missing title

Good afternoon.

It is 4.30.

We are going to momentarily start this meeting.

All right.

This is Director Topp.

I am now calling the board special meeting to order at 4 30 p.m.

Please note that this meeting is being recorded.

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

For the record I'll call the roll Vice President Briggs.

Here Director Lavallee Here Director Mizrahi Here Director Rankin Here Director Smith One more time.

Here.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Director Song.

Here.

And this is President Topp.

Good afternoon, everyone.

We've got a work session ahead of us in two parts, but want to first just do some introductions.

We have our Superintendent Schulzner here with us for his first sort of board meeting.

And I just want to pass over the microphone to him to talk a little bit about some of the events from this past week.

Hello.

Good afternoon, everyone.

It's an honor and privilege to be here.

It is really wonderful to be able to actually be here physically present with all of you.

Thank you again for welcoming me with open arms to this community.

Of course, I do want to make mention of the two students who were tragically killed on Friday.

They are our students.

They are our children.

They are the people that we are supposed to protect.

They are the people that of course we love.

And I just want to send our condolences, our grief, our thoughts, but also to know that these types of events need to call us to action.

And so I just want to make sure that everybody in the community is mourning with us and we understand the mourning, we understand the feeling, we are sorry, we're gravely sorry.

But I look forward to working with this community so that we can help try to end these types of horrible, tragic incidences.

Thank you very much, President Tom.

Thank you Superintendent Schulzner I think moments like this public service doesn't pause and even though it's difficult and it's weighing on us we do have two portions of our meeting tonight and we will push through and sometimes moments like this call for more from all of us more doubling down on our work so the first part of this evening is on progress monitoring at the conclusion of that first work session we'll move into a continuation of the budget sort of work session and we'll start kind of right where we left off on the 28th just a kind of quick housekeeping thing staff received some questions later today or late today so not all of them have responses yet they'll work they tried to respond to as many questions as possible and maybe I'll let them speak to this but some of those questions were answered but they will continue to answer questions just so as we think about how we spend our time or what questions you specifically want to ask as we go around the you know that they they're not ignoring the questions, they let me know that they're gonna be working on getting further responses.

But with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Dr. Torres Morales for the presentation on progress monitoring.

Good evening, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, board directors.

I know we're hitting the time of year.

We actually get sun later in the day, almost.

So good afternoon, board directors.

I'm here to present our progress monitoring on our math progress report.

As you recall, we were before you once already, and we did baseline reporting at that time over where we were.

We have our first set and slice of data for this year to talk through.

And so, As a reminder, the purpose of this report is for us to review the progress of the board-adopted SMART goals in our five-year trajectory.

We're gonna share an update on the student outcomes in fourth through sixth grade mathematics, reflect on the current data and make adjustments as needed, and outline emerging future strategies to achieve our goal targets.

So the plan for progress monitoring, you'll recall we were in front of you all in December and then we were in front of you in January.

We're now in front of you in February for this is our progress report on goal number two for math.

And as a reminder, progress report is the performance report delivered during the middle of the school year summarizing progress to date on goal metrics and our strategic initiatives.

This we've looked at before but just worth looking and noting again is the iceberg analogy where we look at the top of the iceberg is the school board and the superintendent and then there's the below, all the other things that are going on to make some of this work happen and the progress monitoring part is just the tip of the iceberg, the top, there's a lot of other things that go into this work.

So to review our actual mathematics goal, the percentage of sixth graders prepared to succeed in math coursework in seventh grade as measured by sixth grade Smarter Balanced Assessment will increase from 56.8% in June of 2025 to 66.8% in June of 2030. As a reminder in our previous set of goals it was seventh grade.

One of the things that we heard clearly from board and community was feedback that we wanted to move everything back a bit because if our kids weren't hitting it at seventh grade why aren't we taking an earlier look at things and making adjustments earlier so that when they do hit seventh grade we've already addressed some of those gaps.

and so also just the differentiated targets to address achievement gaps, we did set accelerated five-year goals for our students of color furthest from educational justice, African-American males, and free and reduced-price lunch students.

And to note, we do have an appendix based on feedback we've received from you all around data for students with disabilities, our ML students, et cetera, or students with disabilities that receive services, ML data, et cetera.

So in terms of measuring the progression of the fourth through sixth grade math, there's two assessments we're gonna be looking at, or that we do look at.

One is the Smarter Balanced Assessment, one is the MAP or the Measures of Academic Progress.

So the SBA is a computer adaptive test and requires multi-step performance tasks with reasoning.

This is basically like your summary end of year assessment that all of your kids would take.

The MAP, on the other hand, is also computer adaptive.

It measures standards-based skills in key areas in math like algebraic thinking, numbers and operations, geometry, and statistics and probability.

It provides instructional useful information.

So for those that are not aware, the MAP is actually aligned to something called the learning continuum.

So as a student receives a certain score, it'll tell you what skills the student knows and what skills they should work on next.

So it is an instructional tool.

and along with curriculum embedded assessments it can help identify skill gaps, plan for instruction and monitor improvement throughout the year.

And as you see below for fourth grade we'll be looking at MAP and SBA as well as for fifth grade and for sixth grade.

Reporting on the interim would be the SBA for fourth and fifth and MAP for fifth and sixth but the ultimate top line we've aligned to the Smarter Balanced assessment for the end of sixth grade.

just to review our performance status if we're in the red we're declining that means we didn't meet the target and results decreased by more than or equal to one percentage point from the prior period maintaining is we didn't meet the target but results did not change by the plus or minus one percent improving we did not meet the target but results are increasing or equal to one percentage point and meet target or if we met the target it means that we have exceeded our current target regardless of the direction or change As a review, here is our overlying top line measure.

This is also worth some conversation at some point, especially with Superintendent Sheldon, are with us now.

But if you look, we are already, for all students, we're at 56.8% as of the end of last school year, and the goal is to hit 66.8% within five years.

while that does account for 2% a year that is a very aggressive target and as I noted worth some conversation and you'll also see that we do have differentiated targets for this three subgroups noted earlier and that those are on an aggressive track intentionally so given some of the historical issues we've had in serving those groups of students in our district in the past.

So here's our first set of data, and this is grade five SPA prediction for spring of 2026. Interim measure 1A, the percentage of students of color furthest from educational justice in grade five who achieve smarter balanced assessment proficiency in math will increase from 34% in spring of 2025 to 44% by spring of 2030. So what we have on the left here, this is called the projected spring 2026 SBA proficiency.

This is based on fifth grade fall 2025 map.

So what does that mean?

When a student takes a map assessment, the system will produce a report for you that talks about the predicted proficiency summary.

So what it says is that based on the way a student scores, this percentage of students are predicted to be proficient in math on their spring assessment.

for this specific interim measure, we're looking at fifth grade, hence why this was the fall fifth grade map data.

If you look, all students for the current year was at 48.9%, for last school year was at 47.2%.

Overall, we did rate this as maintaining because while the overall measure is saying that we will increase to 44% by 2030 and 34% by spring of 2025, what you'll notice, our starting point at where we're at in the fall, we're pretty much even where we have been in the past.

So we know that through the instructional practices, the curriculum materials that we have and the things we do in our schools, we can predict that we're gonna fall right in the same range as we have in the past.

This does beg the question about, okay, if we're maintaining, then what are we gonna be doing different?

Because we're not really interested in maintaining.

The point of this is to say that we're going to exceed, especially with the aggressive targets that we've set for ourselves.

but based on fall look to a fall look we're pretty much in the same ballpark if you look across even for our subgroups where we're at hence why at this time we've rated the goal as maintaining.

map growth goals on fifth grade spring map.

So this is interim measure 1B.

Among students of color furthest from educational justice in grade five, who did not achieve smarter balance assessment proficiency in math, the proportion who meet or exceed their growth target from fall to spring map test windows will increase from 47% to 57%.

In this area we're actually noting this as declining because if you look at our metrics, especially for our students of color furthest from educational justice, we are not keeping track with where we were before.

So this begs the question again around what are our current strategies.

In our previous metric we saw that we're maintaining, isn't awful, but we also want to grow this.

And so when we look at this metric, we also see that we're declining in this area.

So it begs the question over, as we're thinking about potential strategic plan, as we're talking about budgets, as we're talking about strategies, what are those strategies gonna be?

Because the strategies we're currently using are actually keeping us at a maintenance level and are declining in certain areas.

Next we're gonna go to fourth grade.

So this is grade four SBA prediction for spring of 2026. This is our interim measure 2A.

So this is the percentage of students of color furthest from educational justice in grade four who achieve smarter balance assessment proficiency in math will increase from 39.2% in spring of 2025 to 49.2% by spring of 2030. So once again, the measure here, it's the projected spring 2026 SBA proficiency, and these data are based on fourth grade fall 2025 maps.

So this was the map that was taken in the fall by our fourth graders.

Once again, what you'll see here is that we're in a maintenance state.

Want to call attention to, yes, we know what we want to hit in the spring, but based on historical trends, when we're in this ballpark, we're gonna maintain where we've been.

And so it also begs the question around strategies again, we see that we know we'll be able to grow our students but basically maintain our current proficiency rates and so need to push the conversation over our overall strategies.

Finally we have grade six SBA prediction for spring of 2026. So this is interim measure 2B, the percentage of students of color furthest from educational justice in grade six who are projected to achieve smarter balance assessment proficiency in the spring as measured by the fall math map will increase from 29.9% in fall of 2025 to 39.9% by fall of 2030. So this is a look at how our sixth graders this past fall, our current sixth graders perform the assessment.

Once again what you'll see is that we're in a maintenance stance here.

Our data did not move drastically in either direction, so we are maintaining.

So we know that if we stick with our current strategies and our current practices, we'll be on track to hit right around the same proficiency as we have in the past.

So we're gonna go through pathways to success.

So here are some of the district-wide strategies and expectations.

If the bottom graphic looks familiar too, hopefully it does, the little chart, that's actually from some of the work we've been doing in budget sessions, in progress monitoring sessions, some of that all pulled from some of the ERS strategic plan work, but When we think about the strategic plan, one of the priority, draft strategic plan, one of the priority areas was around rigorous and inclusive academic experiences.

So you'll see here one of the strategies that the district is interested in moving going forward is high quality tier one instruction and aligned assessment.

So using, reinforced some of the universal design for learning that we've been doing as a district.

and then also expand the use of our curricular embedded assessments to align instruction to timely student data.

What that means in practice is actually looking at assessment data, let's say your unit test or your chapter test, disaggregating that data to say what are the skills and knowledge that the kids know or do not know and then making plans on how we're gonna address those things.

Additionally, one of the strategy areas around multi-tiered systems of support to actually improve the data system and collaborative structures district-wide for progress monitoring and coordinating support for students.

And then provide clear and consistent guidance for school-based implementation of tier two and tier three supports versus just leaving it up in the air as to what does a kid get if they need a tier two support.

Also reflecting on data, making shifts.

This is specifically for fourth and fifth grade.

So the data we looked at on interim 1A, 1B, and 2A were the fourth and fifth grade focus.

So really thinking about monitoring progress in grade level content and addressing the learning gaps.

This goes to the use of the CEAs, the guidance for PLCs, and how we can actually leverage those things to make sure that we're getting to instructional improvements.

and also considering how are we using our expanded learning opportunities, for example, summer quarter in 2026 for students eligible that are demonstrating foundational gaps in math based on some of the assessment data.

Finally, reflecting on data and making shifts in the sixth grade focus, this is our interim 2B.

So thinking about how are we monitoring progress in grade level content and addressing the learning gaps via the standards.

Also thinking about tier two and middle school transition supports, how are we providing curricular resources and ongoing professional development for the math empowerment course.

In our district that's similar to almost like a math lab, we're working with kids who need extra support in their math foundations.

and then also once again thinking about providing expanded learning opportunities for students.

included, there's also some end notes with some definitions for you all and some appendices that dig a little bit deeper into the different data sets and also provide some more information around the progression of key topics you would see in mathematics in grades four, five, and six.

I'm gonna turn it back over I believe to President Topp for questions at this time.

Perfect.

Thank you, Dr. Torres Morales.

So we'll go around the U, just like in our normal fashion.

We'll try to stick to one question per director and then we'll see where we're at from a time perspective.

My goal here is not to cut directors off or their questioning off.

It's just one time around the U takes us about 40 minutes.

So just as we think about, you know, our time management and getting questions beforehand.

but with that we'll start with Director Lavallee.

Hey.

So I wanted to kind of ask about, you talked a little bit about some of the things that we're doing to make some changes, although a lot of it is in the data analysis piece of it, what are we actually, and the curriculum, what are we actually doing in classrooms to provide additional supports and How are we looking at that as well from a budgeting perspective?

Because if we get new curriculum in classrooms and new updates, there's still one teacher trying to do that with a classroom of kids.

So what is the practical ways that you're implementing this in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade?

So one of the things when we talk, I want to take a moment to unpack that a little bit and what we say when we say like data analysis.

So just let's run it through a scenario.

And this actually was a lifetime scenario.

Superintendent Sheldon and I were in a middle school classroom this week and it was clear as something I looked at.

So last year when we first started doing a focus on curricular embedded assessments, one of the things that we were looking at was completion rates.

Like is everybody doing it, using the curriculum, those sort of things.

One of the things that me and my team were pushing on at that time is, yes that's important, but we also need to get into what, in the field we would deem as question analysis.

Why is that important?

When you think about vetted and high quality curriculums, each of those questions in the assessment is actually pegged to some standard, and the standard is what should a student know and be able to do.

So at that time, I was really curious about sixth grade math, and the reason being is one of the issues, and this is a nationwide issue in mathematics instruction, is dividing fractions.

And you say, why?

Well, it's the idea of what does it actually mean to divide a fraction?

In traditional math instruction, what you'll find is that kids are told, flip the denominator, multiply.

Great.

Everyone can do that.

It looks good.

It's great.

The second follow-up question is why?

And then you often run into a place of like kids are like, I don't know.

That's what I was told to do.

And this is the answer.

And so I share that because when we talk about doing analysis of questions, that's where we can actually see what's going on so that we can then provide supports that teachers would need in the classroom for how to address those missing skill gap type things.

and so not surprisingly last year when I did this data analysis, what did I find?

Questions that were related to procedural knowledge of dividing fractions, we did amazing as a school district.

Actually across all of our schools, I don't remember off the top of my head, I wanna say we were like 60 to 70% of kids were knocking it out the park.

the questions related to the procedural knowledge part of dividing fractions, we were actually across the district more in like the 20, 30% area and I wasn't surprised to see that.

Fast forward this year, we were just in a classroom and we were looking at them dividing fractions.

And so when we were asking students specifically like, all right, so what is it that is going on, we would get the answer, but we wouldn't get a clear reason.

The next thing that we were doing, and specifically I started looking at what were the instructional materials, and they were our instructional materials.

They are our curriculum that we're giving teachers to use, yet when I was looking at them, I'm like, I can see where there may be some potential gaps here as to the why.

And so the question then becomes, what are we doing next in strategies?

In the absence of doing that level of data analysis, though, we're really not going to know.

Of course, you talk to teachers and you hear from them as well, but we also have a responsibility to look at, like, where are our gaps, where are the gaps in our materials, how do we fill those gaps, so that we're giving teachers what they need for that.

In terms of the budget pieces, those are bigger questions.

We're going to talk about that, I think, in our next progress commentary, but, yeah.

Hopefully that answered your question.

Yeah, thank you.

I would tell you standard-wise what we're doing for fourth, fifth, and sixth is we're looking at tier one instruction.

As we look at tier one instruction, we're asking them to reteach what they've actually ascertained from the curriculum assessment.

We're also, as we ask them to reteach it, we're asking them to get together in their PLCs and actually get some coaching.

If they didn't do well the first time through, let's take a look at what happened.

Let's look at that curriculum-based assessment, look at what it can inform our instruction and shift those practices.

And the last thing is we're trying to scale those practices up for everyone, so to get to mastery.

So that's what we're doing with our teachers just at fourth, fifth, sixth, but all the way from kindergarten up.

We're asking all the teachers to do that, to look at that tier one instruction and learn from that.

Director Song.

I actually submitted a lot of tactical questions.

I need some help kind of understanding the data pieces, so I might follow up with you on that.

My comment is kind of similar to Jen's, which is that you are all obviously instructional experts.

Sometimes this presentation is like the communication is like you would give to a peer.

and so I think of this as an opportunity for us to communicate to the public the work and strategies that we're doing to improve instruction and outcomes for our students.

So I think we should think about how we can present this information in a way where parents and caregivers, when they see this, they will know what they're looking for in a classroom.

So that's just a general comment.

I'm looking at slide 16 and often we come back to multi-tiered systems of support.

So providing clear guidance for a consistent school-based implementation of Tier 2 and 3 supports.

What does that look like right now and what are the things that you're seeking to improve around Tier 2 and Tier 3?

And then which slide are you on?

What's the title of it?

District Wise Strategies and Expectations, slide 16, yeah.

Yeah, so currently, it's a little bit all over the place.

And I think this is something that we've been talking about as a team, something that I've talked about up here and said no, we need to get this tightened up.

So is it happening in some places?

Yes.

In an ideal state, what would this look like?

In an ideal state, let's say we do curriculum embedded assessment.

Let's say it's me, let's say I'm the student.

I got questions two, three, four, five, six and seven wrong out of 10. I need something that's a little bit different in my next step.

And so it should be that we're aware of who those groups of students are, and we're able to meet with them, provide instructional resources and materials to the teacher to actually address the gaps in the skills and knowledge based on the questions that they missed and that they get whatever it is, the instruction that they need to fill those skills and gaps and then get back on pace with what's going on.

We have some of that going on in some of our schools, but not all of our schools.

There's a whole other part to this that involves data analysis with our teachers and our principals at the school level.

So in an ideal state, we'd have one, a data tracking system that allows us to see those things more openly, and two, the vetted curricular resources ready for when those things happen in the moment, and then three, would be the actual guidance for teachers and principals on how to do this.

the intent of this is to not get into some sort of like cookie cutter mandated you need to do, you need to do but if you do need the support it needs to be ready and available for you and be clear and also be able so that it could be explained to families when let's say your child has needed to go into like a tiered support multiple times why and how we're getting them out of there does it necessarily mean your child needs a special education evaluation not always it just means that they need something extra So hopefully that helps clarify a little bit.

Yeah, it is inconsistent and I also think that in Seattle our schools are unique and so if there's a school that's doing it well, great.

We also have an obligation to provide them the support of here's the baseline of how this could look.

If you all wanna do it in a different way and jazz it up, great.

We don't wanna minimize that either.

That's the art and science of teaching but we do have an obligation to say here's the minimum of what you get and we're expecting.

I can name the six things that we're doing.

You've hit it right out of the ballpark.

What is the biggest issue is inconsistent.

What we want to do is have the experience be consistent, but research has shown these are six things that are inconsistent in our buildings, which are our formative assessments, our curriculum coherence, our instructional feedback loops, our walkthroughs, our conversations with our instructors, coaching pieces there, scaffolding the grades, where kids are at, whether they are at grade level or below grade level, how do we scaffold that.

And then the last piece is instructional coaching.

Those are the six pieces.

If we do those well, then we'll stay on course.

That's what MAP SBA is predicting.

If we do those six things well, we'll hit the goals.

Right now, if we were to look at a temperature check, our practices vary from site to site.

just we haven't been consistent with it.

We start our strategies and we haven't been able to take them to a fidelity of implementation so they're always there at that same level and growing.

Teachers leave, principals leave, it's inconsistent so those things start over.

So we're trying to get better at that and I think as we have those inconsistent practices you'll see as we start to build on our goals you'll see that stay consistent but right now as a temperature check that's where we're at right now.

I only had one question, but I was just wondering what changes are actually different between the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders that might explain why some of the progress looks stronger in certain grades than others?

So I want to clarify, I think the question you're asking like why the data looks different in each of the grades, yes?

Exactly, and like what could cross some of those.

So there's two, when you're looking, when you're doing these type of data analysis for like at schools, one of the ways that it's often talked about, and I'll go back to one of these slides just so we can look at it, is you need to think about it as cohort versus thinking about it as like gesture fourth grade.

So you're spot on with the question.

That's a different level of analysis we can do and happy to bring it forward if that's something the board would want to see in the future.

Because there's, for example, you can have a goal in saying this is our sixth grade goal, grade and then you always want to look at did we hit that in sixth grade?

There's also the cohort level data though to look at so how are the fourth graders doing when they're in fourth grade versus how they're doing when they're in fifth grade versus how they're doing when they're in sixth grade.

Some of what we tried to capture gets to that because we went back a couple years but duly noted around like we could and should maybe look at when we're looking at this, what about our current seventh graders?

How did they do last year in sixth grade?

Just so that when you're thinking about it, that is another way to look at data, and it's important to look at it by cohort, because it's a totally different group of kids every year that you look at this, so yes.

Okay, thank you.

Director Mangelson.

So this is kind of a clarifying question, but I'm looking at the SBA scores for fifth grade in 24, 25, as well as the MAP scores for 24, 25, and I'm just noticing that there's a really big difference in the gaps between all students and students of color furthest from educational justice.

So I'm just kind of wondering, especially because the MAP scores are being used for instructional materials, and there's about a 15% difference from the SBA scores if that makes sense.

So I'm just curious, are these tests testing specifically different ideas or concepts and kind of in what ways are they being used to inform things differently, if that makes sense?

Yeah, can you expand on it a little bit?

Because one, I'm clear on the part around the gap that we see.

And I think the question is around the use of the instructional materials and why a gap would exist if they have exposure to the same materials?

Is that the question?

I'm just kind of curious because there's such a difference between the SBA and the map.

I'm just curious, are they testing different things or why is there that big difference between the two tests?

Yeah, so it is a projected proficiency.

will, the way the map works is it is aligned to standards and based on the way a student scores, it'll predict, like let's say it was me or it was you, based on how I performed that assessment, does it look like I would be proficient on the SBA, yes or no?

So here where you see part of the gap, what's not accounted for is how much we do as a school district in the interim there.

And so that's why some of these are rated as maintaining, even though they're less than what the actual long-term goal is gonna be, because our trend data and patterns show us that we get our kids caught up to whatever that certain level is.

So duly noted, and it is true, like, yeah, that does look, why is it such a gap?

In general, in our system, even with that gap based on our practices, we do usually get the kids to whatever that percentage is which is why it's maintaining begs the question though back to our strategies like what are we doing yes and I think we need to just keep talking more about that and iterating on it because we know that the strategies will get us to a certain point but we actually want to go beyond that point so is it doing that yes the map is aligned to standards but it is an algorithm that is a predictor just based on how kids perform essentially Does that help?

Yes, thank you.

Director Smith.

Hi.

Just looking in the end notes, what really pops out to me is the multilingual learners seem like they're doing drastically worse, both in terms of the raw numbers, but also, or not raw numbers, none of this is raw numbers, both in terms of in any given year, the number of the percent that is proficient is lower, but also looking at from the fourth grade assessment to the fifth grade to the sixth grade, that number is decreasing, and so I am concerned that that's saying that the longer a multilingual learner is in our school system, the farther behind they're falling.

It does kind of touch on that difference between cohorts versus point in time.

So do we have any way to help them?

Of course the answer's yes, there's always ways to help them.

There's a little bit of nuance too in this around students when they're new arrivals and when they take assessment and those sort of things.

So for example, we would have all of our students take a MAP assessment.

Not all of our students' SBA scores would necessarily be counted, multilingual students, depending on when they arrive.

But that is a fair question to ask, like the number of time in program.

We do know, for example, we can get these data for you, that our students who have exited our multilingual servicing perform quite well.

but I think the question on the table becomes why is it the ones that aren't exiting, are they not only not performing well, it actually looks like they're regressing and so I say thank you for the question.

I think I want to take it back with the team and probe on it a little bit more and also pull the data for the students that were exited from the program and how they're performing because I think there is some sort of interesting juxtaposition there around what, how and why, so yeah.

What you're leading into is the instructional strategies that how we're teaching our teachers how to actually assess, make some adjustments to Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4. If our teachers don't have those skills and we haven't really poured into them, then the adjustments in their toolbox is not going to be there.

so that's what we're working on to give those teachers with our MTSS assessments to be able to use those assessments to actually inform instruction and then help our teachers develop those skills and get the mastery on it.

Our teachers haven't got the mastery on those pieces so can you scaffold from second grade up to fourth grade and what does that look like with vocabulary, what does it look like with math vocabulary, what does it look like when you assess those students in various levels and how do you build up their confidence and courage to be able to do that and give them more time on task.

That is not a skill set that most of our teachers have developed and we're in the early stages of developing those types of strategies with our teachers on a regular basis.

So you will see that that happens at certain schools and other schools it doesn't happen or you may see it at fourth grade but you won't see it at fifth grade.

as we get our teachers to master and give them more time and PLCs to actually develop those skills, especially our EOL, our special needs students and our regular ed students all in the same classroom, they will start to be able to differentiate that instruction and be able to meet the needs of students, but they're at the early stages of doing that.

COVID kicked in, a lot of our students came back, reading skills, they're working on reading skills and math, they're working on their computation skills.

Those are a lot of different things that we're asking our teachers to do along with working on communication skills with their students.

So a lot of barriers are there, but we strongly believe the longer our students are with us, they'll start to develop those skills.

And someone will always ask us, can we catch those students up?

Well, we have to work on the students that we have right now.

Catching the student up, we can't have them go back and do third grade, they can't go back and be 14 again or can't go back and be 12 again, but we can work on actually extending that learning time either through summer or through tutoring or through mentoring to actually help our students get the skills that they need.

Thank you.

I think also the point about multilingual learners transitioning out of that program, it is kind of like some self-selection going on there where we aren't seeing the numbers for some of the previous multilingual learners.

So that's definitely a good aspect to consider.

Director Yoon.

I had one question.

So how do you guys make sure students get extra help, math help, no matter what school they go to?

I guess in this presentation, I'd ask what guardrails are in place to ensure tier two and three math supports are not dependent on a school staffing capacity?

Because if we're doing these summer programs, it does seem that it's a big ask for teachers to also extend their teaching time and such.

So I'm just wondering, to ensure these programs are successful, not during the school year since in the summer, how do we ensure that's kind of not dependent on a staffing capacity?

meaning for access to the summer program that we're talking about here?

Yeah.

A lot of times the way the team works it is it is dependent on where the MAP and the SBA scores are showing a student at, mostly the MAP scores, and so when they're performing at certain levels or not performing at certain levels, those are the groups of students that will get an outreach to join summer programming because they need something more, not necessarily that it would fall completely on the teacher's shoulders to say, Sabi or Rocky need to go to summer programming.

We have done some outreach at the middle school level especially through our partners with the City of Seattle.

So as an example, Meany Middle School, Washington were two schools that we reached out to, Mercer was another school, and we extended the learning for math through the community centers.

And the big thing that we learned about that was how do we get those people that are teaching to learn our curriculum and get up to par.

So there was a gap there, but the opportunity was there.

The second thing that we've learned from some of our 30 schools that partner with Deal, they're also extending that after school and they have extra support coming in through volunteers and they're partnering with outside resources, whether it's varsity tutors or other tutors, tips tutors, they're providing those extra support one-on-one time for our students to actually develop the skills that maybe they don't really feel comfortable asking in front of their peers or they need more time because the vocabulary is difficult for them to understand.

And so we've been doing that one-on-one.

What we haven't done is to take it to all 107 schools right now, it kind of stays within those 30 schools because they are funded through DEAL and so as we look at those pieces research-wise, how do we do that at some scale all the way across the system?

We haven't been able to take that to scale in all our schools, but we're working on to see how we can do that.

Thank you.

Vice President Briggs.

Okay, so my question is on the, where'd it go?

Under differentiated targets, to achieve, to address achievement gaps, we set accelerated five-year goals for students of color, furthest from educational justice, African-American males, and free and reduced lunch students.

So looking at the interim measure 1A, which is to me the most apples to apples comparison with our top line goal, because it's the same assessment and it's just the year prior.

What I'm seeing is that our top line goal for everyone is an increase from 56.8% to 66.8%.

And then for interim measure A, students of color furthest from educational justice will increase from 34% to 44%.

So in that scenario, the gap remains at 22%.

across five years.

So I'm not seeing how, I see that there's parallel progress, that both groups are progressing, but I'm not seeing how we're closing the gap.

So this was for, and you're talking around the interim measure, correct?

Yeah, I'm talking about interim measure 1A just because it's the SBA assessment from the previous grade, so it seems most predictive of what will happen in the following grade.

But yeah, I mean, I guess just the larger question is that there's, it's written that you said accelerated five-year goals, but I'm not seeing how they're accelerated.

Yes, and I think, noted in terms of for the interim but I believe and I'm trying to get this here.

Give me one second here.

In our overall goals it is noted here that it is we are trying to close the gap in terms of the SBA for the sixth grade.

So I think that's some work for us to talk to our data team about, around how and why in the interim measure, the way that we think that getting to this is gonna get us to the ultimate top line measure for the baseline, but the top line measure, sixth grade SBA baseline, we are looking at closing the gap because if you look at 24-25, for example, students of color furthest from educational justice, we're at 33.5.

and all students were at 56.8 which is roughly like a 23% gap and the goal is going to be that by the time we hit 29, 2030 we're at a 16% gap.

So I think, thank you for noticing and I do want us to talk to our data team more around our interim measures to make sure that they're capturing that but that does not minimize that our overarching goal should be that we're closing those gaps.

Yeah, I mean I think it's just that the 10%, the 10 percentage point increase in both the top line measurement and then for the targeted groups doesn't, there must be something else at play to explain how we're going to close the gap there because otherwise that doesn't pencil out.

And so I just, yeah, maybe there needs to be data around what that, what are the metrics around gap closing?

Because right now all I'm seeing is just a parallel progress situation.

And so yes, and I think when we look at the top line measure, it's broken out, but I don't think it is, I don't see, yes, we'll see, yeah, I got you.

Yep.

So you got your MAP scores that are the predictive growth measures, then you got your SBA that's supposed to actually make those summative adjustments that will work on teacher adjustments, and so they're predictive.

And so as we take a look at those predictive measures, what are we gonna adjust and make changes to?

So when we look at our inputs, we look at our outputs, what are we gonna do differently?

Because if we keep doing the same thing, we're gonna hit the same numbers you see here, but if we make those adjustments that we are learning at the front end, on our inputs, then our outputs are gonna be different.

But you're absolutely right.

If we stay on the same trajectory doing the same thing we've been doing before, we're gonna hit the same marks.

We keep using the curriculum the same way.

But the key to this is working with our teachers.

Having a little bit smaller class sizes to have these conversations with our teachers so they can have time to plan together.

If they get more time to plan together as a strategy, you'll start to see our teachers make those gains.

It's not about doing the same thing, it's about them having time to take a look and unpack that curriculum to see what's worked, what hasn't worked, but they need more time to be able to plan to make those adjustments and do that.

And as they do that, they will learn more strategies.

So PLCs is a huge strategy to be able to do that.

Number two, maybe working with the University of Washington or some of our partners to unpack that, to take a look at past strategies that have worked, other strategies that haven't worked, and abandon those strategies so we can actually make a difference with our students in the classroom but we have to take a hard look at what we've been doing and our behaviors as teachers to make those adjustments.

Our teachers are willing to do that.

They just need more time to do that and we can't extend that after school when they're tired.

We have to find a way to do that in our master schedule during the daytime where maybe they get an extra prep and they could actually do that.

But it's a strategy we have to look at throughout the whole system so we can do that and make those adjustments across the board.

Most teachers who come out of the system, they've had maybe one math class in their BA program and now they're in their teaching.

So how do we work with our universities so when we recruit more teachers, they have a stronger background in math and you will see that right off the board because this is cumulative.

We're talking about second grade, going to third grade, fourth grade, going to fifth grade.

They're learning these skills.

We don't build on those skills.

We're gonna see kids struggle and they won't hit their mark by the time they get to ninth grade.

And we want them to hit their mark each year.

Can I just ask a really quick follow-up question?

I guess, I guess what I'm maybe struggling with is, it's less about the pedagogy and how teachers are gonna manage to support kids in increasing proficiency and more about how we are, what our expectations are on our end from the data and so I guess, to me mathematically it makes more sense if we want to close the gap that the percentage needs to increase at a different rate.

So it would make more sense to me if we were saying that in interim measure 1A that we wanted to see a 15% increase instead of a 10% increase.

then you would be shrinking the gap.

You know what I mean?

So that's less of a question and maybe just like a clarifying where I'm coming from with my initial question.

Thank you.

Director Mizrahi.

One of the benefits of going later is that I get a lot of the questions I was going to ask out there.

So I'll just say one thing that is just related to what Director Song was saying, but not my question.

But I'm just going to say I know that we just adopted, well, just maybe like a year ago, adopted a middle school math curriculum.

And so I think it would be challenging to have consistent Tier 2 interventions and better Tier 1. unless we're really making sure that is being implemented across the district and that it's actually being used in the classroom.

So I think that's an important point.

On the map testings specifically, I'm curious about the relationship to literacy.

I know with one of my kids I saw that and she struggles with reading and her map score in math went way down in third grade because there's a reading component to it.

And it was essentially a useless score because it really had nothing to do with her math ability.

It had to do with her reading ability.

So I'm wondering if we think there's going to be any benefit literacy goals in these overall scores and then also how much we think there's just a causal relationship between the map scores and literacy versus just a corollary of students who are struggling or struggling across the board and how we can approach that problem or is there another way to assess their skills with math that doesn't require literacy?

Okay, so yes, and yes, and I think yes.

So partly when you think about the way that we have structured the goals, I mean you all came up with them, but we had a lot of input and conversation around it.

The reason that foundational literacy is so important, because there's the whole notion of learning to read, so you can read to learn.

So that's why when we think about our second grade goal, it is very important to make sure that we're getting as many kids to read at grade level or above as possible because in later years it is going to show up and it is going, 100% will have impacts in math instruction especially when you get into what they start calling word problems and story problems in elementary math and so is there also evidence that some students aren't doing well in language arts and math?

Yes.

Is there also evidence that would say that some students who don't do too well with reading or maybe have some sort of disability, potentially is that gonna impact their ability to do certain math?

Yes, that is true as well.

So to your question around is there some sort of correlation for some students?

Absolutely, and that's why it's very important when we start talking about foundational literacy and what strategies we're doing and getting students at grade level or above, it's really important because it is going to impact everything.

You can take it into science, you can take it into social studies, but it will also impact math because as you start getting into higher level math, it is not, especially nowadays, it is not just procedural math anymore.

there's conceptual understanding math that involves reading of problems and actually having to do writing out answers of problems and not just doing the flip the fraction multiply.

So yes, long way to say yes.

Director Rankin.

I have to ask one question to ask my second question.

It's a two-parter.

We'll call it 1A and 1B.

1A and 1B.

I am wondering about, and I see the appendix, but even looking in the appendix, this becomes even kind of more stark, is students of color from educational justice, how useful of a grouping is that?

for the current context because as we saw with our student needs assessment, when you look at free and reduced lunch, and multilingual learners in particular, and to some extent students with IEPs, you're capturing, because of historic and systemic racism, those demographics are capturing most of our students of color furthest from educational justice.

And what I'm seeing now is that we're actually by using that bigger bucket, we're kind of invisibilizing some of these other needs that can actually benefit from some targeted strategies.

And so that's a question is, when we look at the Venn diagram of students in different buckets that many students fall into more than one bucket, again because of the history of this country, students of color furthest from educational justice are represented or over-represented in these other groups.

But then when you break down these groups, the fact that we are not specifically talking about strategies for multilingual learners when their proficiency is so far below and it's not because they are less capable of doing this learning, it's because they don't have language access and that is something we have control over and that we should be investing in.

So that's a question of which of these groupings of measurements are the most useful for this context.

I'm not suggesting that we like never look at that category of student again, I think it's still important to look at that, but with the context of strategy, when we're looking at instructional strategies, I have never seen this district say, here's an instructional strategy that's going to apply to students of color from educational justice, never.

But I do see that there are opportunities for strategies for students with IEPs, for multilingual learners, for other groups of students.

and free and reduced lunch and we saw that, anyway, yeah, you get what I'm saying.

So that being said, I am struggling because I actually don't see any strategies presented here.

Tier one's not a strategy.

Using curriculum is not a strategy.

that's the floor of teaching.

We have standards, there is curriculum.

Asking teachers to teach harder is also not really a strategy.

And kind of combined with Evan's point of the trajectory, and I sent this some in the email and I know with not enough time to respond to it, but we seem to have current state, hoped for a future state, something magical in between, and somehow statistically improbable consistent growth.

So if I don't know what we're doing that's gonna be different that's gonna create that growth, because I don't see it here, I also would expect it's not gonna be consistent.

So I would like us, and I would be really curious, I know Superintendent Schuldner, it's your first day, your first meeting here with us, but I know you've watched a lot of our old meetings, and I'm probably repeating myself, you've heard me ask these same questions.

What I wanna see, and this ties into our budget conversation, where are we changing our strategies, changing our investments to actually target specific supports for the students who need them the most.

Because if we look in the appendix two, 97.1% of highly capable students are meeting or exceeding standard.

That's not a surprise, right?

56% of all students are meeting or exceeding.

not great but it also is like okay so for half of everybody the standard tier what we're doing now is working but when we're talking about what our strategies are to do different and they're just we're just gonna keep teaching and using the curriculum I'm not seeing how that's gonna lead to this upward trajectory and that's what I wanna see.

I wanna see, here are supports and services we're providing to our teachers, to our buildings, specifically for multilingual learners.

Here is, we're looking at our IEPs, we're looking at our services for students with disabilities and we're investing in these areas to give them support that they clearly don't have.

So I know, again, first day, but I am thinking a lot about, you used one of my favorite quotes which is the fierce urgency of now.

I have been feeling urgency for a long time and it's hard for me not to feel that urgency when this does not feel very urgent.

1A was the measuring of the groups of students and then what can we expect to see strategies that actually specifically address the needs of these students who need the most support?

Yeah, no, I'll just give a couple, a little bit more detail on some of the things we've been talking about.

So for example, if you look at our current math materials, there's a thing called Success Maker, which is a tier two intervention, which is available to all the students, which is something a little bit more specific than what we've put in the presentation.

But aligned to your question around like multilingual supports, we are starting a lot of that work with our math teachers around where are the multilingual with the interventions that are already built into the materials that they need to start leveraging based on some of these data.

And also Director Oda and her team, we've been having a lot of conversations around this, around how are we pairing the instructional, the ML instructional coaches we have here in this building to work with our curricular team so that when we're providing guidance to teachers, we're actually hitting on just high leverage.

For example, the GLAAD strategies, how are we making those more universal?

I do think to your point, there's a difference between where we're at and starting those conversations and needing it to be more robust.

Like it needs to be, this is what it is, it's more robust, it's available everywhere, and being able to almost detail that out for you all in a better way.

But it's not that it's absent, it's not that none of the things are happening, they are happening.

and I think duly noted on your point here around the students of color for this educational justice because in some ways if we look at this specific slide, when I was looking at it, it's almost minimizing what's happening for other groups.

And side note, I also looked at, yeah, that include them, but in the absence of actually calling it out, then we're not doing strategies towards them.

And then I think another thing that I just noted as you were talking about it was, yes, our highly capable students are performing at proficient levels, but if you look at the interim measure for the grade five map growth, they were not growing at the same rate as some of other students.

That begs the question is what are we doing for them as well?

I would say to you, we're happy to come back and give you the strategies, because they're not here, you don't see them.

But you will be able to see a robust toolkit for first grade, second grade, they're different for each situation.

And for us to be able to hone that and to say what we're doing for each first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, all the way up, we need to be clear about what's working for our multilingual, our special needs students are highly capable and be able to explain that in detail.

So we wouldn't do it justice trying to tell you what's happening in sixth grade versus what's happening in third grade.

Some could be redoing vocabulary for certain students, should be reteaching the curriculum, giving more time on task.

It's a lot of different strategies, but we can be able to come back to you at another time or even provide that in your notes to be able to show you what teachers are doing so you can get a real clear idea of what's happening.

What's not happening, I can tell you, is not consistent across the system in all our schools.

So you'll see them, and then you'll wonder why it's happening at this school and not at this school.

So those are some of the things that are...

Well, and that would be what I would expect for a strategy.

If you all are seeing why is there this discrepancy between schools, what's maybe not, what's getting missed over here, and how can we then come in and support that?

and we see it in the CSIP because the buildings are writing down what they need to develop through professional development and things of that nature.

And then the principals doing their walkthroughs are giving that feedback.

So we see that, we're clear about what that is.

We're also clear when we don't see the data, that data's missing.

So we probe deeper to kind of find out why isn't that data there?

What's missing there?

So we ask, you know, because it's continuous learning.

So we ask those questions and we get our teachers and principals

Do we have access to map data, so I have seen a map report that a teacher gets for one teacher is, this student is proficient or excelling at this, they're ready to learn these standards, they're ready to learn these standards in statistics, they're ready to learn these standards in geometry.

There's not a mystery.

Again, curriculum embedded assessment, that's not a strategy.

That is a way to collect data.

I am not clear on if we're getting useful data out of that and if it's different data than we're seeing from the map when the map, and I'm not as familiar with SBAC.

That's just state required.

But the map, I mean, I would assume allows us to aggregate that data and we could get a snapshot of across the district, in general, students are really strong in SPS and these standards and not these.

Can we see that through the map?

Yes, and we have a team that comes together to look at that, and that is somewhat newer for us this year.

We did a whole training with the team on what is the learning continuum and how do scores fall in certain areas, and then from there, having the team set up their own goals for, okay, so what does this mean?

But I also go to say that, yeah, we need to make that more of like almost like our muscle memory of like, how do we do this and just do it more consistently?

It can't just be that like, oh yeah, we looked at it, this is great, and then what does that mean down to the school level, down to the district level, those sort of things, so yes.

but oh, hello everybody.

I wanna make sure that there are no more questions.

I know it's 5.32 and we're gonna move on, but I wanted to address some of the questions.

It's up to.

I think my question's similar to Director Rankin's and I think it's more directed towards you.

Sure.

Superintendent Schuldner is, you know, are these, we can talk about strategies, but are these the correct strategies that are up here slash emerging initiatives and as we look at our goal, do you feel like it's possible to get there?

Hello, everybody.

I wanted to really let our terrific staff answer all the questions from the board.

They've put together this presentation.

They've worked really hard.

I would never want to one-up them on any way, but I appreciate Director Rankin.

I started the job on the first.

I should be able to answer all of these questions and I'm happy to do so.

So if President Topp doesn't mind, I'm going to try to refer to all of the questions that were asked because I think it would be helpful for me to give some kind of overview.

So the first one is the question about making this make sense to not just education professionals.

Absolutely.

I think that we have as a job is to try to explain as best as we can to everybody listening what's in fact going on.

So let me try to just point out a couple of things.

So the question on that page 16 about, well, what are we doing, right?

What is it that the district itself is trying to do?

I try to break it up into two things.

President Topp was with me at three schools today.

We got to watch.

It was terrific.

I liked going into the classes.

And what you're seeing is not only in different schools, but even in different classrooms, things are different.

And what that means is that some are teaching to fidelity, some are not.

Some are adding things, some are not.

And so the first thing the district has to do is get into the schools to make sure that what's happening in the classroom is actually hitting the standard that we're supposed to and then if they need to be differentiated, happening.

So an important strategy the district has to do is getting the instructional division actually into schools because they need to make time to see what's happening just like I did and just like President Topp did and I was with Rocky and in other days.

When you spend three hours, one at each different school, you start to see what's actually happening.

What I saw is really wonderful teachers, teachers who care deeply about their children, but even in two classes that were next to each other teaching the exact same curriculum, one class was rocking it out and one class maybe needed some more support.

and so that's what we have to do is making sure that the people in this very large building leave the building and go into the school so that they are really seeing where that is.

Now this goes to the second.

You talk about looking at data isn't necessarily a strategy.

No, but that's step one because what we need to do is look at those two classrooms and say, I wonder how are each of those children doing in those classrooms and then when they see that maybe one classroom is also rocking it out not just by me watching it but by the data then we as instructional division need to say okay we see in this classroom these students aren't necessarily doing well and then is the teacher actually differentiating the work or giving different kinds of instruction or different supports and I spent a lot of time with one teacher today who said look look, I need the district's help with the differentiation.

I love the curriculum, but what happens when I look at the data and I see that, wow, I've got a group of kids that are not doing well, what are we gonna do?

And so, you're right, tier two isn't a strategy, that's just education ease.

But what it really means is we've gotta look at the data and then we have to say to the teacher, okay, what do you got?

And then we go, okay, these groups of kids are, let's say, not able to do fractions in a certain way.

Are we giving you different ways of teaching fractions?

So those are strategies.

Now, I don't want to bore you with what that might mean.

Maybe we need manipulatives.

Maybe we need to do a different type of evaluation.

Maybe there's different ways of teaching it.

There's a lot of ways I can happily go into it.

But the issue is, what are we as the district doing to support that teacher when they look at that data to say, wow, this kid is doing well, this kid isn't.

And so you're right, I think this is a very kind of top line thing, but what's important is that you see those two important but separate things.

One is, are we teaching the curriculum?

And if not, what's going on.

And if a teacher is, let's say, supplementing it with stuff that is not rigorous or supplementing it with is very rigorous, we need to make sure that everybody at least is on grade level.

Because when you see students who are not making it, a lot of times it's because the curriculum itself is not moving them towards success.

And then the second, of course, is you have to look at the data to see which kids are doing well and not, and then actually focusing on it.

So to Vice President Briggs' point, if we're gonna try to get to the numbers that we purport to get to, it can't be 10%.

You're 100% right.

When I looked at that, it doesn't necessarily add up.

But to Rocky's point, on the page 10, it does add up in the sense that if you look at the top line baseline from 24-25 to 29-30, and this again is the sixth grade, is that the all students goes from 56.8 to 66.8, so with 10 points, but then the students furthest from educational justice goes from 33 to 50, so that's actually a 17% jump.

So you're actually starting to move it, but you were right to point out that this interim goal just keeps it keeping on.

So I appreciate you pointing that out, but the thing that we're focusing on, of course, the end result is the 10, and you can see some.

Now, would I love to not see any differentiation between the colors, that the blue and the red and the, I guess that's a kind of gray, and another gray, like a green-gray, they should all be the same, right?

Which is awesome, but we gotta be real about what we're seeing.

The other thing, I would point out, which I think is really fascinating, is the ELL scores, the multi-language learner scores, scare me, right?

They're super, super low.

But if you look at the growth rates, actually those students are in fact doing the year of growth, they're just not at proficiency, which of course means that they started at a different level, so even if they did the growth that they needed to go, they're not making it.

So that's a different way of thinking.

So what that says to me is our teachers are moving our ELL students when they get them, but they're starting at such a low level that we need to actually move them farther and faster, and maybe we need to start differentiating much earlier.

I will also say, to Rocky's point, sometimes the tests that we give, we give to all students, and then the actual state exams, you don't give to certain students because of, you know, just getting into school.

There's certain laws about that.

But what I'm encouraged by is that if you look at let's say page 26, I am getting old and can barely see that, is that the multi-language learners actually the 52.2% of MET is saying that actually our ML kids are growing even though they might not be at proficiency.

The sad one about highly capable is that the kids that are not at proficiency who are highly capable are actually not growing nearly as much.

And so I think what this says is, are we not really engaging our HC kids?

And then, of course, it looks like we are engaging our ML kids, but not far enough because they started in a different place.

So what I see from this data is both Scary and encouraging.

We're starting in a place where many of our students who are furthest away from educational justice, that are ML, that are special education, that are free and reduced lunch, are in fact well below our total population.

But at least the good news is there seems to be growth of students who are not necessarily at proficiency.

We've got to get them to proficiency and that's why what I really care about is that second piece, teaching to fidelity and data analysis, is what I have found in my experience is a lot of times teachers don't know or aren't supported enough to know when a kid is really close to proficiency but isn't just right there.

And so we might have a ton of ML kids that are making progress, that are doing well, and they're just not getting over that proficiency level.

But that's where the teacher comes in and goes, oh, wow, you're really close.

I need to do this extra thing or that extra thing.

And sometimes there's an old adage, you teach what you test or you focus on what's being tested.

I think what we need to do, again, is make sure that our teachers have robust information so that they can then look at how our children are doing and then move them forward.

They're the experts.

We have to help them by giving them differentiating instruction and things like that, but I think what is happening, what I saw today, is the students seem to be taught collectively, and there might be some individual students that need support that isn't necessarily happening.

That's hard, differentiation is really hard, but that's where we as a district can come in and support.

So that's kind of a broad way of trying to answer the questions.

And I think the President's top question at the end is, are basically are these numbers doable, right?

And I think I want to say yes, right?

I want it to be 100, right?

But I think we also in this district, and I know it's day four, but we also have to recognize actually how good these numbers are.

And this is not to be an apologist.

This just means is I've spent a lot of my time around this country and the proficiency rates that Seattle has is actually extraordinarily high.

So if you compare us to any other large urban district in America, we're actually doing quite well.

And so it's unfortunate that doing well in America means 55% proficiency, but when you look at, basically you take a big district, a Chicago, a New York, a Portland, a Denver, whoever, we're actually doing quite well.

San Diego, You know, there's close there, right?

But when you just list all of the data points of cities, we're actually doing quite well.

But we should do better, right?

And so I think I want the 10% as a goal.

I think that's a really great number.

I'm glad that the board picked it.

But I do want to couch that is if we get there, it really will be we will be the best urban public school district in America, which our kids deserve.

But I just want to temper that though 10% might not seem a lot, that goal of 65%, 66% will actually put us in places that are incredibly high, which is awesome.

But we just need to know that.

sort of final questions before we wrap up.

Director Smith, sorry.

Ms. Tav, two questions.

First, I do want to comment on the map growth for, I think it's page 26, so it's what's up there.

Just doing some back of the envelope math, I am not as worried about the highly capable numbers there because the percent of highly capable learners that were behind Yeah, I did the math.

And so if you look at the percent of students for each category who both didn't meet their target and then didn't exceed the growth, or didn't meet the growth target, it's 2.1% for highly capable and it's over 20% for every other category when you combine that.

So I just wanna, I do math.

And then my other question is about kind of overall, I think that the map and or SBA scores have been rescaled, and so there are a lot of mismatches between the numbers on different pages.

So for instance, like the top line plot, you can look at the numbers listed there for 24, 25, and those don't match the numbers later on for the same years, for the same tests.

so I think that was a very recent rescaling but I think it would be very helpful to make sure we have consistent reporting on how the data is being adjusted as we go along and it also does have a tiny bit of concern that if these tests are going to be adjusted so that I think it's based on student performance.

There's a little bit of putting ourselves in a position where we're saying we're going to get 60% of the students over the median.

Nobody will.

I wanted to comment on that.

How will we manage that rescaling?

So I think there's kind of two things to highlight.

One would be you're absolutely right to point out the very small number of HC kids that are not necessarily proficient, but it does at least point out that maybe the kids that are HC that are not proficient that we might not be I think the other concern, and this is when you use a nationally normed test is, you know, there was an old radio show, you know, the Garrison Keillor, where all the kids are above average.

Well, that can't possibly be true, right?

And so we just have to be really thoughtful about how we use reference exams that have a national norm, so that you're not necessarily setting us up for always being above average, but I think at least with state exams, there's no question that we need to be at 65, whatever the percentage is.

I really appreciate you pointing that out and what I would hope is as I get kind of deeper into the data analysis with the team is that I'd want to make sure that we do some explanation of the difference between MAP, the difference between Smarter Balanced but also the kind of how we're looking at different chunks because some of this might be a little confusing because it says basically here's our proficiency numbers and then it's like here's our growth numbers here's our growth numbers for kids that aren't proficient, but they all kind of don't make any sense if you don't have a broader view of it.

So, you know, what I love about this dialogue, and thank you for having this, is that your questions make the next presentation that much clearer, and so I really look forward to whenever it is, although I guess there's the next presentation in eight minutes or two minutes.

But, you know, these are the kinds of dialogues that I want to see happen in my superintendency, however long or short that might be.

And it's also really important for the people at home watching because they need to understand what we're talking about, too, and that they need to have faith that the board and the district knows what we're talking about as well.

So thank you, Director Smith.

We are going to thank you, Dr. Torres-Morales, Superintendent Schildner, and Accountability Officer Howard.

We're going to transition now, so we're going to take a five-minute break, so we're going to be back here at 5.53 in our seats so we can start, and we'll go into our budget discussion, and we'll switch out staff, too, I believe.

All right.

Thank you.

I'm gonna call folks back to the tables, please.

As promised, it's 5.53.

I'm gonna see.

Director Rankin is back.

All right.

I'm gonna start calling out people who aren't at the table.

Director Mangelson is back.

Director Masoudi is back.

Let's see if we can get Superintendent Schuldner to come to the table.

Let's see if we can get Director Smith to the table.

Vice President Briggs to the table.

Who else can I call out?

Director Song to the table.

All right, welcome back.

So this is budget study session part two.

I really appreciate the staff and the detail that we went into in the first session.

I think we kind of cut it off abruptly at a point where we could actually sort of start having a little bit of discussion or director questions.

Questions were submitted today, but also somewhat late, so they may not all be answered.

So I think I'll pass it over to staff for a moment, but then we'll really sort of get into discussion and go around the table.

So Superintendent Shuldmer.

Hi, I'm just extremely happy to be here.

I watched the other one online, and so thank you for continuing this wonderful conversation.

I will hand it over to COO Podesta, who's very happy that he's not being called interim superintendent.

No, I worked hard to orchestrate the last session, so the former superintendent just presented and the new superintendent answered all the questions.

That's why we have him as the COO, he's very smart.

but we did, we really ended and left it at the part for Q&A.

Again, we changed the structure a little bit to have many if not all of our senior leaders here so they can speak to their own priorities and budget challenges they face.

Appreciate all the questions you got in advance and I was wondering if President Topham would work that if you did what you would have done, go around to directors and if they have written questions, maybe they could pick their highlights if they want us to talk about them or ask whatever's top of mind, because that's kind of where we were in the program.

And so whereas we may not be able to answer everything this minute, but we'll do our best and keep working with the board along the way.

And I think that if you haven't gotten questions in because I know directors have been very busy in the past week, it's still an opportunity to get questions in and get responses.

But we're just going to go around the U, but we'll go the opposite way this time to kind of keep it fair.

So I'll start with Director Rankin.

Thank you, and yeah, I did send in some questions like three hours ago, and I know folks were busy doing other things and at schools and whatnot.

At the same time, a lot of my questions were not brand new from me questions.

I guess, I think the question I would like to ask is a little bit of a further out timeline, bigger picture, not to put you on the spot, Superintendent, but realistically, I mean, it's February.

were not like, hmm, what should we do about next year's budget?

We're not just cracking into this conversation.

Pretty much as soon as we pass one year's budget, we immediately start talking about the next year's budget.

Knowing that we were going through a transition this past year of leadership, I didn't expect massive changes to come for next year, but this is my seventh year on the board.

and so what have you looked at, Ben?

What are you thinking about in terms of where can we get next year and what are you thinking in terms of, because I know you've thought about it, what are you thinking in terms of sort of a five-year forecast and again, not a we are here now, we will be here later, magical things happen in between, but what can we kind of, what should we be thinking about in terms of getting us to solvency but most importantly, better aligning the resources that we do have with meeting the needs of our students, not, and this is, we have a budget and a process very much focused on FTE.

And we exist to serve children.

We hire people into positions so that they can serve students.

We have a budget that looks like children come to us so we can hire adults and give them jobs.

yeah well first of all how can we shift no thank you for the question and you know the first thing I would say is all of the 9000 plus employees that work for Seattle Public Schools I know are doing their absolute best to help put children first and so what director Rankin is really talking about is the system and structure of how we do this and it's the same thing that we you know I said in the previous presentation our teachers really are terrific I mean every classroom I saw I saw people really wanting to to teach are we giving them the right facilities?

Are we giving them the right curriculum?

Are we giving them the right structure?

And then, of course, are we having the budget in the right way?

So, I mean, look, have I looked at the budget?

Absolutely.

And then, more importantly, I've been into the schools and I've seen how we're using money there.

I was at a school that had one child in a classroom.

Two adults.

That can't possibly be okay.

Is that the right way to use the money we have to support the 50,000 children that we are to serve?

Clearly the answer is no.

And I was in a school that had classes that were bursting at the seams.

I was in a school that needed walls.

I was at a school that needed certain facilities.

And then I was at a school that had at one point more adults than children on an entire floor.

that was in a building that was shutting down a wing because they just didn't need the space.

So I think those are the kinds of things that we have to just be honest about and we have to be thoughtful about how are we using our resources in the most equitable way.

Now, again, I'm not saying we're going to do one thing or another, it's day four, but that's one thing.

I think a second thing is, as we look at the org chart, we see a lot of different departments that have very similar positions and very similar types of roles.

That's happened because really great people, all of these awesome folks at the table and behind, have been trying to build their departments to serve the things they need to serve, but there hasn't been quite a lot of alignment as a district.

So what I think you'll start to see is some recognition of where we're spending money well and where we're spending money not so well.

I can't today say we're going to cut here or we're going to grow this.

but I will certainly give a very large plea to the wonderful city of Seattle.

Everybody knows that there's something called deal and the FEP levy and a big kind of sword of Damocles over our heads is this very large funding stream.

We are very much hoping that the city in its own beneficence recognizes all of the things that it does and we hope that they are going to continue to re-up that money but that's also going to be a big question because that is money that we have to also understand because if we don't have that it's not like we can backfill that either.

So I think early on my analysis is there's some misuse of facility space, of staffing, there's some inefficiencies in terms of departmental structure and FTE and at the end of the month, just so everybody knows, we're gonna have a really big meeting in this building with a lot of different folks so we can really just hone into the org chart and see what's going to happen.

So I appreciate that that answer is sort of full and sort of mealy-mouthed, but I appreciate that there are buckets that we're gonna look at, and then hopefully we can start to make decisions pretty quickly.

Director Mizorahi.

I think I'll piggyback a little bit off Director Rankin's question.

And I know it's day four, so not with an expectation that you're going to have a comprehensive budget solution for us.

And I don't have an in the weeds question, more just on page 29, just the trajectory of the fund balance really makes me quite nervous overall.

And I think that to me is just where the rubber hits the road on are we in good financial shape as a district?

And once that money is gone, that's like the nightmare scenario.

So I think that projection going forward really makes me nervous.

And I think that my larger reflection around the latter half of this presentation.

I think the first half was great to just sort of see how the budget is aligning to our goals.

Is that, you know, the solutions that we're talking about are still just sort of like chipping away around the edges of a really big problem.

And I think that as you come in, my hope is that we are seeing both on the revenue side and on the cutting expenses side of like, let's find those big solutions.

You know, I don't have any expectation, nor do I have like, it's this, this thing that we need to fix.

But I think that trying to find the systemic ways, because even the solutions offered here, which many of these are cuts that will impact families and students and will be impactful on especially low-wage workers' lives in our city.

but even with all that impact, they don't really solve our big problem, right?

So how do we get to those big systemic solutions?

I think the FEP levy is super important.

I think continuing the conversations with the state is super important on the revenue sites.

We're not only talking about austerity, but also finding where there may be large inefficiencies or just ways that we've just done things forever that are gonna maybe get to that larger problem.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think, as you said when hiring me, I can be blunt, which I love.

Yeah, we're in a lot of trouble.

I mean, you look at these numbers, there's no way to sugarcoat it.

You know, there's different ways of looking at it, and I would certainly refer to Dr. Bottleman.

you know, 87 million, 100 million, you know, depending on how you look at this, it's a lot of money and we are in the hole.

And so we have to be honest about that.

And so I appreciate every single person who has come to me in the last four days asking for more money.

That is not happening.

It's going to be the opposite.

We have to be clear about that.

We have to not be $87 million in the hole.

So I think in some respects, the first thing we have to do is stop spending money we don't have.

And so one of the things that we can start to do is building budgets kind of backward, which is we build what we have that we need for schools, and then what's ever left is what comes to this office.

You know, there are ways to not You can also do it the other way, which is you take the money off the top, you know, you got to have a superintendent.

You know, I like these people, they should get a job, you know, and then you say what's left, and then you put it into the schools.

The problem, of course, doing that is who gets hurt is the kids, right?

So I think what we have to do, and it's a fundamental way of rethinking a budget, which is take our total budget, what we have, not wishful thinking that somehow 50,000 kids from, you know, somewhere else are gonna pop up magically, is that we're gonna say, this is what we think our budget is, this is what the schools need, whatever's left is what goes to this building, and we call it a day.

And it's gonna suck, and it's gonna be really hard, but if we are gonna put kids first, that's kind of what we need to do.

Now the good news is, there is some revenue stuff, you know, there is some you know different pots of money that we can move around so we can cut around the edges but that huge middle ground we're just gonna have to we're just gonna have to deal with it which is we fund the schools whatever's left is that what is what we get for everybody else and we call it a day It'll probably take two years.

I think what that'll mean is that we'll be in heirs for about another year or two, and then by then we'll be good.

Now hopefully deal and FEP levy, hopefully state is going to come through.

But again, I can't promise that or plan on that.

And if it does, all the better.

Terrific.

So, yeah, it's a great question.

I mean, I think there's a lot there.

I mean, the other way to make people not as freaked out as they might be after hearing what I said is the budget is $1.35 billion.

We're $100 million, let's say, in the hole.

That's still less than 10%, right?

So you're still only talking about a 10% hit.

So you're not saying we're getting rid of everything, we're cutting right down to the bone.

What you're saying is we need to figure out about an 8% to 9%.

Now, one other way of thinking about it, and this is definitely one we are looking at, is in any organization, even the most wonderful organization, people retire.

People leave.

So if there's FTEs that become vacant, maybe we don't replace them.

And so even if we took, let's say, a 5% people retire or leave or go play for the Knicks or something, which would be my dream, but whatever.

is that even that 5%, you're talking about hundreds of folks that if you don't fill up, that's FTE.

You're saving, let's say, on an average of 100,000 bucks.

Now you're talking real money here.

So I think, and they've all heard me say this, is we can't start hiring more folks to more positions, and the positions that, let's say, become vacant, then we gotta think about, do we really need to fill them?

The good news is if we do that, then nobody actually loses their job, right?

And that's always what I want.

I'd never, never want to be somebody that's going to lay folks off, but we also have to be honest about where we are.

So those are some theories or some strategies.

Vice President Briggs.

So I'm a big fan of win-win situations.

I don't know who isn't, but when you, Ben, were talking earlier about wanting staff, especially instructional staff, to be out in buildings more, I've been hearing from staff and families for a long time that it would be really great to see central office staff in buildings and that that could go a long way towards eliminating a lot of the disconnect that families feel from what happens here and what's happening in their buildings.

And so it just made me think about a win-win scenario in which that was a cost-free, possibly revenue-generating way to improve outcomes for students and then do we need this giant building at that point and what can be done with it?

So anyway, that was just like a little thought that popped into my head when you talked about that and I was just wondering if you happen to have any other similar like win-win type ideas that you think could be, because I think to Joe's point earlier, I mean we have all said this, I know we all feel this deeply, the last people we want to impact are kids in classrooms, and so what are, I guess I'm just thinking, what are the solutions, are there hidden solutions that will actually save us money and be better for kids?

Yeah, I mean, that is the question, right?

And that's the way we were always thinking about it.

You know, look, I think being thoughtful about human resources is number one, right?

Putting people in schools and, you know, maybe that's a win-win, as you said.

I mean, I think we also have to look at some of the facilities we have that are not even being used as schools.

Again, day four, but I've looked at a list of all the stuff we own.

We own a lot of stuff.

Do we need it all?

Are there ways to rent it out?

What's the relationship that we have with some of the places that are renting our facilities?

I think we also have to look at some of the places that we're using that we're renting.

I was at a wonderful school that I loved the principal.

Big shout out to that principal.

She knows who she is.

But they're renting space.

We have a million buildings.

What are we doing, right?

So I think there are some easier win-wins.

But again, I'll try to give the board and, of course, the wonderful community a pretty detailed analysis but yes I mean when you look at how the entire district all 1.35 billion and all 9,000 folks and all the 50,000 kids is if we're renting something and we own something, maybe that doesn't make sense.

Those are the kinds of things that I think we just have to be honest about and maybe it'll be a little bit uneasy for some folks at first, but it's the right thing to do and it doesn't impact what happens in the classroom.

So, yeah.

Director Yoon.

Director Smith.

So I did submit most of the questions I had from last week online, so hopefully they'll be covered.

But on the...

Chief Operating Officer Podesta, do you want to...

Okay.

So I was thinking for those that we've responded in writing, if like there, and you had several, if there's a highlight or if our responses need follow up rather than me just, or anybody just reading our responses that we've written.

And we all have access to them and I believe the public does as well.

Okay, I haven't seen them yet, but I'm not going to touch on that too much right now, but I did just want to comment about, I had asked about the hiring freeze, which only impacts the non-represented positions, so not teachers, I think not principals, so it's a smaller number, but that kind of goes alongside the the strategy of not backfilling positions as people leave.

And I don't want to criticize that strategy because I'm not an HR person, that's not what I do, but it does seem a little bit at odds with the desire to not just say, here's what we've always done and so we're just going to do changes from there.

Sorry, I'm saying a lot of words here.

With regard to that in particular, which I think is an option we identified, I think Superintendent Sheldon also raised it, that there's attrition and that can be leveraged.

We have had a hiring freeze since 2023. and it's not permafrost by any stretch of the imagination but it means that there's executive review of any refilling any vacant position and specifically the leaders who look at those requests for a variance from a hiring freeze, think about the strategic priority of those positions.

And that's one of the reasons, I think, when we were writing budgets in 2023, we were looking at a $132 million deficit.

This has unfortunately been a movie we've seen the past three years running.

And so we're teaming that up as a strategy not to just make savings that are just random based on who leaves and who doesn't, it's kind of harvesting, that's a really crude word for this, but since we've had this freeze and haven't filled these positions three years running because when we looked at should this be an exception and thought this isn't a strategic need, no, is now the time to just take that off the books because those vacancies are written into our budget and so that's part of that $87 million.

So it isn't, I know when you say well let's just not fill vacancies, that sounds kind of random.

It hasn't been random.

There's been thought behind no this is something we do need to fill because it's important or this is something we could live without and so those are kind of efficiencies that come up along the way.

I don't want to cut you off Superintendent Schildiner but I am very satisfied with that answer that it really addresses that concern that it's like is the hiring freeze meaning that our cuts are kind of being applied in a random way.

No and I appreciate that and I'll try to reiterate it.

The whole idea of when you set budgets for large, you know, districts or large organizations, you kind of have a list of these jobs that you think you need and that you think you have.

And then sometimes they don't get filled for a year, two years, three years.

You got to start making a decision when do you just stop putting them on.

And if we do that, even with what we already have, there'll be some quite a lot of savings, at least in the way that we plan it.

Now, somebody might be saying, yeah, but Ben, if you haven't been filling it for three years, you haven't actually been spending the money.

Fair point.

However, when you're budgeting, you've got to make sure that you're actually budgeting the right number.

And so this is a really good way to start to clean up a lot of the things.

But to Fred's point, we do have to continue that not permafrost, but that soft cold because it is oftentimes that somebody will retire and the question is do we really need it, right?

And again, we have to have the reality, we're 87 in the hole, If it's like a 50-50, we might have to make a decision, hey, look, this is something we're not going to fill.

But, you know, again, our people are what matter, our children are what matter.

Every decision we're going to make is to try to make sure that the people who currently work for us still work for us, but sometimes we will have to make the hard decision.

So thank you for the question.

Director Mangelson.

Director Song.

I just want to say how appreciative I am of this presentation because I think we as we talked about last time we really made a lot of progress in terms of presenting what we plan to fund so I think I'm gonna sound a little hypocritical but I'm trying to at the end of the day we still have to balance our budget right and so what I'm trying to understand it's not in this presentation is what is our projected fund balance?

So this is the fund balance for the 24-25 year and then there's a table where it shows revenues versus expenditures and that's like the contribution, but where are we with a fund balance?

I know from the last budget presentation it sounded like we ended up using less of our fund balance than we expected, so does it seem like we're in a more comfortable position than we anticipated for 25, 26, and 26, 27?

I'm just trying to help, I'd like to know so that we can understand in the context of all the cuts that were on the table as presented by business line.

Are these things that we need to seriously start talking about?

I'm going to ask my new boss.

Do you want me to start, or do you want to start?

You know, again, I think if we do the things that we've talked about today, that $87 million can go down, right?

And so that's the good news.

Right now, if you don't touch anything that we've done, that's the real number, right?

And again, I've said this very much in public.

If you know what you're doing with a large budget, you can make it look pretty much any way you want, right?

And so that doesn't mean that you're shady.

It doesn't mean that you're hiding something.

It just means that it's like from what comparison are you looking at?

So that 8758392, that's a real number, right?

Kurt did not make that up.

He said that is a number that is what we're going to be in the hole.

However, if you think about some of the vacancy stuff that we've talked about, some of the savings that we've talked about, we do think we can bring that down by a pretty significant, which is great.

And I'll turn over to Kurt to maybe either go through specific numbers or just give a general like where you think we're gonna be.

But yeah.

The good news is that that is real, but the things we've already started to do, we think we're going to bring it down, but we also don't know if there's going to be extra costs that have come out of nowhere that, you know, we don't know, a roof, you know, some, you know, cola costs, some, I don't know, healthcare costs, you know, things that just happen, right?

Yeah, so just to sort of piggyback on that, these numbers assume nothing changes.

The district continues to operate business as it always has, which isn't an option, as we've discussed, because we ran out of money, we ran out of fund balance, if that were the case.

So there's urgency to do things about that.

I think your real question is, is there some optimism in here, or is there more pessimism in terms of where we think we're going to really end up for this next year?

like this 89 number, that's not our fund balance.

That's the contribution to the fund balance.

So my question is, okay, we know that we're having potentially a negative 89 million dollar impact to the fund balance, but where are we with the actual fund balance?

So the actual fund balance is this 97 million?

So if all that played out as that portends, then you'd have that very little left.

But it's not going to play out because we're gonna do some things to make sure that $87 million is not the reality for 26-27.

If we don't erode that $87 million down to zero, then there will be some additional contributions from the fund balance, but not that $87 million.

The current fund balance is 97.

So 97 and we're expecting a $89 million hit to that.

If we don't do anything.

If we don't do anything.

And this is interesting because there's legislation currently in discussion about what is the appropriate level of fund balance for school districts.

Do we have a internal target for where we're trying to get our fund balance.

I mean, I know over time we want to replace that rainy day fund.

We're trying to get there, but do we have a number that we're trying to hit?

That's the parallel to that legislation that you're talking about, is the district's economic stabilization account, so that's the three to five percent that's been utilized the last few years to help balance the budgets of the boards.

What I will say, just to give a not-just-Washington point of view, that's really low.

A typical fund balance in the rest of the country should be 10% to 15%.

because you just don't know.

Now, Washington has a view of this.

We're also a very large district, so 10% to 15% of $1.35 billion is quite a lot of cash.

But typically, if you look at, let's say, Michigan, where I was, having a fund balance of 10 to 15 was considered healthy.

Now, you could go down to five, but once you were under five, the state starts to really look at you.

And so what I hope, and again, not to shortchange any child or any adult, but the hope is that over the next five years, we can actually really build a sustainable fund balance at around 10%.

I think that would be incredible.

But let's just get out of the hole first, and then we can start to dream.

Director Lavallee.

Yeah.

I loved, first of all, your discussion on kind of, I briefly worked in financial reporting industry for a brief amount of time and was working on top-down and bottom-up reporting.

So I really appreciate you kind of taking a look at that and being like, how are we doing it both from top-down in the district, but then also doing that reverse and doing that bottom-up process at the exact same time.

So I appreciate that.

My question is last year the budget and I was not at the board at this point in time but the budget was delivered really late to the board.

Schools and the building leadership teams need to get staffing plans in by mid-May.

Currently if we're looking at the board budget development next steps on slide 60 we've got a public meeting for the proposed budget on July 1st two weeks after everyone goes on break.

So I'm really wondering if that's real public engagement or what the purpose of that meeting and the expectations for that are if it's two weeks into break and right next to the Fourth of July weekend.

Then it looks like in August there's the adoption of that budget.

Most other districts that I've looked into have that budget approval closer to the May timeframe.

So I'm wondering if there's anything that we can do to move this in a direction that's more in line with both what our peer districts are doing and what schools are needing to do to project staffing for.

In that question, so thank you.

This is, last year was June and July, which has been typical for Salem Public Schools.

Most of the Puget Sound districts are on this July-August cadence.

What the challenge here has been is the board sort of, level conversation that we tried to have last week with the real sort of proposal.

That came later than was appropriate last year because all the staffing had already happened.

So the intent is to get in that February, March in front of the board something that says we are planning to grow this, reduce this, eliminate that, so that the staff can figure out what the legislature did to us and how all that works together to come forward with this document, which is the entire budget proposal, which is the formal document that would be approved in July.

The reason that the staff wanted to move the June to July was to have more time to have a more comprehensive document for folks to work on, especially with the transition of leadership at Seattle Public Schools.

But that February-March timeframe is the place where we really like to get the board's sort of input on what they want to see in that July document.

and there's been tension and like you said you weren't part of the board last year around what level of detail the board wants to get in that information, what level of detail you want to get in terms of the decision making and so that will persist and we'll work through it and hopefully it'll work through it a little more satisfactorily to the board going forward and I'll divert to Superintendent Schildner if he has anything he wants to add or subtract from what I've shared.

You always want to get the budget as soon as possible in the hands of the people that need to spend it.

But I certainly appreciate Kurt's view of the Puget Sound area, which of course I do not know.

If this is kind of the general timeframe that they use, then that seems to make sense.

but you know we're gonna certainly I think the relationship with the board and you're all wonderful people is that I think there's two ways of thinking about it there's the kind of draft like what are the big buckets and then we can start to go line by line by line but the line by line by line stuff comes later and that's typical right that's when the other districts in the area do it etc but I think if we can move up or codify where the boards understanding of what the budget should look like, then we could start to really give sort of good guidance to the schools to make decisions.

But again, there is this kind of sort of Damocles right now of the FEP because of that, which, of course, we cannot control, so.

Director Rehn, can you have a follow-up there?

I wanted to add that the public, it's required that there's a public hearing before the board adopts.

So it's not necessarily that June or what we have been doing in June or July is not like, hey, it's not actual engagement.

It's more than just public testimony.

It's a separate hearing that's required by the state before the board adopts the budget.

It's kind of the last opportunity for members of the public to speak now or forever hold your peace before we adopt.

We have, and I can't remember what it's in our policy 0060, ideally would have a preliminary recommendation for the budget around January of just like what are we looking at for the next year.

then the February, March kind of response from the board heading in, that's heading into legislative session.

February, March a firmer idea based on board direction and then some opportunity for staff to actually take that to the public.

for a final development and talking about what's in it, what they're considering before it comes back to us.

The other thing at the state level is that May 15th is a requirement for notice of layoffs.

So those are kind of the non-negotiable timelines.

But depending on the size of the district, districts have to adopt, finally adopt the next year's school budget by either the 1st of August or the 31st of August.

so we actually have been adopting on the earlier side.

And we have a back and forth with the ESD and OSPI during that July-August timeframe to make sure it all makes sense.

Thank you.

I'm going to hold my question for now, but I want to see if other directors have questions.

We'll just kind of shoot around the circle.

Director Mizrahi.

Okay.

I just want to dig in on this question because I think maybe I'm confused.

Can we go back to slide 29?

Okay.

So I want to make sure I totally understand this because I don't want to accidentally be bankrupt.

Okay.

So sorry.

Page 29, not slide 29. So then go back.

One.

So that is 89.8 million that we're taking from our fund balance for this school year that we're in right now.

if everything went off as in this budget book.

If every employee vacancy was filled throughout the year, enrollment was exactly.

But we're in that now, right?

So we kind of know a little bit about that.

Right.

Okay.

And then go back to the previous page.

so we have 97 whatever in our current fund balance so at the end of this year it will be 8 million like what is our fund balance going to be September 1 of this year I think is my fundamental question yeah we don't know that somewhere in the range of 8 million to what, 20 million, I don't know, whatever.

It's not gonna be 90. The last three years, the average sort of erosion of it has been 31 million dollars.

So if we use that as proxy, the 97 would be 66.

Okay, I guess what, then if you go to the next slide again.

I guess what makes me nervous is then, okay, so then we're going to be looking at a budget that on paper is negative 87. It will feel strange in August to be approving a budget that if those numbers are panning out will be a negative fund balance budget.

And we can't do that.

We can't do that.

We can't do that.

That's not allowed.

Okay.

Right.

Okay.

Yes.

I don't think we can or should do that.

So I guess the more we can know about how much we're on track for that 89.8, how much of that we actually think is going to drain from our fund balance seems really important as we head towards August.

I very much appreciate that question.

So what you are highlighting is one of the problems that school districts have in terms of updating the board on where we are, right?

So Kurt's response of we don't know is because we haven't done the math.

in many districts, and Kurt and I have talked about this, so it's not like I'm telling him to do something that he doesn't know about, is that what I'm gonna like to see going forward is budget amendments that you will be presented with either twice a year or three times a year.

That way, you'll know, is that 89 right now at 72, or is it at 65?

Because how in the world, Joe, can you make a decision, sorry, Director Mizrahi, can you, how in the world could you approve the 26-27 budget if you don't know if we've got 97 million or 50 million or 2 million?

Because if we got, let's say, 10 million in the bank, you can't possibly say anything other than, Ben, we're about to be insolvent, you need to go fix it, right?

So what we're gonna hopefully bring to the board in the future is amendments to budget so that you'll actually see updates and Kurt and I are going to talk, is it twice a year, is it three times a year, so that you're not going blind into this.

Now, Kurt is very good.

He's not going to have you go blind at the end where you're going in, you'll see the numbers.

But even today, we're having this budget conversation.

And Director Song, first question.

What's our fund balance?

Correct question, right?

And if the answer is 97, well, it's 97 really as of a couple of months ago, right?

We don't know what it is right now.

And so we are gonna get there and the good thing is it's probably, you know, hopefully in a bank somewhere and we could just check.

But the more that we give you updates on a consistent basis, the more reality check we can all have to make the right decisions.

And I want to publicly commend Kurt for his willingness and desire to do this.

It's a lot of extra work for him and his team, but it's what we need to do in order to kind of move forward.

So thank you.

Thank you for clarifying sort of the question for me.

One of the tools that we do currently provide is the monthly report.

So the monthly financial report has a trend analysis on the fund balance.

So you can see how it's sort of been consistent throughout the years, but it's consistently been down for the last four years.

And so not to, of course, we'll provide what Ben is requesting, but that's a tool that's currently available.

So if you want to have more information on that, we can certainly provide that.

Director Song.

it's been a information item it was something that we used to review in the audit and finance committee meetings and something to kind of pay attention to is like for example how we're tracking with enrollment we're a little bit off budget so we know our revenue is a little bit off but what I would say is like one complication in terms of our understanding of where we are with a fund balance is always the legislative piece.

We don't know what additional funding they're going to provide us.

We don't know what additional requirements that they're going to have us that are unfunded, for example.

And so I think districts are in a very difficult position in terms of actually predicting where we are and I think in the last couple of years we've really benefited from some extra money that we ended up getting for MSOC that was retroactive

And I appreciate you saying that because that's also why you do the budget amendments is that one of the hardest things to do as a superintendent and certainly with budget and finance is you don't know how the state government's going to vote, right?

You just don't know.

There's, I think, one state in the union, Nevada, that their state legislature only meets once every other year.

So at least that second year you know what the answer is because they voted on it the year before.

But other than that, you have wonderful people in Olympia that are going to make some decisions, and we have to kind of estimate.

And so I...

we have to be conservative about that estimation, but we're going to estimate what our enrollment is, we're going to estimate what the budget is going to be from the state, and then we're going to move forward.

But if we start to do amendments, we can then adjust based on when those numbers actually come in, when those enrollment numbers come in, when the state government numbers come in, then you can see you know sooner rather than later where we actually are because one of the hardest things to do is you have to estimate what your your enrollment is and you have to estimate what the state's going to give you to make a budget and then you hope you're right you don't want to be in that position for a year you can be in that position for a couple of months you then rerun the budget with the actual numbers and then you get a kind of a more real budget other directors

Alright, that was our two work sessions.

I just want to plug a few things.

One is Superintendent Shouldner is going on a whole bunch of school tours.

I did have the opportunity to watch him assess some different classrooms today.

It was great to be inside the school.

So please see the list.

If you want to join, please get that to carry.

Also, email went out with the community meetings that he's holding.

I think there's one in each of our districts.

so please be tracking that as well and then we have our retreat coming up this Saturday as we look towards more of the upcoming year so I will see everyone on Saturday but there being no further business on the agenda the meeting stands adjourned at 6 38 p.m.

thank you everyone