School Board Meeting Date Sept. 7th, 2016 Pt3

We are now going into our action items.

And our first action item for tonight is approval of board policy number 6501 data privacy.

Can we hear from A&F?

All right that came to audit and finance.

Oh okay.

That's a good idea.

I'm going to read it first.

All right approval of board policy number 6501 data privacy.

I move the school board adopt policy number 6501 data privacy as attached to the board action report.

Second the motion.

Okay this motion was discussed at the Audit 15 and the April 19 and May 12 and the June 9 and the August 18, 2016 Audit and Finance Committee meetings.

On August 18, 2016 the committee reviewed the motion and moved the item forward to the full board with a recommendation for approval.

Any comments or questions on this item?

Ms. Ritchie roll call.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion passed unanimously.

Our next item team read memorandum of understanding.

I move that the board authorize the superintendent to enter into a five-year agreement with team read in the form of a draft agreement and to accept the grant funds from the team read nonprofit organization with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to take any steps necessary to implement this action.

I second the motion.

Can we hear from C&I?

This motion was discussed at C&I meeting on August 15 and moved forward to the full board with a recommendation for consideration as amended.

There were two aspects of it partly the memorandum, the MOU was not, there were a couple of amendments that were made in committee but also it was moved forward for consideration because we wanted explicit opportunities to celebrate the success as has been done recently.

Director Harris.

I just want to say ordinarily I would be hugely opposed to a five-year MOU.

However, given the extraordinary results of this program and given the fact that this is a 501C3 that is out there looking for funding and grants it gives them the kind of stability that they can leverage with those grants makers.

So I withdrew my opposition when I understood that issue.

Any other comments or questions?

Ms. Ritchie roll call.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion passed unanimously.

Okay we are now into our introduction items.

PTA 4 approval of the educational specifications for the Magnolia Elementary School renovation and additional project.

Can we hear from Ops Chair?

This item was heard by the Ops Committee on August 16 and was moved forward for consideration.

Thank you.

You are on Mr. Best.

Yes thank you Richard Best Director of Capital Projects and Planning.

Introducing tonight the elementary educational specifications for Magnolia Elementary School.

These are based on the district's elementary ed specs.

We then met with a Magnolia Elementary School SDAT team led by Heather Johnson who is the principal at Catherine Blaine K8.

Some additional staff members from Catherine Blaine K8.

And Sherry Cox who is in the office of teaching and learning to help us develop the architectural program for Magnolia elementary school.

This is based on what we call a three up model.

meaning that there will be three classrooms per grade level with K-3 class size reduction.

There is actually four classrooms at kindergarten through third grade in the three up model.

And Director Blanford had requested in the operations committee that we put the K-3 elementary educational specifications on our website and so we did that and I believe Director Burke requested that we have a hotlink to it when we were at the operations committee and we were also successful at doing that.

So I open it up to questions.

Director Harris.

Since it seems sometimes that we are darned if we do and we are darned if we don't, what community engagement in that community have we done so that we are not having some of the same issues with the Loyal Heights folks coming back to us a year from now?

We had a community meeting in I believe late May early June presenting the schematic design submittal Director Harris and then we are also planning to have a community meeting here in the very near future.

None of the concerns that have been expressed by the Loyal Heights community were expressed at the meeting that I attended at Magnolia Elementary School.

I do know that we also have community participation on our SDAT committee.

So there are some members of the Magnolia committee that are sitting on the SDAT committee participating in those conversations.

So I will also note that we do have a park immediately adjacent this school to the east and so that could be why we are not hearing some of the issues that have been expressed concerning Loyal Heights.

How many folks came to that community meeting and how did we get it out to the community?

Our capital projects community specialist got the meeting notice out.

I'm going to say there was probably in the neighborhood of 100 community members in attendance at that meeting.

I will also note that the Magnolia community is very excited to have this school reopened.

Thank you.

Director Peters.

On the subject of the park I think one similarity between Magnolia and Loyal Heights is the fact that there isn't much playground space there and so yes the park will be helpful.

But this is a topic I also brought up with Director Herndon regarding Hamilton middle school.

These are Hamilton like Magnolia are two schools that are right next to public parks.

Can we have any sort of agreement with the city, the parks department to allow our students to have access to the parks during the school day?

Because my understanding is that at the moment that's not necessarily allowed during the school day.

But this would be a great possibility of a partnership where the city could help us out in places where our kids could benefit from more space especially in some of the cases I think in Magnolia.

I think that park used to belong to the district and the district sold it to the city.

You are correct, Flip Herndon associate superintendent of operations and facilities.

In many cases the parks that are adjacent to schools used to be school district property but we have sold to parks.

We have had this conversation with the parks department While we would not be granted exclusive use we couldn't close the parks off to the public.

We do indeed have some partnerships.

Fairmount Park is another location that has an extremely extremely small paved area and students go to the park.

But supervision is key in that particular area and the parks folks have said we can't give you exclusive use but we have very little problem with kind of communicating that during school hours you're going to see a lot of school students on and in the park at that time.

So it comes down to supervision on the school side.

Just to broaden the scope of the question, is that a general yes from the parks department?

They generally don't have an opposition to that.

They really do like to work with us in these particular cases and they understand that we may need to use them more often than not.

It becomes a little bit more tricky if we are trying to coordinate programming since we don't have exclusive use of the land.

For instance if there was a park that had tennis courts and we were trying to schedule tennis class or something like that on that particular piece that may be a little bit more tricky.

But general use as long as we are trying to coordinate with them they have been fairly supportive of that with us.

And is that an option for Hamilton middle school this year?

We can certainly continue to ask if there is any opposition to that.

So far any of the locations that we have inquired about they really haven't had much opposition to that.

And just for the record the reason why I am bringing up Hamilton is right now Hamilton has some portables parked on its only play space which was a basketball court That is only a temporary situation it will be a one-year situation but that does leave the kids nowhere to really run around but there is a beautiful Wallingford Park right adjacent to the school.

So it sounds like they are using the park or at least they did today.

They did.

Fantastic.

Director Geary.

Having experienced the whole park availability with Laurelhurst Elementary I would just, it's my understanding that we need to be careful about that because it sometimes would take additional staff that the principals can't guarantee to supervise.

So just the proximity of the park doesn't necessarily take care of the problem if you have limited staff available to supervise.

You can't.

And you need probably more than on the enclosed area because now you have an open area that is accessible to all sorts of people.

We have a growing homeless problem in our city that makes the bushes somewhat inaccessible.

You'd need to yeah attractive nuisances I guess is the nice way I don't I don't want to pit groups against one another but we do have to be very very careful in considering the use of parks when it comes to our kids.

There's a lot of risks in that.

Director Pinkham.

Thank you.

One comment that I think I brought up before is as we do need to have this new construction for capacity especially prior that you know K through 5 schools that I'd hate just again keep on reducing the play space you know.

So where it can be some kind of action and be there by the board or us ourselves and maybe I'll write up some kind of action report that any new school will not reduce the average play space for any future.

So.

Again we are going to keep the play space hopefully if we have the average of two acres for K through five the next school can't be smaller than two acres play space something like that.

So we're mindful of those kind of things and I know the challenge of space and all that but I'm glad that we are working with the parks department.

I know with the new bell times that is an issue so there could be hopefully some negotiation room with how we can get access to the proper recess needs for our students.

Yeah just a little bit in response to that.

Some of our challenge is clearly whether or not we are dealing with an immovable object that has been landmarked which is the case for Magnolia.

So in many cases if we have the ability to really maximize the entire lot We have a better opportunity to do that but when we are dealing with finite amount of space it becomes a challenge when you are trying to increase the class size.

I mean it is a zero-sum game when you are dealing with a finite amount of space unless you buy adjacent property and increase the amount of space.

Magnolia like a couple of other schools also doesn't have a gymnasium.

So in order to add a gymnasium you are actually increasing the ability to have space, active space for students indoors that yes it is taking some exterior space but you are increasing the ability for interior space and programming which happens on a regular basis.

Believe me all our designs we try and maximize as much the possibility for outdoor play space.

I fully support active play for students and unstructured active play which I think is great to have.

But we also need to make sure that we are meeting the educational instructional needs which includes physical education and a gymnasium that's an appropriate size for our students.

Any more questions comments?

Thank you.

Our next item is PTA IV award contract P1454 for architectural slash engineering AE services to Integra's architecture for the Ingram high school classroom addition.

Can we get a recommendation from ops chair?

First off I would say that I misspoke on the last one which was move forward from the committee for approval.

Thank you Director Geary for pointing out my error.

And then this one was heard by the operations committee on the 16th of August and was moved forward for consideration.

Thank you.

And I'll just speak to that point.

It was moved forward for consideration because we presented a range of architectural fees for at the operations committee we have completed negotiations on this with Integras architecture.

This is actually a BTA IV project.

I'll remove the BEX IV reference from the title in this when it comes to action.

But this is to add a 500 student classroom addition at Ingram high school.

It will be added, we are looking at adding it on the north side of the building adjacent the 2010-2012 addition that was on the west side of the building.

So they will actually link.

working with Integrious Architecture on negotiating a fee.

We have landed on a fee of $2 million $900,000 for a construction contract of approximately $22 million.

Their fee represents 12.6% of the construction contract value because this is a modernization in addition it is not unreasonable.

From a fee standpoint we deem this fair and reasonable and are making a recommendation that you approve this contract so that we can begin design work.

We are on a relatively short timeline.

We are hoping to deliver this project in the summer of 2019 for occupancy in the fall of 2019. And we definitely need the capacity that this addition will provide for our high school students in the north end.

So.

Director Harris.

This firm we've worked with them before good work.

Can you name some of the projects.

They actually did the addition at Ingram high school back in 2010 timeframe.

Director Harris they are a well-regarded Seattle architectural firm for school design.

They have done numerous high schools throughout the state of Washington.

They have two offices, one located in Spokane and one located in Seattle.

But very reputable.

Any more questions or comments from directors?

There being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned.