Seattle Schools Board Meeting May 14 2025

TESTING.

All right, good afternoon.

The May 14th, 2025 regular board meeting is called to order at 417 p.m.

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

Miss Wilson-Jones, the roll call, please.

Vice President Briggs.

Here.

Director Clark.

Present.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Present.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Sarju.

Present.

President Topp.

Here.

Student member Bragg.

Do we have, oh, not quite yet.

So I do believe we'll have student member Bragg and student member Elias joining.

Great.

Thank you, Ms. Wilson-Jones.

This afternoon we're going to start with superintendent comments, but I just want to make note that Dr. Jones is on health slash medical leave today, and his intention is to return before September 3rd.

In his absence, the delegation of authority goes to the chief operating officer FRED PODESTA, WHO IS HERE AT THE PODIUM WITH US AND READY TO PROVIDE SUPERINTENDENT COMMENTS THIS EVENING.

THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TAH.

LET'S SEE, AM I DOING THIS RIGHT?

FRED PODESTA, CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER.

I'M GOING TO MAKE COMMENTS ON BEHALF OF DR. JONES, WHO CAN'T BE WITH US TONIGHT.

WE'LL BE ON MEDICAL LEAVE FOR A WHILE.

WE WISH HIM NOTHING BUT THE BEST.

and so I'd just like to make a few comments on his behalf.

Last week, as you know, we celebrated National Teachers Week and also National Nurses Day.

I think I don't need to tell the board or the community how important teachers are to our system.

Seattle Public Schools is teachers and they obviously serve their role as educators, but they provide welcoming environments.

They create the environment for students to thrive and learn.

Likewise, nurses play a vital role in our school.

They ensure students are healthy, that they're safe.

They create a calm and welcoming environment for students, again, to provide the baseline by which they can learn.

Another event this past week, On Saturday, I had the privilege of joining Dr. Jones and the community to dedicate some spaces in Rainier Beach High School, which has been reconstructed, and the community honored three members of the community, dedicating spaces to them, rededicating the Betty Patu Library.

Betty Patu had a long history with Seattle Public Schools, including a seat on the board.

The court was rededicated for Jamal Crawford who was a luminary at Rainier Beach High School as a player and in the NBA and has been a pivotal member of the community since.

And the athletic complex was awarded to coach Michael Bethea who earlier this year won his ninth state championship for Rainier Beach and was really moving to hear from students and former students of beyond coaching basketball, just what an important figure he is in students' lives at Rainier Beach High School.

So Principal Patu said it well, referring to Rainier Beach High School as the crown jewel of their community is the way she looks at it and the honor she has being the school leader.

And it's a beautiful building.

I invite people to visit it whenever you can.

It's really a testament to what this community can do, what Seattle Public Schools can do.

Tonight we have a very full agenda, as often.

We are going to do some progress monitoring on some guardrails to give us a sense of progress on how we work to comply with the visions and values that have been laid out by the board on behalf of the community.

And thank you very much.

And we'll turn it back to President Topp to get to that full agenda.

Perfect.

Thank you so much Chief Operating Officer Podesta.

Looking now to student board directors seeing if there's any comments.

Director Elias.

So, we've been working closely with Director Rankin to reflect on what this role has actually looked like over the past few years.

And we're hoping to update the policy so it starts to align more with what we've been doing.

And there's no handbook or a real guide on how to be a student board member.

So we kind of had to figure it out as we go, which is why it's so important.

We have a policy that is clear and supportive, especially for future students stepping into this role.

And now that SPS has had student members on the board for a few years, we've learned a lot, what works, what doesn't, and what support is actually needed to make this role meaningful.

We've also been talking and comparing with other districts across the state to see how they structure their student They're student board roles.

Some have more formal mentorship programs, handbooks, or clearer systems for student input.

We'd love to see Seattle public schools get to that level, too, where student members aren't just present, but are equipped and empowered to lead.

Director Bragg?

I'll probably just be brief because Sophia said most of what we planned on saying.

But we are super excited to be able to work on that policy and work with directors to see what we want to see the change be in that policy and to provide this amazing opportunity for more students in the district and create a Better idea of what we're supposed to do.

We've already shown a difference in this year with the fact that we have had almost every student board member, if at least not two, at a meeting instead of just one.

We have a much deeper connection between each other, and we hope to teach that to the next members.

We recently had the applications close for the next, and we cannot wait to help them and see what the next student board members are and what they plan to do.

ALL RIGHT.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT.

WE WILL MOVE INTO BOARD COMMENTS.

I'M GOING TO START WITH MY GRATITUDE FOR THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS HERE WITH US TONIGHT AND WHO HAVE BEEN JOINING US AT OUR MONTHLY ENGAGEMENT SESSIONS.

HAD SOME GOOD CONVERSATIONS AT EACH ENGAGEMENT SESSION ON A VARIETY OF TOPICS.

AND GRATITUDE FOR THE STAFF AS WELL PARTICIPATING IN THE CONVERSATIONS.

I THINK WE ARE STRONGER WHEN The district and the board are aligned in supporting kids.

The insights we've shared at our community at our gatherings are being used by the board in our planning our superintendent search and will continue to inform our work on budget and strategic plan.

to improve our district we do need the insights of our entire community and I really thank you for continuing to advocate for students staff schools and helping chart our our vision and shape the system to best serve our community and I look forward to these conversations to continue but I also want to offer an apology to our deaf and hard of hearing community as we wrote to our community earlier this week We did not have an American Sign Language available at last week's engagement session.

This meant parents from the DHH community were not able to access the meeting and discussion.

And as directors we were not able to receive their insights and their help in guiding us.

As I shared in a letter to SPS families we apologize to those who joined us and the broader DHH community.

Last week's meeting was not a single incident but part of a larger history and I'm grateful to our community members who are here tonight who continue to work to make our school system better for our students.

YOUR COMMITMENT REQUIRES US AS A BOARD TO MEET IT WITH OUR OWN COMMITMENT AND ACTION.

I THINK LEADERSHIP TAKES A MITTING WHERE YOU ARE AT FAULT AND CREATING A PLAN TO DO BETTER.

I'M WORKING WITH BOARD STAFF AND COMMITTED TO PROVIDING ASL INTERPRETATION AT EVERY REGULAR BOARD MEETING, OTHER PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE FULL BOARD AND OUR ENGAGEMENT SESSIONS AS WELL.

Before we move on, though, to additional director comments, I want to summarize a few pieces of our work since we last had our regular board meeting.

We are moving ahead with our superintendent search process.

Last night we met with our search consultant, H.Y.A., and we will be sharing the timeline for our search on our school board website here shortly.

OUR COMMUNITY, AS WE TALKED ABOUT LAST NIGHT, CAN EXPECT ENGAGEMENT AND INCLUDES A SURVEY, NUMEROUS FOCUS GROUPS, AS WELL AS I'M HOPING WE CAN PULL OFF AN ENGAGEMENT SESSION LED BY OUR STUDENT BOARD DIRECTORS, SOMETHING THEY'RE INTERESTED IN DOING, WHICH I'M SUPER EXCITED ABOUT.

THIS WILL SUPPORT THE CREATION OF A LEADERSHIP PROFILE FOR OUR NEXT SUPERINTENDENT ALIGNED WITH OUR COMMUNITY'S PRIORITIES SO THAT WE CAN USE IT TO RECRUIT AND TO VET CANDIDATES FOR THE SUPERINTENDENT POSITION.

OUR NEXT FULL BOARD MEETING WILL BE ON MAY 21. WE WILL HAVE OUR FINAL BUDGET DEVELOPMENT STUDY SESSION BEFORE THE INTRODUCTION OF THE BUDGET.

WE WILL ALSO RETURN TO OUR INTERIM METRICS AND NEW GUARD RAILS.

AND FOLLOWING THAT BOARD MEETING, WE WILL END IT WITH AN EXECUTIVE SESSION ON BARGAINING.

Chief Operating Officer Podesta mentioned the Rainier Beach High School dedication.

It was an incredible event.

Also in the intervening time we had the Seattle Scholarship Foundation event that Dr. Jones and I got to celebrate and participate with awarding 72 seniors with $10,000 scholarships.

If you're doing the math, that's $720,000.

And one of the takeaways from that evening was the importance of counselors in schools.

And Director Rankin and I had an opportunity this week to meet with a group of counselors from elementary, middle, K-8, and high schools to hear about some of their concerns.

And it was a really impactful moment.

One of the counselors asked, do you remember in high school what your counselors did for you?

And I think Director Rankin and I BOTH HAD STORIES AND SPECIFIC INSTANCES AND WAYS WHICH COUNSELORS HELPED SUPPORT US AND THEIR IMPORTANT ROLE IN SCHOOLS.

As we move into June, we will have the introduction of next year's budget and a public hearing.

We will also anticipate receiving policy recommendations from the ad hoc policy committee, sorry, ad hoc policy manual review committee, some student safety updates, and we will hold a board retreat.

So those are sort of the upcoming items.

Do other board committee chairs or liaisons have reports?

DIRECTOR CLARK.

THANK YOU PRESIDENT TOP.

WELL AS THE CITY OF SEATTLE I GUESS FAMILIES EDUCATION PRESCHOOL AND PROMISE LIAISON THE LONGEST LIAISON TITLE EVER I JUST WANTED TO PROVIDE AN UPDATE FROM OUR APRIL MEETING.

THE LEVY OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE THAT I SERVE ON, WHICH IS OVERSEEING THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE CURRENT LEVY, MET ON APRIL 24TH.

AND WE RECEIVED A PRESENTATION ON THE Sorry.

On the early learning program, the Seattle preschool program.

And I'm going to send around the slide deck and a link to the full report to board members.

I just wanted to highlight a couple of items.

This was the year five evaluation process and they looked mostly at the SPP plus program and some of the highlights the SPP plus classrooms which include children with special needs and children without special needs had higher average class scores across all three domains.

Evaluators observed alignment with the evidence-based indicators of high-quality inclusion practices.

Student skill growth were higher in the children in SPP Plus classrooms, showing that they were more likely to meet target growths.

and SPS kindergarten students with and without IEPs who attended an SPP plus classroom had higher walk hit scores than comparison groups.

So really encouraging findings and I'm excited to share the findings of the report with the board.

We also received I guess a preview of the THE LEVY RENEWAL THAT MAYOR HAROLD ANNOUNCED I BELIEVE ALSO ON APRIL 24TH OR HE TRANSMITTED IT TO CITY COUNCIL.

SO I WILL SEND AROUND A FACT SHEET THAT WE WERE GIVEN.

I DID WANT TO POINT OUT THAT AS OF RIGHT NOW AS A BODY WE HAVE NOT DISCUSSED um our advocacy on the fep levy renewal um and so i'd like to recommend that we either have a special meeting to talk about how and if we want to engage in um advocacy as a body on the fep uh the new levy proposal or I can draft a legislative agenda for the renewal and send it around for comments.

And I think we should probably try to vote on that at our next meeting.

There's been some concerns that have been brought to my attention from the community.

around expansion of the current city SPS partnership on prevention and safety supports in and around schools.

So I think we need to get some clarity on what exactly the proposal entails and decide where we are as a body on supporting that proposal.

And I think it would be great if we also provided some clarity for the community.

That's it.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Director Clark.

Other committee or liaison reports.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

A few things to share about conversations I have had in spaces I've been in since our last meeting.

It seems like a really long time ago that the legislative session ended.

couple weeks ago.

So, had a continuing regular conversation during session with partners across the state on other boards.

Also was able to attend its WASDA regional meeting season.

where by director district area, there are regional meetings for boards to get together, share a meal together, talk about common issues and themes.

I, as a representative on the WSDA board for district area two, I went to both the north and the south district area two meetings.

And I would love to have more company from my colleagues on our board at these meetings.

And I know it's more meetings, but some other folks attend with their full board and superintendent, and it's a little bit lonely.

I know.

But it's also really one of the few opportunities we have throughout the year to make connections with other boards.

And we usually spend some time talking about common issues and concerns and then focus on a presentation from WASDA staff that has to do with our role in board governance.

And I always find it really valuable.

And it's always great.

There were a lot, something I noticed that we may all want to sort of have on our radars is that there are a lot of new board directors on boards.

Several of us noticed there's a whole bunch of people who have been on boards for a year and a half and they were like, coming because they were like what is this job?

We need support.

What are we doing?

So just something I think for us all to think about in building those connections with other districts and working together to collectively build best practices and our work for students across the state and share our knowledge and share our advocacy efforts.

Another event that I attended was hosted by the regional NAACP, the NAACP for Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and the Black Education Strategy Roundtable for Higher Ground.

It was an event focused on securing black academic futures.

I know I took some photos of slides.

I may have some materials I can share with the board.

But we had a really great presentation on some data for the state, particularly to do with black students.

And there were folks from just so many different community organizations all serving black students across the street.

It was really exciting and I felt really lucky to be able to be part of that gathering that was at Highline College.

And then I missed the scholarship night because I was invited to attend the DHH family night at TOPS which was really fun and just connect more with folks about from that community about what they need and how we can better support.

They have a group that is really, really excited about and committed to increasing access to ASL both for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, for CODAs, which is hearing children of deaf adults, and also just for peers who are interested in learning a second language.

There is a lot of excitement and appetite at the school around creating a instead of the deaf and hard of hearing program co-located with an option school creating a whole community that is dual language immersion with spoken English and ASL.

So exciting possibilities for us to talk about with staff and maybe the next superintendent about what that can look like and of course the community themselves.

So that was that's just sort of a And then, of course, met with counselors with Director Topp, which was wonderful and really appreciate them willing to share their thoughts with us.

For a legislative meeting, I do have a final kind of wrap-up legislative memo for the session that I was hoping, it takes me several hours to put together.

I was hoping to have it today to put into meeting minutes.

It is not done.

It is coming.

I'm just going to sort of recap.

session and put in some sort of things to think about for next session.

I will make sure that that goes somewhere that is accessible to the public as well, maybe in meeting minutes in the next board meeting.

But if I get it done sooner, I will send it to board directors sooner.

But I do want to especially shout out our Seattle delegation for their consistent commitment to our students and public schools, not just in Seattle, but across the state.

They stayed really consistent and strong and worked very hard to increase progressive revenue and provide options for progressive revenue.

the financial outcome is not what we were hoping for.

The collaboration and the consistent messaging of K-12 advocates and of legislators like we are lucky to have representing us, it strengthened I without the collaboration I don't think we would have gotten what what we did get even though the doom and gloom version is that we didn't get what we needed.

I think it could have been much worse if we hadn't worked so strongly together.

I want to especially thank Representative Paulette and Senator Peterson for their leadership in particular special education and capital funding and working not only for our students in Seattle but to support um their colleagues from other areas in the state and really learning about what's going to make an impact why it's important and just keeping on message about what our kids need um i also am pleased that i heard from legislators that they felt good collaboration from sps which has not been the case historically um specifically got a message from a legislator that said we appreciated the months of fiscal policy and organizing efforts that were dedicated before the session by sps to prepare proposals and the responsiveness and organizing with other superintendents and districts and for providing testimony during session.

I wanted to say that out loud because most of the staff that that is for is here in the room.

You may not have heard that otherwise, so it was recognized and appreciated and makes a difference.

And the big sort of we got everything we asked for was we make a capital ask every year because the SCAP formula, which is what funds capital projects, does not reflect the contributions of the Seattle taxpayers.

And so as a kind of makeup for that, we usually get a couple of additional capital asks.

And both were approved.

They are literally going to keep roofs over the heads of children in two different schools.

And so thank you to the entire delegation for signing on in support of that request and to our staff for getting that there and for getting that over the line.

Yeah.

So more detail I will put in a written memo.

And apologies for not having that today.

Policy committee we met last week.

And we will be meeting again next week.

We're moving through our 1000 series.

As a reminder, we are not rewriting or making new decisions for the full board in that committee.

I heard something that's actually quite ridiculous saying that the reason that something online and I'm out of these, I encourage everybody to just not pay attention to Facebook, but sometimes people send them to me.

Apparently, policy committee is my way of disempowering the whole board and handing everything over to the superintendent.

And I cannot overstate the ridiculousness of that comment.

Policy is the law of the school district, okay?

Our power is in writing and upholding policy and holding the superintendent and staff accountable for following that policy.

If we do not maintain our policy manual, we are giving up our voice as a board on behalf of you, the community.

and leaving it open and leaving us with only having veto power over things that staff chooses to bring to us in meetings.

That is not power.

That is not community representation.

By taking control of our policy manual as the governing body that represents the entire community for the education of our children, We actually claim the authority that we should have as the representation of the people who own this school district who is all of Seattle.

in setting expectations clearly describing to the superintendent and district what we expect allowing you the public to see in our policy whether or not we are living up to our commitments that we made to you and then it is our job to hold the superintendent accountable as the representative of the district to us to make sure that our district is delivering on the education that our community wants and our children deserve so i just have got to make that extremely clear policy is the law we get to write it we're responsible for enforcing it and if we don't do it we are giving up all of our authority do other directors have reports

All right, then we are going to head to the tables.

We're gonna do progress monitoring and we will stop at five to do public testimony.

Please bring your microphones.

All right.

Director Hersey is our progress monitoring lead.

So I will facilitate this portion.

So I will pass it over to him.

And I'm going to pass it over to the staff.

Let's get rolling.

Thank you, Director Hersey.

We're here.

We'll have two teams rotate through to talk about Guard Rail 1 and 2. The first one is engagement.

I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues, Chief Redman and Associate Superintendent Torres Morales.

I believe we're starting with Dr. Torres Morales.

Thank you.

Good evening, board directors and community.

We are pleased to provide an update on our current guardrail one engagement as part of ongoing progress monitoring.

This session will briefly view key interim metrics, describe system practices underway, and preview how this work evolves under the new 2025 to 2030 guardrail progress monitoring framework.

Next slide, please.

So here is just the scoring rubric that we use that's color coded.

This is aligned with how we do our other goals and guardrails.

Next slide, please.

So in terms of this guardrail, I'll be looking specifically at guardrail 1.1, and then Chief Redman will be talking a little bit about guardrail 1.2 and 1.3.

As you see here, we have rated guardrail 1.1 as in the yellow.

And just for context, this guardrail is the percentage of students furthest from educational justice who express having agency and opportunities to give voice in their school community.

And we were initially saying that this would increase from a baseline of 47% in 2022 to 55% in the fall of 2024. We currently have this rated as yellow, and what that means is that the interim metrics indicate conflicting evidence as to whether results will be delivered.

In terms of interim Guard Row 1.2, this is the percentage of school leaders, school staff, and central office leaders responsible for policy implementation who are trained on best practices for stakeholder engagement, And we rated that in orange, and interim guard row 1.3 is percentage of school leaders and central office staff who have completed community engagement, training and prepared to implement best practices in community engagement, and we rated that in the orange.

Next slide, please.

Oh, and for context, orange is interim metrics indicate that results are unlikely to be delivered without significant changes.

No surprise there.

I think we'll get into that a little bit more.

We've heard this from the community, and so happy to share some thoughts on where we think we need to go next on that.

So these first set of data, this is related to 1.1.

And as a reminder, this is the portion of students of color for this educational justice.

And the goal was to go from 47% to 55%.

When you look at these data, I want to be clear that this is students who responded agree or strongly agree.

On the next slide, we also included the kind of agree, but we'll talk about that in a moment, because when we set the actual goal, it was based on agree or strongly agree.

So what we see is that when you put the two constructs together, so to be clear, when I say construct, those are the actual questions the kids get on the survey.

And so the question is, at my school, I can be a student leader and make changes if I want.

The other question for this guardrail was, my ways of knowing and understanding the world are valued here.

What we see is that in terms of, at my school, I can be a student leader.

We did make some progress.

We ended up six percentage points in that, which is good.

It shows that what we were doing is working towards what we were trying to get to.

But when you look at my ways of knowing and understanding the world are valued here, it was actually pretty flat.

So that means we still have some more work to do there.

When you combine these together, that's where the number 47 comes through.

So if you look at fall 2021, it's essentially the 41 and the 53 would be the 47, which was the baseline.

And then we wanted to get to 55, and we're only at 51. So did we make progress?

Yes.

Did we make the progress that we wanted to make?

Not exactly.

We know that we have further work to do.

Next slide please.

This slide just provides a different look at the data.

This is if we were to include students that also said kind of agree.

So the previous data was a student either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

These data are showing kids that also said kind of agree.

This is important for us to look at too because what it tells us is there is a good chunk of kids that agree in some form or fashion.

But the wondering becomes why do they only kind of agree versus fully agree with the statement.

So that gives us an idea of some of the work that we need to do there as well.

And next slide, please.

I'm going to hand it over to Chief Redmond at this time.

Thank you.

I believe we can go into the next slide.

Thank you to everyone here.

And it's good to see the board together again.

I think we're getting some feedback on a mic.

All right.

Wait a second.

Again, greetings to the board and thanks to Dr. Torres-Morales for leading us into this.

It's a pleasure to join with him and collaborate with him on engagement.

I believe we both align in the reality that while we are seeing some elements of progress or tipping our toe and seeing some bright spots, there's much more work to do.

But my job is to tell you about 1.2 and 1.3 in terms of our response to incidences as evidenced on the slide.

We have presented this to the audit committee, but SPS has implemented and initiated an initial training protocol that standardizes our process framework for school-specific incidences, coordinating responses, and district-wide issues.

These protocols are included to or designed to enhance our communication with families, follow up on conversations, and make sure that we're providing necessary training for staff.

And ultimately, a goal is to enhance and to build trust through consistency and, again, providing that supportive training to our staff.

Moving on to the next slide.

We also want to acknowledge some places where we do believe we're seeing some evidence of movement.

Again, not communicating that we have arrived.

There's much, much more work to do.

but we are very happy to see some input and some impact and seeing students serving on some of our hiring committees and our equity teams, also strategic planning task force and focus group work that's yet to come, and also making sure that there's legislative advocacy and school safety that includes student voice.

Again, tipping into that area, but knowing that we need to increase that.

And as evidenced on screen with the slide, you can see that there has been activity and some engagement within our Memorial Stadium projects, our levy work.

And we don't want to negate that again, but turning a corner and looking forward, and we can go into the next slide.

looking ahead to 25 through 30 we have seen and been able to support and happy to support we don't take credit for but happy to support the board as we as you're launching out there on your own community engagement journey and providing that structure for you great to see our community being responsive and coming out to those sessions but we want to be that mirror or that group that walks beside you and making sure that we're doing our job on our side with community engagement as well and getting richer in that and where we're aiming to go and hopefully when we're back here next week talking about those interim guardrails that you can see evidence that we're planning to track and measure the quantity and the quality of the engagement also making sure that we have our support from our school leaders and departments and bringing us closer together in terms of how we train and how we embed equitable engagement practices into what we do.

You've heard some of that through the CSIP work.

And then also making sure overall that our families, our students, and our educator voices, it amounts to feeling consistently that their voice is represented and influential in decisions at every level of the system.

again aligning with Dr. Torres Morales there are many more places to go much more work to do and we're looking forward to as we're sunsetting this particular set of guardrails really ratcheting up and digging in and getting better at what we do.

So thank you for your time.

All right.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions from directors.

Director Sarju.

I don't know that I necessarily have a question.

I think we have people in the room and we need to not pretend like they're not sitting out there listening and watching and wondering and they don't get an opportunity in this format to ask questions.

I have heard just ad nauseum about what is perceived in the community.

And when I say the community, I mean people who are in my ear, that there's been a failure of engagement.

And so part of that is, I don't think it's as much of a failure is that we actually haven't set people up to understand what engagement is. right the engagement of district staff is different than the engagement of the board and so when we actually haven't done a good job of explaining to people what they can what it is and what they can expect then we're setting them up not by intention but by outcome to be disappointed frustrated angry whatever whatever the things are and so um you know We're all, particularly for board directors, there are at least three of us who work full-time jobs.

This is not a job.

This is a volunteer opportunity.

So our ability to, if I didn't have to work a full-time job, I could spend a full-time job doing this, right?

I don't want to do that.

I mean, I wouldn't want to do that.

But my point is, we leave people disappointed, frustrated, angry.

So where does that show up?

Public testimony, right?

So we're caught in this vicious cycle, this loop of what I think is preventable.

If we can just slow down and figure out what we need to do, educate the community so they can come along with us, not stand up there against us, because it feels very adversarial to them as well as to some of us sitting on the dais.

And I'm not interested in being your adversary.

I'm interested in being a partner for you and your children.

And so how can we get to that?

I think, and it's got to start with doing something different.

If we want something different, a different outcome, we have to do something different.

But I feel like we're stuck in this perpetual loop of doing things the way we've always done.

So if that's the decision we're going to make, I think pretty much everybody in this audience would agree with me, we're going to continue to experience the things we're experiencing because we're actually not engaging with them and not partnering with them.

So I don't have the answer to the staff.

I don't have the answer to any of you all in the community.

But I'm saying this because I want you to understand that I see, hear, and feel your frustration.

And I'm a board director of one, and I have made several statements about what we could do related to community engagement.

Maybe someone will take that up, and maybe they won't.

I'm not tied to this outcome.

But what I am committing to you is that I'm going to continue to try to advocate for a different way forward, because I don't want you frustrated.

I want you to show up here, feel like this is a meaningful opportunity for understanding how the district is working on behalf of your kids and not that you're trying to get on the first 25 testimony list so you can express your frustration and your anger and your disappointment.

based on the information you have.

It's totally legitimate.

It's wrong.

I'm telling you, most of the time it's wrong.

But you're legitimate.

I'm validating you in your frustration because you don't have another way.

So that's my comment.

Mr. Rankin?

Thank you.

I am going to attempt to stick to what is here and ask about the data that is being presented to us.

What is, I'm having a hard time seeing And maybe this is something we need to think about for interims for the next batch, but...

If we have this indication that results are unlikely to be delivered without significant changes, I would like to know what significant changes we might be considering.

I know that there is a pretty comprehensive audit.

that is on the school district.

This is not a secret.

It's on the school district's website under completed audits.

We asked for it in 2022, I think.

We've gotten some updates through the audit committee, but I'm not seeing changes in practice or behavior that are reflected here.

And I think we can all say that we're not seeing changes reflected because we're unlikely to see progress without making changes.

So I am wondering if staff has identified what's working and what's not working and how that relates to the recommendations made in that very comprehensive report and the report from the PSESD related to Rainier View, that also had some pretty comprehensive recommendations about what Michelle is talking about, which is for me, when our public testimony list is full and when it's full of things that are operational issues or family to school or family to district issues, that is an indication to me that engagement is not working because people would rather do anything than have to come down here.

They come down here to sign up for their two minutes because they're not getting what they need from the proper channels.

And there are a lot of very clear recommendations in that communications audit and the PSESD report.

And so tying us back to our best practices and progress monitoring is what is happening to keep us Is there a barrier to implementing some of those recommendations?

Is there an opportunity here from staff that you're seeing about a plan to implement some of those practices or what are you looking at to get that metric to move from orange to make progress on that?

Thank you so much, Director Rankin, for the question.

I want to provide just a couple of examples of some of the things that are upcoming that are different.

And part of the reason that I want to highlight that is because it's an example of how we recognize exactly what you're talking about.

We have a lot of conversations, particularly me and Chief Redmond, around some of these topics.

If we don't give people an outlet to share their ideas, they're going to share their ideas.

So what are we doing about that?

And frankly, for the work that I do, it's very helpful.

So I think if you talk to a lot of community members, what you'll find out is I've been doing a lot of parent one-on-ones almost just to learn more.

I'm like, tell me more because I need to figure this out so that we can do this in service of community and ultimately in service of students.

That also isn't very fair because then who gets the time with me and who doesn't?

So how are we creating the structure so that people get the time?

So one of the examples that I want to share is UNAPOLOGETICALLY I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT WE'RE GOING TO COME OUT HERE IN THE LATE SUMMER THROUGH THE EARLY FALL TO MEET SPECIFICALLY WITH THE WHOLE COMMUNITY BUT ON THE TOPIC OF HIGHLY CAPABLE SERVICES.

WHAT'S GOING WELL, WHAT'S NOT GOING WELL, GETTING INFORMATION FROM FAMILIES.

SO WHAT YOU'LL SEE TOMORROW IS WE'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO RELEASE ALL THOSE DATES.

We're going to release what districts they're going to be in the five different regions of the city.

There's going to be a Saturday option and there's going to be a virtual option.

Five languages of interpretation and ASL at every single one of those.

We're going to be releasing that tomorrow.

So be on the lookout for the dates when they come.

And it's open to the whole community.

There was this notion that this is for the HC families.

And what I say is, no, we serve the city of Seattle.

So this is for anybody.

Especially people that are curious, like maybe I want my kid to go to Seattle schools, but I don't know.

This is why I'm not going.

Tell us.

We want to know.

So I just share that as an example of we are listening and we're trying to figure out how do we get better.

Is this going to be almost like a first out the gate on this specific topic?

Yes, but hopefully this provides us with a roadmap to say like, hey, this is what we're talking about.

We need to do more of this around various topics.

So I wanted to share that as one example.

And then real quick, just hit on, in terms of GuardRail 1.1, one of the things that Dr. Mia Williams has been doing very intentionally, if we go back to the intent of the Department of African-American Male Achievement, it was always supposed to be the target to the universal.

The target to the universal.

So some of the strategies that that team did, where they have very strong data, was around just student learning groups and student voice groups and those sort of things.

And so now she's been doing some intentional work to say, hey, this is what we did.

These were the results we got when kids were surveyed on this.

How are we going to try to take that now and make that more broad across the system?

And then I'll let Chief Redman respond.

And then we're gonna go into public testimony.

Yes, okay, let me zoom on through this.

In terms of other reassurances, want to make sure that when things come to you as a board, right now on your board action report, you can do a check box on whether something was just information engagement.

We need to actually present the engagement plan for all of those areas.

If you're not finding that, then perhaps we don't submit it, and I know that's a firm and strong thing, but if we don't submit it, or you have a right to send it back to us to say this is undone, So being much more firm in how we require engagement.

But in order to require that, we have to supply training.

We have to provide support.

Again, underscore on support to our building leaders, to our own staff out of the John Stanford Center on how you do that and what does that look like for SPS so that it is easily identifiable.

So I'll pause there.

Sorry about that.

This question kind of strays away from what the other board directors commented about.

But as a student, I see a lot of engagement.

But it's not always clear what happens to our feedback.

not engagement sorry a lot of efforts to engage us and it's not really clear what you guys do with our feedback and what systems are put in place to make sure student input leads to tangible results and how exactly are you guys closing that loop so students aren't just heard but you know listen to

That is an awesome question.

Thank you for it.

As part of that requirement, whether it's student voice, whether it is voice from any slice of our community, we have to be able to demonstrate how that was utilized in that plan and then also be able to communicate it back out to the group that we sat down and spoke with or the community at large.

So that would be required as part of you can't go past here in order to get this to the board and to get you to sign off as approval.

All right, we're gonna head back up to public.

Can I make one last comment in response to the point that Director Rankin had with regard to when you get comments about concerns at a particular school, Chief Redmond described a kind of our incident response process where working with school leaders and management in schools to not think of that only for safety incidents or power outages or other kind of operational incidents, but anything that's gonna in the end require communication.

back to the community because that's how we let people know that, oh, we're not having school tomorrow because there's a power outage in building.

We could use that for many other things and we're working hard to leverage that as well.

And that's also how the local community, local school community has a say in the education of their children at the school level.

They also have a say at the district level as members of the broader Seattle community.

But everything doesn't have to come here.

Much more should be actually in the schools with the people who are the most impacted.

All right, we are going to begin public testimony, and I know there are some folks who need to leave here by 515, so we're going, or some students who need to leave here by 515, so we're going to try to get started as quickly as possible.

We have reached the public testimony portion of the agenda.

Board procedure 1430 BP provides our rules for testimony.

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

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

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

I am now going to pass it over to staff 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 with the when listed speaker is called time is not restarted and the total time remains two minutes the timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for the speakers here in person when the light is red and a beep sounds that means that the time has already 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 on to our list now for those who are joining by phone please press star six to unmute on the conference call and for everyone please do reintroduce yourselves as you are called as i may miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list the first speaker today is um Is this?

Chris Jackins.

My name is Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124. On authorizing $4 million of capital fund interest for use by the operating budget, the amount should be much more.

On the $12.5 million purchase of a warehouse, the purchase is driven by the district's wrongly giving up use of the Memorial Stadium site.

Please vote no. on the interlocal agreement regarding Memorial Stadium and the connected granting of exceptions to board policy on commercial advertising and drug-free schools.

Five points.

Number one, the proposal would turn over Memorial Stadium to a private group with a long-term lease while still allowing school use.

Number two, Memorial Stadium was meant to honor Seattle school alumni who died in World War II.

The proposed plans are disrespectful and lose the central focus on students.

Number three, in order to accommodate the glitzy plans that big businesses want for the site, the board would grant exceptions to board policy against alcohol and marijuana use and commercial advertising.

Number four, the naming rights can be sold by the private group as long as the word memorial is kept.

Such commercialization is disrespectful.

Number five, bluntly, redevelopers want to sell booze, commercial advertising, naming rights, and whatever to make the project pencil out.

They should not be selling booze and commercial advertising at a public schools owned facility.

Please vote no on these plans.

also my compliments to laura gramer for her comments in today's seattle times on deaf and hard of hearing issues thank you very much the next speaker today is alice rivera alice will be followed by knox taylor and we do have some seating at the front of the room which and we for um anyone who may wish to be able to see the sign language interpretation a little bit easier

I'm Alice Rivera and this is my brother Zach.

We are in fourth grade and I yield to my mom.

Good afternoon.

My name is Laura Marie Rivera, and I'm running for Seattle School Board Director Four.

I'm the mother of four Seattle public school students and the only educator in the race.

I want to speak tonight not as a candidate, but as a mom, because my kids are watching, all of our kids are watching the system closely, and they see what's happening.

They understand that when families aren't given real choices, when schools lose resources, and when students with disabilities are denied services, Or when students are left on wait lists, it's not just a policy problem, it's a justice problem.

And I agree with Director Sarju, this engagement is not working.

To serve our students, Seattle Public Schools must invest in the programs that help them thrive.

Project-based learning, the arts, hands-on technical pathways, advanced curriculum, dual language immersion, student wellness, and strong special education services.

These are not extras, these are essential.

And we need particular care for those students for educational justice.

To make our schools work, We need the people who keep our kids safe and their education whole.

And I'm talking about our nurses, our assistant principals, our music and art teachers, librarians, reading specialists, recess monitors and counselors, all of the grown-ups who create those safe and inclusive and inspiring environments.

We must move students off the waitlist in a timely manner.

We must provide interpretation services.

We must end discrimination in special education and we must ensure that every student has access to learning opportunities that meet their needs and honor their dignity.

I'm running for school board because it is time for a change.

I can help fix what's broken and we can make sure 100% certain that each student in every school has access to the quality public education that they deserve.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Knox Taylor.

After Knox Taylor will be Caitlin Winterstein.

I want to give the time to my dad.

Next Taylor.

This is Knox's letter, but I'm gonna read this on behalf of him.

My name is Nick Taylor, by the way.

Hello, my name is Knox.

I'm a first grade student at Pathfinder K through eight, and I want to tell you all about how awesome Miss Thomas and Miss Everman are.

They're our school administrators, and they make everything better at my school.

They care about our school, our teachers and our students.

They've made our schools safer, and they've made our school more fun.

Ms. Thomas and Ms. Everman are the best, and I think they should stay forever.

We need their support to keep making our school the best it can be, and so many of us will be very sad to lose them and have to say goodbye.

Thank you for listening.

The next speaker will be Caitlin Winterstain.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Caitlin Winterstein.

I am a resident of Seattle, a former product of the Seattle Public Schools, where I attended the deaf and hard of hearing program in my youth.

I also have been, for the past decade, working with deaf and hard of hearing children, first in my role as a school audiologist, currently as a school psychologist at Top K-8, which houses the deaf and hard of hearing program in the Seattle Public Schools.

I am here recognizing that I have a voice and I'm in a position to advocate.

appreciate the school board's apology regarding lack of interpretation at events.

I do want to highlight that these are families that were utilizing the protections under Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504, the Rehabilitation Act.

I do recognize that the board is by implementing interpretation, but that's just one step.

We need more systems and practices in place.

There needs to be an ADA coordinator.

What if the individual was had vision differences or mobility issues.

We at Lisa Franklin shared that, you know, the law of the land.

Having training, a more clear system for requesting ADA accommodation, trainings for staff which we're required to do every october regarding implementing ada section 504 at the school level and at the district level three and i would encourage a task force with members of the community deaf individuals that yeah thank you the next speaker is chi kernetta

Ms. Wilson-Jones, is she online?

The next speaker is Chi Cornetta.

If you are online, please press star six to unmute.

My name is Marita Santiago, and she was supposed to call to speak her time to me, but she may be having difficulties with the meeting.

We are going to need to go to the next speaker, but I will call the name again.

Time needs to be seated at the time of the testimony.

The next speaker is Tricia DeVille.

Okay.

Patricia DeVille, if you're, oh, you're here, sorry.

I'm here.

This is my 25th year teaching in SPS and my 23rd as a newcomer teacher, formerly BOC, or Bilingual Orientation Center, at both Thurgood Marshall and Dunlap.

I'm so proud to be standing here today with other newcomer teachers and former BOC students, including one of my former students who is now an amazing teacher at Dunlap.

The mission and vision of SPS states that SPS provides excellence for all.

It should be changed to excellence for some, because that is really what is happening at SPS.

The newcomer program is for students who have been in the US less than one year.

We use the district curriculum with a focus on vocabulary and language development.

We also teach students how to acclimate to the US school system.

We care for the whole child and support families in ways that cannot be done in the regular classroom.

For the past four years, newcomer students in SPS have been left out.

We at Dunlap have had zero students in our newcomer classrooms.

Our homeroom classrooms at Dunlap are full, but any newcomer we receive is not able to enter our classroom, and they are placed in the regular education classroom.

For example, our fourth grade has 31 students with three newcomers.

Come see how it's going for these newcomers in these huge classrooms.

It is impossible that these newcomers are receiving the same attention as they would in a smaller newcomer classroom, since they are in need of intensive support.

We are ready to teach, yet we have a classroom full of empty seats.

Dunlap is just one example.

There are newcomer students in most Seattle public schools sitting in regular education classrooms.

They're getting no special support besides what the typical ML student receives.

The criteria used to qualify for the program is too difficult.

Why is the district making it so difficult to even qualify?

The messaging families receive from the district about their options is confusing and misleading and deters them from our program.

The district has a new plan for the newcomer program.

Starting next school year, each of the six newcomer teachers will be staffed in one to two schools based upon the numbers of newcomers in June.

Will be spread across schools using the same model as an ML teacher.

This inconsistent support of being spread across schools will not benefit newcomers, especially those who are in schools without an assigned newcomer teacher.

These models are not equitable for this population with such intense academic and social needs.

This plan of inclusion without appropriate support is not working and will not work, and parents are unaware of how little support their children are actually receiving.

What metrics does SPS use to evaluate the effectiveness of a program?

How do they determine if a program isn't working?

Give the newcomer program the same attention and urgency as the HC program.

Keep the newcomer program open so SPS can devise a thoughtful instructional model specifically for our neediest ML students, the newcomers.

Be as clear and concrete as you intend to do for the HC program.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Hem Nalini Morzaria Luna.

After that will be Joanna.

Hi, my name is ,, and I'm a former John Stanford International parent, CCSA co-president, and member of the Dual Language Immersion Task Force from 2016 to 2018. I am also speaking because I am no longer a parent at John Stanford, but some families are afraid of sticking up for fear of retaliation.

When my youngest child joined JSIS in 2015, the school had between 460 and 470 students every year.

Children into Seattle regularly enrolled mid-year in grades 2 fifths as long as the child already spoke one of the target languages at JFIS, Spanish or Japanese.

Our own family spent four months working abroad.

We withdrew from the district in March and re-enrolled in September, and my kids rejoined their John Stanford classes.

This would not be possible today.

Today, students applying to upper grades are simply denied entrance to JFIS.

This goes against the policies set in the student assignment plan, in the recommendations of the dual language task force in which I serve, and it's inequitable and unfair to families and students.

At the last board meeting and in statements in press, central district staff have said that this is how things are done, and that staff have always taken this decision.

I am here to say that it's not true.

The waitlist used to move, and native speakers could join upper grades in Spanish and Japanese at John Stanford.

A recent Seattle Times article cited Central District staff saying that they have to protect neighborhood schools.

Please point to the policy or the section in the student assignment plan where it says that when families apply and they get into an option school, they join a lesser class, because that is what the current policy is doing.

It's creating two or three classes students, creating inequities where they shouldn't be any, and they then used to be any.

This spring, I held kids tours at John Stanford.

When the tour ended, a parent pulled me aside.

She wanted her daughter to join John Stanford, because in the neighborhood school that she went to, there were no other kids that spoke Spanish.

And I wasn't sure if I could tell her the truth, that she could apply, but she would not get in.

Because in Seattle Public Schools, adults are making decisions for their own benefit, not for the student's benefit.

Please fix this in guided enrollment process.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Joanna Arreza-Taylor.

Thank you, Joanna Arreza-Taylor.

I stand before you today as a proud member of the Pathfinder K-8 community, a place where transformation and renewal have taken root under the guidance of our interim administrators, Ms. Thomas and Ms. Everman.

A year ago, safety and communication were major concerns for us as parents.

In fact, you saw many of us in this room back then.

But today I'm thrilled to report that the changes brought by our interim administration have not just addressed these issues, they've exceeded our expectation.

The proactive enhancements and safety protocols have created a secure and nurturing space for our children.

Positive behavior intervention strategies have reduced incidents of distress, allowing our kids to thrive in a supportive environment.

Communication has vastly improved with timely and transparent updates keeping us informed and engaged.

This openness has built a bridge of trust between the school and families, enabling us to better support our children's education.

The collaborative spirit fostered by Ms. Thomas and Ms. Everman has renewed our school's atmosphere, making Pathfinder a place where everyone feels welcome and involved.

Giving these remarkable advancements, we strongly urge you, the board, to push administration to look past their very outdated formulas for staffing.

With the district's current plan, our AP is being reduced to half their hours, and we risk losing incredible interim Principal Thomas, despite all she's done for our community.

This is a school that serves a high number of distinct students which require a full-time principal and assistant principal to be present in our building at all times.

The manipulation of enrollment from the last few years is now making that impossible.

With a reduction of full-time staff and administrators, we need to push for better for our students.

After all, it's not all of our missions.

The next speaker is Patrick Conway.

Patrick Conway.

After Patrick will be Elsa Jones and then Manuela Slay.

Hello.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your support, board members.

and also from admin and the community as well.

So I met with SPS admin yesterday and we really encouraged the process of, we decided everybody who wants to help but maybe they don't know how then, I would say first thing to do is don't listen to people who make excuses.

Look for the people who say, yes, we can.

We can make that happen.

And really, we should include services for everybody within our system.

And I mean that we need to include more people.

We need to add more people.

We need to design a system that's more effective for more people and not just for one.

For example, subsidies would be one way.

I would love if our advocacy efforts resulted in a system change that would benefit everyone and it would succeed and continue after staff turnover.

So I look forward to continue working with you guys.

Thank you so much.

Next is Elsa Jones.

Good evening.

My name is Elsa Hoonason Jones.

I am a deafblind graduate of Seattle Public Schools, a parent of SPS students, and a former president of SCPTSA.

Directors, SPS has an ableism problem.

It's been on full display publicly in the last month, from an engagement session with no ASL interpreters to this board continuing to discuss deaf and hard of hearing families after interpretation ended.

to yet another round of apologies without meaningful action behind them, with the exception of the interpreters which I see tonight, which I'm very happy about.

But it has to continue.

Those public failures are just the surface.

Beneath them are deaf parents without interpreters at parent-teacher conferences, inaccessible curriculum knives that put disabled parents in danger or at the very least at a serious disadvantage, families sidelined by staff who still don't understand or respect what disability access actually means.

If you're truly committed to equity and safe and welcoming schools, then that equity must extend to disabled parents and families because we're equal partners in building our children's futures.

DHH families aren't just in pathway schools.

We're everywhere.

My children are CODAs.

They're not deaf.

I am.

And yet every building in our district doesn't have an emergency system that's accessible to all.

We still don't account for deafblind students or parents, and that's not a minor oversight.

It's a safety risk and a civil rights risk.

Nothing about us without us must be more than a slogan.

It must be a policy.

It must be a practice.

It must be part of how this district operates, not a box to check when it's convenient.

We've waited long enough.

Thank you.

Next is Manuela Slay.

Buenas tardes, my name is Manuela Sly.

I'm a parent, former Seattle Council PTA president, and I'm here today because I'm actually angry.

I'm frustrated.

I don't like this.

I have heard our other communities talking about lack of access, lack of interpreters, and I have now noticed that I've been in this district for 17 years, and I have yet to see real engagement of my community.

And it's not okay.

And my daughter is now a college graduate, and we're still not getting it right.

And it's not because you don't agree with me.

You agree with me.

We have had real conversations.

People in the district agree with me.

Parents agree with me.

Board members agree with me.

But there's nothing after that.

The words of extensive engagement opportunities, robust collaboration, ongoing engagement, broad community engagement, robust engagement with families and students are empty words.

Are empty and they're very harming to our communities.

We have parents that have interpreters like we have heard before for parent-teacher conferences, for IEP meetings, for board engagements, for graduation ceremonies, even at World School.

That is our pride and joy in our community.

No interpreters until I had to go and fight for it.

So I'm going to take credit for that because nobody else did it, but I did.

These are empty words.

We have language barriers.

we are invited on the surface but we don't show up because we don't feel comfortable and then when we have interpreters those interpreters are under qualified it's not their fault they're under qualified and they come here and they give you half of what the person is saying that's not okay with me i have offered my talent i have offered my time i have offered solutions on the spot to step as an interpreter and still don't see any progress so please let's stop pretending and let's do the next speaker is Sawyer Wells after Sawyer will be Kay Lowe and then Samantha Fogg

My name is Sawyer Wells.

I was an SPS student my entire life.

I'm here on behalf of Miss Peace, a former teacher of mine and an SPS educator of 34 years.

She has not been seen at her school, Concord International, since October of 2024. She has not been terminated and she has not resigned.

Staff, students, and families have been left in the dark as to her sudden disappearance.

Throughout my six years at Concord, Miss Peace was the only teacher I had that made me feel excited about coming to school.

She was engaging in all of her lessons and always went the extra mile to make sure that her students reached their academic goals.

She was and continues to be one of the only black staff members at the school.

More important than Ms. Peace spending time to write copious rhymes to help children learn math, more important than the immense amount of energy it took to keep her students engaged in virtual learning during the pandemic, and the prizes Ms. Peace and parents distributed for being in class, The most important thing she does is to create a culture of respect.

From the first day that anyone meets Miss Peace, she makes it abundantly clear that the expectation she holds for her students, her coworkers, and herself is to always maintain respect.

The dense atmosphere of respect for your fellow humans has been one of the greatest factors in Miss Peace's ability to build real trust in a community and a community in a school system that is not designed to do so.

If you ask teachers and students at Concord, they will tell you that Ms. Peace is one of the most trusted and respected adults in the entire building.

I started this campaign because Ms. Ramona Peace deserves better treatment than what SPS has given her over the last half a year.

We demand answers for the following questions.

One, how can an educator who has given 34 years of her life to this district be on leave for seven months with no concrete explanation?

Two, how can you justify the negative impacts of students caused by the sudden and unexplained removal of a teacher?

Three, how can you rationalize the cost of a, I'll conclude my remarks.

How can you rationalize the cost of a seven month paid leave for Ms. Peace as well as paying for a sub or spreading staff even thinner than they already are?

My final question, where's Ms. Peace?

The next speaker is Kay Lowe.

Kay Lowe.

Hi, I'm Kay Lowe and I cede to Erin McDoodle.

Good evening, thank you school board directors for your commitment to continuing to partner with us as we solve difficult problems together.

My name is Erin McDougall, I'm a parent of three SPS students and an SPS alum.

The evidence of parent concerns about wait lists is pretty overwhelming at this point.

Hundreds of emails sent to you, 500 signatures on a letter and many media reports all describing how enrollment mismanagement is harming our students and families.

Instead of rebuilding trust after the school closure controversy, SPS has amazingly created more distrust.

SPS has lost sight of its core mission, educating students.

By ignoring family choices and refusing to move wait lists, you are pushing families out of the district.

There are real concerns about legal action.

The enrollment crisis affects every neighborhood with the highest concentration of applications coming from the south end.

That's for you, Director Hersey.

Your people are talking to you and we'd love to hear what you think.

immigrant families simply want their children to stay together cleveland high school wants to survive enrollment of elementary schools are the best lever to engage families for the long term more than 400 students never enrolled this year to the tune of 12 million dollars in lost potential revenue every student that doesn't enroll is lost revenue for up to 13 years and their younger family members too how is this equity and fiscal stability It appears SPS is deliberately reducing enrollment to justify future school closures.

The board has a responsibility to the electorate for effectively operating our schools.

Yet the student outcomes focused governance, a right wing governance model originally created in Texas, is a model that allows the board to evade its responsibilities and avoid fixing problems.

Due to SOFG on enrollment, student safety, fiscal oversight, academic outcomes, HR violations, and much more, the board is failing to properly ensure the district's effective operations and ethical operations of our schools.

I'll end early to just say that Altogether for Seattle Schools has put together this handout to educate folks about SOFG.

And I've included a letter to the Pittsburgh Public Schools from a number of national organizations urging them to not do SOFG.

Thank you.

Next is Samantha Fogg.

Samantha Fogg.

Hello, this is Samantha Fogg, co-president of Seattle Council PTSA.

I was glad to see that on the engagement memo, engagement was listed as orange because they need to change.

I am concerned, though, that there's this idea that what we need to do is reinvent the wheel or figure this out because we have staff who can engage with family.

We've seen it.

We have families who are experts in this and who have offered services.

We have had plans put forward, discussed, debated we have seen staff punished for us listening community voice and we need to do better we honor those within sps who do the work we need to honor those who try to partner with sps we also need to be honest with community when we speak to them about what we are doing what we can do and what we cannot do when we have listening since we tell communities What can be done with that information?

Can change happen or not?

Are we wasting these time?

What are the restrictions?

What are the benefits?

When we make changes, we need to be clear with communities that we made changes.

We should thank our advocates.

When they bring things to us, we make changes and we improve things.

When we have accessible alarm systems go in, We should honor the advocates and hard of hearing community who has been uplifting this work for years and years and at great expense.

We need to do better.

We have the ability to do better.

And we have made choices within our district and allowed leadership choices to happen that perpetuate discrimination and that hard failures of engagement communities have done their own engagement and done their own investments but we are often volunteers in pta we are volunteers and seattle public schools has some very highly paid staff who should be doing this work and we ask you to help them lean in and to make sure that we have systems that uplift the good work that the staff who partners with community does do.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Laura Sorenson-Blackburn.

Laura Sorenson-Blackburn.

After Laura will be Susanna Bellastracci.

Laura, if you're online, please press star six to unmute.

I'm going to go to the next speaker.

I will come back for Laura later.

Oh, Laura, I think you're there.

Hi.

We can hear you.

Hi, this is Laura.

I yield my time to Susanna Corney Bellastracci.

Hi, I yield my time to Susanna Corney Bellastracci.

I'm right here.

I have some papers that I would like to share with you.

May I approach?

They are statements from members of the deaf community for your review.

Two separate.

And then I will read them for you.

My name is Susanna Balastracci.

I'm the spouse of Patrick Conway and affiliated with the deaf community.

Two members of the deaf community asked me to read statements to the board in response to your apology.

So I am here to honor that commitment to them.

Yes.

The first statement is from Laura Gramer, DHH parent advocate.

Thank you to the board and Superintendent Jones for your public apology.

I say with respect that we have been offered many apologies as well as listening sessions over the course of the past 10 years.

Personally, I'm leery and tired of both.

I seek something more productive with a purpose that yields positive and sustainable outcomes for DHH families and students.

For example, a task force that meets one to three times per year to offer solutions to pressing problems for DHH people, such as ADA access, inclusion, and anti-ableist and anti-audist initiatives.

The DHH community would also like to work in collaboration with SPS administration to establish a dual language program at TOPS for American Sign Language and English as bilingual education is best practice for students with hearing differences.

I asked the board and Superintendent Jones what specific changes to SPS procedures will be made to begin to rectify the harm done to DHH people in this district.

What policies written?

Okay, what policies written, what plan created, enacted, and made available to the public with accountability measures.

There's also the issue of changing minds in SPS, so DHH people are no longer harmed.

There are employees at the administrative level who discriminate against the DHH and disability communities.

Their ableism goes unchecked.

In fact, some of them even receive promotions.

I want to know, what is the board's position on allowing an employee who is actively discriminated against the DHH and disability communities to continue to be promoted?

Is it actively combating ableism and autism not something that is a priority for this board?

The DHH community would like to see the creation and implementation of a DEI initiative to combat ableism and autism in SPS much like those that have been established to combat racism and transphobia.

As starting points, these initiatives should include cultural sensitivity training for SPS administration as well as education on the basics of ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

In closing, the DHH community wants to see less talking and more action.

We also remind you, nothing for us without us.

Lastly, just as SPS administration and the SPS board has begun to listen to the DHH community, we ask that you begin to do the same for the American Indian community, namely Gabriel de Los Angeles, who spoke at the April 23rd board meeting.

There's one more statement.

This is from Bill Harkness, engineering accessibility leader at Boeing.

Thank you.

Let's be honest.

Deaf and hard of hearing students, families, and staff have never truly been centered in this system.

We've been managed, accommodated, explained away.

We are always the afterthought, never the blueprint.

Inclusion as it stands today is a temporary gesture.

It flares up when the spotlight shines, then it fades, but we are still here, living in the aftermath of your forgetting Sorry.

Every delay an interpreter access whispers, you are an afterthought.

Every school announcement spoken aloud but never signed or shown murmurs, this message was never meant for you.

Every decision made without our voices echoes, the system was never built with you in mind.

This is not about feelings.

This is about design.

And a system designed without us will always fail us.

Every failure accumulates until it becomes generational, cultural, inherited harm.

You cannot fix this with a task force.

You cannot fix it with an apology.

You fix it by rebuilding the foundation.

You fix it when you stop treating DHH inclusion as a gesture of goodwill and start treating it as a basic requirement for dignity.

We are not asking to be included.

We are demanding that you remember we belong.

Build systems that expect us.

Train leaders who respect us.

Design processes that never require us to ask twice.

Because if inclusion can be turned off, then it was never real.

And I leave you with this.

When you're accustomed to privilege, equity feels like oppression.

So ask yourself, not what it costs to include us, but what it has already cost us to be left out.

Thank you.

The next speaker is James Hunt.

James Hunt.

my name is Jim Hunt I've been a teacher for 34 years the district I'm now retired and part of the group standing with miss gosh we were here last month and is now month seven ever unfounded administrative leave we're here again to express our frustration and demand a speedy resolution to this injustice we're here again because we hold miss peace in the highest regard and there are that countless others who do who do likewise for me there are only two other people in my life with her level of integrity my best friend my father And I know of her integrity because I teamed with her for a number of years at Concord International School.

A teacher with the highest level of professional and personal ethics.

A beloved teacher that works effectively with students and colleagues alike.

So consistently does she rate as most trusted by her colleagues on climate surveys that SCA regularly invites her to become a building rep. trusted enough even to be named principal designee for the last two years a level of positive influence on the school rarely seen.

I invite school board members and media alike to visit Concord International School and find out about the reputation of Ms. Peace for themselves, visit a lunch room, go up to a table and ask a student if they know Ms. Peace, then watch the kids turn heads, watch their eyes light up, watch them rise up from their seats in excitement and tell their stories of how Ms. Peace impacted their education because that's what will happen.

Interview teachers to remember to assure them of their in and admitted anonymity though So now imagine you're such a reputable veteran teacher of color with impeccable with an impeccable 34-year teaching career and one morning you receive an email banning you from the school It says you're now on administrative leave for creating a hostile work environment yet you are yet you're not given any specifics about what you did to create hostility at the school and seven months later You still don't know.

You're portrayed as a danger to students and staff.

How would you feel?

How would you respond?

Would you find a therapist for your mental health?

Would you seek legal recourse and sue the district for millions of dollars for pain and suffering?

Because this is how the district has forced Ms. Peace to respond.

This is the thanks she gets for dedicating herself for 33 years to a teaching career in Seattle.

And she wants everyone here in the whole city to know about it.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Uyen Ong.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Wee Jin Ang, Franklin Quaker alumni, and I'll be speaking about geographic equity and accelerated curriculum with a focus on HC for West Seattle.

First of all, thanks for prioritizing our children's education and hearing the community.

I'm sure the last few years hasn't been easy for the administration from COVID disruptions to possible school closures and dynamic changes in leadership and vision.

I empathize and want to partner in providing the best education for our children and advocating for accelerated learning and geographic equity for the student population.

SBS has instructed neighborhood schools to implement HC services but has not provided any meaningful support funding or HC training for teachers who are already stretched thin with their daily gen ed responsibilities.

before sending my daughter to our designated cohort school we asked our neighborhood school's administration about ways we could enrich her learning but we're told they are limited at our neighborhood school my daughter was grouped with students of similar math and reading skill level but received limited accelerated instructions simply because there's just not enough time in the school day for a teacher to teach both gem ed and hd material Bringing back programs like Walk to Math would solve this problem because it would allow students to learn at their level and alleviate the resource constraints at the school.

On the topic of West Seattle, the physical void of HC services in Seattle leaves many parents like myself isolated and hoping that a 30 to 60 minute bus ride one way is the right decision.

In our case, it 100% has been.

But we've been fortunate to have flexible work schedules that allow us to drop off our daughter instead of getting her at her bus stop by 6.30 a.m.

But many working families may not.

We estimate there are about over 100 kids in West Seattle who are entitled to roll a pathway school.

Reinstating a cohort school in West Seattle will fill that void and give neighborhood schools more time to train and prepare for what the revised HD plan will be.

Quoting Mr. Howard, where a student lives shouldn't decide what kind of school experience they'll have.

And bringing back a cohort to West Seattle will bring geographic equity to students in West Seattle.

Lack of meaningful, and to close, lack of meaningful HC services and the absence of an HC cohort in West Seattle contributes to the enrollment volatility in West Seattle.

I believe enacting these solutions will stabilize enrollment, enrollment volatility in the neighborhood, and more importantly, provide equitable resources for these students.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Tobias Cullens.

Tobias Cullens.

After Tobias will be Matt Burtness and then Melissa Barbera.

Hello, thank you for listening.

My name is Tobias Collins.

Both of my children attended Seattle Public Schools.

My youngest is currently a sixth grader at TOPS.

He's been there since kindergarten.

I'm a nationally certified American sign language interpreter and have been active in the deaf and hard of hearing community in Seattle for over 30 years.

In my 30 year professional career, I have coordinated, deployed, and managed deaf and hard of hearing accessibility and disability accommodation services for Bellevue College, University of Washington, and Amazon.

During my children's tenure with Seattle Public Schools I have seen mistake after mistake made by Seattle Public Schools district leadership and how deaf and hard of hearing accessibility disability accommodations and assistive equipment are managed and deployed.

In all candor the mistakes I see often at the district level are the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest to fix.

Simply looking at the last board meeting as a case study and what not to do Brief examples, you only had two ASL interpreters.

The last meeting goes too far across the room for comfortable sight lines for the deaf and hard of hearing attendees.

The cameras facing those interpreters were set at inappropriate angles and did not stay on the interpreters.

The interpreters left the meeting before the meeting ended, yet the meeting continued without them.

No mechanism was provided to allow deaf and hard of hearing community members who use sign language as their primary mode of communication to testify remotely.

The live feed at one point during the testimony was 120 seconds delayed.

I was watching the live feed and listening to the audio via telephone.

There was no captioning provided other than machine.

And to be very clear, machine generated captions do not meet with accessibility needs to anyone who was relying upon them for communication access.

I could go on, but I will stop.

All of these failures would have been anticipated and remediated by anyone with experience in providing deaf and hard of hearing accessibility and disability accommodation services.

You SPS leaders are failing the deaf and hard of hearing community in Seattle.

It would be great if you could find a dedicated deaf and hard of hearing accessibility and disability accommodation specialist coordinating these services district-wide.

I have no interest in working for SPS, but I would love to help in any way I can.

The next speaker is Matt Burtness.

After Matt will be Melissa Barbera and then Will Roach.

My name is Matt Burtness and I'll be ceding my time to Nemo Farah.

I attended bilingual orientation center known as BOC, a program created to support students who are new to the country and are learning English.

I remember being asked to take a state test and feeling completely lost.

I didn't understand the directions and I blamed myself even though I had just arrived in everything from language to classroom routine.

was new but at boc i had teachers who were trained to support students like me even with that help i still struggled now imagine students having to face those same challenges without any support that is what will happen if sbs removes It's not fair or realistic to expect newly arrived students to succeed in general education classroom without language and cultural support.

These students often feel left out, discouraged, and this affects how they feel about school and how well they will learn.

Research shows that early support in school is very important.

especially for immigrant students.

Without it, they more likely will fall behind, feel disconnected, and miss out on future opportunities like college or getting a good job.

Many immigrant families trust SBS will do what's best for their students, but they often don't know change like this.

Meanwhile, programs like Highly Capable are grown because these families know how to advocate.

They have resources.

They speak the language.

As a mother of multilingual student and educator who works closely with these learners, I am very concerned BOC helps the students who need the most support.

Instead of cutting this program, the district should be invested in it.

I invite you, I ask you to come visit our schools, speak with our students and teachers.

The need is clear.

The demand is real.

Please see it for yourself before making a decision that will affect many lives.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Melissa Barbera.

Melissa Barbera.

After Melissa will be Will Roach and then Sam Gutierrez.

Do we have Melissa Barbera in the room?

I believe she's on the phone, but she's having trouble unmuting.

Melissa, you'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference call line.

This is Sarah Fellows and Melissa was going to see her time.

I can see that Melissa's here.

Hello, can you hear me?

We can.

We could hear you, Melissa.

I think you'll need to press star six again.

Melissa, you were unmuted briefly.

Please press star six.

You are unmuted.

We should be able to hear you.

Hi, yes, I want to cede my time to Sarah Fellows.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you, Sarah.

I want to cede my time to Sarah Fellows.

Thank you.

You can go ahead, Sarah.

I'm the parent of a student at John Stanford International School.

I'm here to talk about how the decision to hold wait lists is negatively impacting both students at the dual language immersion schools and our school district.

Three years ago, the district office began refusing to admit students in grades two through five to JSIS and McDonald International, even when there was space in the students grade level and language track.

These students are native speakers of Spanish or Japanese.

The very students of the district says these programs are most designed to serve.

The principal advocated for these students and told the district that we absolutely had faith in their grade levels, but was shut down.

We know these families and their stories.

One family only speaks Spanish and is navigating this confusing process with the help of a friend.

One Japanese speaking family has been trying to get their older child into JSIS for three years to join the sibling.

They plan to leave the district next year if they don't succeed.

Two years ago, JSIS was scheduled to have a fourth kindergarten class, something it has regularly had in the past, but the district held us to three classes without explanation.

Over the past four years, the district has deliberately shrunk enrollment at JSIS from 470 to 429 students.

This has caused JSIS to lose staff.

For example, the district is artificially holding us just below the threshold that would qualify us for an assistant principal under the weighted staffing standard.

Even more frustrating, when the district refused to fill open spaces in the upper grades, we lost teachers.

This has forced the school into large four or five split classes unnecessarily, despite having qualified native speakers sitting on the wait list.

It's the same for McDonald, who will lose their assistant principal and two teachers next year.

JSIS is one of the district's highest performing schools and has demonstrated that it works for low income students, multilingual learners, and students of color.

Why are we denying kids the opportunity to enroll when we have space These decisions are directly harming students, and this issue can and should be fixed immediately.

Please submit the waitlisted students in grades two through five to JSIS and the other DLI programs.

Thank you.

Next is Will Roach.

we are not yet seeing your video will Will you'll need to turn your camera on.

Oh.

So for some reason it disabled my camera and I can't get it turned on.

So if you guys would allow me to do it this way or if you guys can give me permission to turn my camera on that would be great.

Says only selective participants are able to show their screens.

Will, your camera should work on here, but if you are on the phone by FaceTime, we can also take your testimony that way if it is working for the interpreters.

Okay, yeah, I'll just do it this way.

Great.

Hello, my name is Will Roach.

And I, so sorry, we're having some freezing issues.

I do appreciate SBS's apology to the entire deaf community, deaf families, for the accumulation of mistakes and failures that have happened in the past in regards to meeting our communication needs.

However, what we've seen is really just words.

What we really need to see is change and action.

I really need to see that the board has committed to having interpreters at these meetings, which is great.

But I think we all should have interpreters for all special meetings.

Or we also need to extend those services to all events that involve our deaf and hard of hearing families and their children.

SPS leadership and committees need to actively engage with the deaf and hard of hearing community and families so they can understand how to improve accessibility within the system and create that very important relationship.

We're not looking for more apologies.

We're looking to be included in creating a more inclusive environment within SPS.

And we would do that by working together, and we can prevent these mistakes from continuing to happen.

We are ready to collaborate, and we really look forward to seeing actual change.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sam Gutierrez.

After Sam will be Liz Berry and then June Noe Ivers.

Hi, this is Sam Gutierrez.

At a previous meeting, Marnie Campbell said that if parents submit the form in time, they will likely get their choice.

And that the waitlist is for the forms that I submitted late.

Um, but the first time that my kid was rejected from the option school process, I submitted the application at 12 0 1. AM on the first day of choice enrollment.

I indicated she was native Spanish speaker and we were still number 96 in the waitlist.

The elementary school waitlists are nowhere near the hundreds yet we were number 96. No families that were even further down, and this year our school waitlist for case report is well over 100, according to the waitlist report that SPS released last month.

Sorry, I was running from the bus.

SPS staff says that all parents who reach out to ask get answers to all their questions.

Plenty of parents have already expressed their experience was the opposite.

And I also want to ask, what about the parents who don't even know they can question that position?

I grew up in Mexico, and I had no idea how public education worked in this country when I was filling out forms to enroll my daughter into kindergarten.

I got the standard that's where she will attend, and that was that.

SPS claims that all their work centers equity and minorities, but understanding the enrollment process is very hard, and the person in charge of it is not particularly or proactively helpful.

There's a lot of conflicting information.

It feels like gaslighting, in short.

So many parents have shared how they are being negatively impacted by weightless across the district.

And immediately after staff and directors deny this is happening, state that everything is tended to, so they have all the correct data and everything is done right, essentially dismissing or leave experiences.

And because the directors are not supposed to fact shock them based on the student outcomes focused governance frame, things go on unchecked.

This is the kind of thing, though, that breaks trust and contributes to SPS negative reputation, which in turn Drive down enrollment.

You have to do better for the sake of her public schools.

Thanks for listening.

The next speaker is Liz Berry.

Hi, good evening, I'm Liz Berry, SPS dual language teacher, SPS parent, and Seattle Council PTSA board member.

And first of all, I wanna say that Seattle passes the levies because we have a citizenship that believes in our public school system.

And so we can make change and we have support and we need to do that.

I'm here to continue right now to advocate for expanding our dual language offerings.

Dual language meets the needs of a wide diversity of students.

It supports MLL students in both maintaining their home language and also developing their bilingual and multilingualism.

It provides challenge for both monolingual and multilingual highly capable students.

This connects also to the access issues that are facing our deaf and hard of hearing families and students and have faced them for years.

These concerns raised by the families are very similar to concerns of families who speak languages besides English.

Many feel excluded, interpretation is not always provided, and some feel that their presence is even not welcomed.

Expanding dual language programs in SPS is a pathway forward.

Imagine having DL programs in ASL, Vietnamese, and Somali, as well as the current languages we offer.

The second topic I want to address is around family engagement.

I was unable to attend the school board's community engagement session on April 30th at Denny, where I teach.

Despite being a Denny teacher, I was not aware of the session until the day before when someone outside of Denny informed me.

At the Denny staff meeting the next day, it was clear that most of the staff were unaware of the event.

I tried to rearrange my schedule to attend, but could not.

I recommend that these engagement events be tied to an existing school event.

such as our multicultural night, which happened the next day.

The school board could set up a table with a sign that says, talk with a school board member.

I encounter many families who do not actually believe that SPS is interested in their thoughts.

By attending events like this, it would allow for more authentic ways of connecting and engaging.

Lastly, I wanna connect with the folks about Miss Peace.

My son is a student in Miss Peace's class this year.

I have emailed district staff about supporting the students and families who are confused and concerned about their teacher and have received no information.

I have also not received any response.

Please find a way for Miss Peace's class to express their gratitude to her and to give Concord staff a way to explain this challenging situation to students and families.

Thank you.

The next speaker is June Noe Ivers.

June Noe Ivers.

June, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

I'm going to go to the next speaker.

I will come back, though.

Returning to Chi Creneta.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you.

My name is and I cede my time to Marita Santiago.

Hi, my name is Marita Santiago.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my perspective on the lack of access to highly capable services in Seattle.

My son earned a highly capable designation as a kindergartner in 2022. And we chose to stay at our neighborhood school in West Seattle because sending a six-year-old on a bus at 6.30 a.m.

for a 90-minute bus commute to Thurgood Marshall was out of the question, even before considering the need to take our second child to a different school.

To shorten the morning commute, we would need to drive 30 to 50 minutes, which is not feasible for our work schedules and limited access to vehicles.

West Seattle students needed geographically equitable access to highly capable services, and this can be solved in two ways.

one reinstating teaching beyond the grade level and walk to math at neighborhood schools hc students at cohort elementary schools are taught two grade levels ahead in math compared to hc students in neighborhood schools so the two programs are not equal and two reinstating a cohort elementary school in west seattle there are over 100 hc designated plus additional advanced learning designated elementary students in west seattle Their only cohort option is Thurgood Marshall, a school that is already nearly at capacity with about 500 students.

There wouldn't be enough room for West Seattle HSC students if they all opted for Thurgood Marshall, and the cost to the district for busing these students would be high.

The most cost-effective, reasonable, and equitable solution is to return a cohort to West Seattle and to allow above grade level instruction again.

Thank you so much.

Next, trying one more time for June, no Ivers.

June, you'll need to press star six if you're online.

Okay, I'm gonna go to the wait list now.

The next speaker is Sabrina Burr.

Next is Sabrina Burr.

Why are we here?

We've gone so far backwards.

I was looking over some older documents about our community engagement guiding principles, and we're not following any of them.

I didn't bring my glasses, I should have.

Community engagement involves all sectors of community, including teachers and internal staff, and it's important to bring people early, involve the community early in the process, Has learning componented that helps build community awareness and acknowledges around the subject at hand?

utilize community partnerships as expertise, and employs clear, open, and concise communication.

We once had our styles of communication where we define what was when we went out into community, if it was a forum, collaborate, involve, or if it was consult or inform or if it was collaboration.

We've come very, very far from where it is.

What we really have instead of community engagement is we have emotional, abusive relationships with families.

And that's where we are right now.

And that's really, really sad.

and we talk about accountability, but board, you have not held anybody accountable.

I have gone down all of the guardrails.

All of them are broken all of the time.

What are you doing to hold this district accountable for the outcomes of students?

What I want to say is these are lives.

and those furthest from educational justice, you are failing.

And this is the last thing that I wanna say.

All of you guys voted, most of you, for a 10% increase over five years.

For those who are furthest who are in the gap, who are at 30 and 40 percent of standards, what is that going to do?

People who are talking against student outcomes focused governance are those who do not have kids in the gap.

We started this a long time ago.

It didn't get implemented when it could.

But if you guys don't do it, we will bring it into community and we will demand you.

We are not letting you fail our black kids anymore.

Period.

Full stop.

the next speaker is justina schwartz and this will be a finer speaker final speaker of justina's uh here or online justina you'll need to press star six if you're on the phone but i'm not seeing your number i'm going to go to the next on the wait list yana parker Yana, I can see that you're unmuted, but we're not able to hear you in the room.

OK, going to go.

We've heard from the next several people on the waitlist.

Chantel Hazelwoos.

Do we have Chantel in the room or online?

Chantel, you'll need to press star six to unmute.

OK, moving past Chantel to Jen Elliott Blake.

Do we have Jen Elliott Blake?

OK, moving to the next on the list, Michelle Campbell.

Not seeing Michelle online.

Eleanor Warren.

Eleanor Warren.

Going to go to William Harkness.

Do we have William Harkness here?

Lila Woods?

Lila Woods?

Alex Wakeman-Roos?

I think the computer is muted.

it looks like we have a few of those folks so i don't know if we want to start from the beginning and see if folks are available from the top if the last four digits of your phone number are 19 or less or the last two digits are 10.

I guess we can see folks.

We have one testimony spot, and I'm going to, the first step that we had on the list, the first step we had on the list was, I believe, I want to say was Yana Parker.

So Yana, if you want to leave the meeting and then rejoin, we can see if we can take your testimony.

Move the cursor to the bottom right hand of the screen.

There's a muted icon on it.

See that speaker with the X in front of it?

yeah if you want to give it one more try

we're just going to give it just a second yana was on and she exited the meeting and we'll be coming back in and hopefully we can get her testimony here so just let's be for folks who are on the phone i can see that you're unmuted and um speaking i'm going to let you know sometimes the team settings get goofy and so

we are not able to hear you in the room i understand that you can potentially hear each other or you're speaking um but i think the best we can ask is that you leave and come back and we will go in order if we are able to receive testimony from you um oh we we can hear somebody i think we can hear yana parker it um can everybody who is not named yana parker please mute who is on your phone and yana if you want to provide your testimony we should be able to hear you can you hear me we can thank you for your patience oh okay good evening my name is yana parker seattle special education ptsa president

As you heard tonight, the community is tired of the district's enrollment game and the almost accessible events.

Student enrollment manipulations.

Last spring, hundreds of students sat on wait lists while the classrooms in successful schools sat half empty.

Families begged to move in.

Instead, we lost them to other districts' homeschooling and charter schools, and their funding went with them.

This unauthorized practice of balancing the budget numbers without consideration of students' needs have to end?

Why take students away when they're literally knocking on the door?

Is it to make sure that staff are not allocated and less resources and administrators can be provided?

Are you looking at the needs of students and teachers at each school?

How many disabled students, low-income families, and multilingual learners do they have?

About accessibility sales?

The April regular school board meeting continued for 30 minutes after the ASL interpreters left.

The closed captions when provided have been too small and not contrasting enough to be accessible, not to mention the small screen and tiny font on the projected presentation in public meetings.

This is why I'm not in person tonight.

The school board community engagement sessions have no ASL interpreters.

Deaf parents could only lip-free your apology.

If the school district can't make its own events accessible, how can families trust that it provides appropriate universal design training for our educators?

The apps are simple, therefore.

Move every wait-listed child into the MTCs now and staff them accordingly.

Stop denying students with IEPs enrollment in schools based on their disability.

examine why some schools are more desired and replicate what's working well the program families are lining up for don't start don't starve them provide certified interpreters and accessible closed captioning system and as large enough screens at every public meeting our kids aren't budget widgets or numbers in your spreadsheets they're humans with very real needs students and their families need true access to participate in the district events.

Please do better.

President Topp, that was the 25th speaker tonight and concludes testimony.

I appreciate it.

I thank you, everyone.

I so appreciate you making time to be here this evening.

I think that we try to harness the care, the energy, and the innovation in this room.

We can try to make a difference for our kids, and I see it as a huge asset.

We're going to go, board directors, back to the tables to finish progress monitoring guardrail two, and then we will take a break.

But first, we're going to finish progress monitoring.

So please bring your microphones to the tables.

Passing it back to Director Hersey for progress monitoring.

Passing it back to staff for progress monitoring.

Love it.

Thank you, Director Hersey.

We're here to give the final progress monitoring session on the former Guardrail 2, which was about consistent and predictable operational systems.

The measures, the interim measures that were adopted for this were in three operational areas and the goal was to use them as kind of broad indicators of our overall operations, things that mattered to students and had an impact on our ability to deliver services and provide a great learning environment.

I'm gonna ask the department leaders, the functional leaders from each group, to introduce themselves and go over the measures that would relate to transportation, placement of teaching staff in schools on the first day of instruction, and technology.

And so I think we're starting with transportation.

I'll turn it over to Dr. Campbell.

Good evening, directors.

Thank you so much for being here.

Appreciate all that you do.

The transportation guardrail that we have chosen to track the quality of our system and structures is on time AM arrival.

We feel like this captures sort of the heart of what we want to do when we're providing transportation, which is to get kids to school on time.

And we want that to be pinned specifically to the AM arrival at school.

So you can see we have two, and this is also really critical for our partnerships with our providers.

Zoom and First Student are our primary providers.

So you can see the metrics here.

Our goal is to have 95% on-time morning arrival.

Our two providers are making strides and growth toward that.

First student has met and exceeded that.

Zoom has not consistently, but you can see the trend here, and that is our work for getting students to school on time so that they're ready to learn, ready to have breakfast, all those things that are really critical.

And maybe we'll take questions for these by each subject area, if directors have any, so we don't have too much handing off, if that works for you.

Director Hersey.

We thought we'd take, since we've got three operational areas, that we'd see if directors had any questions about those after we go through each area.

So if you have transportation question, that would be a great time.

Thank you.

Yes, okay.

This one works much better.

Director Rankin, please.

Thank you.

I have a question that I wish I had thought of before when we have looked at this, although this is our first time this year monitoring this.

This is the transportation reflected here.

Is it just arrivals and departures from school at the beginning and the end of the school day?

Or does it include district provided transportation that goes between schools or between programs during the day?

Not field trips necessarily, but like skill center or other reasons why students might go school to school.

so and then what would I mean I'm surprising you with this question I did not think to ask it ahead of time so I don't expect the answer but I would be curious to see how including all district provided transportation would if it would reflect the same or if it would impact that this data

Thank you for the question.

This is on-time AM arrival only, and we chose that as a really specific target because, again, that captures, and it's only for our yellow bus providers, and it doesn't include alternative service providers.

So we captured that because it felt like the biggest measure of how overall systems are working, and that has to do with some of the things that have been problematic in the past, you know, enough bus drivers to make sure that routes are running and those kinds of things.

So this is just on-time morning arrival, and again, we chose that because that, again, captures what we think has potentially the largest impact on student learning, and really that's As we work with our providers on this, we really focus on how this affects the students' ability to feel successful through the day.

Do they get there on time to have breakfast?

Do they get there on time to go to start the day in a comfortable way?

So that's all that this is.

We certainly can look at, though, in the future, things like midday transportation, alternative transportation, field trips, but that's all that this represents.

Okay, so for that, thank you.

For the on time AM arrival, yellow bus services provided by Zoom and for student, is that only general education routes or does it include special education routes that are also expected to, I expect them to bring students to school on time in the morning?

Great question.

This includes all routes.

We don't differentiate between that because it's equally as important for everybody to drive to school on time.

Thank you.

My question is pretty simple.

I'm thinking about traffic and how traffic impacts not just buses, but cars.

I mean, not just school buses, but metro buses, cars, other forms of transportation.

Do you all collect data on that?

Does that impact?

No, let me restate my question.

Do you have any data that reflects whether or not our traffic patterns are impacting?

It's not a big difference, and so I just want to make sure that FOR ME, IT'S IMPORTANT THAT KIDS GET TO SCHOOL SAFELY, NOT THAT THEY'RE RUSHED THERE FOR AN ON-TIME ARRIVAL DATA POINT.

AND SO WE'RE ONLY TALKING 3%, I THINK, BETWEEN THE TWO PROVIDERS.

SO IT'S NOT STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT, NUMBER ONE.

What do you know when a bus rides late?

What do you know about that?

Thank you so much for that question.

So, and I won't go into it, but if you look into the finer print around the actions that the transportation department is taking, again, I think it's a great question about what enables our students to get to school on time in general.

This specifically captures how operations within the department are responding to that very thing.

So, for instance, when you see in the month of September, as you may or may not expect, the on-time arrival rate is much lower.

That has a lot to do with routes being new, drivers being new, systems getting established.

But what we do is we meet twice a week with our providers to say, okay, this bus is consistently getting here late.

What's up?

And so that might mean rethinking the arrangement of the stops.

Maybe there's some construction going on in a particular part of the city we need to adapt to.

So this enables us to say twice a week to say how can we respond in the moment and over time to those things that are creating those difficulties.

And certainly traffic patterns is a big part of it.

So we know, for example, students that are going from downtown, say, to Lowell Elementary.

That was an area for the past two years we've really worked on increasing on-time arrival just because of the nature of the traffic patterns during the times of day when their students are being driven there and also driven home.

So I think that's a great question.

That's exactly why this becomes an interesting metric, because it shows how well is our department organizing itself to communicate and collaborate with our providers.

And sometimes it's a question of, we need to get some more buses on this route, or we need to have more backup drivers.

And this just cues us to say, okay, how are we going to, I don't want to say push our providers, but collaborate with our providers to make sure that they're meeting this target.

Yeah.

All right, if there are not further questions, I'll ask to advance the slide to Interim 2.2 and turn it over to Dr. Pritchett.

Good evening.

I'm Dr. Sarah Pritchett, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources.

The guardrail for interim 2.2 was related to human resources hiring.

Specifically, the percentage of classrooms with a teacher on the first day of school would increase from a baseline of 94% in September of 2022. to maintain at least 95 percent or higher beginning September of 2023. As noted we started this school year with at a 97 percent fill rate for the positions and for having teachers in the classrooms and this only speaks to teachers in the classroom.

It does not include our classified staff in this particular interim.

measure.

We have done a lot of work over the last three years to really look at our systems emphasizing building the relationships with our HR business partners and our school leaders so that they have accurate information as they start going to hiring season.

Our HR business partners are working side by side with school leaders as they're doing their budget and staffing so they have acute awareness of where the vacancies are, what areas are the highest needs for particular regions.

They're spending a lot more time working on an ongoing basis with school leaders so that they are prepared.

We've also stepped up the timeline on placing our displaced staff into positions so that they have their assignments before they leave in June.

That's our goal to finish the majority of hiring by June 30th of every year so that as we go into summer that school leaders and teachers can plan and have that summer to be able to get ready for an exciting school year to start.

I'll stop there and ask if there are any questions.

I see Director Sarge.

Okay.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I mean 94% is already pretty high and 97% is some growth but also already pretty high.

I was wondering based on what you were just talking about Dr. Pritchett if the timing of our I know our in SPS this is something that's come up a lot of times over the years that our hiring cycle is slightly different timing than other districts.

Do you know if that has an impact on recruiting and filling this those spaces for the start of the year and if it does if there are plans to look into making any changes.

I think that we've done some initial changes.

We have phased hiring that we work on the timelines with our labor partner with SEA to agree upon the timelines for hiring.

So we do internal and move through all of the phases to get to an external.

I think that in the past, and I'll take a point of privilege to speak as a former principal.

So there have been in the past kind of lagging times.

to get hiring out we've done work on emphasizing and part of that was due to the amount of time that it took to place staff that have been displaced from buildings based on enrollment changes and fluctuation and we've really worked hard to move that up because that actually holds on whether or not we move into an open hiring position of course we have Some positions that we know always have shortages, so we have open hires for that.

We've been aggressive with that.

I don't know that it's necessarily as big of a timeline piece.

I think for some other positions, certainly there is.

We see that certainly with our school leaders.

There are some concerns around timelines for those particular positions.

and just process of how we're doing that.

But for our teachers, we track data on how successful we are in filling vacancies the later it gets.

Of course, in the spring we're able, if we have known vacancies in the spring, and that's around when our budget and staffing season is, that we're pretty comfortable with how our ability to fill those positions as you get later into August and September and October.

Again, we struggle to fill those positions when we're identifying them that late.

Seeing no further questions, we can proceed.

Thank you, and if we could advance the slide to Interim 2.3, which measures systems availability of technology in a variety of dimensions, and I'll ask Assistant Superintendent Del Valle to cover this.

Good evening.

I'm Carlos Ceballo.

I'm Assistant Superintendent of Technology.

I'll speak a little bit about these key metrics.

The intent is to provide equity access to reliable and high-performing technology systems to support students' staff productivity and engagement.

Our goal was 99.9.

And the first one that we got is the data center and systems availability with 99.98.

This is where we have all the students information systems, the LMS, the business, the ERP, the major critical systems.

The network infrastructure, which is more of the Fiverr, the servers, the routers that contain the network, we have it at 99.87% availability.

And then the Microsoft 365 as a whole platform that composes all our teams, our SharePoint, email collaboration at 99.96 uptime.

Then we have the telecommunication systems.

Are we still in this?

Yeah, telecommunication systems at 99.82.

And this is basically fiber and connectivity for telephone and cell phones for the district.

Next slide, please.

So there's an error in this slide where it says school year 23, 24, 24, 25. But this is the issuing of computers at the beginning of the year in September, 49, 26, 226. And that was 100% distribution of these.

And about 1,300 hotspots.

Let me see what else.

In customer service, the average resolution for travel tickets is about anything from one to two days and five hours.

Depending on the complexity of the ticket, it could be just a passport reserve that takes a minute or it can be another complex problem that needs back shop repairs.

I'm going to go back to the To the data center availability, I'm happy to report that right near Beach, we have a redundant system data center that is going to come online in summer.

So if there's any cutoff from the north side, we'll still have digital services provided on the south.

So that's a great win.

Also, we completed the, on the network side of the house, we completed an upgrade to our wireless network.

All the schools are done.

Also, we're working on interactive power supplies that will allow us not to be down.

And also, in the infrastructure side of the house, the Windows 11 upgrades, we completed all the devices across the district.

So that's...

We have Windows 10, it's not going to be supported, so that's why we need to migrate to it.

On the percentages for the systems of availability, the industry standard is 99.9, so we're pretty close on all of them.

Any questions from directors?

Oh, I see you.

Director Briggs, go for it.

This is a general question.

I know, right?

I was not on the board at the time that this guardrail was devised or the interims, and maybe this actually might be a question for the senior board members.

But I'm just curious how these were chosen in the first place, just because all of the baseline rates already seem pretty high for all of these.

So it doesn't feel like I guess what got me thinking about this is if the official guardrail is the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service, I was thinking of how do you define operational systems?

Would our enrollment process be considered one, for example?

And we obviously have a major issue there.

And it doesn't feel like any of these things were major issues.

Unless I'm missing something.

So I'm just curious about how we ended up tracking data that was already kind of on the high end to begin with.

Well, I believe Director Briggs directed a question to the senior members of the board.

I'm happy to give my two cents as well, having been there, but yeah.

So this was a swap, if you remember.

When the first set of guardrails were developed, there was a different guardrail, too.

And so I think the board replaced this with an operational one, and it was kind of an abbreviated process.

So I think staff And there had been, given the timing of all this with hiring staff related to COVID, the district had gone through years of transportation challenges.

And then I think technology, we really accelerated the deployment of technology during COVID.

So I think those were top of mind at the time.

I don't think there was deep thinking into it, but it was, can we pick Three canaries in coal mines, for lack of a better term, that just how are we at operations in general?

I don't know that there was deep thought into what operations mean.

And anyway, it is what it is.

But that's my recollection, and I would defer to colleagues that were here for that.

Yeah, my recollection is that it was a last minute swap and it was mostly at the insistence of this was a high priority for one board member and it replaced something else.

And I think, yeah, it was somewhat response to COVID.

I think also were we to now what we know now about this process.

I feel me personally I would not I would probably have some strong feedback about these interim guardrails if they were presented to me now having done done this already.

Yeah.

Could I. Could I add something.

Yeah, please.

Thanks.

I know that the number that you see in terms of on-time AM arrival is a substantial improvement from what had been going on the years prior.

And that is the result of some strategic decisions, for instance, to have two carriers that vastly improved the number of drivers and vehicles that we have in the fleet.

But those numbers, we were nowhere near that in terms of AM arrival.

I think it served its purpose.

It taught us a lot about how to improve that operational expectation.

It has also enabled us to, again, lean into our providers and say getting kids to school on time in the morning is job one.

And so the numbers there reflect a fair amount of work to make sure that everybody understands really clearly that that's our priority.

But that's a pretty significant improvement.

If we could advance the slide, two slides, because there were some questions about how the board might provide support in these areas going forward.

And the recommendation from staff would, with regard to transportation, as Dr. Campbell noted, we've made.

I'm sorry, if we could back up one.

I did want to highlight just that these are supports that the board could make to help the district continue to make improvements.

And this was developed before the end of the last legislative session.

But what we've made, as Dr. Campbell alluded to, we've made significant improvements in our transportation system overall.

We are funded about 50 cents on the dollar right now in transportation.

And we've invested heavily to do that.

And folks know of our financial situations and the spending that we rely on levy funds or others to do, you know, is a significant amount of money on the order of 25 to 30 million dollars.

So continuing to get support on transportation, the transportation funding model, whatever the legislature is willing to hear from us again would be great.

Human resources are driven by policies, the board approving collective bargaining agreements, making sure that we stay in the market to attract staff and be competitive in teaching positions and in other critical positions across the district.

And then keep doing what we're doing with regard to technology and supporting levies and continue to make those investments, I think is what we would need to sustain all this.

Any other questions?

Okay, seeing none.

All right, we are concluding progress monitoring.

We are going to take a five-minute break.

We'll be back at 6.55 to start the business items on the agenda.

We are back up on the dais.

All right, I was serious about the five minutes, and so hoping we can get a quorum back.

Director Mizrahi, you're going the wrong direction.

Carrie, would you just check in with staff or the board directors?

I don't have a quorum.

All right, we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

Absolutely.

Let me just get oriented here.

I haven't been in leadership for a while.

I move for approval of the consent agenda.

Will that suffice?

Yes.

Second.

Perfect.

Do directors have anything that they would like to remove from the consent agenda?

Okay.

Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

All right, we are moving on.

We are moving on to action items.

We will now move to the action item on today's agenda.

Action item one is the BEX V property acquisition for the purchase of existing warehouse located at 3223 3rd Avenue South Seattle, Washington 98134. Do I have a motion on this item?

Oh, my gosh.

Wait, is this on?

Oh, wow.

I MOVE APPROVAL OF THE CONSENT AGENDA.

WE ARE ON ACTION ITEM 1.

THIS IS THE PROPERTY ACQUISITION OF THE EXISTING WAREHOUSE.

No, I'm looking for my direction.

Ms.

Wilson-Jones, will you provide a little assistance here?

Yeah.

Okay.

I move that the school board approve the purchase of the warehouse located at 3223 3rd Avenue South and authorize the superintendent to fully execute the purchase and sale agreement dated April 21st 2025 in the amount of 12 million $500,000 with any minor additions dilutions modifications and actions deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement the purchase immediate action is in the best interest of the district

Second Call on it looks like Mr. Richard Best to present and provide an update on this action item.

So thank you Director Taub.

So Richard Best, Executive Director of Capital Projects and Planning for Seattle Public Schools.

This property was made, Capital Projects was made aware of in early April of 2025. It is a property that is approximately two blocks away from the John Stanford Center.

We have toured this properly several times, specifically with our facilities operations staff and our grounds manager to ascertain whether this would be a facility that could be utilized in support of the grounds operations at Seattle Public Schools.

Some of you may not be aware, but for the past 25 years, our grounds operations has been conducted really in the north parking lot here at Seattle Public Schools.

They occupy approximately 100 parking stalls.

They have a small outbuilding at the north end of the site in which they store their fertilizer.

It was previously a building that the auto shop utilized for tire storage and so we are looking at housing the grounds shop and their activities, their equipment at this facility and then in addition we are looking at moving the facilities operations, masonry operations and roof equipment and operations to this facility as well.

We have done our due diligence on this site.

I will note that the seller acquired this property approximately four years ago, made some seismic improvements to it, and then has returned it to the market.

We had an appraisal conducted.

The appraisal price is matching the selling price of this property.

We believe this is in the best interests of Seattle Public Schools to acquire this.

We have done some analysis as to potential cost savings for our facilities operations department over the next 10 years.

And we believe it would approximately be a million dollars a year in equipment savings, operational benefits for Seattle Public Schools.

So open it up to questions.

Board directors have questions or comments.

Director Clark.

Was this the only site that was toured for the purpose of trying to find an actual location to support the grounds operations?

Like did you look at any other buildings and how did you select this site?

So we have looked at I'm going to say roughly half a dozen sites.

in either the Soto or the Georgetown neighborhoods.

This site we are most you know is most attractive to Seattle Public Schools capital projects and facilities operations because it's literally two blocks away from from the John Stanford Center.

So we see a lot of operational benefits there.

We identified those areas Director Clark both Soto and Georgetown because they allow that we have the correct zoning.

We're not going to have to go through a departure process to have our operations there and costs.

This was actually a very cost effective site for Seattle Public Schools.

Other questions or comments from board directors?

Director Mizrahi.

So the 12.5, does that include the modifications and the actions deemed necessary, or is that going to be above the 12.5?

That would be above the 12.5.

The modifications are going to be relatively simple.

We're looking at potentially removing two columns just to allow vehicles to enter into the warehouse.

without the potential of hitting those two columns.

The estimate for that was approximately $100,000.

And then we're looking at enhancing the ventilation system to take vehicle exhaust out of a large warehouse structure.

Other board directors?

All right, that ends discussion.

And I'm going to ask staff for the vote, please.

Director Clark.

Aye.

Director Hersey.

You just gave it to me, so aye.

Director Mizrahi.

Aye.

Director Rankin.

Aye.

Director Sarju?

Yeah, she's here.

Aye.

Vice President Briggs?

Aye.

President Top?

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Great, we are moving on.

We will now move to tonight's introduction items, which relates to Memorial Stadium project.

Since both are interrelated, I will read both titles into our record, and then I'm gonna pass it off to Chief Operations Officer Fred Podesta to introduce both these proposed actions.

The first one, introduction item one, is approving an interlocal agreement regarding Memorial Stadium between the district and the city of Seattle.

Introduction item two is amendment to board policy number 4237 advertising and commercial activities and 5201 drug free schools, community and workplace and repeal of board policy number 4262 community use of Memorial Stadium and board procedure 6800 BP regulations for stadiums owned or leased by Seattle Public Schools.

Now that I've read those titles, I'm going to pass it off to Chief Operating Officer Podesta.

Thank you, President Taup.

And I want to say thanks to directors on the dais now and many of your predecessors who have heard about this project in great detail many, many times over the years, as recently as last week.

in some respects is a construction project like many that we do, but it's a bit more complex and it's a bit more visible given the nature of the facility, so we wanted to make sure you understood it.

There are some policy implications, so we want to talk about those as well, that are fairly narrow in their scope, but it's good to understand them.

I do have a couple of slides just because we're excited to be able to As you know, when we talk about the capital program and levies, we talk about condition site assessments, facility condition assessments that we do in the cellar all the time in that ranked order is Memorial Stadium in terms of the facility in worst condition in our portfolio by a large measure over the next worst facility.

So this is something that's needed attention for a while.

So if we could advance the slide.

Anybody who's been to Memorial Stadium knows why we need to replace it.

The facility was built over 70 years ago.

Its major systems have long since failed in terms of HVAC, electrical, mechanical systems.

The facility is not really accessible to any level of ability.

Anybody who's ever gone, tried to climb to the back row of bleachers in Memorial Stadium and didn't come away scared is a better person than I am.

The site and situation and the condition of the memorial wall is frankly an embarrassment.

This facility is meant to honor students and the current condition that the memorial wall is in does none of that.

And so a week in advance, I'll just show you a few pictures and we'll get into the...

So the plan is for a modern facility that's better integrated with Seattle Center.

Seattle Center grew up around Memorial Stadium, which was built, constructed in 1947. You've all been there.

You know that when you're in Memorial Stadium, if it weren't for the Space Needle, you would have no idea where you are because it's walled off.

It doesn't allow the users, students, anybody to have access to everything that occurs at Seattle Center, which was developed later.

So this facility is better integrated.

If we could advance the slide.

And the number one thing I hear from students about Memorial Stadium is locker rooms and what a disgrace they are.

And so we really are changing the amenities for student athletes, for performers and others to have it be actually an uplifting experience to participate in something Memorial Stadium.

We could go one more.

And kind of before and after of restored and enhanced Memorial Wall, we want to restore the facility itself, the fountains, the surface.

It has been landmarked, and so we'll be very careful about that, but also to create a surrounding environment where people can really contemplate and think about the students.

It's meant that the whole stadium is meant to honor and provide a space that actually accomplishes that.

I think.

And then, again, it's just we wanted to be a better facility, a better event space for student athletes, but for all the other uses of Memorial Stadium.

So the partnership, the reason we felt there was a partnership needed is there were really three goals.

We think they're aligned, but they're not all the responsibility of Seattle Public Schools.

So we didn't want funding for this to compete with funding for making improvements in school buildings.

It's an important facility, but it isn't a school.

It gets used a lot by the community, and we wanted the community to share in the cost of the redevelopment.

So our three goals, again, is to replace an aging facility that serves students, to help Seattle Center with its operational needs and then also to create a civic space, a civic amenity that can be used for lots of purposes and that's why we wanted a partner to bring both management expertise and funding for that third goal to the table.

And the structure of this partnership is not fundamentally different from the way we use this stadium now.

I've heard many, many anecdotes over the years of people's memory about attending something at Memorial Stadium, and it's not usually an SPS event.

It's I saw our legal counsel.

I saw, or was it you, where you saw REM?

Yeah.

It's always served that civic purpose.

And we're happy to provide it.

We will own this facility when it's built, just like we do now.

We're happy to share that with the community, given its location.

But we don't think we ought to pay for that, that the community ought to.

And that's why the private partner is a consortium develop a non-profit consortium developed by the seattle kraken and their non-profit foundation to build an llc memorial stadium redevelopment to help us with fundraising for that and to manage the construction and then to be very clear to manage the stadium when we're not using it so now as all those concerts that people went to all those events whether it's folk life bumbershoot that Interaction with the city and others to make that happen now falls to our six-person athletics department.

As the venue operator for Memorial Station as a place, and that's not fair, that distracts, it's not their core business, it distracts them from taking care of students.

So we want a private partner to manage that part of the business and not SPS part of the business.

We will still be in control of the facility when we use it and we are the primary tenant and primary user and we will remain the owner.

There is no change in ownership as a result of this.

There are a few policy changes we'd like you to make to support those commercial operations.

They do not apply when we operate the stadium.

They would allow the sale of alcohol for those kinds of events, that's a long-standing request we've had from promoters who use the facility in other areas.

Could they be more viable when there's commercial use of the facility?

We want to have some carve-outs about how Memorial Stadium community use is used, and we want to allow advertising, again, Controls over that advertising would not be for SPS events, it would be for commercial events.

The nature of the partnership, all revenues, all net revenues that come from this facility will go back into maintaining the facility or to the district to support students.

There is not a profit motive for any of the partners.

And then the city, Mr. Best talked about a warehouse.

The district has long used, the Seattle Center and the district have long used Memorial Stadium as warehouse space under the grandstands.

That is a terrible place for a warehouse, particularly for Seattle Public Schools.

It's not shaped right, and that's not a convenient location for us.

It is convenient for Seattle Center, since they live there, and so their contribution is mostly to replace those non-stadium uses that are helpful to them.

Again, that's not something that we wanted to fund, but we're happy to maintain the partnership.

Should note that the land that the stadium was built on was conveyed to the district for a dollar in 1946. so we could build this facility.

So we've been partners the whole time.

This kind of formalizes that and builds us a new stadium for a new generation.

And I think it's a huge win-win for the community, for city operations, and for district operations, and for students, first and foremost.

Happy to take any questions you might ask.

Board Director's questions.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I did have the opportunity to ask some of these, or ask some questions already, so I have kind of some follow-ups.

And I just want to, because I'm not a legal expert, confirm that this agreement is really an agreement We still have to, there still has to be agreement about what you're talking about with the details of the site management and all those things.

That's still to come.

What you're approving today authorizes the superintendent to negotiate a potential operating agreement.

What we are committing to today would be the construction.

And then while it's under construction, we will see, and again, this was in response to a request for proposals where the Kraken team responded, and they want to get to know us better, too.

They've learned a lot about Seattle Public Schools since they responded to that RFP, and during this construction, we want to finalize, hey, can we all work together?

They obviously know how to manage facilities.

Their redevelopment of the former Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena was very similar in terms of they on behalf of the city, redeveloped NASA and then now operated.

Again, there, there's definitely a profit motive for us.

This is a nonprofit enterprise.

And I mean, I live pretty close, close enough to the Northgate facility that I have been in and around it a lot.

And they have three rinks in there.

And no matter what time of day I'm in there, there is community use happening.

And I'm so excited that they are the partners that wanted to do this because they do prioritize making, I mean, in the case of the ice facility, making hockey and ice sports more accessible to everybody.

And you can see it every time you go in there.

It's really awesome.

I've seen adult hockey leagues in there.

I've seen they have a program with REWA.

early childhood where they bring in kids who, you know, have never been on skates before.

It's just, it's just, it's like part, it's just part of what they do.

They want to do it because they want to do it.

That being said, they obviously can't just do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

So, I think when we get into the further parts of it, I'm interested in talking more about the revenue sharing or how that's going to work because I, like having a six person athletic team for SPS, I completely agree.

We want them to be focused on student athletics, not to suddenly become event managers and venue managers.

That is a huge job.

And that speaks to the policy changes we're asking for, to allow for the advertising and sales will make them more viable.

We've worked several pro forma models We don't see a windfall for anybody here, but I think they're willing to participate.

They just want to have a chance to defray the cost, because if we do, in fact, enter into an operating agreement, they would be bearing the risk of if this thing is in the red every year.

That would be the operator's problem, not our problem.

So then the two questions that I have are probably more about the operating agreement, which will come later, but I'm going to ask it now just because maybe it's part of this and I don't know.

I know I've heard some concern, not a lot, but some concern about, you know, what happens if this other entity takes over and our students don't have as much time, something that I think we could consider as a board or keep an eye on in the operating is thinking about requiring board approval of the calendar use.

I know that all those dates have to be set way in advance, a mechanism that we could use for transparency for the community and to provide our oversight and make sure that students are the priority users and beneficiaries as intended would be for us to approve or receive the usage calendar.

Is that something we should think about now or is that part of

So the action tonight approves staff negotiations of the operating agreement, not a separate approval process for that.

That's obviously something we can consider.

The calendar will be, and again, this community use of the facility is not something new, so it does fall to our small department to have to negotiate that, but this is something we do all the time.

I think we've gotten a good enough relationship with our partners to know that they know that this needs to be a student-centered facility.

What we're trying to do on behalf of the community is it's pretty well loved by us.

We use it a lot, 10 months of the year, but there's openings in the summer, there's openings on weekdays to leverage that on behalf of the community, not to

uh in any way constrained students use yeah hopefully um this will be a friendlier uh venue for arts than the current facility so hopefully there'll be more student use yeah um yeah so that's great the uh i think just for the transparency of the community to see that yes we are still maintaining student use and also if it becomes a you know twice you know every other year board approval people would have the ability to look back If people start to say, oh, they're just taking all of the time for students, we would have the ability to look back at board-approved documents to see has there been a shift or not, and then we'd be able to address it as an oversight piece.

The second question I have is about the revenue coming back Some of it would go, obviously, for their operating costs from the events that they are managing.

Would this be an opportunity?

Or I guess I'm asking where the, if that would be money that would just go to the general fund or if, and we don't know what it would yield, but if something like using that that is from athletics for athletics to cover student athletic fees would be something that that could possibly go towards?

That's everybody's first choice in regard.

That presumes that there are net revenues.

I personally, I'm not sure, but we'll see.

But there's agreement among the partners that that would be the point of net revenue and to make sure that the facility does not fall into the state that this one has felt, that we at least take care of the facility and then is there net revenue beyond that that could support students and then particularly athletics since that's what the facility is mostly about.

And any advertising that would be up during events that are not school sponsored, those will all be temporary and they would only be there during those events.

They would not remain when the school is using them.

Is that right?

That's correct.

And then one point of the policies that we're requesting to be modified when you see that's not on that list is naming rights to changing names of SPS-owned facilities.

The existing policy would govern that.

That takes board approval.

So it would be covered by the policy that requires recommendations to be made to the superintendent, the superintendent to authorize whether or not it can be explored, and then ultimately come to the board for approval, just like with the building?

Just like the Betty Patu Library that we talked about earlier.

That is all my questions.

Thank you so much.

Other board directors.

All right.

Thanks again for your time tonight, and again, many, many times over the years.

We've been working on this for a very long time.

Perfect.

We're going to head to the tables for the last two items on our agenda, and we will adjourn from there this evening.

So one last transfer.

Okay, our last two items on the agenda are both updates from staff.

The first one will be an enrollment planning update and then a strategic planning update.

So with that, I'm going to pass it off to Chief Operating Officer Fred Podesta.

Thank you.

We've had a few discussions lately about enrollment planning, and I want to thank the board for the session that was held last week, the community engagement session.

We got to hear a lot of great information from families.

It was very appreciative of staff ability to kind of participate and provide some dialogue during the course of the event.

I think that was helpful.

And I know it was a little bit of a pivot in real time, but I want to thank Enrollment Planning Director Faul Manouv for being in that space, answering some questions.

I think we all appreciated the conversation we're having.

We understand the concerns that this issue raises.

You'll recall the first update that we had for the board on April 23rd.

I acknowledge that this whole system is completely of our making and we have choices that we can make.

And so thinking about that and Trying to balance the interests of the entire community will be our work.

We want to talk today about some things that might happen in the short term and if we want to make larger systemic changes.

how we would want to approach that, because again, this has system-wide impacts.

We want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to understand the trade-offs and the complexities of this situation.

So I will turn it over to Dr. Campbell and Director Manu.

Thank you, and thank you as well, Dr. Torres, for being here, and thanks to all of you for persevering through all of this.

This is learning for us, so I wanna start with our agenda for this update.

First of all, we wanna talk about what we have learned, or what have we learned.

We want to review the March through May choice assignment status, so how are we adapting in the moment in response to what we are learning.

And I want you to check me if you would please.

My partners in the deaf and hard of hearing community tell me to really move towards saying what have we learned rather than what have we heard.

So that we're actually really inclusive of that.

So what are we learning in all the ways that we're learning?

We certainly learned a lot tonight from our community.

Practices and patterns for the past 10 years.

And then future options and considerations.

So if that feels like a good direction to go in, we will head in that direction.

So I'll turn the time over to Director Manu and again thank her and her team for the work that they're doing to be responsive and to also continue to do the real-time work that's happening right now.

Good evening, board directors and community members.

I think we've learned a lot last week and tonight.

My name is Falmanu, director of enrollment, and it's an honor to be here.

As we listen to the testimonies tonight, I really want to continue to express the value in us leaning in and making sure that we show up and be present.

I had an amazing opportunity last week to do that and it was so great to hear families one-on-one and express their concerns and help provide clarity and about our systems, but we all understand that there may be another way to do this and look at that system change together and to really open up those conversations and dialogues and hearing from Sabrina Burke tonight, to make sure that we're hearing from everyone.

And so when we talk about balance, for example, that this is what we're talking about.

What do those strategic goals, how do they align with the system like school choice?

And so it was an honor again, and so I just wanted to go over what we've learned from tonight.

It's the same echoes as we heard from last week.

And people just want more access to our programs, our dual language immersion programs, STEM, our science technology engineering, and math, and then a focus on expeditionary learning.

It is incredible to have this continue as we did because we've been doing this process for a very long time.

And so we know that, hey, there can be an opportunity to look at and see what we can do better and in expanding that.

And so we want to just be sure that we heard you, the community, and thank the families that attended and participated last week.

It was greatly appreciated.

You go on to the next slide.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Can you go back?

Before, I do want to acknowledge that the families for the children of deaf adults, that also came to light, including the ASL interpreters.

And so Dr. Torres-Morales will speak more about the progress that we made with those conversations with CODA.

Can you give him your mic?

Good evening, board directors.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

So given some of the conversations that have been going on recently with the deaf and hard of hearing community, there's been a team of us that have been put in charge of trying to really clear out the way for what's going to happen in terms of accommodations across the board and also specifically deal with the issue that was raised up around CODAs and enrollment CODA children of deaf adults.

So I was charged with doing this work with a small team, Falmanu, Dr. Campbell were both part of those teams through enrollment.

And so we have made the determination that Dakotas will be allowed their place in TOPS.

And so I have met with some of the families already and engaged with them to learn more about what their needs really are.

We are in the process of doing that.

There are some technical things that we still need to work through.

So I just want to be clear that this is not, for this moment, it's like a Band-Aid.

We need to get to the actual system solution, though, and that's something that we've committed to working on.

So some of the things that you should see coming forward in the near future, is where does American Sign Language live on our home family surveys or when families come to enrollment, so we're working on that.

My understanding is that it is there, but it's not prominent in the same place as some of our other languages, which causes some of the problems.

Additionally, Director Manu is in the process of working with DOTS or our Department of Technology Services around how are we doing the coding of students, because that also impacts.

And what we found out is that we currently don't have a code to capture code of students in the system.

So it's work that we're doing to make sure there's a code for that.

we do have codes for our multilingual students, but not for CODAs.

Regardless, we have already started to communicate with families that they will be allowed into the program at TOPS, and now we're working through some of the technicals on the back end with a commitment to get into more formalized plan through the student assignment transition plan going forward.

Thank you, Dr. Torres Morales.

I also want to note that parents express students with IEPs that they have more access to their own schools and services and really value the attendance area or neighborhood schools that they're at, but also want more options if they wish.

Next slide.

So what's going on behind the scenes is another update, as I shared last week.

But as applications keep coming in, we have new information.

So as of today, we have 4,100 applications that we received.

1,700 students have been assigned to their first choice.

We are continuing to review our wait lists and that is through August 31st when they will be dissolved.

Just so you know that those offers, 75% of families that we offer those seats accept.

And so we are constantly looking at those that decline.

We're going to keep moving down the wait list until we've satisfied those seats.

And again, we are looking to see how we can better acknowledge what our families are concerned about having more access to those schools.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

So I will recap something that we have shared, but just to frame it a little differently.

When we hear the concerns about wait lists, the first thing we did was to say, well, let's look at some historical data.

Are our practices anomalous right now?

And what we found is that for the past 10 years, so 2015 to 2025, pretty consistently about 10% of our K-12 families are participating in the choice process.

So again, we want to check ourselves.

Are we doing something different that's creating this?

And we can think about why the response is different now.

But the practices have been pretty consistent.

Doesn't mean that we don't want to change them because our framework is different.

Our context is different.

A lot has happened since 2015. Again, those applications are roughly split between requests for option schools and other attendance area schools.

So we were also interested just to know where are folks saying that their preferences are or are not.

And that district-wide, for the past 10 years, about 5% of those students and families that request a different assignment receive that choice other than their assigned school.

Just, again, to frame it, that has been pretty consistent.

But, again, what we're hearing, or rather, what we're learning and understanding is that we need to adapt and change.

That's very clear.

And next slide, please.

Please.

Thank you.

want to take the credit or the blame, because some of these are my observations, and I don't want to have people have to answer for my look at this data.

But the 5% that Marnie referenced, again, is across the whole system, 5% of all enrollment.

And so what we've historically been doing over the past 10 years fairly consistently is 10% enter the choice process, about half get their first choice, so that leaves 5% who don't.

And 5% It may sound like a small number, but we're still talking about 2,000 people, 2,000 students.

So that's really the question, I think, before us as we think about this going forward.

Should that 5% mobility in the system turn to 10% or 8% and what are the trade-offs?

How does this align with the goals that this group have put forward on behalf of the community and guardrails, particularly guardrails around allocation of resources and equitable student assignment.

So what will be the impacts if that choice goes from 5% that we move everybody on the wait list, just so we understand that.

What would be the impacts to the 90% that go to their assigned school out of the system?

Because we will be moving a lot of resources around, or some resources around, so we just want to make sure that we understand that.

And then there's choice, the constraints that we place on choice in the system, and there may be other constraints that families face in terms of transportation or other So how does everybody get the benefits of those who can participate in choice, not because of our constraints, but how do we mitigate that to make sure that choice is fair to everybody?

And again, I will stop interrupting, but these were mine, and I just didn't want you to have to apologize for my work, Marnie.

I would celebrate it, but thank you.

But yeah, I think that this slide really gets to the strategic questions that I think are the purview of this leadership group and of our community.

To say, really, I think the second bullet point, the questions on the table really align with our strategic goals and guardrails around geographic equity as well.

And then that final bullet is also very important for us to think about.

Choice comes, we have to have infrastructure in order for choice to be truly equitable.

So a choice to go to a different school if you have to provide your own transportation might not really be a choice for many families.

So then that leads us to then the operational questions.

So, you know, we certainly want to participate and support in that strategic conversation, but then we, as the people who are charged with creating the operational structures that support that, these are just some of the considerations that as we reflect on this, wanting to, again, be responsive to our community, want to put to use.

So we try to make these as generative as possible to kind of open up our thinking for how we work together.

So how could transportation service standards, for example, be adapted to support equitable access to school choice?

So again, school choice without the capacity for all families to really maybe get to a different part of the city where that's not something that they don't have VEHICLES OR THE ABILITY TO, YOU KNOW, THE TIME TO DRIVE, I MEAN, THAT THEN CEASES TO BE A CHOICE.

SO WE NEED TO THINK IS THAT THEN WE'RE GOING TO THINK ABOUT OUR TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM.

THAT VERY MUCH COULD AND SHOULD BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION.

WOULD THE EXPANSION OF CHOICE CONSTRAIN OUR ABILITY TO GUARANTEE SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT for attendance area students.

Again, that guarantee is part of our current student assignment system.

That could change, but right now, working within the parameters that we have, and Director Rankin, you pointed out very well, we create the policy that guides us and then the procedures that build on that policy.

Right now, that student assignment plan is our guiding.

It's not policy, but it's our guiding document.

How could staffing allocations be modified to address schools with significantly declining enrollment?

So if we do have schools that are getting much smaller, how do we make sure that those schools are still healthy, thriving places where students have what they need and deserve and where staff Also, where staffing is sufficient.

These are all, again, things that are both could have to do with how we design our staffing assignment processes, but also would potentially have fiscal implications.

All of these things likely do, but again, we prioritize our values and our goals, and then we fund them according to what we think is going to best meet our students and families.

SO THIS IS ONE THAT HAS COME UP.

HOW COULD SCHOOL CHOICE AND BUDGET TIMELINES BE ADAPTED?

SO IF WE WANT TO, SAY, ALLOW ALL THE CHOICE ASSIGNMENTS TO BE DECIDED AND DETERMINED IN ADVANCE OF STAFFING ALLOCATIONS, WE COULD CERTAINLY CHANGE THAT TIME FRAME.

So that is something that we could also look at doing.

And then what are the recruiting and employment implications of increased shifts in educator staffing?

So bearing in mind that teachers teach in a particular school setting, if we were going to have a fair amount of movement from year to year, or maybe initially, how would that impact staff members who, not just teachers, but say staff members in general, who are part of a team in their school, who have developed um you know grade level practices um and then you know are shifting from one place to another would that change um how it feels to be an educator in seattle public schools again all of these things are possible we just want to think about all of these different operational uh implications this certainly is not a comprehensive list but it gets at some of the things that we have thought about NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE.

SO OUR NEXT ACTIONS, AND WE'VE BROKEN THIS DOWN, AND I'LL LET DIRECTOR MANU TAKE WHAT ARE WE DOING RIGHT NOW, AND THEN LONGER TERM.

TEST.

Sorry about that.

So just to summarize what Dr. Campbell just went over, these are a lot of things that we should, as school board directors, as superintendent and staff, really understand because it is a lot of shifts that we are considering if we go in that direction.

So it's important that we think about these things and really understand where that leaves all of our students, especially those in under-enrolled schools.

THE NEXT ACTIONS WE'RE GOING TO TAKE IS WE'RE GOING TO CONTINUE MOVING THE WAITLISTS AND DO OUR REVIEWS.

WE HAVE UNTIL AUGUST 31, AS I STATED, AND THESE DECISIONS ALL IMPACT OUR STAFFING ADJUSTMENTS.

SO OUR NEXT ADJUSTMENT REVISION FOR OUR PROJECTIONS IS IN JUNE.

And so budget will receive that the first week in June and then we're going to take a look and see what those impacts look like so that we can also run the WSS through those changes.

A recent decision of the highly capable cohort to allow the second grade cohort and pausing the decentralization that had an impact on our projections, so we adjusted immediately for that, but as a natural course of what we do with school choice and our lottery, we do look at the enrollment trends of how this all tumbles out as students are being offered and declined, and then most students want to go back to where they were at their neighborhood school.

So all that is happening, and so that is all captured in these projections as we look at our historical view in the last two or three years.

Thank you, and to that second sub-bullet waitlist moves, and we've heard voices tonight saying please move all the waitlists.

What we're doing right now is actually addressing specific situations where we can see there's a, Queen Anne would be an example where rather than just moving all of the wait lists right away, we're trying to be sensitive.

TOPS is another one, Pathfinder, South Shore is another school where we would say, okay, we're seeing, we're learning and we're seeing or perceiving some different things and so we're going to address those immediate significant situations now.

while we then make plans for the future and beyond.

So that community engagement, we've heard a lot about that tonight, and strategic planning.

So this is an opportunity, again, to revisit.

Looking at our student assignment plan, how has it been functioning for the past, 2010 was when our current student assignment plan came on board.

and really looking at the data and saying, what do we need to modify and update?

Again, we have moved from a system that was increasing enrollment to one that is decreasing enrollment.

It's time for us to reconsider then how assignment looks and feels.

Develop options for modifications to school choice budgeting and staffing processes.

So based on that strategic planning, we will develop those options and then have an implementation timeline so that we're very clear in how we can carry those things out.

So thank you, that is our update.

I'm gonna start with my question.

Is our current enrollment system the best system we can have to align with our goals as a district?

I'll take that.

Well, obviously we've heard from our communities that it's not.

And so let's take a look at that.

Because they said very loud and clear, they don't feel that.

So I'm not going to sit here and try to defend it, like I said last week.

This is a systems concern that we need to look at, because enrollment may be the driver, but it really has something to do with bigger than that, right?

Okay.

I mean, the current practices were developed before.

The current strategic goals Seattle Public Schools used to operate more on a choice-based system and move to attendance areas.

And I think the operation side of that has worked to probably emphasize making sure that there are always seats in attendance areas.

The other thing that's really changed in this timeline is the system created less of these issues when the questions were all about building capacity because enrollment was going up.

So the answers felt one way when the buildings were full and they feel a lot different now.

So now it has become more about staffing and operating viable schools.

I appreciate Director Manu's candor, but it would be almost impossible for, given the age of this system and the other changes, for this system to actually be aligned with our goals.

So now is the time to make the adjustment, see what we can do now, but make sure we think This would be a fairly big system change, so we just want to accommodate as much as we can in the short term and be thoughtful about if we're going to retool the whole approach that we understand because, of course, the folks where choice is being constrained, we've heard from them loud and clear.

I don't know that we've invited the same kind of input from the members of the community that aren't participating in choice and will feel the impact that we make a very deep system change.

So I just want to make sure that that's covered before we completely retool this, would be our recommendation.

So then one last question and then lots of board directors have questions.

So I just want to make sure that I understand sort of the next steps, both short term and long term.

So short term is trying to push on the wait list as much as possible within the current framework that we have.

to move the wait list as much as possible for the upcoming school year and then for the following 26-27, it's looking at a larger review slash systemic changes to what this looks like.

what enrollment planning looks like.

That is the way, that is the update essentially.

And including the, you know, depending how significant and profound that change is, what is the realistic implementation timeline?

If we reorder this in terms of the choice process gets rebuilt and that is an input into the budget process, which makes a lot of sense, but that means that it's way earlier than we've operated before and, you know, we would need to be ready in the fall.

We need to ask the community to be ready in the fall to make choices for the next fall.

And so we just want to make sure we understand that.

All right.

No questions yet on this side, but I didn't check the order here, so I'm going to start here and go this way.

Director Hersey.

all right thank you for the update i'm honestly just confused right because i've been receiving messages from folks saying that like uh the district is saying like oh well if the board gives us direction then we'll do it or and then people are hearing from board directors well the district's got to be the first one to move so can y'all give us some clarity around what how are y'all operating are y'all waiting for us to do anything So, because I was just told at a meeting at Bagley last night that it was said that if the board gave y'all direction, then y'all would do so.

No, for our short term, again, we need to think through the ramifications of each waitlist move.

We've made some bigger moves already than we would have if this discussion hadn't come up.

I'm...

This is probably ill-advised to throw this term out, but we're looking for particular wait lists that are kind of hot spots where there's, you know, and that we can make a move because it's, you know, students are not perfectly fungible entities.

It's like, well, what can be accomplished to move this wait list?

What are going to be the impacts?

How many staffing changes are there going to be?

We will work those.

We will work those some percentage more aggressively than we have in more recent years.

There's still going to be a wait list in August.

I don't think it would ever be We can't clear a wait list.

We can't completely clear it.

We're trying to see, you know, if you go back to my eyeball analysis of 5%, can we, this year, can we make that 5%, 6%?

Can we make it 6.5%?

It's not going to be a wholesale move.

And, you know, we're filling option schools to their...

projected capacity, see if we could make other staffing changes like we did for Queen Anne Elementary and just understand, it's also late in the game to be hiring teachers and so how much can we do and also not set a precedent before we decide what the ultimate system is.

But there is no policy that guides exactly how we work this.

The one policy that was inferenced here is there is a policy that says everyone's guaranteed a seat at their neighborhood school.

That is a board policy.

You want to change that, we need to get direction.

The rest of it has been built by staff, can be changed by staff.

All right, bet.

Thank you for saying that.

The reason that I ask that question is that, like, and we see this with issue over issue is that there are definitely like wild communication problems within the district there are wild communication problems on this board and between uh senior staff or whatnot i think in the cracks of all that when things get hot there are both uh i would say actors who are acting in the best interest of their children and probably some folks who are acting pretty nefariously out there to an end that I would say doesn't necessarily benefit the community as a whole, right?

I say all that to say, I'm taking this opportunity to identify a hotspot for me personally, Cleveland, right?

I think that when I am thinking about the impact that I have as a board director, in order for me to do my job effectively, like, I think the dissemination of information about where the decision-making power lies really, I think, exploits a big confusion point for the people around this table and the people who come and spend the time that they could be spending with their families here talking to us right so i want to keep it a buck i would like to see some movement on cleveland's wait list i am one board director that being said That being said, I think that what I also really want to see in whatever next iteration, and we've had this conversation here and I've been very critical, not because I don't like y'all, but just because it's the fact that like the way that we have these conversations make it really difficult to understand why something is happening and I want to be super clear and on the record that while I support moving these wait lists in a more prominent way, we also have to look at it on a systems basis because if I move some kids off the wait list at Cleveland, that means that enrollment at another school is going to go down, which means that we're just changing one set of families for another, creating chaos instead of doing what it sounds like y'all are planning to do is take A holistic approach to this now there's a lot of people who are gonna be out there and I'll catch whatever charge that think that's bullshit right because for so many years it has been and I think that like For me where I'm getting frustrated and I'm usually not this animated, but I'm like, you know, I really want to drive this note home There there's what we understand based on our conversations and then there's what the families are experiencing and there's a whole lot of middle in between that and it makes it really really hard for me to do my job and i've been sitting in the same seat for a minute so i feel like i have a good understanding of what my job is but it gets more and more difficult when my understanding of what's happening in buildings is not actually what's happening y'all's understanding what y'all are telling me is aligned with what i think but IN THAT BIG OLD MIDDLE, THERE'S A LOT OF CHANGES THAT ARE HAPPENING.

SO I DON'T KNOW HOW WE CAN CONTINUE TO RUN A SYSTEM OF THIS SIZE WHEN WE DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S IN THAT MIDDLE.

AND I DON'T KNOW IF THAT MEANS THAT WE NEED TO SHRINK THE MIDDLE.

I DON'T KNOW IF THAT MEANS THAT WE JUST NEED TO, LIKE, BLOW THE WHOLE THING UP AND, LIKE, BECAUSE I WAS REALLY GETTING TO THE POINT TO WHERE...

THANK YOU.

I REALLY APPRECIATE THE CLAPS.

I HEAR YOU.

BUT IT...

I'M ADHD.

IT'S DISRUPTING MY CHAIR OF THOUGHT.

But I'm really to the point to where it's like, I was ready to walk in here and propose the fact that, like, just clear everybody off the wait list so that we could figure out what is, what, like, are y'all telling us the truth?

Like, will the system break if we do it, right?

I know as an intellectual that that is a terrible idea, so that's why I'm not presenting it.

But, but, but, There is our way.

There is what is actually happening and then somewhere in there is like what actually needs to happen.

I don't feel as a board director right now who has been sitting here for six years that I have a good understanding of what actually needs to happen because there's so much disinformation, misinformation and lack of information that is being shared with community.

We just had somebody come in here and tell us that student outcomes focus governance was created in Texas and is a conservative think tank plan or something like that.

But that's not her fault.

It's our fault because we haven't done a good enough job of telling people what's going on.

I would imagine that enrollment is the same thing.

So I really, I do not have long for this seat.

But I also want to make sure that whoever comes after me and the board directors that are here, because a lot of them have not been with us through the trenches of COVID and have not built up the relationships with y'all that we have.

and we specifically are not going to be here in like 20 minutes so to avoid board directors feeling emboldened to come in and blow everything up there has to be a system of trust and accountability not to use words that have been like you know been out of shape but like there is a lack of that because i feel confused and if i feel confused if brandon hersey feels confused there is a problem here significantly, right?

So help me help you and let's figure out where the source of all this misinformation is coming from, point A.

Point B, can we please just help our families out in these situations as much as we can?

And I love what you said.

Might go from 5% to 6%, great.

I want to push you to go for 10%.

You know what I mean?

And I'm not asking you to break the system.

I'm not asking you to blow this up.

But what I am asking you is like, I'm sick of people coming here, spending time with us that they could be spending with their families for stuff that we know good and well, we ain't got no control over.

You know what I mean?

Or if we do, just press the button.

You feel me?

And I know I'm preaching to the choir.

I get it.

But I think that there is a big disconnect between what folks are experiencing and what we understand to be true, and that's a problem.

Chief Operating Officer Podesta, do you have anything to respond to?

Well, so this will be the last day Dr. Jones ever gives me the keys to the car.

That may be crystal clear.

These are not board decisions.

These are staff decisions.

We have reversed some courses we were on in terms of, again, hot spots.

I shouldn't keep using that word, but we've tried to make some changes.

We'll see as much as we can accommodate.

Yes, if we completely eliminated the wait list at Cleveland, it would have enormous impacts at Beach, Franklin, and other schools.

And so we want to understand that better.

I think the team has embraced that, well, let's see what we can do.

We need to work with our finance and HR partners on, well, is it possible to move?

We've done school budgets.

Staff think they know what their assignments are.

If we're going to blow that up, what does that mean for the coming year?

If we do that this year, have we then preempted the ability to stop and think about how would we like to retool the system?

Because it's going to be hard to come up with an argument for not going to 10% if we just do it and just jam it through.

But yeah, express to the board your dissatisfaction with our decisions, but please know that there are decisions.

And people can call me if they're not happy.

And I will call foul.

And can I just, not to interrupt you, I just want to echo and share what Chief Podesta is saying.

And I hear you, Director Hersey.

And the reason why I was so quick to respond to President Topp is because it isn't working.

And so we recognize long-standing practices doesn't mean it's okay.

It's just mediocre.

And so that's hearing from our families.

And so if we need to truly understand that, then what does broken mean?

And how do we define it?

And how do we work around that?

Because that is not their problem.

And we understand that first and foremost.

And that is an internal discussion and dialogue of our current practices and matrix and how do we navigate that.

And so I hear you, and understandably, and I'm glad you understand that there's impacts because that's what we tried to explain as far as balance.

You know, in its purest form, we have students or schools already at risk.

They're under-enrolled.

and so when people want to move well that that reverberates everywhere and these are tentacles and these are families that are at these schools split classrooms three grades with one teacher they have less than seven teachers I mean We need to broaden our horizon a little bit here and really not talk about moving that weightless, but what are we doing with the strategic goals when we put language in there that every student should thrive?

How do they thrive in those conditions?

We have to understand that ourselves, and it's not talking to each other.

We've got to go out there and engage because our families are telling us.

They had great ideas last week, great ideas.

We can't do everything, and to quote Dr. Jones, but we can do some things, and we can do it and get it right.

Just wanted to add that.

I appreciate that.

I appreciate Director Hersey's comments.

I agree with ‑‑ I wholeheartedly agree with them.

I also really appreciate staff's push to try to push things where they can this year and realizing the system is not working.

Director Briggs, I don't know the order, so I'm just going from ‑‑ All good.

OK, I'm going to try to tie this all together using my entire brain right now.

But I think what I the main thing I want to talk about is just zooming out like 30,000 feet and recognizing that this enrollment cluster is a symptom of much deeper issues.

And we need to be really focused on root cause analyses here, because those same root causes are the same reason that we have failed the same kids for generations.

So this is not just about enrollment, it's about a pattern of behavior where we are reactive to the loudest voices and do not actually deal with the root issue.

And kids are suffering as a result of that.

So I am curious to know whether or not staff feel that you all have a shared, in-depth understanding of what the root causes are.

I think a big one of them is lack of role clarity, which is something that Brandon touched on, which is what student outcomes focused governance attempts to address.

being really clear about whose role is what, which is, again, another thing that came up in the engagement session.

But I'm just wondering how far down the road you all feel you are in really having an in-depth understanding of what the root causes are and how we get ourselves out of that.

um and then i have so that's one question and then like the last thing i'll just tag on and then i'll be done talking um is and this is i'm this is very similar to what brandon was saying but um these operational considerations here like these are really legit considerations like they're totally real um valid all of that and somehow the emails that we're getting from families none of this stuff is what's happening.

It's something else.

And so there's this disconnect between, I'm not saying that there are no barriers to granting access to choice.

There clearly are, but the scenarios that we are hearing about don't fit into any of these categories.

So I'm not really sure, again, to Brandon's point, I'm not really sure what's going on there.

But there is clearly just a chasm of misunderstanding.

And a lot of it comes back to just communication.

And also, if we're not clear on what the real root causes, then it doesn't matter how good our communication skills are.

We have nothing to communicate.

So that's all for me.

So I'd like to address the root cause.

I've been in enrollment for 12 years.

I also understand deeply our communities of color.

What they've experienced, I've experienced as well in my life.

And so, The root cause is deeper than these wait lists.

There is a privilege and entitlement beyond.

And those voices are heard over and over and over and over.

And there's policies that are changing because of it in the past.

I'm not saying right now, but I've seen those shifts as a witness and testament to that.

They are very loud and very strong and powerful and influential.

but they are a community and they do matter.

And my point is the ones that don't come to these meetings, They don't need to chant or to get rowdy and hold signs.

All I'm saying right now with this root cause is how do we protect all of our schools?

How are they thriving?

And what measures are we doing to take a look at those underserved students who consistently fall behind?

And if we're doing our strategic goals, I want to be very clear, they're already behind.

So if we do these lofty goals of a Western type of language, culturally speaking, it doesn't make any sense to our families in how to support their children because a lot of them just trust that the system will tell them where they go to school.

They trust that you are taking care of their child.

So if we are to think about this in a larger scale, that root cause is just that.

What decisions starting from the board are we adopting that are protecting those very children?

And we heard that tonight.

They continuously over and over are left behind.

And we see it in the data.

whatever we want to look at it, and we always scratch our heads and have a plan.

So what do we need to do to change if we're going to shift the way we do school choice lottery, which is a mechanism for a family to have access to whatever they want to get, right?

But there's parameters.

What does that look like on a larger scale when we're looking about shifting all of that curriculum, instruction, everything?

Thank you.

I just want to add too that I was a school leader at the time when we moved to our new, I was actually in the central office but had been a school leader with our prior enrollment plan and also a parent where it was very open choice lottery.

I can't express how much more complex it actually was previously because you were not even guaranteed your assignment to your neighborhood school.

And at the time, the rationale was, again, I think what we have all expressed here, which is that and what Director Manu just said, thank you for your words, to make sure that you can navigate a system without having to be a statistician or without having to understand how to work your first, second, and third choice options.

The remedy at the time was you are guaranteed your neighborhood school and we will provide academic assurances at all of those schools.

Now, did we follow through on that second?

Maybe not so much, especially when we think about students with IEPs where there might not be intensive services, as we learned during our last conversation, 67% of our students who have intensive services can't go to their neighborhood school because they don't have the services there.

So I do think that, again, although certainly it is staff responsibility to work the system, there is a shared work for us to do, and it's not about blame, it's about how do we come together to say, in order to meet those goals of genuinely saying this is our community, we recognize where there is capacity and influence and power, and we also have to be the voice for those who aren't speaking into those spaces.

How do we make sure that those academic assurances are available?

however we do it, that there's never a time, and this is very wisely built into your strategic guardrail, around geographic equity.

There's never going to be a time where you cannot get to a school where your student will have what they need.

And getting to school, we've talked about bus transportation certainly is one way that we do it, but that means that those schools do have to be located or else we have to provide a way for students to get to that school.

We have to provide that and really be thoughtful about that.

So again, I just want to remember that where we are now is very much an outgrowth of these same values, which was to say you should be able to navigate the system and you should be able to be assured that your school, wherever that school is, has what you need.

What we're hearing is that not all the schools do.

So that's when we take a look and say, okay, what are those academic assurances and then how do we provide access to those?

Thank you.

Director Briggs, did you have a follow-up?

Let people, other people talk.

Thank you.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, thanks.

I have.

Why is my thing so loud?

Is it me?

Give me something if you want.

Yeah, I have a few questions, but I'll start with one that is more of a statement that I'm going to disguise as a question.

On the first page, you have what have we learned.

And one thing that you are talking about the value of these programs, dual language, STEM, explore expeditionary learning.

And I think that was something that really came through to me at the engagement session is that a lot of times when people are talking about choice and option and wait list, what they're really talking about is program.

And I know that when we were having the school closure discussion, There was some intentionality around, like, how do we expand these programs?

How do we get these programs into more neighborhoods?

At the engagement session, we saw a very interesting heat map of where folks are trying to choice into other schools.

And I would think that maybe that heat map is a good start for thinking about where these popular programs should go.

And that's a question.

I don't know.

I'll just make.

So, I mean, what do you think about that?

I think that's definitely a basis for the program-based root causes that Director Briggs talked about.

You know, one thing that where this that we need to remind ourselves is half of the choice applications are just for another neighborhood school they're not about program access necessarily and so and sometimes this conversation gets teed up like this is neighborhood schools versus choice schools it's much broader than that but but so understanding in that heat map so what are people choosing?

That was the origin of the applications.

Where are they going to and understanding those patterns?

But yes, that'd be the exact data we need to look at.

And yes, we've certainly heard about programs that people definitely prize.

And I don't know, Dr. Torres Morales, did you have something you want to add?

I just touched base a little bit on the dual language question because that is something that we have started initial, initial planning on.

And what I mean by that is we're not fully out the gate on it, but we do recognize that it's an issue.

So one of the things that we're looking at is how are we going to move to create actually research and evidence-based dual language schools across the city aligned to language need?

So, right now, if you think about it, our dual language schools, some of them are prized and people really want to go there, but are they actually dual language schools?

Once you're running three languages, you're really not running a dual language school, you're running an international school.

So, how do we work with our community to say this is what a dual language school is?

It's actually a service pathway for multilingual students that all students could benefit from so we can get other kids in there so they can learn another language and get a seal of biliteracy eventually when they graduate from high school.

But we are in the initial stages of planning through that and thinking, what does this mean up to including an ASL dual language option?

More to come on that, but I want to just make sure that we're putting that out there because it's something that is in process and something that is important for our community.

I think that's good to hear.

And I hear your point, Fred, about it's not people always going to option schools.

I do think that one other strategy in thinking about the long term to ease the weightless burden is to just have fewer families who want who want to choice out to a different school because they're happy with the program offering in their neighborhood school.

So I think that we should think about that as a strategy.

I have other questions, but I'll defer.

Can I comment on that really quick?

Of course.

Yeah, I think the secondary piece to that, to your question there, Director, Ms. Rahi, is When you have people who are leaving their neighborhood school to go to another neighborhood school, the question becomes, why?

So what are we providing as a baseline?

So something that Dr. Campbell hit on is that we said we had academic assurances.

So the question becomes, did we?

So it's not about creating cookie cutter schools, especially when you think about our elementary schools.

But there should be some baseline assurances of this is what your kid's going to get.

no matter where they go.

One, that aligns with the zip code guardrail that's coming out.

Two, it aligns with the work that we're talking about in MTSS.

If and when we create the effective MTSS system, it does not matter.

You should not have to want to move your neighborhood school to another neighborhood school.

Now, there is a little bit of nuance in there, because if you're just right on a borderline, it could just be because it's closer to you, just the way that the boundary was drawn, fair.

But it should not be because you think you're going to get a drastically different academic experience for your child.

So that is work that we're working on, because we're seeing it, and it needs to be addressed.

So we wanted to make sure to put that in the space.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

And I want to thank staff and my colleagues for probably one of the least performative, most open and honest conversations we've had in a board meeting in a long time.

Even though if you were to ask me, I would say this doesn't belong in a board meeting agenda because it's operational.

Because there's a lot of stuff here that I'm like, this is not a board decision.

Like you said, Fred, this is the work of staff.

And we approve it.

We approve things.

We don't have no say.

But just like I said with highly capable, I don't want to talk about this anymore.

I don't want to talk about the ins and outs of the stuff that we meet twice a month.

You all meet every day.

You guys figure it out.

Based in what we expect for students.

And this is where this is.

Where we are today and I know I'm a broken record where we are today is the result of decades of failure of the Seattle School Board to be very clear about direction and holding the district accountable to do that and superintendents to implement according to the direction of the board.

That is, I mean, we have, when we have, we do have the policy.

The policy says, here's what we expect.

At the end of the policy, because it is a management policy, the superintendent is authorized to write procedure to implement this policy.

That is the contingencies for CODAs.

We had family advocates.

There was a lot of people pressing for that.

But what moved the needle was a combination of that.

And I just said, you are already authorized to do this.

This is in alignment with the direction from the board that has already been authorized.

Just figure it out.

That is how we move and if we can't stand behind our policies, this is what we end up with is that the most dominant voices pull everybody in a lot of different directions.

You end up with seven board directors giving seven different directions, a superintendent who can't possibly figure out what is actually expected of them and then they're turning around to staff.

And, you know, our policies are only as good as our willingness to hold people accountable for following them and to make sure that they actually reflect what we want to see happen.

I wish we were here a year ago, longer ago than that.

This is why we needed to have a conversation about well resourced schools.

What is available to what students?

What kind of educational equity and quality are we providing and does it look the way we want it to look and do we need to make some changes?

We need to make some changes.

And choice has been a part of Seattle Public Schools for a really long time.

It's very highly valued.

But we as a system haven't been clear about the viability, sustainability, and fair access to those choice programs.

So we have beloved dual language programs.

We do not provide curriculum to them or really, I mean, those PTAs raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.

to maintain those programs, not at Concord or Dearborn Park, but the others.

And it provides a great benefit to the students who attend it.

People clearly value it, but if we as a system value it, we should invest in it and sustain it and make it accessible for people who want it.

Bellevue School District is way smaller than us.

They have dual language programs in Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese.

So this isn't a matter of like, oh, maybe we don't have enough interest.

We have the interest.

We have to decide what we're gonna do and stick to it.

So we've got optional programs that include dual language immersion, self-contained cohort for highly capable.

More things that have come and gone have competed with neighborhood schools for students and resources.

And when there's an enrollment uptick, There's no shortage of options for people because it's not going to have the impact on the whole system that it has now where we're in enrollment downcline and everybody's spread very, very, very thin.

And that limits access and opportunity for everybody.

We also haven't been clear as a system for a very long time about assurances about our neighborhood schools.

This goes back to the 90s when the intent was a system of charter schools where schools would compete with each other for students and resources.

That was the stated intent at the time, was the idea that school quality would increase if they had to compete for market share.

That is right wing, my friends.

Not a governance model centered on elevating the needs of the entire community.

And so we have a legacy of that with kind of different values on top of it.

And so we have this competition amongst our schools.

And then the programs and efficacy are all very highly dependent on individual school principals who we also don't support adequately as a system.

And the parent pressure and support to maintain some programs a lot of which are reliant on the contributions of families, have actually overshadowed the need for very, very alternative programs and settings for certain populations.

SPS used to have a high school program for students who had survived trafficking.

That is an alternative program.

We have kids who end up dead on the side of I-5 because they are exited from their neighborhood school and in the transfer to interagency, which is ignored, which is actually serving a highly on the margins, very different need population are lost.

And that's not me being hyperbolic.

That happened last year.

And so when we're talking about alternatives and we're talking about student need, we can't only talk about Expeditionary learning, which is, by the way, awesome for all kids and there's no reason that that can't be present in some way in any neighborhood school.

So it's just, I feel like this, I appreciate this conversation and as a board director thinking about the whole system and all kids, we have spent the last five months, four months talking about 15% of our students who have all of the options Unless they have a kid with a disability.

Then they don't.

Because they could qualify for highly capable or be able to go to an option school, have access, have all the privileges, and then that option school could say we don't have that here.

But we've been talking, we've been spending all of our time talking about the students who think, some of them believe a neighborhood school is something to be escaped.

Our neighborhood schools are incredible.

especially those that are trying so desperately to cling to survival as their resources dwindle as enrollment declines but we're still making them hang on.

And so we had an opportunity last year to decide restructure, like let our system flex with enrollment and consolidate schools or keep them all open and we're going to have to change staffing models so that we can afford it.

We didn't do either.

Next year's budget is going to look exactly the same.

And I'm livid about that because we asked in January for scenarios that showed different options.

We're not going to have any.

What we need to do is as we enter the next strategic plan and with our next leader that we will have by the fall, focus on all the longer term things that you're saying.

And what I hope we can commit to as a board is what has happened historically too is the short term fix comes in And people move on before it gets embedded in policy, before we have the proper reporting mechanisms, before we have the accountability measures, and we end up right back here.

Because we actually have not implemented any new governance structure.

This is status quo right now.

This is standard practice.

This is what this district has been dealing with for 30 years.

We had an audit done that's available on the website.

in December that says SOFG is not a thing in Seattle Public Schools.

We've talked about it in the boardroom.

It has not moved into implementation.

We're not doing it.

This is status quo.

No accountability.

So I'm imploring on us all to stick with it.

We have to provide direction for implementation to happen.

And yes, the implementation is your job and it's our job to make sure that it happens in alignment with what is best for our whole community, I'm frustrated and I'm excited and I look forward to us having real options, being clear about what they are, who can have access to them and having strong neighborhood schools and having specialized program like Recovery High School that meet a very unique and outsized need.

And we can do that if we're serious about making decisions to do that, sticking with it.

all right so well director hersey has one thing but we're going to continue on and just we we have one more item on the agenda that we didn't get to last week and we have to wrap up by nine so we will be wrapped up by nine so director hersey i just wanted to say how comedy it is how often we hear that sofg is ruining a district that has already been ruined if you go back and look at every single public comment for the last 30 years But we're not even implementing it with fidelity like it like that and I'm not saying that to be coy What I'm saying is is that like when we do not communicate the Conspiracy theories fill the void and people will make up whatever it is They want to service whatever it is.

They might be advocating for at that moment And that's not their fault.

It's our fault because we're not doing a good enough job of communicating.

Like, I just, that is just wild to me that we are getting beat over the head for something that we really wish was implemented, and it is already getting blamed for stuff that it has, even if it were implemented at 100%, would not have any impact on what we're talking about.

I'm sorry.

Bring us back to enrollment.

We got, bring us back to enrollment while we got here.

So, Director Bragg, Thank you, Director Hersey.

Every time you go before me, you say, like, half the stuff I'm going to say.

That's good.

That is really good.

Okay.

But, ah, so a lot of these are statements, not questions, and I already know that, and I'm not going to try and phrase it as that.

But from a student perspective, I'm coming in this with the fact that, like, I am not a full-on board director.

I don't get as much information as them, so I'm fully coming at for where the parents are and where the students are here.

It is communication.

It is so much of the root of what we are hearing every single time people come up to public testimony is they do not know what is happening.

They do not understand how long these implementations are going to take.

They don't understand how we got here.

They don't see the roadmap.

They don't see where we made our faults.

We don't acknowledge those faults and show them how we got there and where our solutions are.

And when we have solutions, it takes five clicks through a maze of a website to get to a memo that's barely readable.

And when we do engagement, and when I hear about engagement especially, I hear so much of people just being told what they should know.

And not being asked, what do you know?

And where do you know that from?

Like how are you getting your information?

How can we make this information better for you?

Because currently you're getting it through conspiracy theories that are running rampant because we don't inform.

And the fact that a lot of what people have been saying they don't see the communication of it being implemented.

Or they don't see the fact that like, yeah, a lot of people will get upset about things because change doesn't happen in a day.

and they want it to happen in a day.

And we all wish it could happen in a day.

But they're also not communicated to as why it's not happening.

And then I sit at this meeting, and I hear all of this, and I read the memos, and I'm hearing a lot of things being said, but as I sit in my high school, Or I go from, because I have gone through such a transitional period in Seattle Public Schools.

My kindergarten, I've been here since kindergarten until I'm in my senior year.

And I have seen things be said, because I started to get interested in the school board years ago.

Because I'm crazy.

But I have heard things be said.

Like at the first time I watched a board meeting, I wanna say I was in sixth grade.

And I hear things be said and they're talked about and it's performative.

Because when I sit in my school and I see five years later, I see the five years later of that plan, I did not see it happen.

I did not feel it in my school.

And it's also the fact that I just every day in that school and when it comes to this enrollment conversation, when it comes to implementing these systems, making the wait lists available, making it more direct for these students to understand where their education is and the parents to understand where their kids are going, how it's happening, how they get that communication, what they see is they see the top level here talk, and they don't see it happen down here.

Or if they see it happen, it is a microscopic amount of what we say up here.

Because it just does not trickle down.

Because we set, honestly, kind of little goals, and only 5% of your 5% gets down there.

Yeah, I wasn't vetted before talking because normally we do that.

So I don't know what I just said.

That's fine.

All right.

So again, Director Sarju, but we do have our educational resource analysis in our strategic plan that I really would like to get to.

So just remind us all that we want to try to wrap up.

Yeah, I'm not going to take long like Liza.

I'm coming over here because I want the interpreter to be able to maybe have an easier time in seeing me so you all can turn around.

First of all, I want to thank and acknowledge Dr. Rocky for your articulation around your seriousness to actually actively respond to our deaf and hard of hearing community.

When you say you're going to do something, it actually gets done.

And I want to publicly acknowledge that.

The other thing that I want to point out that you said that is totally relevant to this enrollment conversation, because I am paying attention, is earlier when we were at the table, you talked about Dr. Mia taking the targeted to the universal, right?

For the entire school year, I have been advocating and demanding that we have interpreters here.

I have been advocating and demanding.

When it got serious was last week because I threw a complete hissy fit.

I'm still angry about that.

It shouldn't have to get to that point.

I don't have a child who's deaf or hard of hearing.

But you know what?

That's a marginalized community.

And you know how I know?

Because my kids went to TOPS.

That community has been asking for interpreters for school meetings for 35 years over that.

We were asking for that when my 35-year-old was at TOPS in kindergarten.

It has taken 30 years for there to be a serious response.

The reason why I'm honing this point is that it should never take us 30 years.

It shouldn't even take us a year.

When we have another situation like this, and there will be another situation, we need to take the targeted, of this DHH situation and take it to the universal.

Because when you focus on those who are most marginalized, everybody benefits.

We say that, but this school district does not move in that way, nor have they ever moved in that way.

I think because you have made a public statement, we are making the turn.

And so if there are deaf and hard of hearing families on the website, I know you have engaged with me.

I've gotten many emails, many texts, many phone calls.

I'm saying this publicly because I actually trust and believe that we have turned the corner now.

And if we haven't, then you can feel free to still come at me.

They come at me, but they come at me with love, and they come at me with, you gotta keep hounding, you gotta keep hounding.

But I don't wanna hound anymore.

I'm exhausted from this, right?

It's kinda like, I feel like we've just like, well, we're just gonna ignore them until we can't anymore, right?

And so I'm not gonna take, up a lot of airtime because these people are contracted until 9 o'clock.

But what I am going to say is we will never again in the future have a meeting like we had where the interpreters went home at 9 o'clock and we keep going on.

We will adjourn the board meeting.

Or I will adjourn myself.

Because if we can't be fully inclusive, we're not going to continue on because you know what that is?

That's bigotry, it's gaslighting, it's placating, it's, I'm not gonna say it on, it's not a cuss word, but I'm not gonna say it.

It's problematic, I'm just gonna say that.

And so I believe we are turning a corner.

And what I'm asking is that we use this situation, Right?

Because enrollment is important to deaf and hard of hearing students and their parents.

Right?

But we've never actually demonstrated that they're included in that conversation and in that planning until this evening.

I heard you.

What I think I heard you say is you articulated a change in the way you're enrolling those kids.

Y'all, that's what action looks like.

That's what action looks like.

And unfortunately, it took a lot of trauma, it took a lot of anger to get there.

But we don't have to do that, because now we've learned our lesson, or at least I hope we have.

Because what you demonstrated is that what is possible, when we actually put our minds to it.

And we don't ever have to go through this again.

So I am publicly thanking you.

Because I don't think, and I know you're not comfortable with this because I'm looking right at you, but I don't think we get here unless you did some personal reflection and personal thinking after that meeting that you made a commitment something was going to be different.

I don't think we sit here doing this today.

So let this be the lesson for all of the future things that are to come, because they're going to come.

We know they are.

But now we actually have a roadmap.

We know how to do this.

We look at the problem, we take the targeted, and take it to the universal.

And if you haven't been trained in that, go get training, because it's not really that difficult.

It actually isn't difficult.

It's where there's a will, there's a way.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, I have two very quick questions.

I know we're watching the clock.

On the work that's happening this year, the immediate, how will families, how will people find out?

I know you're just looking at what are the things that we can tweak without there being big systemic problems caused by it.

Get all that.

You're trying to get closer to that 10%.

How will, you've told us a few things you're doing.

I know you all are looking into more.

How will that be communicated out?

Can you hear me?

Yeah, thank you for your question.

Absolutely.

So we understand that we need to do a better job at communicating, so we will definitely own that.

So if there's any switch outside of our normal review and expanding choice, we will definitely have a communication that we will send out to families.

and work with our Office of Public Affairs on that communication and explain in detail what that looks like and the impact and be more straightforward and how that process look like and the impact.

And I would add building leaders into the when we made some moves about that really affected John Hay and Queen Anne teamwork with both building leaders so they could also understand the impacts and work with their communities as well to know.

Okay question two for this long term looking at the 26 27. What is the timeline of when these community engagements and the options have to be presented so that we're not back in this place where it's sort of too late to make big changes.

We haven't completely plotted out that work plan, but it really would need to be near the start of the school year.

If there's a decision we need to make in the fall, it may be, well, there's a half measure for 26, 27, and then something broader, but we're focusing right now on the coming school year and what we can do now, and then we're just starting to plot out what that work plan looks like.

So we should put it on the June board agenda then?

In the normal course of how we change certain guidelines within our student transfer or student assignment plan, we tend to engage in the fall and then we bring an update to the board in November.

So there's some timing.

From a planning perspective, maybe think about bringing this back for another update come September, October timeframe so we can hear where things are at and get an update from staff.

We might try to put a placeholder over a little bit earlier if in fact we need to move the open enrollment period.

I don't want to overstate how much we thought this through.

We think this is the right sequence of events.

And we need to develop that list of options and is there an interim option or a final option.

But definitely by this fall, we can't wait past this fall to make decisions about 26, 27. August, September.

Yeah.

August.

Yeah.

That would be great.

Because there's not much going on in August.

I'm looking at Ms. Wilson-Jones to hopefully take a note of that somewhere.

All right, strategic planning update, because this is exciting.

We didn't get it to it last time.

And Vice President Briggs and I already detailed out our June 4th meeting.

And we definitely don't have time for it then.

So we're going to do it now.

I'm going to turn this over to Deputy Chief of Staff Eric Gersey, who, as someone who is relatively new to the district, has done an amazing job herding cats on getting the strategic plan to where it is.

Great.

Thanks Chief Podesta.

I want to start off with just a brief introduction.

We have our consultants and partners from Education Resource Strategies who are with us.

They're going to walk us through some slides here.

I'm going to kind of just give a brief voiceover and then skip to some slides later on.

You've got them.

We can go back to them.

But I do just want to ground us in a story from a student that I heard today, a student from the Seattle World School who shared his plans for after high school.

And what he said is, thanks to the support that I got over the last three years that I've been here, I've applied to college and to the University of Washington.

Because of the knowledge I've gained here at the Seattle World School, I was accepted to the University of Washington.

so I feel like I'm ready and I'm very thankful for the school for helping me achieve that.

I don't have anything to give back to them right now, but maybe in the future I'll be able to help others the way they helped me.

Right now I'm just receiving all the gifts and support they've given me, but in the future I want to share and give that back.

And the reason I share that story is because what we're talking about today is fundamentally the student experience, the student and staff experience, and how we want to change, how we leverage our people, time, and money across Seattle Public Schools to enhance that school experience, to achieve our goals within the constraints of our resources.

And just briefly, if you were to walk outside of the classroom that that student was sitting in, what you'd see is very similar to the life ready goal that the board has adopted.

You would see a bulletin board, and on the left-hand side, you'd see all the students' names who are seniors, and you'd see check marks on whether they've done their senior meeting, they've applied to the Seattle Promise Program, they've done their FAFSA or WAFSA, they've done their networking meeting, they've done their world language test.

So they're being really intentional about student by student, what have students accomplished, and how are the resources being leveraged to support them.

Really quickly, I'm just going to tee up sort of four phases, three points of process, and two insights that are going to guide some of the work that we have in front of us.

The first is that we're embarking on sort of a four-phase journey.

The first is the goals and guardrails.

The board has set the goals and the guardrails, the top-line goals and guardrails.

We've shared initial interim goals.

We're continuing to work on that and tinker with that.

And Director Rankin, thank you for your feedback.

We're looking at that and incorporating that.

We'll be back in front of the board on the 21st with revised or preliminary interim guardrails to have that discussion.

Today we're talking about our strategy and resource analysis to understand how our resources defined broadly as time, people, and money are distributed across the school system.

And we're using resourcing as a point of entry into the strategic planning conversation because we believe that resourcing intersects with sort of three areas that are big rock issues for the school district.

The first is that we're declining in enrollment overall and we're managing a differently sized district.

We kind of just talked about that.

The second is that we have a $100 million budget deficit according to which we're spending about $100 million more than we're bringing in.

And the third is that we're looking to conceive new academic strategies to move the needle for students to achieve our goals within the constraints of our guardrails.

So we're taking the insights that we gleaned from looking at resources to sort of begin to piece together some initial shifts for year one, which we'll be bringing back to the board and we'll be standing up sort of a series of what we're calling strategic imperatives long term that are going to guide the work of the district.

Briefly, three points of process.

The first is that we're keenly aware that we're planning in the midst of a superintendent transition.

We are being intentional about how we do so, so that we're establishing for now just a fact base.

What we're trying to do is understand and develop a shared understanding of where our resources are distributed, some strategies we're standing up for next year, and how we can begin to set the stage for priorities and how the next administration will take those on.

And in the PowerPoint in front of you, you can kind of see best practices for how we're going to do that.

The second is stakeholder engagement.

We've begun to engage stakeholders pretty deeply, including students school leaders, educators.

We conducted a survey with school leaders that had about a 90% response rate to understand how we're serving them.

We've held four focus group sessions with school leaders.

We've talked to educators, and we're beginning to bring this work out to the community.

But we think right now the precedent is for the superintendent search engagement to take the front seat, and we're going to gain a lot of insight along the way for what the community's priorities are there.

And in a second, I'll turn it over to our partners.

But I just want to raise sort of two insights that I heard from board directors over the last several months.

The first is from you, President Topp.

You've shared that graph a number of times that shows kind of our outcomes versus our spending.

And you've said, hey, it looks like in our higher need schools we're spending more money, but we're not necessarily achieving better results for that.

Is that true?

Are we really upholding our values is sort of the first question and sort of the second question is why are we not achieving better results?

I think we're going to begin to unpack that question with some level of depth.

The second is from you, Vice President Briggs, and you've asked how much would it cost for us to achieve our goals and what will we spend that money on?

I think what we're going to see.

Like I was saying, how can we exceed our goals and how much would it take?

And I think that the answer that we're going to kind of suggest tonight is it's a little bit more complicated because we both need to look at how much we're spending, how well we're spending that money, what's the experience that's creating, and how does that translate into outcomes?

So I think that'll be a productive way for us to begin thinking about that as a team going forward as we establish this fact base.

So with that, we'll turn it over to our partners, and we will end before 9 p.m.

Let's target to end at 855 from ERS.

And any questions board directors have, can we send to the board office, Ellie, and we can make sure staff responds with answers.

Perfect.

We can start, I think, on slide six.

This is, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Perfect.

Okay.

Um, to president, uh, top board directors of the administrative leadership.

My name is Dr. Angela King Smith.

My colleague and I will be providing an update regarding the work around the strategic plan.

Um, Education Resource Strategies, or ERS.

We are a national nonprofit organization that partners with district leaders to transform how resources, and as Eric mentioned, resources, we think of them as people, time, and money.

All are very precious to K-12 school districts and are used to support student success.

We focus on helping school systems make strategic data-informed decisions that really focus on promoting equity and improved outcomes.

Since January, we've been working across the district to review how resources are being used in the district across all levels at both the school level, regional level and central office departments and teams.

Today, we want to share just a little bit about our work that we're doing with the administration and what we're learning about the system and that can be used for the future decision making.

As Eric mentioned, we've been thinking deeply about both your strategic planning work as well as this current state analysis or fact base that we've been doing.

The transition of a superintendent before or during a strategic planning process is a very real situation.

And so we, as a national organization focused on supporting the work of school districts across this country, we wanted to help Seattle Public Schools think about how to best move forward and what adjustments might need to be made given this transition.

And so we've been really trying to think about both the challenges that the district and the staff may face during this transition, and how to best adjust the strategic planning process to really think about the long term for the district.

And so on this slide, on slide seven, you can see some of the things that we've taken into consideration from research and best practices associated with leadership transitions.

And we've made adjustments to the timeline or recommendations so that this work stays on track and stays focused, focused on long-term impact.

And so ultimately that the system maintains momentum and progress, but also takes into consideration some of these challenges that the district may face.

And so on slide eight, You'll see some of the things in terms of how we're thinking about this work, really focusing in on that current state, developing that fact base, really understanding priorities and the work that is happening for what now is year one of the strategic plan.

We really recommend the system to really think about long term around years two through five of the strategic plan, waiting until you have Made decisions around the incoming superintendent and when that person is sitting in the seat that they can really provide that vision and future direction so we've made adjustments to the work that will be doing and the work that we're doing with the system to provide support.

I'd like to go ahead and transition to my colleague so that he can get into what I'm calling some of the things that we're learning about the system regarding some of the analysis that we've done.

Today, you're just seeing just a few pieces of data and information that is helping the system to really focus in on a couple of key areas.

And so today, we'd like to share just a few of those items.

So I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Rob Dagnow.

who will be going through that information at this time.

Thanks Angela.

And for sake of time I'll probably just go through three things here to make sure that we end on time.

So I'll start with slide 10 actually.

And we wanted to start this section by grinding on the purpose of our first phase of work here with Seattle Public Schools which is about building an understanding of how resources are currently used in the district in order to identify and prioritize the highest impact shifts.

in resource allocation and use so that they could be a part of the next chapter of SPS strategy.

To do so, we're looking at two questions.

One, how much?

Two, how well?

We name both of these very intentionally as when talking about resources, both matter in our service of creating a different student and teacher experiences that enable the highest possible outcomes for students.

In the following slides, we'll walk through just a few people key sample analyses that illustrate current patterns around how much and lay the groundwork for deeper conversations in alignment around strategic planning.

We'll shift to slide 15, for example, here.

And I think there actually might be a couple of click throughs here as well.

So there might be one more click.

Thank you.

So we brought this up.

And the reason that sort of we were looking at this particular thing is for part of our analysis, we were looking at how how does Seattle Public Schools measure need or sort of use different measures of need in its school staffing formula?

And this slide focuses on one specific component of Seattle Public Schools staffing approach, the differentiated teacher allocation tiers that are used at the elementary school.

So as you may know, Seattle allocates teacher staffing at elementary school levels in part based on a school's percentage of students that are eligible for free and reduced price meals.

This is a strategy we see in many districts, an equity driven approach to ensuring that hiring schools receive additional instructional staff, for example.

But there's two things that we really wanted to highlight.

One is that there can be significant variation within a single staffing tier.

So if you look at that purple tier, for example, schools in that tier could sort of range between 40 and 75 percent and yet staffed the same.

So you could imagine that needs may be different in those schools yet have sort of a similar staffing allocation.

The other thing that we wanted to draw the attention to here is sort of that difference between, say, the light green and that purple.

Those are schools that may have very similar levels of need, yet staffed, again, very differently.

And the question that we were sort of teeing up is, you know, what are the different ways that Seattle could think about need?

Can we have just sort of one measure here?

And what's the way to sort of address potential challenges with regard to sort of staffing using tiers as another?

The last slide that I just want to share with you, given the time we have is slide 16, the next one.

As a part of our exploration of this question around how much, we took a closer look at staffing patterns across elementary schools in Seattle with a focus both on baseline or foundational staffing and then how these staffing allocations work.

vary based on school needs this slide compares staffing at sort of two ends of the spectrum sort of schools of the lowest quartile of students that are receiving free reduced price meals for schools that are in sort of the highest quartile our goal here was to prompt two really important questions one does staffing in lower need schools reflect the types of student and staff experiences that seattle public schools aspires to create system-wide And two importantly, our schools serving higher need populations receiving the differentiated resourcing in ways that are sufficient to also create the types of experiences students and staffs need in those schools to be successful.

You know, we do see, again, those additional staffing at those highest need schools.

But if you look at sort of what that composition of that is, about two thirds of that comes from differences in student population around multilingual learners or students with disabilities.

A smaller proportion of that comes from those more general education resources, which, again, just sort of prompts this question of Are those the set of resources, both amount and type, that create the types of student and staff experiences that Seattle wants to be true in its course?

So I know that I went quite quickly and sort of abbreviated, but want to be very respectful of time.

So we'll sort of pause for Angela or Eric to add anything else.

Perfect.

So I appreciate board directors, ERS, further staff.

We do not have time for comments, Director Rankin.

We are going to.

Sorry.

So this is what we're going to do.

I appreciate those board directors who took time to interview with ERS.

They've also offered a deeper dive.

I know Director Rankin took up the offer and did a deeper dive.

I've got it scheduled on my calendar.

If you don't have it scheduled, please see Eric and he will get that scheduled.

And we will dive deeper into this at a later time.

If you have specific questions on what was presented, let's get that to board office.

But we're going to wrap up the presentation there tonight.

The full deck is in the materials, yes.

So with that, that concludes our business.

A quick happy birthday to Julia from the board office.

Thank you for spending your birthday with us.

And at our next regular board meeting, so not the one not our work session but our regular board meeting we will have a celebration with our student board directors very excited for that so make sure you come early for some treats some some fun words and the celebration but there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 8 56 p.m.

thank you everyone