We know what happened to Jill.
Our meeting is now called to order.
I would like to welcome everyone to the October 12 regular board meeting.
Welcome to our student representative Casey Kono.
Ms. Kono will have an opportunity to provide comments regarding her school later in the meeting.
Ms. Ritchie, actually I would like to introduce our board directors who are present.
I would like to introduce Director Leslie Harris, Director Sue Peters, Director Scott Pinkham, Director Geary is not here tonight.
We haven't heard from her yet but hopefully she will be here soon.
And Director Stefan Blanford actually had to leave for an emergency and he will be back later.
So now Ms. Ritchie.
Oh and Director Burke is out of town.
Ms. Ritchie the roll call please.
Director Harris.
Here.
Director Peters.
Director Pinkham.
Here.
Director Patu.
Here.
Can we now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
At this time I would like to recognize an important community partner and I will turn to Dr. Noland for his remarks.
All right welcome all.
Thanks for being here tonight.
We will start with recognition for one of our premier partners the Nesholm family foundation has been one of our great supporters and partners over many many many years, 15 I think.
And as I have shared before I had the opportunity to work in our middle schools in Seattle 20 years ago and when I came back I didn't know it for a while but I certainly saw tremendous gains and improvements across the district.
And the three schools that Nesholm Family Foundation has been working in over that time period has made a huge difference.
Those three middle schools are among the schools in the state that have the largest African-American population and the best achievement for our African-American students.
So they are positive outliers and leading the way for us in Seattle and the rest of the state in terms of what works for closing opportunity gaps.
So I'd like to introduce Kelly Aramaki, regional executive director for schools to tell us a little bit more about the Nesholm family.
and what they have, a small representation of what they have done for us over many many years.
Good evening, thanks for having me.
Over the past 15 years the Nesholm Family Foundation has invested over $6 million at Aki Kurose, Denny and Mercer middle schools.
Their investment has provided professional development for teachers and school leaders, a full-time assistant principal at each school focused on literacy coaching for teachers.
A literacy coach who coordinates curriculum and assessment across the three schools.
They provide funds for books for classrooms and a mental health professional in each school to address the socio-emotional challenges that students have.
The results have been nothing short of stunning.
Mercer, Denny, and Aki have consistently been identified as three of our district's top gap closing middle schools.
When compared with schools across the state with high numbers of black students Mercer, Denny, and Aki are the top three schools for black student achievement in mathematics and all three of them are in the top 15 for black student achievement in literacy.
This past year the Ness Homes have been actively promoting the Seattle Public Schools and have been sharing the positive partnership that they have with the school district As a result of their outreach you will be voting tonight to approve a $300,000 grant from the Satterberg foundation to extend this work to the highest needs elementary schools that feed into the three middle schools.
The goal of the Satterberg foundation is to parallel the long-term investment of the Nesholm foundation.
The Nestle Family Foundation partnership is a model of collaboration between school district and community-based organizations.
It's a partnership that is founded on mutual respect of ideas, expertise and contributions of the school's educators as well as those of the community.
It's a partnership grounded in current research and teaching and learning as well as trauma-informed practices.
And most importantly it's a partnership that is laser focused on equity and eliminating the opportunity gap.
I'd like to introduce, we have our Nesholm principals here so Jeff Clark from Denny, Mia Williams from Aki Kurose and I don't think Oh and there's Chris Carter so maybe the three of them could come up and then Mia is going to speak on behalf of the three principals and then we'll have introduced the family.
Good evening.
I just want to just turn in to say thank you on behalf of us as leaders but also the generations of students that you have had a tremendous impact on their lives and their educational experience.
I just wanted to just share with you that the Nesholm's have been like the true picture of what equity looks like and making sure that every student gets what they need to be successful.
They have helped me grow as a leader, they allowed me to partner with these wonderful gentlemen behind me.
They help make me get smarter and better for kids as well as the teaching staff in our building where we get professional development.
We've gotten opportunities to travel, see what best practice looks like for students and the other thing is that Whenever we talk about a need and they're looking at the whole child they've been able to step up every time we've said that it's not only the content of literacy we have to wrap our arms around students and so we were allowed to have care coordinators in our buildings that were able to help support students and eliminate any barriers that they may have to being successful in the classrooms.
So they stepped up and we all are fortunate to have that opportunity which we wish that all schools were able to have that for kids.
So again I just want to say thank you and I'm going to pass it over to Jeff Clark to say a couple of words.
Good evening school board directors.
I too just want to thank the Nesholm's very publicly and let you know that their contribution has not just led to significant reform and achievement in our three schools but it's through this innovation and that collaboration that many things have come to all Seattle Public Schools.
whether that be a different pedagogy and literacy for example that we started a decade ago that quickly spread throughout all middle schools.
So their contribution is far beyond just the hundreds and hundreds of kids who have come through our schools but all of Seattle Public Schools so thank you so much.
Mr. Carter.
I'd like to also express my gratitude to the Nesselton Foundation and of course our partnership with the City of Lovie that has also helped to facilitate this.
The one point I'd like to really emphasize here as well as Jeff talked about this and Mia talked about this but within this innovation and growth comes teacher leadership and teacher leadership that is not just able to be replicated and scaled but endure over time.
So that investment around students, investment around literacy and the development of teacher leadership is profound.
Alright so now I'd like to invite up the Neslom family so John, Laurel and Erica Neslom if you could come up and then John is going to go ahead and give a couple of words for you.
Well thank you Kelly.
We firmly believe that education is the central challenge of our time.
We are very proud of what has been accomplished but we are fully cognizant that there is a very long way to go.
But I really want to pay tribute to our team members who really do the work.
First of all our principals Jeff and Chris and Mia and our assistant principals Dan Reeve, Dan is here today would you stand up Dan.
Adrienne Nestor and Christy Bowman White.
And our AP coordinator the force of nature Susanna Kapp.
And our consultant Christy Scandrup.
Christy please stand up.
Along with the district representatives at our monthly meetings we have a real team culture.
One that is totally focused on student learning and student achievement and one that constantly seeks ways to become more innovative and more effective.
I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the important contribution, I'm sorry coordination between our work and the city of Seattle levy.
The crucial levy dollars complement ours.
We are just simply ecstatic that the Satterberg foundation is joining us in this work.
Obviously the next step is to move our feeder schools forward so that our incoming sixth graders are fully equipped to take on our middle school work.
We are optimistic about the future.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I invite the board to come down and greet the Nesholms and thank you again for awesome work.
You guys should come up too, Christy.
Okay.
Yeah.
We want to recognize we are a little late.
Monday was indigenous people's day.
Two years ago the school board passed a resolution commemorating that and setting aside that day for our work districtwide.
Hold that thought.
OK, tonight we will have the Idaho Heritage Group from South Shore K-8 perform for us.
At this time, I would like to invite my colleagues to take a seat in the audience for the performance.
Good evening.
My name is Jeanne Jimenez.
I am a 1968 graduate of Ingram high school and now I am the announcer for our Haida heritage dance group.
I was just telling my sister I moved here in the first grade from our village of Alaska in Haida Berg in southeastern on Prince of Wales Island.
And my mother never in her wildest dreams would have come into my classroom and shared her culture because back then it wasn't really validated.
It wasn't valued and it wasn't asked for but now we are invited to a school board meeting so this is wonderful.
Our dance group is called Haida Heritage and in my native tongue I say Haida Heritage.
We are Haida Heritage.
We are happy to be here.
All of you are welcome to share our culture with us on indigenous week.
which is a long time coming also.
Our dance group we have children in our group from South Shore, my three grandchildren, a niece goes to Cleveland and we also have a principal from Graham Hill, a retired teacher, I am a retired para-ed I worked in the Seattle school district for 35 years and also a para-ed from South Shore and also the native ed coordinator from the Renton school district.
I hope I didn't forget any of them.
So but mostly we are focusing on our children and they are so proud of their culture and they have been doing this for quite a few years now.
And I just want to say that I started in the district in 1970. It was the first Indian education program.
It was implemented in 1970 in the Georgetown Elementary which is now demolished.
And I just remember I had to wear a dress to work every day.
I had a manual typewriter.
And I had a mimeograph machine, and that's about it.
That's all we had back then.
But I'm just thankful that we don't have to wear dresses every day.
So here we are, Haida Heritage.
And as I mentioned, we have students from South Shore.
Raise your hand if you're from South Shore.
Cleveland.
Renton High School.
Coordinator.
And my niece over here is a principal at Graham Hill.
We're so proud of her accomplishments.
And we also have my sister, who's a retired teacher, Saundra, who works at South Shore.
Am I forgetting anybody else?
And then of course our little ones who haven't really started their formal education yet.
Our first song is we only have a few minutes so we're going to do a welcome song.
So we want you to put two hands up.
This is a gesture of welcome, thankfulness, praise and friendship.
And we'll make our hands go back and forth from left to right as we sing the friendship song.
Many years ago, the Haida people of the Queen Charlotte Islands, which is now called Haida Gwaii, we're Haida, Kaigani Haida, we're Alaskan Haidas, but the Haida Gwaii people of British Columbia sent us this flag, which is the Haida national flag.
And they were trying to stop the forests on their land from being clear cut.
But the government wouldn't listen to them, and the logging companies wouldn't listen to their concerns.
So the grandmothers of the village, the Nani's, the precious Nani's, locked arms across the logging roads.
And finally, their concerns were listened to.
And some of these things are happening, as we know today, around native lands.
So we're going to sing the Lyle Island song.
And before we do our exit I think Gail wanted to say a few words.
I just want to recognize them and I feel so proud to see them perform.
Very modest, amazing singers, love them all.
We also have Chrissy Harris here who is from United Indian.
of All Tribes Foundation known as Daybreak Star.
So I want to just plug this.
Sandra Segundo is also an author and We have a book for each of the board directors and she wrote this book and we give this out for professional development for since time immemorial and in the back of it is also or in the front is a CD of them singing and she wrote the book and she also did the illustrations as well.
Thank you so much for that amazing performance.
But before you leave we would actually like you to say your first name and you don't have to say your grade.
Emmanuel, I go to Cascade, I'm in third grade.
I'm Solomon I go to South Shore and I'm in fourth grade.
Kaylee do you want to say something?
Kaylee is in preschool and Russell is not in school yet.
I'm Sophia and I'm in first grade and I go to South Shore.
I'm in 8th grade and I go to Nelson middle school.
I'm Gemma and I'm in 7th grade and I go to South Shore.
My name is Andrew I go to South Shore and I'm in 8th grade.
I'm Gabby I go to Cleveland and I'm in 10th grade.
I'm Tommy Segundo and I am not in school but I run the Title VI program for the Renton school district and I worked for Huchoosedah about 10 years ago and that was kind of my start to my professional career so it's always good to come back.
I think he didn't want to say his name so he ran away.
I'm Sorrel I graduated from Cleveland in 2013 and I'm currently attending Northwest Indian College in Bellingham.
Hi my name is Matthew Williams and I graduated from Renton High.
Hi I'm Chrissy Harris and I'm the interim admin director for United Indians of All Tribes at Daybreak Star.
Hi I am Sandra Segundo I am currently at South Shore pre-K-8 I work with the EBD program in the middle school and I have also worked for the Huchoosedah program and I think I have worked at pretty much every school in my 20 years at the district.
I'm Dina Russo I'm the principal at Graham Hill Elementary School.
I worked for 17 years in Seattle Public Schools.
I started as an hourly employee in the southeast and I've done most of my work in the southeast.
So as you can hear a lot of us are from the southeast region.
Some are going to school in Renton but all of us have really important jobs in public education and indigenous tribes.
I'm Vicki Segundo I started working for Seattle Public Schools in 1970 and I have been retired for almost one year so it's just been, it's a new experience for me.
I've taught special ed, ELL, I worked at Van Asselt for a while and then for the past 10 years I've been with the Huchoosedah native education program.
But I did want to mention that we do have two other members, my two grandkids that graduated Well one from Cleveland and then one is currently at Franklin High School in 10th grade.
So I am a product of Seattle Public Schools I was brought up in Ballard.
I went to Crown Hill, Whitman and graduated from Ingram before I started working as a teacher.
So I'm thankful to be here and there was somebody else, oh there was three students that couldn't make it they go to Whitman and Gatewood they are from North Seattle but because of the traffic they just couldn't get here today.
I am not sure if Jeannie already said this, my aunt, but we are all one big family.
These are my siblings, this is my mom and my aunt.
And we are all from the town of Heidelberg, Alaska even though a lot of us were born and raised in Seattle.
My youngest daughter is a counselor at Bellevue high school and she is talking about coming back to the hood.
Can we give them one more applause?
They did a wonderful job.
Thank you so much.
It was an amazing performance.
Hahahahaha!