SPEAKER_16

board meeting to order in a moment and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

For those joining by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called.

This is President Hersey.

I am now calling the August 30th, 2023 regular board meeting to order at 4.15 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded and we would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, the roll call please.

SPEAKER_04

Director Hampson, here.

Director Harris, present.

Vice President Rankin, here.

Director Rivera-Smith, present.

Director Sargio is unable to attend.

Director Song-Moritz, present.

And President Hersey, here.

SPEAKER_16

I will now turn it over to Superintendent Jones for his comments.

SPEAKER_08

Good evening everyone and welcome back.

I hope you've all had a rejuvenating summer break and for myself and my team it's been a very productive summer.

Staff have been hard at work teaching summer school programs, conducting trainings, preparing materials and classrooms for the new school year.

We've also had some exciting community engagement opportunities this summer that were well attended and actually inspiring.

I want to say a huge thank you to all of our staff who made these summer programs and events possible for students and families, so a big thank you to you all.

Regarding the events that we've had, we had the creating the system of well-resourced schools dialogue, and I want to thank everyone in the SPS community who joined us at these well-resourced school meetings.

We're grateful to hear from community as we strategize on how to use our resources to create schools where our students can thrive.

These were high-quality discussions and I want to give a special thank you to Dr. Torres, Chief Redman, and the Public Affairs team for their expert facilitation.

I think anyone who attended those meetings felt that people were well heard and we had great data gathering.

To that end, my team and I are working really hard to pull these insights together and ultimately share these back to our board and the community around our buildings, our programs, and our services.

I think this was a really important dialogue that we're having.

This is going to be foundational to how we define our budget, how we do our strategic planning, How do we look at our levy planning for the next cycle?

And so we held five sessions already, and we'll have another session virtually.

We were going to have one Tuesday night, last night, but due to an overwhelming response, we had to go back and reset so that we can have the capacity to make sure that we can accommodate all the interest in the well-resourced school dialogue.

So that next meeting will be September 26th.

And we hope to see you all online.

Regarding progress monitoring, that's something that we do on a regular basis now, and this evening we'll intro elements of my evaluation and share how it's aligned and integrated with our goals, but we'll also have the opportunity to dig into our data on college and career readiness.

That's what we reference as goal three.

We'll be joined by our coach, AJ Craybill, accountability officer, Ted Howard, assistant superintendent for academics, Dr. Mike Starosky, and they'll be the main presenters for tonight.

We're excited to continue enhancing these.

Thank you.

So we're going to have these dialogues around student data and strategy for achieving our goals.

And it's important that we do this, that we're transparent, that we do this so everyone knows what our key goals are.

And for those of you who aren't familiar, we're focused on third grade reading, meeting standard at third grade reading.

meeting standard for math in seventh grade, and being college and career ready, which means taking advanced courses in high school and having adequate credits to not only graduate, but to be prepared to take on the next steps.

Something else that we are preparing for this next school year is my team and I have been hard at work preparing for the school year, and part of that has been negotiations with our labor partners.

As an aside note, believe it or not, we have at least 17 bargaining agreements in our district, and the collective bargaining agreement with the Constructions Trade Council is on tonight, this evening's agenda.

We're also still in active conversations with our labor partners with Local 302. And those folks in orange represent that group.

And these are our food service, custodial, security staff, really important for the essential work that we do in our schools.

I want to recognize how important they are to what we do on a normal basis.

They're part of the fabric of everything.

And so I know we're in a space where we're in bargaining right now, but wanted to make sure that this group knows that we respect and admire what you do on a daily basis.

So we're working on a contract to make sure that people are fairly recognized in terms of pay, in terms of recognizing their contributions, and we're doing it in the backdrop of a tough financial situation.

So we know that we're working hard and both parties are at the table trying to get to ultimately an agreement.

In case we don't get to an agreement, which I claim that we will, we all have to work on contingency plans in case that doesn't happen.

But we're looking forward to opening school on next Wednesday with everybody on board.

So with that said, September 6th, that's the day we're starting 180 Days of Excellence.

That's when school starts.

That's the most exciting day for me at least, mostly for our educators and staff.

I think that's a very exciting day.

We're going to make sure that we welcome our new students and we think about, I think about the five-year-olds that are coming in, the new kindergartners and the new families that are coming forward.

This is why that day is so exciting, September 6th, and so we're looking forward to that.

And so we want to welcome them back into our buildings with open arms so that we can start them on the process of thriving.

A couple more points.

I just want to make note that we are welcoming new student board members.

We've had three new board members that are coming on board.

One is actually returning.

That's Luna, and then we have Lola and Ashush.

They're going to be with us throughout this year helping to guide us using student voice, helping us to shape our decisions, helping us to develop new strategies, helping us to abandon strategies that aren't working, helping us to adopt strategies so that we make sure we're doing right by our students.

And so we had an opportunity to honor them and to recognize them today as we had a moment for them to be sworn in.

And so also the lastly, we were looking at budget.

Budget is always an issue.

At least it's been that way for the last couple of years.

We have a calendar that we'll share with you.

Assistant Superintendent Buttleman has a calendar that he's going to share with the board here soon around what does this year look like?

How do we get to a reconciled budget?

We'll have work sessions starting in September to talk about how do we reconcile and how do we get to a place where we can continue to fund our most important priorities.

Without further ado, I'm going to give it back to President Hersey and look forward to their meeting time today.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you Superintendent Jones.

We have now come to the board comment section of the agenda.

We are excited to welcome all of our students back to school very soon.

Tonight we had the opportunity to welcome our student board members as Dr. Jones mentioned with an oath of office ceremony just prior to this meeting.

We look forward to having Luna and Ayush and Lola join us throughout the year and help provide incredible and critical insight into the way that we do our business and including student voice.

Tonight's meeting marks the first regular board meeting for the year, but we kicked off this board year with a retreat on August 9. We discussed our work plan, which serves as a roadmap for what our policies and laws charge us with doing this year, and I'll touch on what's underway and coming up in my comments each meeting.

This month, we have Director Sarju leading our work on our upcoming appointments to the Discipline Appeal Council.

I invite our SPS community, both staff and members of the public, to apply for the appointment to the Discipline Appeal Council, which serves as our designee to decide certain student discipline appeals.

The application is posted on the school board website and applications are due September 12th.

We will receive an update on this process during introduction on September 13th and are scheduled to make appointments on September 27th.

Work is also underway by Directors Rankin, Rivera-Smith, and Samaritz to develop proposed guiding principles for our next BEX VI capital levy.

These principles are scheduled for introduction on September 13th.

And we'll have some time for further feedback, engagement, and potential refinement with the principles not scheduled for action until October 11th.

Finally, work is also underway to develop a legislative agenda for intro in October.

Our legislative liaison, Vice President Rankin, may speak further to that item later on.

We'll go now to committee and liaison reports.

We do have upcoming meetings for our Audit Committee on September 5 and our Ad Hoc Policy Manual Review Committee on September 7. I anticipate sharing more information about engagement dates for our Ad Hoc Community Engagement Committee soon.

We will now move into our other reports for tonight.

We have a report from the Audit Committee.

SPEAKER_20

Good afternoon everyone.

I am Chandra Hampson director of or chair of the audit committee and we have a quarterly audit committee coming up on September 5th from 4 p.m.

to 6 p.m.

that will be in person here at the district.

I apologize that the I note that when we pull up the board calendar you don't see in the same line of The calendar the the committee meetings you have to go into the committee Itself and then pull up within that committee the upcoming meetings that's something that I hope we can maybe discuss changing in the future in terms of how we bring this work forward.

The audit the work of the audit committee is really important to the whole board.

Encourage everyone to attend.

It will be an extremely robust agenda with everything from audits on communications to teaching and learning.

Having discussions about the management's response to the recommendations and those meetings will also be discussing.

Perspective changes to the audit plan and going over updates on our enterprise risk management work including the formation of the Enterprise Risk Council.

to further cement the importance of internal audit and risk management in the support of this district reaching its goals and outcomes.

Sorry.

And we'll further be reviewing have the opportunity to review the one pager that we did around internal audit and the connection between external audit the superintendent school board and enterprise risk management and how the importance of those items and how they work together.

I encourage people to attend.

Obviously, there will be the opportunity to attend virtually as well.

The agenda for that should post by Friday, I believe.

Then other than that, I do want to give a shout out to, I don't know if anybody else watches the World Series, the Little League World Series specifically.

But Northeast Seattle was represented in the Little League World Series, making it to some of the final games, playing for the US.

Ultimately, a team from California, El Segundo, prevailed and ended up playing Curacao in an extremely exciting game for the final.

But Northeast Seattle Little League made it really far.

played really hard with a lot of passion, a lot of exuberance and positivity.

It was so exciting and made me so proud to see them making it that far and just all the Kind of the spirit of the of the whole thing Hopefully we'll see the same intention played to softball as well at some point in the future Although there there was one one girl representing on The Southeast representing team, but I just want to say congratulations to Northeast Seattle Little League all-stars for for getting so far and and Thank you for your hard work and commitment and to the the coaches I think that was a highlight of my summer to see that that happen and then Hopefully, I know we had two additional board members attend tribal consultation trainings this Week and so I don't know how many that leaves maybe two or three of you left to go Really want to have folks all trained up.

So as much as possible before we bring the ultimately our pretty complex tribal consultation policy forward.

I've been working very hard to take, put into place everything that was learned from convenings.

We had our follow-up meeting on the government to government task force last week and talked about all of our learnings from that and how that will go into policy.

We will be doing a presentation at the WASDA conference in October.

That team from the government to government task force.

So if directors have any additional questions about that I don't currently have I think Director Rivera-Smith is the only other one that has seen the original draft policy so there are at least two other directors that if they want to take a look at the policy and provide edits they're welcome to.

I think that's it from my seat.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

Next we will go to our ad hoc policy manual review and legislative liaison report.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you.

So for the policy ad hoc review committee our next meeting is on September 7th.

We've met a couple of times over the summer and just to kind of give a quick review of what we're doing is we have a lot of policies in the policy manual for Seattle Public Schools.

And we're looking to create a tool to help us assess why we have each policy and how it serves us so that we can ultimately get to a place where we have a policy manual that can be reviewed regularly so that That's really our power as a board is to write and adopt and approve policy that gives direction to the superintendent on behalf of the community.

Our policy is full of policies that haven't been really evaluated or used in any way of accountability since a decade or more ago.

Our first step and where we're about to close out on is developing our tool to score score our policies into some different distinct categories and we'll use that to assign each policy and then we'll go from there.

So the next thing that will come before the full board will be a work session to walk the full board and anybody watching through our recommendations as a committee for what that tool looks like and get a thumbs up to hopefully continue in the work and actually use the tool to evaluate all our policies.

Yeah, so that's that.

From the legislative liaison side of things, where we are right now in the legislative process is, you know, we had a state legislative session this winter into spring that was what's called a long session because it was a budget setting session.

The state sets their budget for two years.

Districts are required to approve and submit their budgets annually, but the amount of money coming from the state is set every two years and remains that way.

We're at the point in the process now and preparing for the 2024 short session.

where we and other organizations set our priorities as an organization.

By setting the priorities, they'll come to the full board for approval.

If approved, that gives our collective direction to the superintendent and the district on our highest priorities of advocacy.

Right now, I'm in the stage of working with staff to identify any staff priorities, any capital or other supplemental asks, because we can ask for all the funding increases that we want, but they will not be preparing a new budget.

The budget has been set.

So the off-cycle years or the short session years are more focused on policy and legislation and any kind of supplemental budgets.

But previous session, we got the largest increase in funding from the state for special education in state history.

Uh, so while that was great, that's a start and also do not- I do not anticipate anything more significant in the coming year since they have already set their budget for the coming year, um, or for- for- for two years.

So- but there's still a lot of work to do and a lot of priorities that we can push on.

I'm working with staff now to identify any specific priorities for the supplemental budget.

Then also, we'll be looking to our priorities from last year and doing some engagement with community partners to involved in education and with children to see how we align, if there's something we're missing, and then bring it to the full board for feedback and then approval.

Then that sets our legislative platform.

So because the budget isn't the focus, one of the other pretty significant student impact bills, the last session that didn't make it through was on isolation and restraint.

I anticipate that still being something that is not losing importance.

And, um, there's a lot of work to do around.

I actually- I had the opportunity earlier this week to attend a roundtable discussion with the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

Um, and they are focusing on, uh, it's called seclusion at the state level.

We call it isolation.

Um, and just to be really clear, this doesn't mean just a child taking a break.

This is very specifically about isolating, secluding, forcibly, a child into any kind of space where they cannot voluntarily leave and they're alone.

Some schools across the country and the state have rooms designed specifically for this purpose.

They're literally padded cells.

But there are, you know, closets get used for this.

Doors are removed and people still use, you know, padded gym mats to isolate children.

So I just want to be really super clear that we're not talking about like a little calm down area.

We're talking about really traumatizing practice that's used most often on students with disabilities and students in elementary school.

So it was, I don't want to say exciting because I wish I didn't have to go to it, but it was meaningful to be part of a conversation at the federal level about this as a civil rights issue, as a discriminatory issue because it is used most often against students who have disabilities and that limits their access to education.

You can report, anybody can report.

If you go onto the DOJ website, Civil Rights Division, you can report it.

There's just a lot of good work happening and people coming around really seriously addressing this as not just a moment of acute emergency, but how do we create environments in our schools?

How do we bring the supports in and make sure that the adults have what they need so that we don't get to the point where this seems like the only option?

So yes, connected to all of those things, we also have coming up, I'm our WASDA, which is the Washington State School Director Association.

I am our board's legislative liaison for that.

And so I will be going as our voting delegate to Spokane in about a month to the General Assembly where we will be voting as a whole body, the WASDA body, all school board directors in the state, all school boards have a representative, and we'll be voting on positions.

And I submitted to our board and it was unanimously approved.

two positions that have to do with isolation and restraint, and they were reviewed by the legislative and the resolutions committee of WASDA, and both have been recommended do pass by those committees.

So that's going to the full WASDA body to hopefully become adopted as member supported positions that allows the full specific advocacy from WASDA as a body on those issues.

There's of course a hundred something other issues that we're voting on.

Also somewhat connected are what President Hersey mentioned about the principles for the BEX levy.

The three of us have been working with staff on drafting those.

As the legislative liaison in WASDA, I'm trying to also connect some dots.

There's lots of common themes across all these things with the well-resourced school conversation, safe and welcoming environments.

A lot of these priorities are really clearly coming to us from the community that connect to one another.

And so that's another opportunity to make sure that we're elevating the highest needs and priorities of our community, and we will have something in there about accessibility and safe and welcoming in alignment with all the other priorities.

So, yes, keep an eye on all those things.

SPEAKER_16

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Do we have any additional liaison reports this evening?

By all means.

SPEAKER_21

Thank you.

Out in West Seattle South Park and Georgetown District 6. We met on August 4th at the Southwest library and Director Song Moritz joined us.

Thank you so much for coming.

I hope the lasagna made it worth your while.

Oh two thumbs up.

Did you see that guys.

And it was a really fabulous conversation.

We were joined by a former SPS educator, special education, who was very pleased to hear that we are looking at universal design.

I bragged about our SLI presentation, Dr. Novak, And I hope that we get Dr. Novak's keynote up on the website yesterday.

It was that good.

And.

I don't often say that.

So hip hip.

Thank you for that.

And because that's only for principals and assistant principals one hopes that we take that professional development and we take it to boots on the ground to all the IA's and all of our hard working staff and teachers.

If we can implement this well And I know that the bandwidth is narrow and the mandates are huge.

But this this could be what turns our tide.

And I'm hoping that we will hear from staff.

just how we're rolling out professional development.

It's that important and it's important enough to where I think that we need to have regular updates here in legislative meetings since we don't have committee meetings any longer.

If this is that important Let's hear about it.

Second we have another community meeting in West Seattle that will be at the High Point library that's on 35th Southwest on September 16th at 2 p.m.

And yes lasagna will be served.

And yes my colleagues are all invited as our staff.

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_29

Just a quick update from the Capital Levy Oversight Committee.

The committee met a couple times this summer to visit some of our newly renovated and new school buildings.

And a huge thank you to the hard work of the capital projects team.

We will be having three ribbon cutting ceremonies.

this week at Kimball Elementary, James Baldwin Elementary, and West Seattle Elementary.

And of course, thank you to the Seattle voters for approving the levy so that we can create these welcoming and inspiring spaces for our students.

SPEAKER_16

Finally, do we have any additional board engagements for us to discuss tonight?

All right.

Thank you.

We will next go to public testimony.

We will be taking public testimony by phone and in person as stated on the agenda.

Board procedure 1430BP provides the rules for testimony and I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

I will summarize some important parts of this procedure.

First testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from our public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the school board website.

Only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step forward to the podium, and only one person should speak at a time.

Speakers from the list may cede their time to another person when the listed speaker's name is called.

The total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined number of speakers.

Time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins, and the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list.

Those who do not wish to have time ceded to them may decline and retain their place on the testimony wait list.

The majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about.

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

As board president, I reserve the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by board procedure 1430BP.

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

Ms. Koo will read off the testimony speakers.

SPEAKER_25

Thank you, President Hersey.

A quick logistical note.

Speakers joining us by phone, please remain muted until your name is called to provide testimony.

When your name is called, please be sure you have unmuted on the device you are calling from and also press star six to unmute yourself on the conference call line.

Each speaker will have a two minute speaking time.

You will hear a beep when your time is exhausted and the next speaker will be called.

The first speaker on the list is Chris Jackins.

SPEAKER_27

Test.

SPEAKER_00

My name is Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the $693,000 cost increase on the athletic field project at Madison Middle School.

Three points, number one, the contract was executed in March even though the district knew costly changes would later be needed.

Number two, a cost increase of over $500,000 requires prior board approval, yet the field is already being ripped up.

Number three, there are dangerous forever chemicals in the artificial grass.

Please vote no and please require natural grass.

On the bargaining agreement with the building construction trades council, page 22 states that the agreement will run through August 31st, 2022, not 2024. That looks like a typo.

On contract negotiations with the operating engineers, local 302, do you have any further updates?

My best wishes to local 302. Thanks for being here today.

On the Alki elementary project, six points.

Number one, the superintendent hired a hearing examiner to review the Alki project.

The examiner was less than respectful to the public.

Number two, the Alki plans do not provide for any on-site ADA parking.

Number three, the city recently rejected the Alki parking plan.

Number four, the district is depending on other agencies to do the oversight that the district should have done.

Number five, please immediately intervene to fix the Alki project as well as Montlake and Rogers.

All three projects are oversized expansions that dovetail with closing other nearby schools.

Number six, please do not close schools.

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Brenda Gonzalez.

Brenda, if you're on the line, please press star six to unmute.

SPEAKER_02

Hello, members of the board and community.

My name is Brenda Gonzalez, and I'm here on behalf of Community Roots Housing to present information on our new affordable housing project in the Lake City neighborhood in partnership with the Seattle Mennonite Church.

We are currently performing due diligence to create a mixed-use new construction project on the current site of the Seattle Mennonite Church located at 3120 Northeast 125th Street.

This project is expected to include new space for the Seattle Mennonite Church, 200 homes of affordable housing for families, families with children and individuals, nonprofit services, commercial retail and restaurant space and a public plaza.

Community-based housing is a community-based organization serving Seattle since 1976. Today CRH owns and operates buildings throughout Capitol Hill, White Center, the Central Area, Fremont, Belltown, as well as other neighborhoods.

We are also actively engaged in community projects and initiatives to improve the neighborhoods in which our residents live.

Some examples of our work, which you may be familiar with, are the Liberty Bank building, 12th Avenue Arts, and Station House.

We are now conducting early-stage design activities and working to obtain project financing.

As with any project of this type, we will be seeking funding from a variety of sources, including the City of Seattle Office of Housing, King County, and the Washington State Housing Trust Fund.

This will enable us to keep rents affordable and construct a building that will improve property for occupants and neighbors alike.

We are offering an opportunity for community members to offer input on the proposed project.

Please feel free to contact me, Brenda Gonzalez, at bgonzalez at communityrootshousing.org if you should have any questions or feedback.

And we will be sending more information to the Seattle School Board.

Thank you, board and community members, for your time.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Jennifer Pence.

SPEAKER_27

Hello.

Yes.

My name is Jennifer Bentz.

I have worked for the school district for 11 years.

I currently work as a leads ground in the north area of the school district.

I serve on IUOE Local 302's bargaining committee.

We have been bargaining all spring and all summer for a fair contract.

Last Wednesday at our bargaining session we received the first economic proposal.

The district from the district and it was nothing more than the mandatory minimum percentage increase of IPD for two years.

We then had to beg and plead for an explanation as to the why behind such a disrespectful offer.

The district's response was to share a school board budget presentation given on May 10th 2023 as to the rationale and why there is nothing more to give to our members who passed out millions of meals to our community during the pandemic, who cleaned and scrubbed high touch areas, biohazards, toilets, and operated boilers to keep us warm and safe.

who have broken up fights and been first responders putting their own lives at risk at times.

Members who have trimmed mowed planted and weeded to keep our properties looking respectable while exposed to the elements of extreme temperatures both both hot and cold.

We were told at the table that the district could operate without us.

Our contract expires tomorrow.

We will continue to be good labor partners right up until the day we're not.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Nancy Buren.

SPEAKER_28

Good afternoon.

My name is Nancy Buren.

I have worked for the district for 12 years.

I currently work in culinary services at Queen Anne Elementary.

I also serve on the IUOE Local 302's bargaining committee.

We have been bargaining all spring and summer for a fair contract.

Last Wednesday, as you heard at our bargaining session, we received the first economic proposal from the district, and it was nothing more than the mandatory minimum percentage increase of IPD for two years.

We then had to beg and plead for an explanation as to the why behind such a disrespectful offer.

The district's response was to share a school board budget presentation that was given on May 10, 2023, as to the rationale and the why there is nothing more to give our members.

Our members who have prepared and passed out millions of meals to our community during the pandemic.

Our members who cleaned and scrubbed high school high touch areas, biohazards, toilets, and operated boilers to keep the students and staff warm and safe.

Our members who have broken up fights and been first responders, putting their own lives at risk at times.

Our members who have trimmed, mowed, planted, and weeded to keep our properties looking respectable while exposed to the elements of extreme temperatures of both hot and cold.

We were told at the table that the district could operate without us without us.

Our contract expires tomorrow.

We will continue to be good labor partners right up until the day we're not.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Gary Ladd Jr.

SPEAKER_09

Good evening.

My name is Gary Ladd, Jr., and I've worked in the Seattle School District for 22 years, nine years as a special ed.

I.A.

and 13 years as a security specialist.

Also, I am an alum at Rainier Beach High School, and I've been working at Rainier Beach High School for seven years, and it's been wonderful.

I have served on the I-U-O-E Local 22 Bargaining Committee, and we have been bargaining all spring and summer, every Wednesday, and it's been a great experience.

Last Wednesday, at our bargaining session, We received the first economic proposal from the district, which was nothing more than a mandatory minimum, as my team member says, of the IPD for two years, something that's been hard for us to do for years since the pandemic.

And we've been doing that same IPD for years.

That's where we get everything spoon fed of the same contract every year.

We then had to beg and plead for an explanation as to why behind such a disrespectful offer, as my peers say, especially as we was labeled as essential workers in a pandemic, in a worldwide pandemic where we had to go to work or else.

Our district, our district response was to share the board budget presentation given on May 10th, 2023 as to rational of why there's nothing more to give to our members to be prepared.

Culinary arts, culinary.

Our culinary got 30 seconds.

Culinary who passed out millions of meals to our community during the pandemic.

Our custodian who cleaned and scrubbed and worked in the schools every day and make sure that our schools were clean.

Safety and security and our alarm desk who comes to work every day nonstop and is very consistent.

And our garden grounds and garden grounds who members who trim mold and worked on the school grounds at football stadiums.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Brett Gamble.

SPEAKER_07

Good evening.

My name is Brett Gamble.

I worked for the district for eight years.

I currently work as a custodial engineer at Highland Park Elementary.

I also serve on IUOE Local 302 Bargaining Committee.

We have been bargaining all spring and summer for a fair contract.

Last Wednesday at the bargaining session, we received the first economical proposal from the district and it was nothing more than a mandatory minimum percentage increase of IPD for two years.

We then had to beg and plead for an explanation as to the why behind such a disrespectful offer.

The district's response was to share a school board budget presentation given on May 10th, 2023, as to the rationale and why there is nothing more to give to our members who pass out millions of meals to our community during the pandemic, who clean, scrub high touch areas, biohazards, maintain the cleanliness of our restrooms and operated boilers to keep our staff warm and safe.

who have broken up fights and been first responders, putting their lives at risk at times.

Members who have trimmed, mowed, planted, and weeded to keep our properties looking respectable while exposed to the elements of extreme temperatures, both hot and cold.

We were told at the table that the district cannot operate without us.

Our contract expires tomorrow.

We will continue to be good labor partners Right up until the day we are not.

Have a good evening.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Amir Noir Sulkin.

Amir if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

The next speaker is Kevin Pratt.

Kevin if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

The next speaker is Michael Saworth.

Michael if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

The next speaker is Laura Marie Rivera.

Laura if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

SPEAKER_06

Dear Dr. Jones and school board directors.

I'm requesting your help in eliminating the blatant discrimination happening in Seattle Public Schools.

When I ran for school board my top priority was a safe and welcoming environment for all students and I know that you share that commitment.

You may not know that the Advanced Learning Department is intentionally working to exclude children with disabilities from the Highly Capable Program.

This year the department used the Dibbles assessment as the required measure for grades 1 and 2 to qualify for the program.

Dibbles was not designed for this purpose.

It has not been approved by the school board for this purpose and has not been vetted for this use by OSPI.

Dibbles is a series of one-minute reading tests designed to help teachers identify a student's deficits.

In fact Dibbles is so good at flagging dyslexia that Seattle Public Schools is now using it as the official dyslexia screener to satisfy the new state law.

Just to be clear for students with dyslexia and other associated learning disabilities it is impossible to score highly on these one minute timed tests.

Children with dyslexia ADHD anxiety vision and speech problems and many other types of disabilities are often given the accommodation for extra time on tests so that they do not have to navigate additional barriers to demonstrate what they know.

Even though the advanced learning department knows this test is challenging for students with learning disabilities, they are denying students the accommodations in their IEPs and 504 plans and using DIBLs to disqualify them.

The department is not offering any alternatives for these students.

None of this is hearsay.

None of this is conjecture.

This is what happened to our child as documented in district records.

Our son is not only highly capable, he is extraordinary.

He is in the group that they call twice exceptional.

He has a 99th percentile IQ and he also has dyslexia.

This is the same profile as Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci.

Dr. Jones, as the leader of the district, we are calling on you to recognize and stop this harmful discrimination.

School starts in one week.

We're asking you to right this wrong and make sure that SPS does not discriminate against any other students.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Muammar Hermenstein.

Muammar if you're on the line.

SPEAKER_06

We're asking you to write this wrong and make sure that.

SPEAKER_25

Muammar if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

The next speaker is Brian Ramirez.

SPEAKER_24

Good evening everyone my name is Brian Ramirez and I am a housing development associate at El Centro de la Raza, or the Center for People of All Races, which will actually be celebrating its 51 years of service this year.

On behalf of our Executive Director, Estela Ortega, and everyone at El Centro, I would like to announce that we, in partnership with Edge Developers, plan on developing an 84-unit affordable housing community in the North Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle.

The affordable housing community will include a mix of studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, and intends on serving individuals and small families.

The intended development is located across the street from the historic building and community inspired transit oriented and the beacon hill light rail station.

It's proximity to the beacon hill campus will guarantee residents access to the organization's 43 programs.

and services including emergency and human services, child and youth programs, financial education and asset building programs, housing and economic development programs, community organizing and advocacy programs.

Ed Centro and Ed developers currently have site control of the project site and are actually in the process of applying for funding sources including the city of Seattle office of housing.

We welcome engagement from the Seattle school board and the community as we continue through the development process.

You can reach me if you have any questions at Bramirez or you can shoot me a call at 206-957-4625.

Thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Debbie Carlson.

SPEAKER_26

Good evening.

My name is Debbie Carlson and I'm testifying in support of a fair contract for the 400 union members who are culinary custodial security landscaping and gardening workers at our Seattle Public Schools.

I'm a concerned parent and a candidate for Seattle School Board Director in District 1. Once again we are on the verge of an unnecessary strike that could disrupt the return to school and impact the services our students need.

This isn't the fault of workers who seek a fair contract.

It is clear that SPS has a fundamental problem in managing its labor relations and it needs to be fixed.

I read in Westside Seattle today that SPS did not even give an economic proposal to Local 302 until last week.

That's unacceptable and it's late.

It doesn't give enough time to ensure a contract is done before school starts.

We've seen the same problems with other bargaining.

Nearby districts like Bellevue and Highline get their contracts with their educators done early, at the beginning of the summer, but we don't.

As a result, nearly every contract negotiation with our educators since at least 2012 either led to a strike or nearly led to a strike.

I don't blame educators or workers for this.

The common factor Here is SPS management.

When we leave it to the end of the summer to negotiate a contract, we wind up rushing to get it done.

We get contracts that don't make anyone happy.

Neighboring districts have shown that with a more collaborative process, we can get better outcomes.

That's especially important when we have to be extremely careful with our dollars.

We need the board to step in and fix SPS's broken approach to labor relations.

This is too important to keep getting it wrong.

I implore SPS management to settle a fair contract with Local 302 and ensure that this school year starts on time.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_25

The next speaker is Lindsay Sheldon.

Lindsay Sheldon.

The next speaker is Marianne Wood.

SPEAKER_19

Good afternoon everyone.

And thank you for being here.

My name is Marianne Wood and I am currently running for school director district 6. And out in my district.

OK number one I want to say I'm in complete solidarity with 302 and I hope that this works out for them.

It's I just want to throw my support behind that.

But in my district one of the hot button topics is the rebuild down at Alki.

And I know because I was one of the appellants on that case, I know the process that we went through with the city examiner to get to the point we are now.

I believe that the deadline for the district to respond to the city examiner's decision is tomorrow.

And I just am here to encourage the district the board and everybody who's involved in this to be transparent with what the district plans to do in response to this decision.

And I stand here as a member of that community to let you know not only as a candidate for school but as a member of the community to let you know that we are open willing and able to work with you to make that project at Alki a beautiful project that everyone can be happy with.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_25

Before we conclude today's testimony I want to go back and check on those who may have missed their turn.

The first is Kevin Pratt.

Kevin if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

The next is Amir Noir-Sulkin.

Amir if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

The next is Michael Saywarath.

Michael if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

And the last is Muammar Herman Stein.

Muammar if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute.

It's today's testimony.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you Ms. Koo.

First off just thank you to everybody who was able to share perspectives with us.

We greatly appreciate it.

Directors do we feel like we need a break.

Five maybe.

No.

Want to keep pressing.

Going once, going twice.

All right.

We're going to keep rolling.

Thank you very much.

All right.

We have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

SPEAKER_03

I move approval of the consent agenda.

SPEAKER_16

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved by Vice President Rankin and seconded by Director Sommaritz.

Do directors have any items that they would like to remove from the consent agenda today?

Director Harris.

SPEAKER_21

I would like to remove numbers 6 through 12, kind sir.

SPEAKER_16

6 through 12. Thank you.

Okay.

Any other items to be removed from the consent agenda?

Okay, seeing none, may I have an amendment or excuse me a motion for the consent agenda as amended?

SPEAKER_03

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

This has been moved by Vice President Rankin and seconded by Director Samaritz.

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

SPEAKER_25

Aye.

SPEAKER_16

Aye.

Any opposed abstentions.

All right.

Thank you.

So first turning to consent agenda removed action item number six.

I believe we first need a motion.

Go ahead.

What's up.

SPEAKER_21

I'm wondering whether we could discuss all of these in totality because...

You want it like as a package?

I want a package because there's some fundamental...

SPEAKER_16

OK, that's reasonable.

Yeah, for sure.

Thank you.

So I see Dr. Torres is here.

Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03

I was just going to ask.

So that makes sense to me.

And to make the motion, do I need to read them all?

That's the question.

Ms.

SPEAKER_16

Wilson-Jones is turning on her mic.

SPEAKER_04

I don't see legal counsel in the room so I'll go take a shot at this and how about you would it work to move the first item and then just discuss the whatever the issue is presented comprehensively vote on that one and then subsequently move the additional items after

SPEAKER_16

OK, fantastic.

So by subsequently moving additional items, would you still recommend that we go one by one for all of those motions?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, please.

SPEAKER_16

All right, let's do it.

All good.

This is government.

Let's go.

SPEAKER_03

OK.

All right.

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to amend the contract with Yellowwood Academy in the additional amount of $409,200 for a revised total contract amount of $1,400,000.

for private placement of fewer than 10 students who require therapeutic day services and programming with any minor delish additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement this contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

All right.

This has been moved and seconded.

Director Harris you had questions.

SPEAKER_21

And thank you Dr. Torres.

Comment and several questions would you like those questions all at once or piece by piece.

SPEAKER_12

Let's go all at once and I'll get them down.

SPEAKER_21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_16

Can I ask just for the sake of folks listening at home that we do one by one just so like we can track properly is that OK.

Thank you.

Sorry to be.

Yep.

Yep.

SPEAKER_21

Concern that these all have come intro and action and these contracts are no surprise because we've been doing these contracts year after year after year.

And for very many years we have talked about bringing some of these services in house.

And we have heard nothing with respect to any efforts to move these services in-house.

And I well appreciate you haven't been here for year after year after year but institutional knowledge is really important.

I think history don't know it consigned to repeat it.

We teach our students that.

And I think that we all.

Can recall the Seattle Times expose about Northwest soil who for the record we do not do business with.

And the Seattle Times forgot to mention that as they slimed every school district in the state and did a pretty good job sliming OSPI as well for lack of oversight.

This is a whole lot of money and if we need to spend it to take care of our students that have special needs I get that.

But being given six different resolutions that add up to millions and millions of dollars with no real identification of what different services each of these.

third party providers provide and why a student with their IEP is going to Yellowwood as opposed to Perch.

I'm having trouble with this.

I'm having trouble with being asked to vote on something that is several million dollars but more importantly disrupts families.

And we don't appear and if we have please edify me because this is a continuing annual request and I don't beg well and we can't talk about this in SSC&I because we don't do SSC&I any longer and I don't relish being up here on the dais being critical here because I know you all are working hard.

But we were voted to.

Oversight.

This is not my definition of oversight.

So if you could help me please don't do that.

Not appropriate not appreciated.

It's hard enough up here to speak truth to power without people doing that.

Please knock it off.

And because I can't even have board comments I can't tell you what I think about your darn testimony.

And I've got plenty to say.

Believe you me.

So help me understand those questions.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_12

Thank you Director Harris.

So I'll get into a little bit of the questions some of them I have to take back and get some more robust responses for you.

But for example.

When you think about how some students end up at different placements, like why a Yellowwood versus a Perch versus et cetera, in some cases what it comes down to is just availability of seats.

So we are not the only school district with kids with very high needs, and so there are times where the programs would be quite similar in what they're doing as far as therapeutic supports, but that it has to be basically where we can find the seat, and that's why we have multiple vendors that we use.

I hear the concern around how and why these aren't brought into our schools as regular just standalone programs.

I think that's bigger conversation for me in the special education department to have as to the what, the how, and the why.

My understanding is in the past we've tried to do some of this stuff and it wasn't always the most successful.

So there's some more historical background knowledge and data gathering that I would need to do on something like that.

And then the other piece is in terms of where we also place the kids or where they end up going, that is ultimately the team decision that does happen with the families involved.

But I also just want to note your comment that, you know, in a perfect world, it would be that our kids stay with us versus us even having to use the option of going to a nonpublic agency.

SPEAKER_21

We worked with surrounding districts or OSPI to put together a consortium to bring these services in house.

Have we gotten creative here as opposed to doing the same thing every year asking the same questions and not getting any answers or forward movement.

SPEAKER_12

I hear you and I will say that the list that we usually get for these places a lot of times these are OSPI approved vendors but duly noted on instead of let me know if I'm not hearing you correctly instead of merely going to the OSPI list why not work with the surrounding Puget Sound schools and OSPI to say why aren't we creating something different that is that is part of the public system so As far as I know, those conversations have not occurred, but more than willing to raise it up and begin conversations to see.

SPEAKER_21

Get some feedback on those efforts.

SPEAKER_12

That I'll have to, I'm sure I can get you guys an update.

But I would say, let's start school next week.

So give me about a month or so, and I'll be able to get you some sort of email just saying, hey, I've started the conversation.

We're looking into this and get you some updates.

SPEAKER_03

Much appreciated.

Absolutely.

I would.

say that this has the potential to be connected to the legislative platform?

There's definitely some crossover here with other priorities, and if there needs to be state-level advocacy to create something where districts are providing this in-house.

You know that's that's that could be tied into a legislative thing.

I also wanted to mention that I know that see I would I would say like six or seven years ago that I probably would have said like why are we contracting this stuff out.

Why are we doing that.

And and now I I know that there are a lot of families actually that have fought very very hard to be placed and have access to a program because their child has not been served in our system and That this issue of outside contractors is not a problem if it's not a problem for our students.

So I just kind of want to say, if there is a need that a student has and we are unable to provide it here, we're still required to provide it in some way.

And that's where these come in.

It would be absolutely ideal if every student could be served at our schools.

But I also know that the therapeutic day services specialized support are not what educators are trained to provide and to ask them to, I don't, I mean, when we have, we have, you know, special education IAs and we have special education instructors and behavioral coaches, et cetera, et cetera, and that's all connected to accessing curriculum and providing instruction.

So, especially with as many issues as there are of, Not just an SPS but in general of the misuse of things like isolation and restraint because people don't Because the need of the student or the situation is something beyond what they're expected to do I Guess I would just say that that like I would I would I I feel comfortable saying most people that are going to these outside services would prefer that services were available for their child at their neighborhood school and then they could be included members of their community.

And that when we have children who are not being served and are in fact being harmed they need a place to go and that's still on us to pay for.

So I just I just hope that we're not kind of putting everything in the same bucket that ultimately the most important thing is serving our students.

SPEAKER_16

Director Rivera-Smith, Director Summers, and then back to Director Harris.

SPEAKER_22

Testing?

Okay, thanks.

Awesome.

I'm looking at the fiscal section of this BAR and this has been a question Every- because as Director Harris noted, every year we approve these con- we have these contracts before us.

Um, every year as far as- as I recall, we approve them.

And I think I've always asked this question too in- in the committee.

Um, because it says that the revenue source for this motion is state special education funding, including safe- safety net for extraordinary high-cost needs.

We- we all agree, I think, and know that we are not fully funded for our educational needs in our district.

So does this money get- I've always been told we're a pass-through.

The money comes to us, we pay it to these vendors or these contractors.

Is that reliable?

Do we get the full funding for these to pay it back?

It is millions of dollars.

I'm concerned if we don't get the fully funding for this that we're left paying this out of our general fund.

SPEAKER_12

Yep, so in general we do, we apply for it through Safety Net, so I'll give you a little bit of a trend analysis or historical perspective.

If you look at two years ago, what we recouped in Safety Net was around $4 million.

Last year we got that number up to $9 million, and this year we actually got it up to $16 million.

So, some of the things that we've been doing is just creating efficiencies on the department end of what we're doing with the special ed department and how we're using some of our staff there to really look at the IEPs to make sure we're capturing all these kids.

But yes, students who have high needs where we need to go to funding sources such as this, we do recoup a good chunk of that money from the state and we've been increasing that money.

In some ways, you could say holding the state accountable to it in better ways as a district over the past few years.

SPEAKER_22

You say a good chunk, but you don't say all.

Do we get all of it?

SPEAKER_12

Usually it's all, but to sit here in the moment and say exactly every single kid we got this year, I don't feel comfortable saying it just because I don't know, but I would say interval of like 99 percent sure yes, especially for our kids who are going to non-public agencies because when those IEPs are written, they're written as such so that we can submit them for reimbursements to the state.

SPEAKER_22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_29

Thank you for the explanation.

I had a similar question to Director Rivera-Smith about the safety net.

I have a tactical question.

For some of the bars, you include the number of students who will be receiving services from these contractors, but then some bars doesn't mention how many students will be receiving services from that contractor.

Is there a reason?

SPEAKER_12

Not specifically but we'll be able to get you those specific numbers for all of them.

SPEAKER_21

I just wanted to respond to Vice President Rankin's comments.

In no way shape or form ever never would I suggest that we don't meet our students needs.

Not the point of this whatsoever.

My point is is that we keep doing the same thing over and over making promises to look in to changing delivery service models and with respect to our educators and our A's are not trained for this.

We have tons of OTs PTs RNs behavioral therapists and other certificated health care providers.

There is nothing to suggest that we cannot hire people with the appropriate training.

There is nothing to suggest that we can't bring some of these services in house and maybe even do a better job of delivering these extremely expensive critically necessary services.

But we have to get out of our own way and start thinking outside the box in terms of different delivery services.

And we have to start making good on our promises to look into things.

And if you want me to do it you know that I will.

I'll go back all eight years and even before then where these promises have been made.

And again Dr. Torres I so appreciate you have not been here for all of these conversations.

Nor have a great many other people in this room.

Man we got to and must do better.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_16

Any other questions on this one or the subsequent ones before we vote.

Ms. Wilson-Jones roll call please.

Thank you Dr. Torres.

SPEAKER_04

OK so I'm calling the roll now on consent agenda item 6 which was previously moved by Director Rankin and seconded by Director Song-Moretz will then go back through for another round of motions and votes on the others.

Director Song-Moretz.

Director Hampson.

SPEAKER_20

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Harris.

SPEAKER_20

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Vice President Rankin.

SPEAKER_03

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion has been approved unanimously.

SPEAKER_16

All right may I have a motion for item number seven.

SPEAKER_03

Just for clarification, we're gonna we got to do them all go.

Okay.

SPEAKER_16

Yep.

SPEAKER_03

All right I moved the school board authorized the superintendent to approve the contract with Yellowwood Academy for the total amount of 1 million four hundred thousand dollars for private placement for students who require therapeutic day services and programming With any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement this contract Immediate action is in the best interest of the district

SPEAKER_16

This item has been moved by Director Rankin and seconded by Director Song-Moritz.

Are there any questions on this item?

Seeing none Ms. Wilson-Jones roll call please.

SPEAKER_04

Director Hampson.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Vice President Rankin.

Aye.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

Director Song-Moritz.

SPEAKER_16

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

President Hersey.

SPEAKER_16

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

This motion is passed unanimously.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

Can I please have a motion for item number eight.

SPEAKER_03

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to execute contracts with Spring Academy in the amount of $950,000.

Hamlin Robinson in the amount of $175,000, Hampton Tutors in the amount of $100,000, and Ryther in the amount of $100,000 to ensure the provision of equitable services to parentally placed private school students attending approved nonprofit private schools under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act with any minor additions, deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the contracts.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

SPEAKER_16

This has been moved and seconded by the aforementioned board directors.

Are there any questions on this item?

Seeing none, Ms. Wilson-Jones, roll call please.

SPEAKER_04

Director Harris?

Aye.

Vice President Rankin?

SPEAKER_03

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Rivera-Smith?

Aye.

Director Song-Moritz.

SPEAKER_29

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Hampson.

SPEAKER_03

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Number nine.

SPEAKER_03

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to approve the contract with Perch Behavioral Health in the amount of $2 million for provision of applied behavior analysis therapy for 17 students as required by their IEPs with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement this contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

SPEAKER_16

This item has been moved and seconded by the aforementioned board directors.

Are there any questions on this item.

SPEAKER_03

I actually do have a question on this item.

SPEAKER_16

Go for it.

SPEAKER_03

Is this additional staff coming into our schools to provide services or is PERCH if am I correct PERCH behavioral service behavioral health contract.

Do they have their own facility or is this staff coming in to provide additional therapies.

SPEAKER_16

Dr. Torres is approaching the podium.

SPEAKER_12

In general it's it is the additional staff and I would need to check the actual IEPs for those students because it could be a mix of both essentially.

SPEAKER_03

So this is specifically for ABA and that would be if ABA was indicated specifically in their IEP.

I'm sorry.

Applied be a high applied behavior analysis.

SPEAKER_16

OK.

Any other questions on this item.

Seeing none the roll call please.

SPEAKER_04

Vice President Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Song-Moritz aye Director Hampson Director Harris.

President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

Thank you.

Item number 10 please.

SPEAKER_03

I move that the school board authorized the superintendent to approve the contract with Academy of Precision Learning for the total amount of one million two hundred thousand dollars for private placement for students who require therapeutic day services and programming with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement this contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

SPEAKER_16

This item has been moved and seconded by the aforementioned board directors.

Do we have any questions on this particular item.

Seeing none the roll call please.

SPEAKER_04

Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Song-Moretz aye Director Hampson aye Director Harris aye Vice President Rankin aye President Hersey aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you kindly.

Number 11.

SPEAKER_03

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to approve the contract with Maxim Health Care and the amount of three million three hundred and sixty one thousand dollars for provision of applied behavior analysis therapy for 30 students as required by their IEPs with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement this contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

SPEAKER_16

Has been moved and seconded appropriately.

Are there any questions on this item.

Seeing none, Ms. Wilson-Jones, the roll call, please.

SPEAKER_04

Director Song-Moretz.

Aye.

Director Hampson.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Vice President Rankin.

SPEAKER_03

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

SPEAKER_16

Fantastic.

Number 12.

SPEAKER_03

All right.

Last one.

I move that the school board authorize the superintendent to approve the contract with Gersh Academy in the amount of one million four hundred thousand dollars for private placement of fewer than 10 students who require therapeutic day services and programming with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement this contract.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

Second.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

This has been moved and seconded.

Do we have any questions on this item.

All right.

Seeing none Ms. Wilson-Jones roll call please.

SPEAKER_04

Director Hampson aye Director Harris aye Vice President Rankin aye Director Rivera-Smith aye Director Song-Warrick aye President Hersey aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

All right.

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

The first action item on today's agenda is action item number one approval of the twenty twenty two twenty four collective bargaining agreement between the Seattle School District number one and Seattle King County Building and Construction Trades Council.

May I have a motion for this item.

SPEAKER_03

I'm just here reading it to myself.

I move that the board of directors approve the 2022 2024 collective bargaining agreement between Seattle school district number one and building trades and authorize the superintendent on behalf of the board of directors to execute the agreement in the form attached to the school board action report with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the terms of this agreement.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

SPEAKER_16

All right this has been moved and seconded by the same two directors as before.

Do we have any questions on this or excuse me we'll go.

We do have a presentation.

I don't I didn't expect you to.

SPEAKER_17

Not necessarily but I do want to take the opportunity to thank the members of the respective bargaining teams and also the public commentary with respect to finding that typo.

But if there's no questions I'm.

SPEAKER_16

We might have questions I haven't gotten there yet.

Do we have any.

Would you mind introducing yourself.

Sorry.

SPEAKER_17

No worries.

Director of Laborations.

Thank you.

Sorry.

SPEAKER_16

Director Harris.

All good.

Do we have any questions on the side.

Go for it.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_22

I'm OK.

I'm good.

I'm good.

Can you hear me.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here today and for bringing this to us.

I had I submitted a comment in the questions and I got this.

I got the answer here and the director questions.

I'm trying to find it so I can.

And it was about the fact we have board policy 5020 which which lays out sort of our role in bargaining because we don't have very much of a role and honestly it's done through your office and with the teams and I respect that we do have you know it does in policy state that the board shall establish strategy for collective bargaining and that we shall receive The chief negotiator shall advise and inform the board regarding the progress of negotiations.

And I get it.

So I just I appreciate the response recognition of the policy and kind of just look at acknowledging that sometimes you know this doesn't happen.

It hasn't been happening.

So I just really.

I know you guys work hard on these.

No doubt about that.

And I don't envy your position when doing these things.

But yeah but we know I just want to know that we can be brought in where we should be so that we have so that we can just be accountable to you know the public as well and and play our part.

So thank you for your work and I look forward to keeping doing it.

SPEAKER_17

You're welcome.

And thank you.

SPEAKER_16

Any other questions on this item.

OK.

Seeing none.

Oh is that a question.

SPEAKER_21

Go for it.

Given the fact that we have heard in public testimony of the disappointment in local 3 0 2 could you say in a nutshell for the folks listening at home.

what the terms of this is this collective bargaining is in terms of raises etc. and why we haven't been kept apprised as per the policy that Director Rivera-Smith has pointed out.

SPEAKER_17

I'll answer the second question first.

Director Harris with respect to providing updates for the trades specific.

I started with the district last August and the my predecessor had begun bargaining with this labor partner in the spring.

I picked it up when he left and I was not provided any information about providing updates to the board.

I would defer to to my supervisor assistant superintendent of human resources.

if necessary providing any updates I would go through her as necessary and answer any questions that she may ask may have asked of me.

With respect to your first question in terms of the wage rate increases is that correct?

For this CBA is retroactive for the 22 23 school year.

The wage rate the across the board wage rate increase was negotiated at 6.6 for last school year retroactive for active employees upon date of union ratification for the 23 24 school year this school year it was negotiated to 4.7.

Or at not to 4.7 at 4.7.

Sorry.

SPEAKER_21

And for both of those years what is the.

I forget the term but it used to be called COLA.

SPEAKER_17

The term is we use the acronym IPD for implicit price deflator for 2022 23 implicit IPD is 5.5 for this year IPD is 3.7.

Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_16

Additional question from Director Summers.

SPEAKER_29

Thank you.

I asked in my previously submitted board questions about the dollar amount.

Is it reflected in the 23 24 budget is the retroactive portion reflected in the 23 24 budget.

And the response was that costs for implementing the state inflationary increase were incorporated in the 23 24 budget but the remaining costs were not reflected.

So I just have a kind of a process question.

So if those costs are not reflected in our budget, what is the implication for that?

Does the 22-23 amount get charged to the 23-24 budget or how much Yes, wiggle room.

Does our 23-24 budget have to reflect something like this?

I'm not sure if you're the right person for that question, but that was my follow-up question to that response.

SPEAKER_08

Dr. Butlerman, are you are you in position to answer that?

If not, please sit back down.

But if so, I think that's a that's a great question and We voted on a budget, is this expanding the budget?

I'm understanding where you're coming from.

If you will, Dr. Butler, please.

SPEAKER_17

I can't answer a little bit of that question in the sense of, because of there's some increase of the structural deficit, this resulted in a riff of two sheet metal workers, so active employees.

So that was incorporated in terms of that change.

I know that there was an additional amount that went beyond that.

SPEAKER_10

Did that answer the specific question or is there more to it?

SPEAKER_29

So in the response to my previously submitted question the remaining costs are not reflected.

So I'm just asking a process question.

We passed a balanced budget.

Now we know that our expenses are going to be eight hundred thirty seven thousand dollars higher.

What happens now?

SPEAKER_10

Yeah the budget that you passed did not include that eight hundred thirty seven thousand dollars and so some contingencies for this year will cover that and then it will be added to the ongoing deficit for the future years.

SPEAKER_16

All right.

Director Hampson.

SPEAKER_20

I hope we'll have a chance to talk about this in more detail and consideration of the financial financial policy that we've all been working on.

A number of us have been working on staff and board.

But the I think the the piece that we're missing what I'm hearing from other directors and I'm wondering as well in the sort of constant process of bargaining and budgeting.

We used to get from the prior CFO would not necessarily.

I can't remember the format in which she would provide it but we would get a little bit of a sense of where are our different.

Classes of employees on the overarching.

you know relative to cost of living and their duties and their class of work are they to par with others in there with them in the market.

And and then how does that compare amongst the different amongst and within the different labor groups.

Right.

Because we have some inequities in that.

And that was one of the reasons why we thought to include it in that financial policy.

But I think if we could get an update as.

Particularly since we're getting intro and action items we should be getting updates as to.

We have been missing some.

Updates on the process how bargaining is going that should be coming to to the board and.

Where are all of our groups of employees and and then the other piece of it is then how do we as a board be really clear about we need to make sure that the budgets that are presented are in fact.

I know that there are some contingencies built in.

We should build in enough contingency conservative level of contingencies when possible for those things but also accounting for the fact that there is this imbalance in the scale of certain bargaining units and also the timing of those bargaining units coming and having needs that they.

want to get met.

I know that the finance and accounting has historically been very conscientious about trying to get all of our staff up to like trying to be where we should be in Seattle is the most expensive place in the state paying the best salaries.

So if we could get an update on that I think that would be really helpful in continuing to have that conversation as time goes on as we start the next budget cycle.

SPEAKER_17

I'm not sure if there was a question there but understood.

SPEAKER_20

Well just making sure that that's something that we all are comfortable doing.

Superintendent Jones said that we can have that reference point as we consider these action items when they come forward especially when they're in drone action.

Understood.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Director Hampson do you think this is considered in the draft of the financial policy that this is already accounted for in that or is this is this something in addition to that.

What's your thinking on that.

SPEAKER_20

There is currently something that that references it but I'll be you know we want to we'll want to have more discussion on it to make sure that it's clear.

And you know I'd want to hear from other directors if that's in fact the intent that we're we're we're going for so that we can

SPEAKER_16

Do our best by all employees regardless of how big they are regardless of when they bargain All right any other questions, thank you seeing none miss Wilson-jones roll call, please Director Rivera Smith Hi Director song Moritz

SPEAKER_22

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Hampson.

SPEAKER_22

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Harris.

SPEAKER_03

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Vice President Rankin.

SPEAKER_03

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

President Hersey.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

We have a motion for action item number two.

SPEAKER_03

I move that the 2023 2024 compensation bulletin for non representative non represented staff be approved by the board as attached to the school board action report with the minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the document.

Immediate action is in the best interest of the district.

SPEAKER_16

This has been moved and properly seconded.

Directors do we have any questions on this item.

Okay.

Thank you, Dr. Pritchett.

Seeing none, Ms. Wilson-Jones, do you have a question, Director Harris?

SPEAKER_21

If it's possible to do a paragraph explanation of the inflationary indicator, formerly known as COLA, for this bar, I would be grateful.

SPEAKER_18

Thank you.

SPEAKER_14

By all means.

SPEAKER_18

Good evening, Dr. Sarah Pritchett, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources.

I will do my best, maybe another paragraph, perhaps a sentence.

What we're saying here is that we are wanting to give our non-represented employees the 3.7% increase.

SPEAKER_16

All right.

Is that satisfactory?

Thank you.

Ms. Wilson-Jones, roll call, please.

SPEAKER_04

Director Song-Moritz.

SPEAKER_29

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Hampson.

SPEAKER_29

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Harris.

Aye.

Vice President Rankin.

SPEAKER_22

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

Director Rivera-Smith.

Aye.

President Hersey.

SPEAKER_16

Aye.

SPEAKER_04

This motion is passed unanimously.

SPEAKER_16

All right.

Thank you directors.

We will now move on to our introduction items.

Introduction item number one is approval of the 2023 24 superintendent evaluation tool approval.

This item would approve the 2023 24 superintendent evaluation document as attached to the board action report and I will hand it over to Superintendent Jones.

SPEAKER_08

Yes so there's an opportunity here for a little bit of transparency around what this superintendent evaluation is all about.

My intent tonight is to give you the highlights of what would be the contents of the superintendent evaluation document as well as see the alignment to how do we make sure that we're executing.

How are we moving towards student outcomes.

Thank you.

My goal is also to get feedback from you all to incorporate ultimately in the evaluation tool.

So instead of presenting the evaluation tool, which we've historically just voted on, I want to have, again, an opportunity to kind of give you some context for the evaluation elements and then incorporate those into the tool ultimately and then present that to you for your action that you may take.

So without further ado if you look at the slide the second slide central office exists to support schools and central office proxy for superintendent.

When we say superintendent we're talking about all the staff generally that are providing support to schools.

So we at John Stanford's Center for Educational Excellence we exist for the sole purpose to support schools.

Do we achieve that all the time.

No but that's what we're striving for.

So it's important in the context of what I'm talking about in terms of the evaluation for the superintendent that you all are seeing my actions our collective actions as tangible relevant meaningful support to our to our school buildings.

Next slide please.

So evaluation focus area, three areas.

One around strategy.

Strategy, that's the development of strategy, planning for strategy.

A second piece is implementation.

How are we providing support for implementation?

What's our plan for execution?

What is our implementation fidelity?

How are we seeing that we're having consistent applied practices across the district?

And then the other piece that's a huge piece is around accountability.

What is our measurement?

How are we looking at our impact?

How are we doing progress monitoring?

We're going to talk about progress monitoring today, but how are we doing that?

around our implementation.

How are we doing that around all the essential elements that we think are supporting schools.

So as you see on this slide student outcomes is centered here.

This is around Seattle excellent strategic plan.

All of what I need to be doing we need to be doing centrally is around achieving the outcomes that are in the strategic plan.

And that results in ultimately a student outcome.

So my evaluation, which you all have tasked me to do, is around getting outcomes for students.

However we do that, whether we do that, excuse me, whether we're looking at strategy, implementation, or accountability, those are the key elements for us having success.

Next slide, please.

So as we look at the evidence, so when you have an evaluation, you need to have evidence.

And so the evidence that I'm proposing here that you all would evaluate me on is around having a laser focus on the strategy area, having a laser focus on meeting and exceeding third, seventh grade goals, college and career readiness.

but also having evidence of strategic development and refinement.

So you should be able to see that we've we've abandoned strategies that aren't working.

You should see that we've adopted new strategies that we think have impact.

You should see that we are adopting new things that really are not not just at the end of the year but during but but formatively like we have formative assessments we should have formative strategy adjustments as well.

We should also see evidence of planned engagements.

And so I believe you all believe that engagement with our stakeholders should inform strategy.

So if we have planned, calendared engagements, they're set on the calendar.

And I'm suggesting here that we have planned engagements for budget, well-resourced schools, and our 2024 strategic planning.

Those will also inform strategy.

So if you were looking at strategy, development, and planning, we should see a hyper focus, laser focus on our academic goals.

We should see strategy, development, and refinement.

And then we should see evidence of us working with our community to understand their needs and then making changes accordingly.

If you look at the implementation block here we want to see your the evidence we should have are you all should be able to say Jones what are your implementation plans for your strategic initiatives.

We have what's called a project management oversight committee.

So all six of the key strategic initiatives have individuals and teams and plans for execution.

So you should be able to see that as evidence.

We should also have evidence of tangible effective school support.

This this shouldn't be just in name.

We should be able to actually have tangible evidence that I present to you for for tangible school support.

In addition to that we should see schools that doing needs assessment of their own needs.

And so our regional our regional support teams are being responsive to the needs assessments that schools are doing.

So those are evidence pieces that I would suggest that would be part of the evaluation.

And then lastly, on accountability, measurement, impact, and progress monitoring, you should see consistent and routine goal and guardrail progress monitoring, which we're going to do today.

You should see formative and summative assessments around implementation fidelity.

So how are we checking in around our execution?

What does that look like on an ongoing basis?

Again, not waiting to the end of the year to make adjustments, but to be able to make adjustments almost in real time.

And then having role clarity, role clarity and accountability clarity so that we all individuals that are in central office that have really key and important roles know what we're doing, know how we're contributing to our quote unquote bottom line.

And so accountability clarity, what aspect of all this am I really responsible for?

that should be manifested.

You could probably see that even in the org chart.

The org chart that I'm developing that you'll be able to see has an interactive feature where you can see who's responsible for what.

So next slide, please.

So in summary, here are the key considerations.

And you see that this is focused on strategy, execution, and accountability.

Are there other elements you want to see for evaluation that will ensure progress towards student outcomes?

You don't have to answer that today, but I'd like for you all to answer that within the next week or so, so I can incorporate your feedback into ultimately an evaluation tool that you all will vote on.

And so without going any farther, I'd like to open it up Have President Hersey maybe field a few comments, questions, considerations for you all.

Understanding that we have constraints.

We have constraints of our policies.

We have constraints around our collective bargaining agreements.

We have constraints around our budgets.

All that is understood.

But I think the strategy, execution, and accountability collectively are a way that we can get to student outcomes.

So I'd like to see if there's any other elements that you all would want to see in the evaluation tool.

SPEAKER_16

Yeah, so before we dive into that, I just want to reiterate that I think under Dr. Jones's leadership, we really wanted to just open up the hood on this a bit, provide some opportunity on the front end, not only for, you know, community to see what this process looks like, but more specifically to just gauge feedback in terms of transitioning from the model that we utilized last year to how we are trying to incorporate more examples of evidence particularly in the evaluation as well as position all of us to you know be in a position to where we can take a look at the work that we do mostly in closed session as we have these conversations and feel good about where we are in terms of the things that are brought before us to ensure that our superintendent is crushing it as he has been doing for a number of months and years at this point.

So.

With that being said are there any immediate considerations that you would like to be captured here in this discussion.

And if not that's totally fine.

Feel free to either send them to Superintendent Jones directly.

Just copy me if you wouldn't mind.

But open to hearing if anyone has any immediate feedback.

Director Hampson and then Director Summers.

SPEAKER_20

Thank you for this style of presentation Superintendent Jones and thank you for providing hard copies.

My brain happens to work a bit better with with hard copies and yet we don't get a lot of stuff printed out because it's not it's not good for the environment and it's expensive.

It allowed me to think about this a bit differently which I appreciate.

I'm still.

It's really important that we hold you accountable and you hold your staff and the district accountable to things that we can measure that we can evaluate objectively.

And so that is my expectation.

And you know that applies to most things in here and I realize we're still in the process of process of establishing what are our baselines because we haven't evaluated our effectiveness as a school district with objective measurement until now.

And I just want to be really clear that is the change to a policy governance model.

is holding ourselves, and we're about to get graded ourselves in this next progress monitoring stage, which makes me very nervous.

I already have test anxiety, if you're hearing that, AJ.

But it's really important that we're evaluating ourselves on how well we are doing at quantity and it's their qualitative measures but provided in a quantitative fashion you know that their measure it's qualitative information but it's measurable.

So.

I appreciate hearing you talk about it and just you know putting it in this this context without just sort of the spreadsheet format I think is is a helpful exercise.

And the only thing that really comes up for me again wanting to emphasize that that we need to be working with what we can measure and not no gotcha government right.

We're not going to suddenly hold you accountable to things that you didn't even know we were going to say or that we that are just things that we like or don't like.

And I think one of the things that I would ask you to think about is culture.

I think for me that's really the only thing that's missing from this.

That is the big shift that I believe we are in the process of attempting to make getting away from a culture of blame to a culture of accountability and acceptance.

and away from a culture of blame and lack of ownership or, you know, the word is not coming to me, but the opposite of that to one where we feel comfortable checking our work.

and failing and where we are eager to change and the notion of a continuous improvement plan actually means something to us as individuals who are engaged in professional development.

There's a number of reasons why professional development is difficult in educational environments and there are not many folks who've tackled that but I believe that it absolutely starts with us.

on the board and the last piece of that is I think that we can't we won't really do a good job of risk management and ownership of risk.

The risks that keep us from being successful and we're about to go into a really deep and hard conversation about college and career readiness progress monitoring.

But we won't get there if we don't have the culture that says that it is OK to fail, but then also demands that we do better.

And I think we can continue asking certain things from the dais about why hasn't this happened.

But if we're not changing how we behave, And in our relationship with you which is the core relationship of that that is the basis of the success of this district.

Those things are not going to happen and it's a reiterative process of clarity which one of my favorite sayings of yours which you refuse to take credit for which is clarity is kindness.

So I want to be really clear that.

I am incredibly grateful that you are our superintendent.

I appreciate the extent to which you are willing to learn and to grow and to.

engage in a process that is truly heart-wrenchingly transformative, so much difficult change that comes before you start to see the positive outcomes.

This for me is really good evidence of your commitment to that and trying to figure out how do we make this work.

How do we communicate with each other.

We haven't finished our superintendent board policy.

And.

And this is really you know what it comes down to is what.

As much as I appreciate all of those things about you.

I also want to know how you're going to deliver these things.

How are these things going to happen.

And again that's what we're going to talk about in progress monitoring.

So I our job is is by and large is to monitor the stated everywhere in every context our job is to monitor the ability of this district and to hold you accountable to making sure that this district progresses for the sake of our kids that they leave these walls with the skills that they and the knowledge that they need to succeed and find their joy.

And your vulnerability in committing to that.

I very much appreciate.

And I'm trying to I'm putting myself through the exercise of trying to express my.

Belief in your ability to do that as superintendent.

I really do kind of wake up every day and think gosh I'm so grateful Brent Jones is the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools because.

There not because I'm not mad at you some days about things that are not going the way I want them to.

But that's not what's important.

It's are you willing to put in the work to change the culture of this district to be one that is self-reflective enough to be right by our kids to do right by our kids and make sure that they get the education that they deserve.

And I have absolutely every belief in your capacity to do that and look forward to more.

finality about this and how we measure that.

But also just wanted to be really clear about that belief and that I do think if there is a way to to talk about that culture that's helpful to you and thinking about this.

That is the thing where I think we all sort of come back to is how do we make that cultural shift.

And it's on.

It starts with us as board directors.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_08

President Hersey, that's powerful feedback.

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_29

Of course director summaries and then director hers My comments and questions are remarkably similar to a director Hampson I want to start by just saying how Appreciative I am that your willingness and your vulnerability as a leader of this organization To be open to this kind of hard evaluation so, thank you very much for taking us on this journey.

The kind of things I had written down, I realize, are almost too tactical, I think.

I think Director Hampson did a nice way of framing it as culture.

I think from my perspective, and I really like that you opened, what I'm leaning into is this concept that we maybe need to add something around culture.

I'm really glad that you opened with central office exists to support schools.

I would be interested in knowing what your thoughts and ideas about how we can specifically look for evidence of that within what you've outlined here.

I you know the other thing that in terms of you know I'm really excited to see the word fidelity on here and I think what that means to me is up down and across.

And so when we talk about fidelity I think those will be the kinds of questions questions I'll be asking but I want to see evidence of the fidelity throughout the organization and across our 106 schools and I think finally around culture this may be too tactical but I'm kind of interested in your thoughts about how you will be approaching evaluation as a manager of your team and how your team will be approaching evaluation for their teams.

That may just be too tactical but what I'm getting at there is really around culture.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_16

Director Harris and then Director Rivera-Smith.

SPEAKER_21

Thank you.

I had not heard the term clarity as kindness.

But I might get a tattoo that says that.

And your and my interpersonal issues have been lack of clarity, lack of communication.

I think you're the bomb.

Drives me bananas that we don't get org charts, that we don't know what job descriptions are.

I could not have been more thrilled when I heard Ted Howard was the director of accountability but I don't know what the hell that means.

I was very excited a moment ago when you said we're going to have an interactive org chart.

Put the ETA on that pray tell.

And a metaphor here and I got to be really careful because we're in the middle of bargaining etc.

And I said this to Dr. Pritchett our assistant superintendent of H.R.

earlier tonight because I believe in speaking face to face.

Being hit up in the grocery store that we have a possibility of a strike with the folks that have been.

Cleaning our toilets.

Hallways.

feeding our children and let's not forget our families especially during the pandemic.

Rock stars.

And it says something about respect if we're not treating Everybody in the organization with transparency.

You couldn't be louder about that if we stood on the roof of this building and yelled.

And that that I know that's not what you feel in your heart of hearts.

I know that's not what our staff feels in our heart of hearts.

But please tell me why I have to hear about this in the grocery store and read it on social media.

Please tell me that because frankly I'm angry but moreover I'm hurt that apparently you don't trust us enough to communicate with us.

That's not OK.

And it says something about how we treat each and every one.

of our staff that bring us the student outcomes.

And I know you agree that it's our custodians and lunchroom folks and our security that are helping us deliver those student outcomes and that they're as valuable as anybody being paid a quarter of a million dollars in this building.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_16

Director Rivera-Smith.

SPEAKER_22

Hello.

Thank you.

True story.

I am not because I just feel like I'm glad that everyone's been able to say how much we appreciate you.

I was I don't know some forum or something recently and I wanted them to ask me what's going right in the district.

What's what's what can you.

Because I wanted to say Brent Jones.

I'm so happy he's he's an amazing person and I really do feel like you have you've you've really revolutionized might be too big of a word but you've really changed the role of superintendent and I feel like I really I do trust you and appreciate all the work you've done.

So like and again this does show that too.

I do appreciate this.

this graphic and this way of looking at it and everyone's kind of finding their word they like in here.

I really like this section on accountability because that's to me the big question I never can answer.

I can never like tell people exactly how do we hold people accountable and what do we do.

So clarity on that I think is something I'm really excited to hear more about because you know I'm kind of disappointed to hear that our chief negotiator didn't know they're supposed to give us updates and didn't know that maybe that they're supposed to come to us for strategy on that.

And those things are important.

Those are in policy.

How do you hold them accountable?

Where is the accountability in there?

I don't know what that looks like.

I don't know how that plays out.

Because when do you hold people accountable?

When they don't meet expectation, I guess?

Or even when they do.

I think another word for accountability is also credit, like giving people credit for what they're doing right.

And that's kind of being held accountable for the good stuff.

Anyhow I really do want to flesh it out and learn more about that and see that how that's going to look as we evaluate you and how we learn about how you evaluate and hold your staff accountable.

So that's all I want to say.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_16

Director Rankin.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you.

Second what much of much of what my colleagues have said and just add that this clarity and measurability and all of these things didn't happen out of nowhere.

That this has been this is as Director Hampson said this is policy coverage.

This is role clarity.

This is actually what the role of the board versus the role of the superintendent should be.

The board is 100 percent responsible for hiring and evaluating the superintendent.

That is one of the only decisions that the board gets to make without any other like we hire the superintendent and we evaluate the superintendent on whether or not they are effective at their job.

And what's so meaningful about this is that when role clarity is confused and a central office is busy thinking about vision and values instead of implementation, and a board is busy running around doing operational things and not being really clear about the expectations of the community, it's really messy and it doesn't work super well.

Likewise, when a board, and I work with boards all over the country and see it, when a board hires a superintendent and then immediately goes to battle with their superintendent, why would you hire someone that you didn't think would be able to implement the vision of the community according to policy?

That's literally why you hire them to implement and operationalize the vision that is directed in policy.

Which brings me to my favorite thing, policy, which is I'm wondering about the accountability and impact part.

And I think this connects to the culture setting piece, which is that the culture that we want, the values that we have as representatives of the community are really represented in our policies.

And so once the and that's really our place to that that is the place for us to give direction by state law.

To the superintendent and by state law and the authorization of the board is that anything voted on in a deliberated and voted on by the board.

If it's a majority vote that is the position of the board and the superintendent is legally obligated to follow it.

That's that's that's our authorization in state law as as a state agency.

So my my question is in looking at a policy review calendar where we're regularly reviewing together in public and updating our policies to make sure that they reflect the vision and values of community and then that we're checking for how the district is or isn't following it is that I guess how could we use that as part of the reflection of accountability?

I know for some of the things like cultural things that won't be as quantifiable as some of these other measures, but I feel like that is an important piece of that role clarity and accountability part is just the kind of continual review and reflection on whether or not the experience of people in our system reflects our expectation as described in policy.

SPEAKER_08

Let me do a quick summary of what I've heard so far I wrote down a lot of notes.

We need to make sure that there's clarity in terms of communication proactive communication and transparency.

The the evidence of job descriptions and org charts and whatnot will provide even more level of understanding of what individuals do and how this all connects.

Then the culture shift around.

failing and learning from failing, understanding our risk tolerance, and the communication around what are our expectations of each other can be reflected in this as well.

And then I didn't catch the full piece around policy, but I understand that there needs to be some clarity around what is policy accountability versus the role clarity and clarity to make sure the strategic initiatives are achieved.

So, President Hersey, back to you, sir.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you, Superintendent Johnson.

Thank you for the immediate feedback.

This is obviously not the end of the conversation, so if you have additional things, please send them in.

I just want to take my opportunity to thank Superintendent Jones.

He and I spend a great deal of time talking about how we're going to figure these things out.

And so, I mean, this is just another piece of evidence through like the transition to student outcomes, focus governance, policy governance, and a lot of the work that we've been trying to do over the past couple of years, quite frankly, to not only, you know, put some parameters on how we do our work, but also elevate the quality of it so that as we are all stewards and not permanent placeholders in these seats, that when we have directors, future superintendents come in, there's a little bit of a playbook that exists that is proving itself to be effective, as you all have, you know, sung the praises of Dr. Jones here tonight.

So with that being said, just again, I want to reiterate, this is not the last conversation.

If you have things that you want to see, ideas around specifically how to, you know, measure culture that might come to you in the dead of the night, please don't hesitate to send that over to us so that we can get those things incorporated.

Given that that was the only introduction item on today's agenda, does anybody have anything else?

Okay, cool.

So that was the last piece of the meeting that we're going to do up here.

I'm going to give us a 10-minute recess before we move into our progress monitoring session.

So with that, and please, I know I say this every time, it's 6.20, but please try your best to be back at 6.30.

As soon as we have a quorum, we're going to get started at 6.30.

So I'll just put it like that.

So with that being said, we are at recess until 6.30.

Thank you.

Oh, and go ahead and take your microphone to where you're sitting.

Director Anker.

SPEAKER_14

Come on.

There's Director Hanson.

SPEAKER_16

Yep.

Hello.

If you have not gotten cake, please make sure you got cake.

Hey, oh my gosh.

All right, Jennifer and Luna got cake I see some folks over here who have not gotten cake yet that cake is fire Please make sure that you eat it All right, we're back.

We have progress monitoring 3.1 and 3.2.

I'm gonna hand it over to Superintendent Jones.

I

SPEAKER_08

Thank you, board members.

Today I have a couple of VIPs with me.

Associate, excuse me, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Mike Starofsky, Accountability Officer Ted Howard, and Executive Director Dr. Kayla Perkins.

And this is another step in our regular meeting to do our progress monitoring.

I think this is an important aspect of what we do.

This is about our continuous improvement and we're grateful for the time that we have with you to discuss this important work that we're doing and promote college and career readiness.

This is our third formal opportunity that we've had to review the progress that we've been making.

And as you recall, we're on track on this particular goal.

But that's not enough for us.

We wanna make sure that we're doing the continuous improvement that's necessary to make sure that everyone is meeting the standard for this goal.

And so we're gonna be focusing on what we can learn from our ninth and 10th grade credit earning data from second semester 2023 and how it relates to our larger goal for college and career readiness.

And I, as we are looking forward to learning together, I'm grateful to have A.J.

with us to give us feedback on our progress.

I always like to hear from you, A.J., so hopefully you're on the line.

And I know A.J.

is going to be monitoring how we talk about strategic items versus tactical items versus very specific items, and I think this is a really great opportunity for us to, again, get into the detail and the business of college and career readiness.

And so I'm going to have Dr. Starosky lead most of this time with us this afternoon or this evening.

And in his new role, it's really important that he is the person that you all will get to know as our grand strategists, our strategy evaluator, our strategy affirmer, our strategy abandoner, making sure that we have all the right things in place and that we already know Dr. Perkins and his role has been our leader in terms of college and career readiness and then we have accountability officer, Howard, who has the unenviable task of measuring it all, both formative, summative, in terms of the academic outcomes, in terms of the implementation outcomes.

And this is what we're trying to do in terms of building a team, a cadre of folks who have very clear, specific responsibilities that are really important.

And as we talked about accountability, clarity, and role clarity, you should start to see this in action tonight.

Without further ado, I'm going to kick it over to Dr. Starosky to help lead us through this memo on college and career readiness.

SPEAKER_23

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

Good evening, school board members.

So our excitement to be able to share the data, which you've all seen, is really drafting and trying to be as consistent and, in a good way, boring about what it is that we're talking about because we are being so consistent.

And so you're going to see a number of parallels between the third grade reading strategy, the seventh grade math strategy, and our college and career readiness, which we should be doing.

And so hearing your comments this evening, your most recent comments about consistency, accountability, Vertical alignment, horizontal alignment, I think a number of things are going to be reflected in this presentation and also the learning that we get from the questions that you ask, the opinions that you have will help us be better in what we're doing.

And so as we get started, I want to talk about some of the things that you can be reliable that you're going to be hearing time and time again.

One is the inclusionary practices.

The inclusionary practices that you've heard a number of times specifically talking about the universal design for learning, so UDL, the multi-tiered systems of support, MTSS, and then restorative practices are something that we can't just gloss over.

It's assumed in many cases, but we also always want to be consistent of calling it out.

And then also being consistent with our third grade reading, seventh grade math, and college and career readiness goals are what we're focusing on.

And so We're also excited and just as a sidebar tomorrow with our Tri-Day, our district-wide Tri-Day, we're spending a dedicated hour to the Goals and Guardrails, which is a recorded version by yours truly, sharing the great work that we're doing Yeah, it's going to go wide.

But widely popular.

But we do want it to be widely popular because we want to be consistent with what we're asking and what you're asking of Dr. Jones in the accountability section, which is the vertical alignment and the horizontal alignment.

And what I think is important for our entire system to know from no matter what role you have in our system is that everyone has a role to play in these goals.

And so we have this through line slide that we've been sharing.

which starts with the school board, and that the school board has a role to play in the goals and guardrails, but also the superintendent, the superintendent's cabinet, extended cabinet, central office leaders and people who work in central office, our principals and assistant principals, our teacher leaders, our teachers, our instructional assistants, and our students.

And that's who we're all in service of.

Our expectation is that when you're looking at this college and career readiness, that you're coming with that same lens and focus that you've given us and the superintendent and the superintendents giving us, and that you'll see the consistency.

And when we're inconsistent, we're going to be open and receptive to that, and also where we're doing well, we want to share that and hear about it, and where we can improve, we want to hear that and share that with the people that we lead as well.

So you have this document in front of you.

We just want to give you just a couple minutes to get oriented with it, refresh back with it, and then we'll come back and Dr. Perkins will do a high-level overview.

SPEAKER_11

Director Harris.

SPEAKER_23

Yes I'll actually I'll send it I'll send it to you probably right now if Francesca would mind sending that to her school board.

We'll give you the link.

I did have surgery on Friday on my my finger so nothing personal it's just just another surgery yeah I do have to keep it elevated it's not in the video Dr. Jarvis reminded me in a meeting yesterday that my my fingers were relaxing a little bit when I had my hand up Okay, dr. Perkins take us away, thank you

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, thank you very much, Dr. Jones, Dr. Starosky, for that helpful introduction.

Just want to hit a couple points in the memo itself and then open it up to our rich discussion on strategic questions in particular.

As Dr. Jones shared, we are, in fact, meeting and exceeding on the top line measure for college and career readiness.

As a reminder, that's on time graduation, having completed at least one advanced course.

And the last time we looked at that was for the class of 2022. And we're soon going to be sharing the class of 2023, which will be coming in November.

So that's something to look forward to.

This conversation is really looking ahead and thinking about the class of 2025, our current, our last year's 10th graders, and our class of 2026, last year's 9th graders.

And unfortunately, we do see that we're not currently meeting the targets for interim measures in those two places.

We're not, well, we've made overall a tremendous amount of progress since five years ago with the start pre-pandemic, but we still, we have, as you can see on the blue line, which is our African-American male students, that trend line, and then the orange line is all of our students of color furthest from educational justice.

We've been making progress and we see positive signs, but we're not keeping up with our targets.

And that does speak to some of the challenges ahead to ensure that the future classes are continuing to graduate at a higher rate on time and completing advanced coursework.

Noting that again to Dr. Jones's point we overall over the last 10 years in fact Seattle Public Schools has been on an upward trajectory in those areas.

But I'm excited to take this opportunity to really go more in depth on what are we thinking about what are we learning around our 9th graders and our 10th graders.

As a reminder, how do we determine the 9th and 10th grade data?

The 9th grade data is the most recent data having completed the second semester.

Did they complete it with six credits in particular areas in ELA math, science, and other areas?

To an earlier question from Director Hampson that have been used a statistical regression to see what's best predictor of our top line measure.

And then for 10th graders, it's the percentage who finished with 12 credits in particular subject areas.

And the natural question and the point of what we're doing today is engaging in what are the strategies?

How are we actually trying to move these numbers?

How are we trying to look ahead to these classes?

As a reminder, we have five categories of strategies.

To borrow Mike's phrase, we're going to dare to be so consistent as to be boring, that we're always talking about excellent teaching and joyful learning.

Thank you very much, whoever's toggling through that.

That's a summary.

Strong relationships with connected families, equitable measures, opportunity pathways, and expanded learning.

So if you need to reorient yourself to what are some of the top line things, I'll call out the fact that Dr. Strosky and Director Harris earlier spoke about the universal design for learning as being critical to our efforts to improve these outcomes.

And that's one thing that we just want to flag, that we have this continued effort to improve in these areas to address and improve upon the interim measures.

So that's the orientation to the main part of the memo.

You might notice that there's fewer figures.

There's one other figure that we didn't look at, but you'll see it in there, which is a breakdown by content area.

Because I think it's important to understand that supporting students is not only general, it's also content specific.

And as some of you asked, we have work to do in math in particular, as you can see for that longer, darker gray bar in terms of passing.

So, the piece that I'd like to highlight, we asked for your questions ahead of time, and there were a few clarifying questions.

Thank you very much.

Just to kind of understand why we see these credit earning and we answered those ahead of time.

I won't go into the depth of those, of course, if any board member wants to ask that.

And really invite us to think more about those larger strategic questions.

The memo itself does highlight the inclusionary efforts as one key strategy that we're trying to implement to improve our 9th and 10th grade classes.

We're also continuing to look at equitable grading.

I know we've talked a lot about that, and we will continue to talk about that.

Again, continuing to dare to be boring on the consistency in that space.

And then finally, we're doing a lot of work around making sure that we have the data reports that students and, I should say, educators and school leaders need.

So I will kick us off with a strategic question that you all asked, and then I'll turn it back to President Hersey to see what else.

One of the questions you asked that was particularly strategic, do we have data on what percentage implementation for each of these strategies, or how have they been implemented with fidelity, which I think connects well to many, many of the points that were just made.

We will share that we're trying to get better and better on that, and with Accountability Officer Howard's leadership, we're going to get even more formal in this space.

I will share that we are trying to track data specifically.

I'll give a few data points and then open it up to your other questions and comments.

On 9th grade success tracking, we've tracked the fact that we now have 375 distinct users who have downloaded the report over 1,000 times.

That's not nearly as much as we need, given that we have 4,000 9th graders to work on, but we've made progress.

We have mentoring that's serving currently 100 African-American boys and teens in 9th and 10th grade.

And we have care coordinators who are formally being trained, each of them working with 30 students, working over, I think, with about 1,000 students in total to support students in the 9th grade in particular.

So we're trying to connect those efforts specifically to these interim outcomes.

But again, I would love to hear your thoughts and your questions, particularly as we try to understand how can we better support our 9th and 10th graders as they move towards our top line measure of on-time graduation and completion of advanced coursework.

Thanks for that intro.

I'll turn it over to President Hersey.

SPEAKER_16

All right questions Director Harris, Director Zalmaritz and if you have more raise your hand.

SPEAKER_21

Where does our subscription and utilization of Naviance fit in here?

Haven't heard that word and probably well over a year.

And we gave you the money to do it, but we don't hear about it.

And it's supposed to make us breakfast, right?

Eggs over easy.

SPEAKER_01

Excellent question, and I believe Accountability Officer Howard may have planted that, but anyway.

No, it's a common piece.

Where it is designed to help is that eighth graders, and I think this has actually come up at recently community meetings, eighth graders are supposed to be engaging in course planning, formally reflecting on what they've shared through the required components of the High School and Beyond Plan.

What are their career interests?

What are their interests in general?

And then in the eighth grade, they use the tool to actually build out their four-year plan.

It's a bit of an understatement.

We have a lot of work to do to make sure that's a well-utilized tool.

And part of it is by trying to get more coherent and consistent on how courses are offered across our many, many different high schools.

So the short answer is we have data.

We had set the goal back in 2018 when you first voted for Naviance, thank you again, of getting to 80% at least of implementation.

And unfortunately we're more at 40 to 50% and we have work to do.

Just to be.

Was that accountable and accepting of that piece?

Yes.

SPEAKER_29

So one of the questions that I had previously submitted was, what are your theories for why students are missing credits?

And the answer to this question was there are a number of reasons, including students are not receiving adequate support to learn foundational skills and missing many days of school.

So I guess my question is, You know we're trying to be consistent around our strategy but within that strategy which of those strategies directly address foundational skills and absenteeism.

If those are our theories for why students are missing credits.

SPEAKER_23

Well, I think always first and foremost, it's the quality of teaching and the preparedness of our teachers with the proper tools, proper professional learning, and expectations with our school leaders.

I think that's where, first and foremost for me, that begins and ends there.

Because some of the things that are in that answer about absenteeism, The absenteeism is a part of the problem, but it's not the problem.

What we want to be focusing on, the things that we can control, for sure, is the quality of the teaching that's happening in the classrooms, the common assessments.

That's where I think we want to put our priorities, even though absenteeism could be happening, and it is happening, for any number of reasons.

And trying to better understand that, and that's why we have other accountability systems.

dashboards for us to be able to look and see that and try to understand it.

We have structures and places and schools, any number of ways and positions dedicated to the absenteeism issue.

But for what we want to control, our strategy is always have to be on the quality of the teaching.

And not saying that the quality of teaching is poor, but it's saying the quality of the teaching, the inclusive environments, the relationships of getting to know students, why they're there, why they're not there, and how we can get them there is one piece of the puzzle.

Sorry, Dr. Perkins.

SPEAKER_13

I would add, good evening board directors, Dr. Jones.

I would add one other piece to it.

Dr. Jones has put me in charge of partnerships and in order to make schools more comprehensive we have to lean on our partnerships in our community to make that happen.

Also, we have to lean on our parents and be clear with our parents what their responsibilities are.

We're in this together.

Universal design is about all of us playing a part.

So our parents have to play a part and we have to be clear with our parents what that part is.

And then we have to use our partnerships.

The city, we have to use King County, we have to use our we have a big homeless situation, we have to utilize those pieces to make that happen.

So I think those are the other pieces that are very clear that you will see as we start to measure those pieces, a dashboard that will associate those partnerships and really glean down what originally our partnerships were very, very large.

Dr. Jones wants us to glean those down and be really specific and narrow on our partnerships that are aligned to our goals.

SPEAKER_16

So I have a question about somebody's I

SPEAKER_03

specifically about equitable measure student supports and then also opportunity pathways.

So what I see in those two areas is sort of better monitoring and tracking of what tools are being used.

What I don't see is a connection between that and improved access to advanced courses.

I see our ability to know if students are accessing them or not.

But what I'm interested in in pursuit of the achievement of this goal is whether or not we have addressed barriers that exist for students who have not accessed court advanced coursework in the past and work to eliminate those barriers.

More specifically I think historically we have provided a lot of.

relied a lot on the acceleration and the highly capable cohort to provide advanced learning.

And you have to kind of start with that early and get to then middle school and maybe discover oh I actually am really interested in this thing or I have interest in advancing in this thing or my my map scores show a really really high achievement in this in a math class.

And we're in the process of implementing a vision of inclusion, but where those are butting against each other, how do we open up access to what has been attract cohort system to more students.

And that's what I'm wondering about how how the equitable measure and student supports and opportunity pathways how those are a strategy for actually creating the environment that allows more students to successfully access and complete advanced coursework.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

So, so important.

Thank you very much for the question.

We, tonight, because of the data that we have that's new, is focusing more on the left-hand column, but you're absolutely right.

It is the strategy.

It is to, you know, expand access to advanced courses.

So just as a review and something that we're going to go much more in depth in November is, It's the equal opportunity schools work that we've been doing.

And one study that I referenced in a prior meeting that we're going to be able to bring the findings on is looking at Nathan Hale and Rainier Beach as two examples who have figured out access for African-American male students to advance math courses which is one of the greatest barriers in terms of figuring those pieces and those components out.

So, it is first and foremost in our mind.

And again, I look forward to kind of getting into some of the specifics about how we're expanding what we've learned both from Equal Opportunity Schools survey work and that study in particular.

But you're spot on.

And it also dovetails back to the idea that if we truly lean into the inclusionary practices, if we make UDL the thing we focus on and consistently help all of our educators, including those who teach advanced coursework, we think that students will have better access and better success in those classes.

So that's some of the work we're doing.

SPEAKER_03

Which I 100 percent look forward to and agree with.

And also what do we do with the students right now when there's not when that isn't.

it when our system doesn't have the capacity consistently building to building to to be supporting that inclusive instruction.

And then just to tie to what Director Song-Moritz mentioned the importance of the seventh grade math goal tying to this is that that access isn't just about offering the class.

So what's the relationship between those two goals so that all students when they get to high school actually have the same opportunities to enroll in advanced math classes instead of that some of them have been prepared since third grade to take advantage of those opportunities and some haven't.

So how do we I guess yeah I'm really looking at that opportunity pathways.

SPEAKER_23

Yeah, so I'm excited about what you're bringing up there because of the opportunity of truly connecting the seventh grade math goal into the college and career readiness goal.

They have to be interlinked.

It's the pipeline.

It's the pipeline to the college and career readiness goal is the seventh grade math.

And then also one of the things that makes me think of a specific strategy that some of the schools are doing that impacts culture and I think this is relevant to the some of the issues being brought up tonight is specifically about just offering the course or the courses is not enough for our African-American young men.

And what they have told us is that they'd like to know more.

but it's the self-tap of self-tapping myself for that class, or having someone who knows me, who cares about me, who says, hey, you should check this out.

You could do this.

Have you heard about this?

The Good News Club, let me tell you about the great news about advanced math that you might not have known about or about these opportunities.

And so I think that's the culture that we're getting into and being consistent with.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be pointing, but it is the emphasis though.

The thing that I think we want to be clear with our students and our staff is that When we're talking specifically about UDL, and Director Harris was asking, so how do we get this down to essentially the classroom level?

And the expectation, and we didn't specifically call it out, but when we spent our time and our week with SLI, with our school leaders this year, specifically talking about UDL, inclusionary practices, if we want to improve the culture, It's a part of a professional way of being is that you're planning for recruitment efforts for students not just that we we open the class and let's see who shows up.

We can do better on that.

And many schools and Nathan Hale being an example or an example of one of our schools is doing some really good outreach efforts to students but also the peer to peer has a big impact with our students.

SPEAKER_13

I would add one other piece to that.

Up here, one of the strategies you agreed to actually implement was excellent teaching and joyful learning.

And that's around building relationships.

And that is so key that you tied that in as a strategy.

The other piece of that is the care coordinators.

That personalized person who's actually going to build a relationship and then make sure the student is actually in the class and doing well in the class.

That is in the meantime until we actually develop UDL across the system and it's pushed down all the way into the classroom.

That is a stopgap until it got there.

So I'm very interested in seeing those things.

Dr. Perkins talked about EOS.

EOS is a partner of ours, and we started using insight cards.

And it tells you about the student.

It tells you what the student's expectations are.

But the biggest part of that is students get a chance to say, This teacher is an advocate for me, just like Dr. Swarovski talked about.

They get a chance to say which teachers are their cheerleaders and that insight card goes out to teachers and so they get a chance to see if a kid said he wants to be a doctor, if he wants to be a lawyer, if he wants to be anything that he's dreaming about, but he's also saying, or she's saying, these are the teachers who are my advocates.

And so those insight cards are so key, and I'm so glad we have a partner like EOS that has pulled that information out, and they can go in the classroom and say certain things that we can't say.

Sometimes it's good to have a partner that comes in, says what they need to say, and people teachers hear it and they go like what what and then they leave and they can beat that person up on the way out but that's our partner that's what their job is to say the hard things as they walk out the door and then we have to wrestle with those things and look at the data to see if there's only five kids in there or five african-american males how come there's not 10 how come it's not a fair representative of our community so i'm so happy to see those two strategies uh the care coordinators as well as the excellent teaching and joyful learning that you guys approved so we could actually move those things forward and as we start to change what Director Hampson has really keyed on that culture of high and start having a culture of high expectations and building those relationships.

things will start to shift and we're just at the early stages of doing that so we're going to keep holding that accountable and holding it up and showing our educators how important it is to have those relationships.

I mean we saw it during COVID and we're going to see even more of that because our heroes are our teachers.

SPEAKER_03

I have one more, thank you, one more question that is about a data point that's not here but you said it so I feel like it's fair game.

which is high school and beyond planning.

So it's state law that every student have a high school and beyond plan.

And Naviance is the program that we use to track those.

Why do you think participation is only about 40% in using that?

And does that mean that the rest of our high schoolers don't have a high school and beyond plan at all, or that it's just not being put through Naviance?

SPEAKER_01

The good news on the compliance component is that yes, they all have to have it to graduate.

They do do it by the senior year.

I was referring to an eighth grade number in particular because we actually wanted to have it much earlier.

There's a lot of work to be done.

I think the partnership with our regional executive directors is going to be amazing and I've already started conversations with some of them in terms of how to follow up on these pieces.

But yes, it's a tool that's underutilized.

I think We can get into some of the reasons that we need to kind of recalibrate strategies.

One was that it was predicated on the idea that we'd have required advisory at high school at some point.

And that didn't materialize for a variety of reasons.

But that's not an excuse.

We can do better.

We will do better.

SPEAKER_08

I just want to add that as you heard me talk about and what I'm advising you all hold me accountable to is implementation fidelity.

And that's a system wide challenge that we have.

So high school and beyond is a manifestation of that.

We have some really powerful tools but if we're not using them with the fidelity then we're not taking full advantage of it.

I think this is what Director Harris was getting at.

uh, talking about how are we using all the- all the different resources.

And so, um, but I- I think you'll see us as we get more intentional about how we're- how we're implementing across the board, uh, how we're doing the UDL type of training, and this is how it manifests in terms of, uh, implementation.

I think we'll see more consistency, we'll see numbers of utilization go up, but I think it's just a matter of us being intentional and conscious around, There's a implementation issue.

And so just to do a commercial real quick, Carlos Devaya is helping us with developing an implementation structure that takes into account all the different things that we said are high priorities.

And how do we track those across, through, up, and down our organization?

And so high school and beyond planning is one of those.

I think there's probably multiple areas where we're out of compliance with the implementation.

But now that we're naming it and we're going to be tracking it, we're going to be measuring it, we're going to do that on a rapid cycle.

I think we have an opportunity to show some improvement there.

So I just want to add on to that.

SPEAKER_23

And can I just quickly build on that?

So we take responsibility for that current state, but also our culture, climate, and our focus when we're talking about accountability is that mutual accountability that we say what we're going to do, and we agree how we're going to do it, and then we do it.

And if it doesn't happen, we try to understand why it didn't happen.

but when we Dr. Jones is talking about strategic abandonment or Strategy in general if that that is something that's required Then that's something that we got to follow through on because it doesn't sound good or feel good to hear that and it doesn't make sense, but we need to better understand why it's happening and then also make it a priority.

And so because of how it does impact a student's plan and that our eighth grade to ninth grade transition is difficult enough and that this could be a potential theory of action of that to ease the transition or to increase the likelihood of success from eighth grade to ninth grade is having that high school and beyond plan completed.

I know our principals and I know our teachers in middle schools.

It's not that they don't want to do it.

Maybe they haven't heard the good news or the great news or the priorities that it's happening or it needs to happen.

But also our system, that includes myself, hasn't been focused on that.

But we can focus on it and we will focus on it because it is important.

to this this metric this important metric.

So that's a good topic for us to consider and we are doing something about it.

SPEAKER_20

So I'm going to one of my questions was very similar and I was going to say the same thing about it wasn't in the report but somebody mentioned the statistic on the 40 to 50 percent utilization in eighth grade.

what is the intersection of that in the completion of that is there a way to have you been able to look at that intersecting with course or credit completion meaning for students that are completing, are they in fact also doing better with their credit completion?

SPEAKER_01

We have not looked at that cross-section as carefully as we could.

I do want to point out there are other tools that our middle schools and high schools, to Dr. Straussi's point, that people are using well.

One, the ninth grade success tracker, that's increasing this.

We have a new CCR dashboard, which I hope you all check out, which will give high school principles, an immediate sense of who's off track, on track on particular credit areas.

So part of what I think is back to original point is that we might have too much going on, and we need to simplify and focus.

But, no, we haven't done that exact analysis.

I think that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_20

And then the other intersection with respect to your strategies that I'm wondering about, and I do appreciate, I was already overwhelmed with the list that you gave, and this is why, because, wait, are you Dr. Howard?

No, Mr. Howard.

Thank you for bringing up the partnerships, the partnerships, families, Is there a correlation between students who are engaged, where their families and their, or partners are engaged in one of those tools?

Because I don't know, I don't actually understand whether or not anybody but students can access Naviance, but I think some of those other tools, yes, and so, In terms of do students who have had that additional support in completing that planning are they also having higher credit completion.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, again, a good request that isn't something, one of the challenges of High School and Beyond Planning is that it gets very personal.

It's a student sharing all their different specific interests.

So we have some heavy amount of protections, partly based on conversations with the board back in 2018. So we don't have a lot of CBOs that are able to kind of go in and look at some of the specifics, but we do share high-level summaries of those pieces.

Have we made the connection?

I think you're getting to a larger theme that we are trying to connect more closely on the implementation.

So take the care coordinators.

The idea that we have this investment in care coordinators who are about building relationships with students in different ways, they are now being seen as leaders in the ninth grade success tracking tool and the use of that tool.

But I think I'm hearing your request.

In the future, you'd like to hear more about how those two actually play out in statistics and connections.

SPEAKER_20

Yeah, I mean, I'm just wondering when a partner support that is one of your strategies or a family engagement with that tool, because I know there are other tools where you can, the families can engage.

SPEAKER_01

Is that going to show up?

Families can get access to Naviance, that's right.

SPEAKER_20

Oh, they can?

SPEAKER_01

They can.

Families, yes, just not the CBOs.

SPEAKER_20

OK.

I'm going to leave that there for now.

I think Dr. Swarovski you brought up the middle school impact and that is mentioned in the equitable grading practices implemented by middle and high school educators.

And I'm wondering within that, in terms of when courses aren't completed.

Is is there a any trends in terms of the testing versus the homework.

Like where does that actually where does it fall apart for students in terms of either and they're not getting.

Is it because they're not getting the support that you talked about with respect to the that from the teachers or they're not getting or the grading isn't Yeah, what's the, how is it, are there trends there?

Because I know we don't have consistent grading practices.

So I'm just curious what you've learned or if you've learned anything within that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I think that this is where I do want to highlight.

The overall trend, especially if you look five or six years ago, we do see students getting a lot more support to earn credits.

And so therefore, it's not surprising that overall the numbers have gone up for ninth and tenth grade and even on-time graduation.

Where I think you're connecting it to, and what Dr. Storosky did as well, is the idea that the 7th grade math goal is fundamentally the same piece, that we're trying to understand why aren't students succeeding in 7th grade math, which is also the question we're asking with equal opportunity schools.

Why aren't they succeeding in advanced coursework in math?

And we're trying to learn from that, those experiences, and that's where, again, when we come back in November, we're going to do a deeper dive on those pieces to try to kind of unpack what causes, and this gets to one of your questions, what causes math to be the area where most kids miss out on credits, and why is that the case?

Now, some of it's stuff that we've been wrestling with for decades across the country, and some of it are things that we're learning from the seventh grade math work.

SPEAKER_23

Yeah, and I'd say when we come back in November we should also be highlighting the positives of what is working for students who are doing well and why.

And not always going and giving us and focusing on what's not working and why.

But also that we can learn equally from our students our young men who are doing well in those classes, trying to understand what's working for them, how did they get this success that some of their peers are not yet achieving.

SPEAKER_29

I'm glad that we brought this back to math because I do think that this is the kind of common theme, right?

We know that this is an issue at the top line and the interim measure and I see the point where if we make progress on our seventh grade math, this will help us eventually in terms of our achievement around the college and career readiness goal.

But I just kind of want to push a little bit harder on the question I asked previously, the more support to learn foundational skills.

So your answer was quality teaching and partnership.

So when I'm looking at this chart, and I actually find it extremely helpful that you organize this around interim versus top line.

the foundational skills.

Are you saying that the equitable grading practices and the UDL is going to specifically help students who need work on learning foundational skills?

And is it the partnerships that will help the students learn to kind of build their foundational skills around math?

Is that our strategy?

Or is there more that's not reflected in this table?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it is a high-level summary, but where absolutely, and this is why, as it's been said a couple times, the focus at the School Leader Institute for August to launch us for the year, and frankly has been the focus of this past year, thanks to Dr. Torres' leadership and many others, is on universal design for learning.

How can we help, and particularly our secondary math educators, teach those foundational skills in different ways.

We know that the system hasn't figured it out in terms of overall achievement for students of color for educational justice and math has not been, we have not been meeting the mark that we need to meet.

So I do think UDL is the main investment that we're making and, but I don't want to lose sight of the fact there's also some real solid basics.

We're implementing our K-8 Envision curriculum with much more fidelity than we ever have, and those have the inclusionary practice tools within them.

And then on top of that, thanks to the tech levy and Carlos Lavalle's leadership, We're leveraging that to do a digital adoption for Algebra Geometry and Algebra 2, which has not received updated materials in a while, to make those more inclusionary and more UDL aligned.

But that's the main investment.

That's where we're really thinking we could move the needle on that.

SPEAKER_13

I think one piece of data that we have not looked at is the formative assessments.

So we can actually, when we have that data, we can actually make changes pretty quickly.

But we have to have that formative data.

We've been using a lot of summative data after the fact.

At the end of the year, map data is at the end, and we're looking backwards.

We want to be able to look at it in real time.

in the first 30 to 45 or 60 days.

Let's make some adjustments based off the formative assessments and then have teachers get the support they need and have that model for them so they can make those adjustments they need.

And so that formative assessments are what's coming.

A big piece of that that we're going to be looking at as we collect data with Carlos de Valle.

SPEAKER_20

And that was very much the similar point that I was getting at in terms of like, is it the testing?

Is it the, you know, the grading?

Is it how it's being taught?

And what are we, what are you expecting to see as a result of that, that strategy, the universal design for learning and the, not just the fidelity, but the, um, extent of the adoption on behalf of teachers.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and just to kind of allude back to a discussion that we had on July 5th as a group around the seventh grade math goal, this idea of the fewer, clearer, higher, like we're trying to be much more specific about what do we mean by teaching in vision.

So the idea that every lesson starts with a solve and share, and that can we develop that practice as an inclusionary practice, as one that actually gets all students involved in learning the concepts deeply.

Again, it's basic, it's really basic, but instead of trying to throw the entire thing at them and all these different ideas, that's what we worked on last week with our launch of the PD for the second year at these six middle schools.

That's what we're going to try to make the focus as we support that up through the high school, just to keep it simple and focused on better implementation, which I think is a key theme tonight.

SPEAKER_13

I think the places where Dr. Strauss is going to go with Dr. Torres is going deeper into the practice.

As we go deeper into the practice, then you'll give students more time.

Students develop at different levels and we need to give students more time to learn and develop.

Sometimes students need 60 or 90 or even a year extra to develop and then all of a sudden it hits and it's passion and it's curiosity for them.

That's something that with UDL, Dr. Torres and Dr. Strosky are going to come up with strategies to take a look at how we give expanded time.

Is that a summer bridge program where students need more time in the summer so they can earn more credit in the summertime?

What does that look like?

How do we maximize that time?

Do we actually do an intervention with students who are struggling during the time of the year and didn't do well?

Do we offer online learning at the same time?

How do we involve the parents?

Those are the supports that you're talking about.

And then we can actually partner with the students whose big brothers, big sisters, other people that that students need access to that don't have it at home.

But we can't help everyone, but we can pinpoint those that don't have it at home.

But those are some of the ideas and strategies that are being talked about.

I call whiteboarding right now that they haven't really fleshed out yet to actually uplift it.

But those are the things that are being talked about right now.

SPEAKER_21

Where would the international baccalaureate programs at Chief Sealth International High School and Rainier Beach High School fit in to college and career readiness and opening doors for young people that might otherwise run into them.

SPEAKER_01

So while, to be clear, I think I could highlight amazing things going on related to advanced coursework access in probably every one of our high schools, including our small, non-traditional high schools.

I mean, don't get me started on how great NOVA has done in terms of leveraging college in the high school, just as an example.

So I don't, you know, we have three distinct approaches.

It's one of the kind of interesting parts of Seattle Public Schools.

We have schools that have committed to advanced placement.

We have schools that have committed to college and high school.

And then, of course, we have their three IB schools.

That said, I do want to sing the praises, as I think I've done previously, of Self, Beach, and Ingram.

CELF and BEACH in particular, Stephen Miller and Allison Hayes who are the IB coordinators have coordinated an amazing amount of the IB for all thing.

We've all heard the for all slogan in our lives and education, but from my sense, they are doing it in such a thoughtful way, thinking about how multilingual learners connect at Chief CELF, thinking about how students with IEPs at BEACH connect to this content.

And if you look at their, you know, they still have work to do.

They would admit that in terms of getting more students to actually earn the overall IB diploma.

But taking and passing IB math classes and IB humanities classes, they have dramatically moved the needle and their outcomes show it.

So I think we have a lot to learn from them.

SPEAKER_22

Thank you.

Quick question.

Is the data on the I don't know which video this is.

The one about the advanced coursework top line measure proportion of students who graduated within four years and also successfully completed at least one advanced coursework.

Do we have high schools that require advanced coursework?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I mean, we have district level graduation requirements.

So while there have been individual high schools that sometimes put on their own spin, no, there's no, it is a, that's policy that you pass for the entire district.

So it's actually requiring it.

But effectively, by saying IB for all, you're having all students take the class.

It's just that they could still graduate because we don't put that additional barrier, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_22

I'm just wondering if that would skew this data.

But because if they're required anyway.

So.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know if this I mean it alludes to the fact that we may want to rethink I think we've talked about this for you what additional metrics do we want if we're already.

Apart from a couple high schools, we have a huge number of African American male students and students of color, furthest from educational justice, taking and passing at least one advanced course.

I think other board members have brought up maybe we need to raise that bar, maybe include math as the explicit thing.

SPEAKER_22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, I think that's all we have for now.

But in terms of board support, we appreciate these questions.

We appreciate that you all are feeling like you're in alignment with us in terms of we have to stay the course on strategies, but we also will abandon strategies when they're no longer effective.

And we'll adopt strategies, and we'll do this in real time.

And so your encouragement to continue to ask the depth of questions, particularly around implementation, have been helpful.

And I know I'm breaking protocol a little bit, but is there any more information that the board wants to understand about college and career readiness given what we just presented?

I think sometimes there's a real-time aha moment or somewhere where you want to go deeper.

So I want to just open that up real quickly, and then I'll give it back to President Hersey, and then AJ can give us feedback, please.

SPEAKER_21

I would very much appreciate hearing in November more about our mentoring programs and more about our our career readiness programs where folks are learning the top lines of a trade and how do those work.

Not tonight but in November or via memos in the interim.

Are they effective.

How can we leverage them if they are effective.

And how do we get money for it.

SPEAKER_20

I think my big curiosity is about family involvement in student success.

And there's no question that it takes a family to get a kid through high school and family and community.

And yet I don't believe we have any data to know our family survey is historically inadequate because of the who's who is represented by that survey.

It's not a full picture.

So it's I think it's a really important question if we're going to be successful and it starts in middle school.

Right.

Like do families feel that they have what they need to support their students and their success.

I think most of us would say a lot of times no.

And some of that is the times that we're in.

And I think that's the other pieces that.

Admitting what we don't know about how to be successful in some of these regards based on my nieces and nephews who are a decade older than my kids have at their age note how different things are.

And I think maybe that goes to the student voice from our our student school board members that they spoke to today is what do we not understand about what you're going through and what you know your parents and your families and community may be trying to help you with and not succeeding so that we can help you.

Get these you know everybody's got love and support in their family and in their communities.

That's not our job our job is to make sure that kids are supported in accomplishing what they want to accomplish that they're being held accountable to that.

Where are those.

How can we evolve to better meet those those needs.

SPEAKER_01

I know we're not responding but just briefly I do think there's a lot more we could bring I could bring around Dr. Williams's work and Michelle Page who's been doing a lot of work with black student unions and so I can't do that justice right now but I would love to have the opportunity to do it more in November.

SPEAKER_03

I would really be interested to know Or somehow see kind of connected to what Director Hampson was just talking about about you know not knowing what individual students are going through.

And I would agree that it's not necessarily the job of our system or anyone in our system to individually identify you know replace.

replace parent or family or community support on a, that can get into people thinking their job, their job is to care for a child and not to teach them and caring for them as part of it.

But it can't replace that our job is education.

We can't say, well, I really cared about them and that's what they needed and ignore that they also needed us to provide education and make sure that they could access it.

So the kind of I guess wonky part that I'm wondering is where's the relationship or can we show a relationship of where legally required services are or aren't being met consistently.

So I'm talking about students who are identified as qualifying for McKinney-Vento services, qualifying for English language supports, qualifying for special education in the foster system, any other as there's, you know, Native education, there's Title III money specifically for literacy support for Native identified students regardless of their home language.

So where are we or are we not?

doing those things that we're actually required to do that we can do in a caring way but that sometimes get preempted by caring when actually a student very specifically qualifies for a certain service or support.

So I just want to and there's a lot of intersectionality between all of those groups and and every student but especially students furthest from educational justice.

So I'm wondering if we may be kind of thinking about tier 1, tier 2, tier 3. If you have a student who qualifies for McKinney-Vento and are not receiving that identification or support and we're going right to something else when actually we were missing this level of supporting that student.

And making sure that students are properly identified so that they're getting all the supports they're entitled to very specifically that were intended to make sure that they succeed.

SPEAKER_16

All right.

Thank you all very much.

We sincerely appreciate it.

OK.

We do not.

Oh OK.

Moving into our board evaluation we are starting our time use evaluation afresh this year.

Thank you Director Hampson for agreeing to do.

Wait I'm tripping.

What.

Oh AJ.

AJ usually sends me the feedback afterward.

I'm not sure AJ do you have any feedback that you'd like to share immediately.

SPEAKER_05

Just that you all have really.

grown in this practice and really did a great job this evening of not only dialing it on strategic matters rather than minutiae, but also I particularly appreciated a couple of moments.

I think when I can only hear the voices, I can't see you all at the moment.

And so I think it was Vivian and Leslie asked questions that really pushed in on the administration to further clarify and connect the dots between answers in this conversation and in previous conversations.

That type of nudge is really healthy in conversations like this.

And so just overall, just really strong work and a lot of growth on you all's part.

Well done.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

I also requested that AJ give us a refresher on just, like, quality of questions.

But I think given that, you know, we're pretty burnt, maybe we could do that next time at our monitoring session at the top.

And then go into the question asking.

So we'll reloop to that.

But thank you, as always.

Brother Craybill, we will talk with you shortly.

OK.

We.

So.

Board self evaluation.

Time use evaluation.

Director Hampson has agreed to do it for us this time.

The way that we are going to do this this year is that we are going to go except for tonight in order of district.

So Director Hampson is going to kick us off.

then district 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and then we're going to repeat.

So that's going to be the easiest and most I think efficient way to get this done and to ensure that it gets done.

So no more volunteering and it will allow you to know what your night is.

So usually we will be going in order but Director Hampson is going to kick us off and then we'll loop back next time with district 1. Cool.

Informational items.

We have two written updates attached to tonight's agenda.

The first is the monthly budget status report and the second is the compilation of questions submitted in advance to today's meeting by board directors and staff responses received and posted earlier this week.

If I'm not mistaken we're going to be adjourning into a closed session.

Is that still the plan.

OK.

So there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 7 33 p.m.

And as I mentioned we will be heading into a closed session across the hall so I will see you there.

Thank you very much.

Have a good evening.

Take care.