drains.

all along my street, not just my own house, because I know that there are upstream effects to downstream consequences.

And I have a responsibility to try and stop the harm where I can.

The Eckstein Middle School field with a school district's proposal to install four 80 foot LED stadium light poles is upstream of my backyard.

And the last time I spoke here, I said this wasn't a NIMBY issue, that I would not want them in anyone's backyard.

According to this school district's capital projects and planning team, or CPP, quote, on the fields where lighting has already been installed, there has been minimal to no complaints from the neighborhood community.

So I did some research for the CPP and I talked to neighbors of these projects and I saw how they live, especially those residences abutted to school field properties.

They urged us to remember them.

They urged this project to be cancelled because what we do now impacts them both upstream and downstream.

You can make the change, school board.

Because when the CPP tells you that the lights are aimed down and shielded, know that at Nathan Hale there are plastic tarps hanging from the eaves of the houses to block the light coming into their front windows.

know that when the CPP tells you that the main lights go off at 945 with low lights going until 10 and all on timers know that the Whitman neighbors filed multiple major complaints backed by hundreds of incidences where lights stayed on with no one at play even over the course of time and that they filed these over and over and that there was no voice for their complaints.

know that there is a lot more and know that you can cancel this project know that you can impact the downstream effects and that CEO Fred Podesta told us that pools and fields are the same they are not they are maintained differently there is supervision and because the school district's primary purpose is education and not the management and maintenance in the future of parks that this is not an equitable decision cancel the Eckstein lighting project please

The next speaker is Laura Linham.

And you'll have to press star six to unmute.

OK, we're going to move on, but I will come back.

The next speaker is Hong Dong Yang.

Hong Dong Yang plus star six to unmute.

Okay, I will come back to you as well.

The next speaker is Yana Parker.

Good afternoon.

For the record, Yana Parker, Seattle Council, PTSA.

October is Disability History Month in Washington State, as you hopefully know.

Since 2008, state law has required public schools to provide educational activities about disability history and people with disabilities.

This is an opportunity to celebrate disability, learn about the people who fought for civil rights for all of us to have today, and understand how those rights came to exist.

Students should know about Brad Lomax, a disability rights activist, and Black Panther who helped lead the 1977 sit-in demanding the government implement Section 504's disability rights protections.

They should know about the 1990 Capitol Crawl when disabled activists climbed the Capitol steps to demonstrate the barriers they faced every day.

Among them was an eight-year-old Jennifer Keelan Chaffins.

These are the people and movements that help make today's disability rights possible.

But Disability History Month isn't just about the past.

It's about disability pride, accessibility, acceptance, and creating schools where every student feels safe and belongs.

I ask school staff about Disability History Month every year.

They often aren't even aware of the requirements, but they appreciate the resources I share.

Teachers need district-wide guidance and resources so families aren't responsible for raising awareness.

Disabled students are in every classroom.

Their history, contributions, and identities deserve to be recognized and celebrated.

I encourage Seattle Public Schools to develop a coordinated approach across all schools to celebrate October.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Kira Brown.

I'm here on behalf of the Alki Elementary community, where our playground lacks perimeter fencing.

Our playground opens into a public field and park, surrounded by streets, businesses, a public beach and forest.

In the first weeks of school, several children have left the property.

Staff has had to search for missing children in surrounding areas.

We also need to take seriously the risk of outsiders having access to our playground.

The attempted luring of students on October 1st highlights this risk.

Parents received an email encouraging teaching stranger danger at home.

This is important, but relying on young children to protect themselves is not an acceptable prevention plan.

Last night we received an update.

There will be a new fence installed at the school entrance.

This still leaves 485 feet of unfenced perimeter.

And the current fencing we have is only 3 feet high.

Currently, the school is relying on three recess monitors to supervise recess and secure the perimeter.

These hardworking staff members did not see the predator who approached the playground last week.

Your packet contains supplemental reports on unfenced playgrounds nationwide, including multiple incidents of dog attacks and student elopement.

We understand that building a fence will require collaboration between SPS and Parks and Rec and that will probably be difficult, but you have to figure this out.

It surely cannot be harder than navigating a community tragedy.

Please protect our kids.

Thank you.

The next speaker is James Baldwin.

Hi, I'm Jim Baldwin and I'm here today to talk about the Eckstein Lighting Project.

And I want to approach it from a more practical point of view than just screaming about the project.

Our house is on the west side of Eckstein.

so we have the street to buffer us from the houses across from us that border on the Eckstein but not only that that's 33rd Avenue Northeast but also 32nd Avenue Northeast and 31st Avenue Northeast butt up against the actual property and 30th which is on the east side of the property is also going to be affected by this lighting project.

Now my concern is we have a number of children in our neighborhood, young children, babies, toddlers, elementary school children and they go to bed at night and they don't go to bed at 10 o'clock when those lights go out and 9.45 when the games stop.

Even if the houses could have blackout curtains to take down the lighting effect, the noise alone would keep those children up and anybody who has had children knows that the part of raising children that gives you some sanity is bedtime.

Richard had referred to the fact that it's not really for Eckstein, it is for private clubs and for adults, leagues, not benefiting our children and our priorities should be with taking that capital construction fund and working on the schools, not on a play field.

Thank you.

We're going to go back to the two speakers we missed.

Laura Linham, are you online?

I do not see your number, so I'm going to move on to Hong Dong Yang.

Hello?

Yes, we can hear you.

Yeah, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, good evening.

Board members and the superintendent.

My name is Adam.

I live in 33rd Avenue, Northeast.

My backyard shares a fence line with the Axta Middle School sport field.

So, I've also been in the meeting before.

I also still saw a couple of my neighbors in the meeting in person.

I cannot go in the meeting in person, but I want to support them online here.

So before that, I just wonder whether the board members have actually read the SEP checklist about the project.

If not, I really hope you will, because there's a lot of gaps and assumptions in this report, and honestly, I don't find the conclusion convincing.

So today, I just want to give you one example, the noise study.

The report concludes that the noise impact is acceptable, but did you know how do they do the measurement?

So basically, just take a one day afternoon and measure the noise from 4 p.m.

to 5.30 p.m.

The rating of 51 dBA and since the code limit is 55 dBA, so they conclude that it meets the requirement.

But it doesn't tell us what exactly happened during that hour.

So was there a real game ongoing?

How many players there?

Any referees?

Any vessels?

No, none of that.

Nothing to mention about that.

So, but I don't think that the measurement represents the condition of real competitive game.

One weekday around noon during normal student activity, I measured the noise myself from my bathroom because my bathroom window faced to the field directly.

So, my meter sounds gathered reading around the 55 to 60 EBA, which way higher than the code limit.

So, this is just the one One example, there are a lot of similar issues to that report where the analysis just didn't seem regular enough.

So before you make a decision to push forward this project, please consider everything they provided for the impact to my neighbors.

Thank you so much.

And that was our final speaker.

Thank you.

Thank you everyone for coming this evening to provide public testimony.

We appreciate and we understand what busy lives you have and providing this perspective to the board is helpful.

We're going to move right along into our consent agenda.

As always, directors may pull items from the consent agenda for discussion if they wish.

Can I have a motion for the consent agenda?

Oh my gosh.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

OK.

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

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

Director Song.

Director Smith.

Sorry about that.

I'd like to pull item six, the approval of Microsoft Enterprise Licenses Agreement.

All right, item number 6 has been pulled from the consent agenda may have a revised motion for the consent agenda as amended.

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Okay, approval of the consent agenda as amended has been moved by Vice President Briggs and seconded by Director Mizrahi.

All those in favor of the consent agenda as amended signify by saying yes.

Yes.

Those opposed?

All right.

The consent agenda as amended has passed unanimously.

We'll move on to the Yes, I realize that I forgot the student representative advisory vote on the consent agenda as amended.

So I will ask for the student representative advisory vote roll call post fact.

Are you doing it all together?

Oh, perfect.

Perfect.

Thank you.

All right, we'll do the item move from the consent agenda, which was item number six, the BEC 6 approval of the Microsoft Enterprise license agreement.

Do I have a motion for the item?

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to execute a two-year contract with Dell Computer Core to provide Microsoft Enterprise license solutions from January 1st, 2027 to December 31st, 2028 for a total not to exceed $4,754,678.96.

plus Washington State sales tax with any minor additions, deletions, and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement the purchase orders.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

Okay, I have a motion from Vice President Briggs, a second from Director Mizrahi.

Discussion, Director Smith.

I pulled this item because I would like to abstain due to conflict of interest given my employer.

Thank you.

Any other directors?

All right, then I'll ask the student representatives for their advisory vote on this item.

I think we have a dead microphone, so maybe Director Song can let you borrow hers.

Thank you.

On behalf of the student representatives, we advise yes.

Great.

Thank you so much.

So then end of discussion.

We will call for the vote on the item.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

Director Rankin?

Yes.

Director Smith?

Abstain.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Lavallee?

Abstain.

President Topp?

Yes.

This motion is passed with five yeses and two abstentions.

going to move right along to the action items.

We have three action items on today's agenda.

The first action item is approval to implement the Naguleri General Ability Tests, NGAT, as a Grade 1 Universal Highly Capable Screening Assessment.

I'm going to pass it over to Superintendent Schuldner to present this item.

Wonderful.

Well, I think good evening now after the good afternoon I gave you earlier.

It's wonderful to be able to present this item.

I will, of course, turn it over to Dr. Paul Montgomery, but I want to preface this by saying The history of HICAP in the Seattle Public School System, I think, has been fraught by many things.

But one of the most important reasons why we need to have something like the Nageleri is that What we know around HC or gifted and talented or whatever you want to call it, is that the earlier you're able to have universal screening, the better.

But you also want to make sure that you have the ability to test students in a way that does not deprivilege their home language or their initial first couple of years on this planet.

and so rather than have this in the consent agenda, I wanted to give some time to Dr. Montgomery to really explain to not just the board but to the community why something like this change for how we think about HC or G&T can actually be really helpful to address some of the long-standing structural and systemic issues of SPS.

So without further ado, Dr. Montgomery, please say whatever you'd like to say about the naglary.

Well, Superintendent Schulender, you said that very well, very eloquently.

And yes, we have had 20 plus years of questionable, highly capable identification in our school system.

And there was really good work that started to happen right around 2017. and part of that work was a task force, community task force that spoke about the need for universal screening even before the state of Washington put it into law and they also talked about the need for a non-verbal screener at that time and interestingly enough in 2017 the recommendation of that committee was actually this very same test.

I mean, it's been upgraded over all of these years.

But in 2017, the recommendation was to get us closer to having our highly capable population reflect the demographics of our overall district.

We needed to make this move.

Fast forward now to 2026. We are really close.

it's your ultimately your decision to implement this but we've done a lot of work since I took this position in July of 2025 we've worked with SCA our labor partners we've worked with school leaders we worked the community we've gone through a rigorous RFP process not just to look at the nagulari but to look at all the different tools out there throughout the country that would help us identify potential.

And that's what this assessment's doing.

Our previous or our current highly capable identification process focuses on academics.

And so it is definitely skewed towards identifying high early achievers.

It definitely is skewed towards students' access to not only early education but to English education and moving and creating this additional pathway we do believe we are going to capture a more represented group of actually first graders who really might be in need of highly capable services in their time in SPS.

I'm open to questions.

I can speak to other topics.

Let's try to stick to this topic but look to board directors for their questions or discussion.

Director Rankin.

Thanks, Paula.

Dr. Montgomery.

Paula's fine.

I have some technical questions and then some more global questions.

We did have a chance to review this in Policy Committee, but we reviewed it very much as our governance obligation, so we didn't spend a lot of time getting into the details of the academic part of it.

Will this now replace some of the other, what does this do with, and I'm blanking on the name of it, the dyslexia screener that was being used in kind of multiple ways.

Dibbles, thank you.

Thank you.

Just totally escaped me.

I mean there's still other very good reasons to use DIBELS but in my opinion and I think other professional opinions it was being maybe misapplied in some ways that this is much more appropriate for and then I'm wondering about map testing also as you said that really provides us with information about academic achievement which is not the same as academic or as intellectual potential or ability.

Can you just talk a little bit about what this maybe is taking the place of and how our community and families will see this play out?

Yeah, absolutely.

Let me just clarify a few things.

When I took the position in July of 2025, one of the decisions that we made was actually to remove the DIBELS.

Using the DIBELS as a gifted screener is an absolute misuse of the DIBELS, and it actually created barriers for our twice exceptional students as well.

So we removed that, leaving us with fewer data points for our first graders, and we saw that.

Last year we were very dependent upon mostly the map.

We also brought in for first graders something called WA Kids, which is a kindergarten assessment and we're finding a lot of success with that.

To answer your questions, we have multiple identification pathways as required by state law.

So, the NGAT, students could qualify by doing exceptionally well on the NGAT.

In fact, they could qualify by doing exceptionally well on the quantitative version or the non-verbal version.

Students could qualify by doing exceptionally well on just the map, like last year.

Or there could be a combination of those factors, and I believe that there are six different combination pathways for students to qualify.

Other districts do combine a cognitive screener and the achievement data.

We've decided not to do that at this point in time.

We really, this is the first year.

It's wide scale, testing 3,000 students.

And we want to look at the data.

We are estimating, and we've been told by area districts, that the children who qualify under the NGAT will probably be a different set of students than qualify under the MAP.

And so we'll analyze that data.

we'll have conversations, a year from now we might have a slightly different combination.

But we're not using DIBELS.

That's wonderful.

Thank you so much.

To the superintendent, the fraughtness.

I'm equal parts frustrated and appreciative that we're here now because it does feel like this is where we should have continued to go in 2017. This is a kind of out there wonder and it's a little bit towards you and we don't have to have this conversation now.

I'm wondering about our recognition as a system now through this screener, the acknowledgement that giftedness and potential are different than doing well on standardized tests, that there's lots of different kinds of intelligence.

And in my experience as a parent and as a community member, the way that we have also provided highly capable services is based very much on the academic high achievers.

and so I'm wondering how this might shape what we define as highly capable services a little bit differently that recognizes many more ways of being gifted and highly capable than doing well on the map.

No, it's a very important question.

I mean, I think that if the board so chooses to go with this proposal where we would use the Naguleri, we believe, Dr. Montgomery and I believe, as our data does seem to show, that this will expand the reach for who would be designated HC.

Now, again, to be clear, HC is part of a legal construct that the state supports, so we to do it, and so if we're going to have to do it, let's do it well.

And so our hope is that if this does expand the students who qualify, we will start to really rethink what it is that service providing looks like for HC.

but I think the most important thing is let's make sure that we can get a universal screener that allows for an expansion of services for children if they so qualify and then once we see the students that we're serving a kind of a broader sense of what does the best service model look like.

Now the nice thing about a district of the size of Seattle is that I think that we can have multiple kinds of service models for children and really try to focus on their needs.

And to be clear, again, that there are students that do very well in school for one reason that might be different than why they might do very well on another.

And there are some students who might be HC that also have other issues that are maybe holding them back.

that's how we can kind of divide our services.

So I think right now under the direction of Dr. Montgomery, the HC department is having a really kind of rethinking of all of what we're doing in terms of double and single domains, cohort model schools, individual walk-to models.

I think it's time for us to reevaluate, but this tool will allow us to serve the students that we really need to serve.

That's great.

Thank you so much.

And just for anyone who might not know, this test was developed from research that's from the 60s and 70s that my dad actually was part of.

The research came out of cognitive assessments of indigenous and aboriginal communities that didn't communicate in English and didn't have a lot of social constructs.

So it was 60s and 70s, so there may be other problems.

how that was done, but it really, it's a series of shapes and patterns and visual puzzles, and it's really a way of like, some kids just see those and can, the way their synapses are firing, they just, they get the patterns, they get to this, and so it's so great that it doesn't have a first language component.

into it.

So I think in addition to the screener for highly capable, it could be really helpful in helping us understand students who are learning English and helping distinguish between what's maybe a literacy barrier because they're learning English and what's maybe, you know, we have some struggles with ML students and the teasing out where there's a disability and where it's a language barrier.

And so I'm wondering if this could help with that too, just in kind of determining like, what are you good at?

What are you capable of?

Where do you struggle?

And how we can better address the needs of the actual student.

So I'm excited about this.

And again, it goes back to some data from, quite some time ago.

So it's exciting that we're actually aligning to best practice.

Thank you.

We're excited as a team.

The state is very excited to have Seattle on a national scale actually.

I've heard from researchers who are also interested in what does Seattle see in our first graders with this implementation.

We are a district that people are paying attention to in terms of highly capable, and this is the right move for us.

We absolutely needed to have some type of non-verbal screener with our youngest learners.

It would be a different conversation if we're talking about high school students, but for our youngest learners, this is a step I feel like we need to do.

Other board directors, questions, discussion?

All right thank you so much Dr. Montgomery.

Thank you.

I will ask for the student representatives for their advisory position on this issue.

President Taub I believe we need a motion.

We had I think we had a motion.

We had but I don't think we had a second.

Second.

Did I read the motion?

Okay.

I think so.

Let's do it again.

Or for the first time.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, I think I did not.

I move that the school board approve the implementation of the Naglieri General Abilities Test, NGAT, including the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, NGAT NB, and the Naglieri Quantitative Assessment, NGAT Q, for all grades all grade one students beginning in December 2026 as part of the Seattle Public Schools Highly Capable Universal Screening Process.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

All right, motion from Vice President Brakes, second from Director Mizrahi.

I definitely did not remember that, so thank you board staff for keeping me on task.

Now we will go to the student representative advisory vote.

On behalf of the student representatives, we advise yes.

Great.

Thank you so much.

And now we will call on staff for the vote.

Director Rankin?

Yes.

Director Smith?

Aye.

Director Song?

Yes.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

Director Lavallee?

Aye.

Director Mizrahi?

Yes.

President Topp?

Yes.

This motion is passed unanimously.

All right, moving on to our next action item, approval of resolution number 2026-2708, supporting the superintendent's implementation of school safety measures.

This is sponsored by Vice President Briggs, Director Mizrahi, and myself, and I'm gonna pass it over to Director- Wait, I think I should read the motion, right?

Yes, yes, you should.

I might- If we've learned nothing from the last time.

I move that the school board approve resolution number 2026-2708 supporting the superintendent's implementation of school safety measures as attached to this board action.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

All right now we have a motion from Vice President Briggs and a second from Director Mizrahi.

Again resolution sponsored by Vice President Briggs, Director Mizrahi and myself and I'm going to pass it over to Director Mizrahi to present the item.

Yeah, thank you President Topp.

So this resolution is around school safety and I think like a few resolutions that we brought in the past, it isn't an update to policy, it's not strictly necessary.

The resolution itself says in the whereas the superintendent has the authority to implement safety.

measures and exactly the safety measures that we're talking about.

So why are we doing it?

I think is a valid question.

And I would just say that safety is one of the issues that we hear about most.

When we were doing our community listening sessions, safety was an issue that came up, I think, in every single meeting.

I'd imagine in the sessions that you're doing, Superintendent, that safety comes up in every single conversation.

And I know that I am confident speaking on behalf of everyone I've talked to on the board that we all take our responsibility to keep our students and our schools safe is just our top utmost priority.

So I think it is helpful at times to even if it's not strictly necessary within policy to acknowledge the fact that we are appreciative of the work that the superintendent's doing particularly on the weapons detector program and I appreciated the presentation that I was not at last a meeting but went back and watched the presentation.

I think it's been really helpful to see these weapon detection systems in action at various sporting events and to see that they're not the intrusive metal detectors that we might think of.

And I think that it's helpful to have a resolution to express that we are in support of the superintendent doing whatever is necessary to keep these schools safe.

So I really appreciate the focus on this at the last meeting and I think we wanted to acknowledge that through a supportive resolution.

And I know that the superintendent has a few items for presentation so we can we do that and then we'll go further board director comments.

Sure.

You know, as a superintendent, one of the things that is kind of most important in terms of the decisions that I have the authority to make is to listen to the community.

At the last time we all met, we heard incredible stories from parents, from students, and from principals.

And everybody said, hey, if there's something that you can do to make us safer, let's at least try.

and I think that should be the thought that we go through when we're making these decisions.

Listen to the community, listen to experience, listen to research, listen to folks who've done this before and say what is possible.

I want to give special mention to the parent that spoke around fencing for Alki.

Fencing is a very important piece of the safety puzzle.

Cameras are a very important piece of the safety puzzle.

active watching of students is an important piece of the puzzle.

Single point of entry is a piece of the puzzle.

And weapons detectors are a piece of the puzzle.

And so I was really impressed, blown away, heartened, and also saddened by the stories and narrative that we heard from the schools, but the fact that they wanted to be proactive and ask that they be part of something, I think it makes a lot of sense.

And I also really want to thank this board for being so proactive and Director Mizrahi is right.

I probably have the power to do this anyway.

But the fact that the board is signaling their support means a tremendous amount, not just to me, but I hope to this community.

And so I also want to be thoughtful that when you hear weapons detectors or metal detectors, that sometimes we think of them in this very over-policing, you know, kind of punitive manner and the ones that we have that we already use for things like football games and graduations are a very kind of different thing.

So if you kind of see the screen, I guess, could you show the pictures first and then we'll play the video?

So if you notice, these are what are called open gate they're very easy they're very similar to ones that you might see at sporting events or at the mall and any of you who have gone to our football games this year we went through them already if any of you went to the graduation at Nathan Hale they use them and so you can see kind of the technology there.

And we actually have a video, which let's see if we can play and you can see.

Oh, it's OK.

I'll narrate it, I guess.

Let's see.

and so it's really, you know, and then, you know, I mean, there you go.

I don't think you need much narration, even the band, you know, and again, what's nice about them is you do notice that, you know, they're not buzzing.

If they do, there's a secondary, they just go through their bag and it really can go through hundreds and hundreds of folks very quickly and if it turns red, They just ask to look at the bag and it really, you can go very, very quickly and you can see how unobtrusive it is.

The good news also is that at a school we could have two of these units, three of these units, even four of these units, so you can see how easy it is to use and go through.

And in my experience, either at a very large sporting event or at school, these things can go through hundreds and hundreds of kids within minutes.

And yes, they were bringing in metal cans, and thus we found them.

So it really does work, and they're really pretty easy and unobtrusive.

So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions, happy for any comments.

But I think, again, as the parent mentioned this today, safety and security is front of mind, right?

And if we as a district can try what is generally referred to in the security biz as the Swiss cheese model, which is that every step you take is like a piece of Swiss cheese.

It has some holes, but it has some cheese.

And when you start layering them on over and over and over again, you have almost no holes or much broader reach.

And so cameras, single point of entry, fences, weapons detectors, humans outside, greeting students, safe and secure buildings, all of that adds to a much safer, safer experience for our children.

So with that, I turn it back over to President Tom, thank you.

Okay, we'll look for other board directors.

Director Lavallee?

Yeah, I did a safety walk with our city council member and some other electeds and a bunch of community organizations this past week in Rainier Beach along Henderson.

And one of the questions that I received from a community member was partially if we're going to do this, and the second part was is this going to take years like everything else that we do?

And so I'd love to get a little bit more clarity.

Is this going to take years like everything else that we do?

So I would like to believe that under the reign of Schuldner, we are trying very deeply to not take forever.

No, I mean, I think we heard from the voices of the principals that wanted it.

And we certainly, with the support of the board, we're going to be working very closely with both those schools that requested a pilot.

and our hope is that we would be able to get that up and running within the next couple of months.

We just really want to be very thoughtful about those two schools that requested it because, again, as I've been very clear, I don't want to do this unless the schools really want it.

And we heard from two, so I would hope that in the next couple of months we're able to get this standing up.

And just as a reminder, we already do it at our football games.

Thank you.

Representative Mangelson.

Really quickly, that's kind of funny.

I was at that football game.

I was like looking for myself, like was I going to be on the screen?

I did go through the metal detectors.

They did not detect me.

But they were very easy to go through.

I had no issue.

I just wanted to say, just quickly reiterate for anyone who wasn't at the last special meeting, just kind of like Superintendent Schulter said, hearing from students and families with hearing their stories and hearing them come to the board and come to the district and be proactive.

like they want this is really, really powerful, especially hearing it from the students that are going to be impacted by this every day.

So it's just always important to see that and it's just it's really great and it's really inspiring.

So I also want to say that at the last at the orientation for the Superintendent Student Advisory Board, I brought this up.

So I wanted to make sure that The many students who are there who are going to continue to do really good work this year knew that this was something that was going on and something they could think about like is this something you might want for your school?

How can you think about other safety programs that you want for your school?

So I think it's really great.

I'm really excited to see how the pilot programs go and yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Others?

Director Rankin.

Thanks.

This falls into two things.

One is the item itself for action, which is the resolution, and then the other bucket is the actual implementation of this.

And so for the implementation and and monitoring which is again not the item that we're discussing right now I am curious to know more about like the timeline and what kind like we're calling this a pilot so what would tell us that the pilot has been successful and what wouldn't and if you have that right now that would be great but also I fully appreciate that that's a different conversation than about the resolution

No, I'm always happy to answer any question from my wonderful bosses.

Yeah, you know, as you heard from the students, actually, about what would be deemed success was really after they do a pilot program, they're going to survey their students.

Also, one of them was talking about timing to make sure that the students weren't going to be backed up and were late to class, things like that.

One principal did mention that if they did get to school late, It wasn't the metal detector's fault.

And so I think we're going to be very thoughtful around looking at, does lateness increase because of it?

Is there a backlog?

Did students feel comfortable with it?

Did it work?

Did it cause other delays?

And so the two schools that have asked for the pilot, they're going to kind of build around what they think success looks like.

but it is again our hope in the next couple of months to really get it up and running and then we'll probably run it through a quarter semester and then have a kind of an analysis.

But to the student representative's point, if other schools are interested in it, they are more than welcome to reach out to us as well.

These two schools specifically had reached out to ask for it.

Right and I'm a Nathan Hill parent and my own student said at first he said I hate it and then we talked a little bit more and he said I actually hate that we have to talk about it.

It wasn't necessarily the implementation.

He just didn't like that it was a reality of today.

One other thing with the monitoring is I, and again, don't have to talk about this now, but the discipline and interaction with law enforcement.

So if a weapon is found, I know that we're not changing our discipline policies, but this may initiate more engagement with those policies.

So making sure that we're really clear about when things are confiscated by the teacher versus reported to law enforcement and that this doesn't become an increase of our students' interaction with law enforcement.

Yeah, so that's just something else.

So the resolution itself, thank you for your comments, Director Mizrahi.

As you might have predicted, I don't love that it's a resolution.

But the context, and I think understand, you know, I don't think we should have to make a resolution to tell the superintendent he can do the job we already hired him to do.

But given that this is a new initiative and we had that session, I appreciate that we want to, as a board, support your actions and make clear to the community that this is something that the governing team, which includes the superintendent, is supportive of.

So I don't know if anyone else is watching the best representation of civil service of today, Widow's Bay, but in the words of Rosemary, I have my qualms, but I want to be supportive.

So I look forward to voting yes.

Other directors?

Director Frowns?

Representative?

Okay, Josie said a lot of what I was thinking, but the video that you played, that's at SWAC, which is right across from my school, so anytime we have a football game, that's where we go.

They always have those metal detectors, and they are so easy.

At the last football game, my bag got beeped.

They went over, they looked through my bag, and it took like two seconds.

they are really efficient and something I was thinking about is at the last special board meeting when we had the presentations from Nathan Hale and Rainier Beach something they said a lot was what's the harm?

There really isn't any.

I mean I think the most important thing in our district is the students and if there's something we can do to make students feel safer at school then we need to do it.

and I think that the pilot program is a really good step in the right direction for student safety and I'm really looking forward to see this being implemented at other schools, my school too.

I think far too many students in SBS have had a experience with gun violence, have lost peers, I have.

I know Garfield has experienced it too.

It's really unfortunate, it hurts a school community so much and it just shouldn't be happening so I'm just really appreciative of Nathan Hale and Rainer Beach for coming forward and talking about it and I'm looking forward to more work around school safety.

The student representatives do you have an advisory vote for this item?

On behalf of the student representatives we advise yes.

Thank you so much and I will call for the vote on this item.

Director Smith.

Aye.

Director Song.

Yes.

Vice President Briggs.

Aye.

Director Lavalley.

Aye.

Director Mizrahi.

Yes.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

President Topp.

Yes.

This motion is passed unanimously.

All right the last action item on our agenda we're saving the best for last authorization for the superintendent to execute the 2026 2029 collective bargaining agreement between sale public schools district and the International Union of Operating Engineers I U O E local 302 local 302 can I get a motion let's see if I can do this right one of the three times

I move that the school board approve the 2026-2029 collective bargaining agreement between Seattle Public Schools and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302 and authorize the superintendent to execute the agreement in the form attached to this board action report.

The superintendent is further authorized to make any additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary and to take any necessary actions to implement the terms of these agreements.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

Motion from Vice President Briggs, second from Director Mizrahi.

Pass it over to Superintendent Childner to present this item.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much, President Topp.

I see one of my wonderful colleagues at the podium, so I will turn it over to Tina in a second.

But I just want to say thank you to 302. Negotiating with 302 was so wonderful, so thoughtful.

The idea that we could have very deep, very in-depth, and very important conversations around what's best for our staff as well as what's best for our students and our community really meant a lot to me.

I was really impressed with the professionalism, the thoughtfulness, the understanding of what it meant to work for the school district, really putting children first, but also their members.

It was a privilege to be at the other side of the table with 302. at many, many, many negotiating tables.

And I just really want to say thank you to the way that 302 showed up, the way that they were really engaging with all of us.

And I think that this contract that is being presented to the board is one that really shows how important their members are to this broader community.

Three or two represents hundreds and hundreds of staff members in a multiplicity of roles and we really just want to say thank you to them for all their hard work and I look forward to and I hope that this board certainly supports the action of authorizing me to execute this plan because I think it is both a good solid contract to give a fair and decent wage to our employees but also symbolic in terms of a good really strong labor relations that was able to get this contract over the finish line in a very thoughtful and very good way.

So with that, I'm happy to turn it over to Tina to take any more questions or comments about the contract.

Hi, Tina Meade, Director of Labor Relations.

I really, yes, I'm here to answer any questions, but I also want to do a few introductions.

We have two field representatives from Local 302, Shelley Phillippe and Daisha Burley, who are here, and then one of their members and one of our employees, Jennifer Martz?

Bentz, sorry, Jennifer Bentz from our grounds crew, who's also present as a part of this vote.

So happy to take any questions from the board.

Questions or discussion from board directors?

Director Rankin.

I want to talk about plants with the grounds person, but that's a side.

All right.

Student representatives, do you have an advisory vote for this item?

On behalf of the student representatives, we advise yes.

Thank you.

All right.

I will call for a vote on this item.

Director Song Yes Vice President Briggs Aye Director Lavallee Aye Director Mizrahi Yes Director Rankin Yes Director Smith Aye President Topp Yes This motion is passed unanimously.

and I would ask that the board and 302 if they would like we have cupcakes for you we want to celebrate this and I'd love us to have a picture together to celebrate the passing of this wonderful contract thank you yes so we're gonna bring out some staff's gonna bring out some cupcakes we're gonna and we're gonna take a picture but before we do that I'm gonna

to recess into executive session and then we can all go about our way.

So the board is now immediately recessing the regular meeting into executive session to review the performance of a public employee per RCW 42-110-1G and discuss with legal counsel representing the agency litigation or potential litigation per RCW 42-30-110-1I.

The session is scheduled for 60 minutes with an anticipated end time of 7.16.

Now, cupcakes and a photo.

Good evening.

The executive session drew you the performance of a public employee per RCW 42301101G and discuss with legal counsel representing the agency litigation or potential litigation per RCW 42301101I was originally scheduled for approximately 60 minutes.

We are running long and the session is now expected to go an additional 30 minutes with an anticipated end time of 7.45.

The board recessed out of executive session at 7.43 PM.

The regular board meeting is now convened at 7.45 PM.

There being no further business to come before the board, the regular meeting of the board is now adjourned at 7.45 PM.

Thank you.