SPEAKER_29

Good afternoon.

Board meeting will be called 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.

SPEAKER_30

Are we ready.

Is SPS TV ready.

SPEAKER_29

This is President Rankin.

I am now calling the March 6 2024 regular board meeting to order at 4 18 p.m.

This meeting is being recorded.

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

For those joining public for public testimony today we first have an entrance conference with the state's auditor's office today and we'll begin testimony following that at or after 5 p.m.

Miss Wilson-Jones the roll call please.

Director Briggs.

SPEAKER_26

Present.

Vice President Sarju.

Present.

Director Topp.

Here.

And then I understand that Director Hersey is not with us at this point.

SPEAKER_29

Director Hersey has a work obligation.

He will be joining us remotely later in the meeting.

And President Rankin.

Here.

Oh and Director Vander Noon.

Here.

All right.

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

SPEAKER_08

Thank you President Rankin and board members.

Good evening everyone.

Before we delve into the agenda for today please join me in celebrating the Garfield girls and Rainier Beach boys basketball teams for their outstanding achievements this season.

You know as as normal both teams displayed exceptional sportsmanship on and off the court representing Seattle Public Schools with pride.

This year Rainier Beach boys basketball team made their 10th appearance in the state championships and were runners up for the title.

Garfield girls team made state Washington state history by becoming the first team to win four state championships in a row.

These achievements not only showcase the talents of individual players, but also the strength of basketball programs as a whole.

These results are the fruit of their hard work, perseverance, teamwork, and commitment to excellence.

The coaches and players of both these teams deserve praise for their remarkable skill and teamwork throughout the year.

So if you all can give it up one time for the Garfield and Rainier Beach basketball teams.

I'd also like to take a moment to pay tribute to the late Billy Frank Jr.

As many of you know, March 9th marks the Billy Frank Jr.

Salmon Day, and this celebration honors his remarkable legacy.

Billy Frank Jr.' 's commitment and courage during the fish wars of the 60s and 70s paved the way for a landmark decision that affirmed tribal fishing rights.

His memory is a reminder of the interconnectedness we share with our environment and with one another as a community.

It underscores the vital importance of stewarding our land and safeguarding the wellbeing of all who inhabit it.

Let's honor him by continuing to advocate for environmental justice and ensure equity to ensure that future generations inherit a world rich in both natural beauty and cultural heritage.

So I encourage everyone to check out the resources on SPS website to learn more about how we can celebrate Billy Frank Jr.

Now, please join me in watching a video as we reflect on Billy Frank Jr.' 's life and work.

SPEAKER_04

A lot of words come to mind when I think of uncle.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I can think of a word that describes Billy.

Inspirational.

Heritage of culture.

SPEAKER_00

tradition of continuity.

One of the words that come to my mind is accountability.

A word to describe this man.

SPEAKER_14

Billy.

That's how you describe him.

He was an activist.

He was a treaty rights advocate.

For a young person like myself, a young indigenous man, it was inspiring.

Billy led the way.

SPEAKER_27

Everybody who works on environmental issues today knows about Billy Frank Jr.

He was an environmental hero.

SPEAKER_00

I was very fortunate to have such a good role model in both my mother and father, who talked about leadership, who talked about coming together and working together, and also, you know, spoke about protecting this environment, protecting this beautiful river that we have, protecting everything that Mother Nature has given us.

SPEAKER_04

So growing up on the Nisqually Reservation and growing up in this community of Nisqually, of its people, people of the river, that meaning alone has a lot of energy and just tradition behind it.

Habitat, restoration, conservation, those are words coming from our people and what we've done over the thousands of years here.

SPEAKER_03

Every time I come out here to the Billy Fink Refuge, I always think back to my first job, bucking hay for one of the local farmers.

Back then, the landscape here was a lot different.

It was a field of hay.

Since that time, the tribe has done a lot to remove dykes and bring this land back to its natural state.

SPEAKER_00

Growing up, that was always a life lesson my father tried to get instilled into me was you protect this environment at all costs.

Whatever you do, you make sure that you protect this water behind us, you protect our salmon so we're still able to exercise our treaty rights and we're still able to celebrate our culture and our way of life.

Salmon need clean, fresh water, and that really is a way to tell how we're doing in life right now, and how the environment and the ecosystem's working.

When the rivers are clean, when the salmon are coming home, we know that we are healthier as human beings.

SPEAKER_14

His real intent was about trying to get Indian people to the table, to help decide precise policy that supported indigenous communities, that supported greater Washington, that protected salmon.

SPEAKER_00

Salmon restoration.

I was on the phone right before we came down here speaking with Fran Wilson, one of our staffers at NWIFC, and she mentioned how my dad used to go over to ecology.

He'd go over there and talk to him about co-management and talk about the importance of protecting the water, the importance of protecting the environment.

SPEAKER_27

He was known to be a great partner to the Department of Ecology, to other state agencies.

And when you think about it, it really demonstrates such a strength of character.

We have to be honest, government did not treat Billy Frank Jr.' 's people well.

Yet Billy Frank Jr. was still willing to come to the table with government and forge solutions.

And those partnerships, and what he taught us about partnerships, continue to this day.

SPEAKER_00

And that's really, you know, when it comes down to it, the tribes, the state departments, they're not going to be able to do it on their own.

It has to be all of us here in the state of Washington coming together for the resource.

SPEAKER_14

He was really the activist that helped bring us together, which is why I think we celebrate Billy Frank Jr. today.

SPEAKER_08

Billy Frank Jr.

Day.

I want to also share out Artificial intelligence.

I went to a conference on Monday and Tuesday of last week, and let me give you a couple takeaways.

One thing about AI right now, it's the worst it's gonna be right now.

We need to think about it in a sense of what are we currently not doing?

How can it be supplemental to our work?

AI is surprisingly empathetic.

AI is very good at giving feedback, and we're pretty confident that it can decrease teachers' workloads.

We need to be thinking about how we implement AI from a comprehensive framework, policy, teaching, operation, technology, and I just want to signal that AI is here, and we need to harness it and embrace it as we go forward.

Start to be prepared to embrace the whole concept of artificial intelligence.

You've heard about it from our large language models, generative AI, interactive AI.

All of those things are really meaning what's a new tool that we have available to us to help us extend our reach and have more effective educational opportunities.

Tonight we also have the state auditor's office doing an entrance conference and we're joined by staff from the state auditor's office who will be explaining the annual audit process.

Every year the state conducts an external audit of SPS and my staff will be working with the auditors to provide the information on their audit.

The outcomes of this audit will be provided to the board by the SAO in our annual exit conference in June.

Lastly we have new director appointment work session tonight and the board will hold this work session to plan the appointment process for new board directors in districts 2 and 4. All candidate materials are now available on Seattle Public Schools website for the general public to view.

My team and I look forward to supporting the board's process in bringing forward two new candidates for to fill these seats.

So without further ado I'll pass it back to you President Rankin.

SPEAKER_29

Thank you.

Do we have any student member comments.

SPEAKER_20

If you're eligible to vote and you haven't yet registered make sure you do for the upcoming election because your voice matters.

SPEAKER_29

Thank you Director Vander Doodt.

All right, we will now be moving to the tables here for the entrance conference of the State Auditor's Office.

Directors, please bring your microphones with you.

All right.

Well as Superintendent Jones mentioned the district is annually audited in multiple areas including how we use and safeguard public resources and are adherent to state laws.

The team from the state auditor's office conducting our annual audit will preview the areas that they will focus on this year for us now.

And then later this spring we'll have the opportunity to meet again in the mentioned exit conference to review their results together as a board.

Thank you to the State Auditor's Office representatives for joining us today.

Today's presentation will be roughly 10 to 20 minutes, leaving us about 10 minutes for Director questions.

And I will now turn it over to our representatives from the Auditor's Office.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_13

Oh, can you hear me now?

Thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity to present our entrance conference for our upcoming audit.

Definitely appreciate you taking the time today to hear about our audit process.

My name is Joe Simmons.

I'm the audit manager for our audit team here in Seattle.

I'm here with Eileen Du, who is assistant audit manager and is the audit supervisor on the audit.

And Carmen Law is the auditor in charge of the audit.

So again, thank you for your time today.

And on the next slide just talks about our audits in general, that we conduct a variety of audits and close to 2,500 audits in any given year.

and that includes accountability audits where we audit for compliance with state law and the local government's own policies and procedures.

And then we also conduct financial statement audits where we audit those financial statements to determine whether they're fairly stated and offer an opinion on those statements.

And then we have federal audits where we audit the federal grants that local governments receive and determine whether they're Grants are in compliance with requirements and that there's controls over those grants that are in accordance with the federal regulations.

And those are the three types of audits that we will be conducting for the district this year.

And I'll go ahead and hand it over to Carmen to talk more about the details of each one of those audits.

SPEAKER_07

So we are going to start with the accountability audit.

We are looking at the 2022-2023 school year for all three of our audits.

For accountability we do take a risk based approach for each of our sections.

So our first section is professional learning.

Districts receive state revenues restricted for staff training purposes aimed at improving student outcomes so we will be getting understanding of controls and testing expenditures to all the applicable state laws.

Our next section is the local revenue sub fund.

Districts are required to use local revenue sub fund to account for all local revenues and enrichment expenditures.

So we will be reviewing the district's plan that they're required to have and will be testing charges that have been charged to the sub fund.

Our third area is compliance with supplemental contracts for enrichment activities.

Supplemental contracts provide compensation to district employees in addition to and outside of their regular work assignments.

We will be getting a standing of controls and reviewing selected supplemental contracts.

We'll also be looking at the financial condition and reviewing for any indications of financial distress.

And if we identify any we will be following up with staff and management on plans on how they plan to mitigate these distresses.

We'll also be looking at open public meetings and meeting minute compliance compliance with meeting minutes and executive session requirements to the state laws.

And next slide.

We also have a student enrollment reporting for basic enrollment.

A large source of apportionment revenue for school district is their basic enrollment.

So we will be conducting recalculation of basic enrollment for a selected grade and school self-insurance.

We will be looking at the unemployment and worker compensations self-insurance programs And then fuel cards and district vehicles will be getting a standing of the fleet commander system and testing some expenditures from that to the district's policies.

procurement of cooperative purchases, we will be looking at any contracts that were procured through some piggybacking of other government contracts and testing those to the applicable state laws.

We will also be looking at the procurement of public work contracts and testing those to the applicable state laws.

And our last section is procurement cards also known as P cards so we gain an understanding of the district's controls over their procurement cards and testing expenditures to make sure they are in accordance to schools policies and procedures.

Next slide.

So for our financial statement audit our opinion will be issued in accordance with the accounting manual for public school districts in the state of Washington and we will be conducting the audit to the government auditing standards.

We will be reviewing internal controls and compliance over financial reporting.

to assess adequacy of accounting and financial statement preparation process and preventing material misstatements and identifying whether there were any instances of material noncompliance.

Next slide.

And then our final area is the federal grant compliance audit.

Our opinion will be issued in accordance to the government auditing standards and the uniform guidance.

We will also be looking at the internal controls and compliance over the selected major programs.

We'll be assessing adequacy of federal grant processes in preventing noncompliance and identifying whether there are any instances of material noncompliances.

Next slide.

So the four programs we will be looking at this year is the Child Nutrition Cluster, assistance listing numbers 10.553, 10.555, and 10.559.

The COVID-19 Emergency Connectivity Fund Program, assistance listing number 32.009.

The special education cluster assistance listing number 84.027 and 84.173 and then the COVID-19 education stabilization fund assistance listing number 84.425.

So these four programs are about 66 percent of the total federal expenditures for the school district in 2023. Next slide.

Staying connected.

So these are some ways that our office likes to stay connected with the school district.

Two areas we would like to point out is the weekly status meeting.

We have that scheduled every week with our audit liaison Michael Stone.

And as you mentioned earlier we will be once we could wrap up the audit we will be back for the exit conference.

Next slide.

So these are our three levels of reporting starting at the top.

These are our findings.

Findings are formally addressed issues in the audit report.

They are significant results of the audit and they will be published in our audit reports.

Management letters are right below findings.

These will communicate control deficiencies, noncompliant misappropriations, and these will be referenced but not included in our audit reports.

And then our lowest level is exit items.

These are minor issues where we will informally communicate them to management.

And I'm going to pass it to Eileen for the rest of the slides.

SPEAKER_10

All right.

Thank you, Carmen.

I'd like to take this opportunity today to talk about a few reminders with you.

So our office is committed to protecting your confidential data, so please let us know if the information you provide to us contains sensitive information so we make sure that this data is adequately safeguarded throughout the audit process.

Second, we'll provide an estimate of audit cost in your entrance packet.

This estimate is on track with previous estimate that was provided to you and has also been approved through the engagement letter.

Third, should there be any concerns during the audit process, please note that we do have an established process for you to voice those concerns.

We do encourage you to please start with our audit manager, Joel Simmons, but please note that contact information for additional representatives are included in your entrance document all the way up to our state auditor should they be needed.

Lastly, we always like to remind our government about loss reporting.

So if you become aware of any known or suspected loss of public funds, state law requires that you immediately report to our office.

So this process is pretty straightforward and you can file this notification through our SAO website.

So the next slide talks about cyber security.

State and local governments may also be required to report cyber security issues including security breaches and cyber fraud.

So reporting to the Attorney General's office is required for single security incidents affecting more than 500 Washington residents.

reporting to us, the State Auditor's Office, may also be required for cybersecurity incidents involving financial records or finances, regardless of the number of affected parties.

So, of course, we hope you have none of these, but if you do find yourself in this spot, we do have some information for you on our website regarding cybersecurity issues.

Next slide, please.

So some people may ask, who audits the state auditor?

Well, just like how you receive periodic audits, we do as well by the National State Auditor Association once every three years.

So you can find the most recent peer review here.

We have a link provided for you.

And the last rating we received was a pass, which was the highest level of assurance that this review can provide.

Next slide, thank you.

All right, so beyond the regular scheduled audits, we do have support services available to you at no additional cost all year round.

The first one is the local government support team, and this team assists with annual financial reporting.

So they provide one-on-one technical assistance as well as client help desk.

In addition, the team offers several trainings around the state throughout the year to keep you updated on the latest accounting and reporting topic.

The Center for Government Innovation is another great resource that strive to help government be better.

So they provide expert advice in areas of lean, and they also have what's called a FIT tool, the Financial Intelligence tool, which help governments monitor and compare their finances to other local governments like yours.

So the next slide talks a little bit more about what the center offers, but what I do want to highlight for you is the first bullet point here, which is the cyber checkup.

So the center also creates what's called a B-Cyber Smart Program that they offer free cyber checkup, trainings, and a lot of great resources that help government improve their overall cyber health.

So we do encourage you to check out how the center might be able to assist with your district.

Next slide please.

So our special investigation team has created this wonderful guide for elected officials and appointed board members on implementing internal control and best practices to prevent employee fraud.

So this guide is organized into three sections, preventing fraud, detecting fraud, and responding to fraud.

So if you're interested, this guide is available for download on our website.

And I believe that concludes our presentation.

Again we really appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk about our audit and we look forward to come back again at our exit.

With that said I'd like to open up the floor for questions.

SPEAKER_29

Thank you.

Do directors have any questions about what we have just learned.

Director Briggs.

SPEAKER_31

Thank you.

I'm just wondering, so how are we defining financial distress in this context?

Like what is that, what are we looking for?

SPEAKER_13

Well, we have that basically We do use that fit tool internally that we talked about.

So basically we look at some indicators as far as number of days of operating cash debt load and basically look at that and look for yellow flags or red flags and also look to see what the local government has as far as plans to address that if we do note any flags.

But our first step is to review that and then discuss with management if we do note any indicators and then look to see what the plan would be to address those.

SPEAKER_29

Yeah it unfortunately doesn't mean distress caused by chronic underfunding of public education by the state.

It's about the internal the use of our the use of the dollars that we do have.

If there's discrepancies or areas of concern regarding the use

SPEAKER_31

We're calling that distress, though?

SPEAKER_13

That's what we call it to try to have it as a way that's hopefully fairly straightforward as to understand that basically for our financial statement audits, we also look at what we call going concerned and determine under auditing standards that the local or the entity is able to continue for a period of time after audit.

For financial condition and under accountability audit we look a little bit closer and try to look ahead to see if there's any indications and we use the term financial distress as to whether there's any indications that we would want to first alert management to and see if there's a plan and then possibly alert the public if it's.

a larger issue and I would say and again I understand we're talking about different types of terminology but I'd say where it happens for example for like some small hospital districts where maybe their experience issues where their patient billing has gone down and they still have the same number of staff that they need to be able to pay and they might be having some issues where they had taken on more debt load.

So or a small water district that that's the type of things where we've noted that in the past.

So I don't know if that helps a little bit.

All right.

SPEAKER_28

Any other questions from directors.

Director Topp.

SPEAKER_24

So this might be for Dr. Bottleman and you might not have an answer but is so the estimated cost for the audit is four hundred and eighteen thousand dollars.

Is that roughly what we've seen in the past or what would it how does that compare?

And then I guess for maybe the audit staff what does that encompass in your estimate?

SPEAKER_04

I believe it's up a little bit for this year but not significantly.

It's in line with what we've typically paid.

Yes.

SPEAKER_13

And that would cover those three audit areas that we talked about.

That includes the accountability audit, the federal single audit, and the financial statement audit.

And I'd say the federal single audit that Just kind of overall statewide due to the large amount of COVID related funding that has come through local governments in the past few years that overall we have spent a little bit more time under the single audit than we have in the past but it has as the director said has been within what we've had as far as the number of hours in the past.

SPEAKER_29

I have a question about the federal grant compliance audit is the the major program selected for audit.

Are those of federal grants.

Those are the areas that we're looking at or are those in addition to regular funder fund federal grants from like Title 6 Title 9 Title 1.

SPEAKER_13

Those would be the specific grants that we'll be looking at this year.

The federal government has requirements as to the frequency of how often we audit grants and it's based on the dollars the amount of each grant and then basically required to audit.

grants every three years if they're over certain thresholds or for title one for example we do audit that at least once every three years it just as it happens isn't one that rose to that.

SPEAKER_29

I couldn't tell if it was these ones in addition to the regular ones or if or if these were the ones.

SPEAKER_13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_29

So that that explains it.

And then the the COVID-19 emergency connectivity fund program.

Dr. Bundlin maybe knows what I'm about to ask not to open a can of worms but I know there was a statewide issue with the reporting of some COVID funds that that it was the issue was with the reporting not that every school district in Washington state didn't.

There was a mismatch there.

So is that the same.

projects and will this hopefully provide assurance to the federal government that those funds were actually used appropriately or what's the trying to close the loop on that thing knowing that it's an it's kind of an outstanding issue for several districts and wondering what if this will address that at all.

SPEAKER_13

I would say there's a couple of things to that so I can definitely answer that.

As you noted there was that finding on that funding last year and there was findings that basically almost every district in the state that we audited and that had to do with as you said that the guidance that came from the federal government was the best I would say was not.

As clear as it could have been.

But we do have to audit to those requirements and that's what we're required to do as as auditors.

And we do understand that the districts around the state that there is a requirement for the funding agency to go in and do their.

management review and then make a determination.

My understanding at Seattle School District they have not yet come back with the determination on those question costs that we had from the last audit.

So that is definitely a key thing that we would be looking to is when the FCC does come back to the district and make that decision that management letter decision on that.

But that would be up to them as far as what they decide.

Again we'll be auditing in accordance with the compliance requirements.

So we will be following up on that prior year finding.

But it also as it happens that it did rise to the level based on those requirements that we have for selecting grants that we did need to audit the 2023 funding this year also.

So we'll be looking at that funding that was in effect for 2023.

SPEAKER_29

Got it.

And is this is this the case for other districts in Washington state as well.

Will we have a statewide picture of this again.

SPEAKER_13

I would say that we definitely will complying the results from all the audits but that might take some time since the audits are kind of staggered out.

The aim is to get them all done by the federal deadline which is May of this year.

So.

SPEAKER_28

Thanks.

Certainly.

Any other questions.

Superintendent Jones.

SPEAKER_08

Generally what can we do to prepare for your arrival.

Are there some things that we can start to look at start to mature before you all get back over here.

SPEAKER_13

Oh I can definitely speak to that too and I want to say that we.

One of the things that we had mentioned in the PowerPoint and we tried to summarize as much as we could but we do have a kickoff meeting even before the entrance meeting where we meet to talk about the audit and that we have.

what we call provided by client lists that we send out before the audit basically it's a listing of the things that we will be requesting during the audit and we provide those in advance of when we start the audit to give the district time to start gathering the information and also reminders of the type of information that we need and we have.

been we have started in on the audit and we've been working closely with staff as to making requests and really appreciate how staff has been really timely with providing the information as we requested it.

But to answer your question we do our best to provide that information somewhat in advance to give a heads up of the information that we'll be asking for.

SPEAKER_29

OK.

Thank you very much.

And we will see you again in a few months.

SPEAKER_13

All right.

Thank you again for your time this afternoon.

SPEAKER_29

So directors we are going to head back to the dais and we'll come back here again later later this evening.

Please take your mics with you again.

So it's 4 54. Director Briggs are you prepared to offer an audit committee report now or do you want to hold that.

I'm trying to look for something that's going to take us about five minutes.

SPEAKER_31

I mean, I'm not, no, not really prepared.

I'd love to be able to fill in those five minutes for you, but yeah, no, I don't have anything at this time I think that would be productive to add.

SPEAKER_29

Okay.

I will, let's see, so we're going to discuss the appointment process.

in a work session and a little bit.

So we're not going to talk about that now as a very very brief legislative liaison report.

I'll do that legislative session is ending tomorrow and waiting for some Seattle specific numbers on some different bills that have gone through.

But we you know despite a well I'm not going to editorialize too much.

We bills that have passed that will impact Seattle public schools and other public schools in our state include a bill addressing MSOC.

MSOC is materials supplies and operating costs.

There's an allocation formula that the state uses that's per pupil like everything else.

That's a certain amount of dollars per student that's allocated.

Again that's an allocation it's not a requirement of an expenditure.

But that has statewide an increase of about 43 million dollars I think about one million of that.

Last I looked I haven't seen the final but last I looked about one million of that will be increased to Seattle.

So you know we're not going to say no to it.

It's it's great to have but it's certainly not going to solve our deficit too much.

And the bill that was brought forward was brought forward with the noticing that materials services many many things have increased in cost.

Inflation has increased cost of districts.

And the MSOC per pupil amount had not been adjusted or increased in many many years.

So good recognition of the fact that that needs to keep a pace and it doesn't keep pace.

So the bill on paraeducators.

has been successful which is really great.

That's about seventy one point five million dollars statewide.

Again I'm not sure the Seattle impact yet but we are very grateful for that.

And also the I think the final special education package that passed.

So last session the first session of the current biennium we successfully advocated for an increase of the cap from 15 percent no sorry from 13.5 percent to 15 percent which was great progress and also putting any kind of a cap on how many students with disabilities will be funded by the state is a civil rights issue.

And if you qualify for services according to requirements set by the federal government, you qualify, and the state should provide the funding for those services.

So I think now the increase is up to, I believe, 16%.

Was the last was the bill that passed just now.

So again it's good that there's a recognition that that needs to go up and also it needs to go away.

There should not be a cap on how many students are allowed to have disabilities according to the state and we're one of only a handful of states that has a cap on funding in that way.

So continued opportunity to push for the removal of that.

However that bill will yield about twenty five point six million dollars for this the state.

Again a little fraction of the amount of the deficit in special education funding across the state.

But for a non-budget year not the worst.

And then thank you so much to our capital team and our legislators for successfully advocating for $5.6 million for a distressed, I think it's a distressed school grant for Whittier Elementary to get a much needed roof replacement.

that the formula that is used to support districts in offsetting some of the costs of local construction projects, we basically spend more in sales tax in Seattle and in King County for any construction project than we receive in assistance from the state.

So often there will be a little bit of a recognition of that from the legislator in allowing some unique some specific projects like the Whittier roof for Seattle as sort of a I don't know if it's an apology but a recognition of the fact that that we are.

putting much more in than is coming to us in support from the state for local construction projects.

And yeah so I will at the hopefully by the March 20th board meeting provide a more comprehensive written update of just a review of session and and then what's.

what's going to happen next session and what we can do in between.

So yeah, that's what I have for that.

Oh, and I also can't remember the dates.

I'm actually going to...

D.C.

for a federal legislative conference with Council of Great City Schools in what day is today.

Not this weekend but next weekend.

So I'll provide a report on that as well.

And I look forward to advocating at the national level with other board directors from large urban districts across the country.

So it is five o'clock now.

We will hold other space for other board comments and liaison reports if we have them for the end of the meeting.

So we'll go to public testimony.

Board procedure 1430 BP provides the rules for testimony and I ask us all to be respectful of these rules.

Summarizing some important parts of this procedure is that testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from the public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list.

Those are included on today's agenda posting on the school board Web site.

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.

Listed speakers may cede their time to another person when their name is called.

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

The time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if a time is ceded to them and they are later on the testimony list or waiting list.

If you do not if you are offered time ceded to you and do not wish to use it you can decline it.

The majority of a speaker's time should be spent on the topic that was indicated when signing up and the board expects the same standard of civility for those participating as we expect of ourselves.

As board president I have the responsibility to interrupt any speaker who fails to observe a standard of civility required by this procedure.

And I hate cutting people off.

I don't want to do it.

And we do have a full list.

So I would just ask that folks please be very mindful of that two minute limit so that we can get through everybody and staff will read off the testimony speakers list.

SPEAKER_26

Thank you.

For those who are joining remotely to provide testimony today, when you hear your name, please press star six to unmute on the conference line and also make sure that you're unmuted on your device.

For all speakers today, I'm gonna do the best I can with your names, but please do reintroduce yourself as you begin your testimony to make sure we know how to accurately pronounce your name.

The first speaker today is Jasmine Lannan.

Jasmine's going to be followed by Chris Jackins, and then after that, Miller-Sherling.

SPEAKER_05

I'm a third grader and highly capable cohort at Decatur Elementary.

I am addressing you because SPS decided to end Decatur which dramatically influences students parents and staff.

We understand closing the building due to budget cuts.

However ending the HC cohort.

will only harm the students enrolled at that school and will badly influence our social emotional learning forcing us to give up friends teachers and community.

My younger sister is just in first grade along with many others shutting down our school make many students have to give up their friends.

I came to Decatur for first grade and I have many friends there.

One thing I hear a lot from my friends who are new to the program is that at their neighborhood school for math they did a lot of retreats or did math on a computer program because the math lessons were too easy for them and the teacher was too busy trying to help the kids that didn't understand the lesson.

Being at Decatur is the first time that many of them felt they had an interactive and challenging math experience.

When SPS enrolls a student in the HC cohort they commit for us to our entire kindergarten through 12th grade education.

It benefits us for our whole academic career including college by forcing families to decide between a nearby school that lacks advanced curriculum or a more distant option school it will have broken our social Contract and put these families in an awkward position.

We must decide between convenience or academics.

By shutting down daycare asking parents to sacrifice more time out of their day and more money out of a bank account to settle for something less.

Some may decide that private school or homeschooling is a better option.

This is a heartbreaking decision.

I strongly urge the SPS board members to consider our situation including the teachers the students have grown up with.

We are a unique special and smart community.

SPEAKER_26

Next speaker today is Chris Jackins.

SPEAKER_12

My name is Chris Jackins box 8 4 0 6 3 Seattle 9 8 1 2 4 on the minutes of the February 7th regular board meeting.

Eight points.

Number one the minutes give little detail on the progress monitoring session.

Number two district efforts on seventh grade math for African-American male students resulted in test results going down by 4.2 percent from 2002 to 2000. 2022 to 2023. Number three district staff presenters have included Mike Starosky.

Cashel Toner Caleb Perkins and Ted Howard the third.

I have admired the work of these talented staff members.

Number four it would be better to make use of their talents by having them directly teach students.

Number five then utilize other teachers as teaching assistants much as large university classes are taught by professors with follow up in smaller groups by teaching assistants.

Number six when I was a graduate student at the University of Washington I was a teaching assistant in the UW math department.

Number seven also get rid of the envision math curriculum and get a better direct instruction non mechanized book based curriculum.

Number eight present the information straight out with honest direct instruction versus students trying to guess hundreds of years of mathematics.

On allocating resources for an American Sign Language ASL teacher at TOPS K-8 the district budget needs to include an ASL teacher as a separate basic line item for the deaf and hard of hearing program.

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_26

The next speaker is Miller Shirling.

Miller will be followed by Stacey Fernandez and then Claire Abe.

SPEAKER_16

Hello my name is Miller Shirling.

I'm an SPS employee and parent.

I have a fourth grader and an 11th grader in SPS.

I'm here to talk about the impact of these budget cuts and what they're going to do to students I work with and hear about through my nursing colleagues.

There are students I see multiple times per week in my role as a school nurse that aren't the students I'm writing health plans for the health plans for asthma and seizures and diabetes and anaphylactic allergies.

I'm talking about students who come to my office with headaches, or stomach aches, or they can't breathe, or they, today, for example, a student who felt like they were gonna faint, and this is from anxiety.

Students are not doing well.

They are struggling emotionally.

And when I have the time to listen to them and hear what's going on for them, I can get to the bottom of what's going on, develop a trusting relationship, connect them with resources to help support them and get them back into class so they can function and thrive.

And I've been just able to do that this year with three days a week at my school and just under 500 students.

Next year I have just under 500 students and two days a week.

I'm going to have to cut corners and the corners I'm going to cut are going to be the things that aren't legal mandates like listening to students when they need to tell me what's going on for them.

And this breaks my heart.

So sorry I'm a little lost in my notes.

I understand that our funding isn't infinite.

But the worker bees on the ground, and I'm a worker bee, and the parents at home, and I'm a parent at home, or family members at home, we need to be part of a collaborative process to develop these budgets under constrained situations with limits.

We need to help make the decisions in these situations of limited funding.

And we didn't get to help.

We were handed a budget from on high.

And I have colleagues all across the district who are going to have to find other jobs while feeling sick to their stomachs about the children they know well that they aren't going to be able to help next year.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

Next is Stacey Fernandez.

After Stacey will be Claire and then Brittany Ryder.

SPEAKER_15

My name is Stacy Fernandez she her a pronouns.

I am.

I am the care coordinator at West Seattle High School.

I am a first generation educator and scholar.

I stand before you today to advocate for care coordination because it's because it is such an important support that is offered to students at West Seattle and at other schools.

We serve students furthest from educational justice.

When I started the program at West Seattle High School I started the program from the ground up.

I got to know the community I am serving.

I figured out where the needs were what our goals were and I created a program that meets those needs and has now flourished into something wonderful.

We now have a care center at our school and I serve hundreds of students at West Seattle High School.

I am able to create a strong, I was able to create a strong program because of the supports from Brittany Samson.

She believed in me and it is painful to know that one of those individuals that helped me help start care coordination is being let go.

Why?

It is unbelievable to me that a person who is an integral part of care coordination has been told that she will not have a job this fall.

Brittany Sampson is the person that has helped me navigate care coordination.

How is it possible that we are cutting her?

How can this district not prioritize the group of educators that focus on serving African-American males and students furthest from educational justice.

I ask that you fully and adequately fund care coordination now and that you keep Brittany Sampson as she is the leader for us care coordinators.

And if you do not I hope you remember my face and the words that I am sharing with you tonight.

Remember the hundreds of students at West Seattle High School that obtained social emotional support.

Advocacy access to food clothing and other basic needs because of the work that I do.

One final thing.

Superintendent Jones last month we had a group of native leaders here asking to meet with you.

My hopes are that you have met with them and if you if you have not I hope that you will soon because we must remember that we stand we work and we live on stolen land.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

Next the next speaker is Claire Abe.

Claire Abe.

After Claire Brittany and then Kelly Perletti.

SPEAKER_19

I cede my time to Dr. Fisher.

SPEAKER_01

Hello my name is Dr. Tammy Fisher-Hewson and I've been an educator for over 39 years currently working at Blaine K-8 and teach graduate students at SPU.

I'm here tonight to push back at the district's seemingly random decision to fire existing school counselors in elementary schools and mandate they be replaced with school social workers.

I have no issues with my fellow social workers.

We are similarly trained and prepared but this decision appears to be arbitrary and deeply distressing to communities.

especially at a time when both are needed.

Many SPS counselors with existing relationships that are endorsed by their principals are going to be replaced because of an inaccurate list of school counseling skills created by SPS.

As a professor teaching graduate students in school counseling, the SPS list of capabilities left off from current school counselors' preparation is a blatant misrepresentation of my highly trained students, many working at SPS, and my own rich skills.

In addition to what was listed, our counselors are trained in crisis intervention, suicide prevention, mental health support, veterans of community health partnerships, creating behavioral interventions and are high needs, highly capable and special education students and more.

They are evaluated rigorously on this and pass exams demonstrating deep understanding and skills.

Most principals have no idea why the district would go this route at all.

Mine thought it was because social workers were paid less.

No.

We are all ESA certified and are compensated accordingly.

I walked along picket line for more mental health supports.

We'd like one to 250 actually.

Not either or or.

Even my social worker cohorts are confused.

This is not what other larger school districts are doing, such as Lake Washington, Bellevue, Highline, Shoreline, Federal Way, and such.

Counselors are valued there in their elementaries.

What an unnecessary trauma for every school's community, for the students, the families, and especially with well-trained, well-connected, and well-loved counselors who know every kid in their building and every teacher depends on them for their support.

Where is the evidence-based data to support this decision?

And with a district push on SEL, how does this decision support the well-being, something heavily in the news and media and schools of students and families who have established relationships?

It does not.

SPEAKER_26

The next speaker is Brittany Ryder.

SPEAKER_38

My name is Brittany Ryder and I'm the school counselor at Loyal Heights Elementary.

I've been at Loyal Heights since 2018 and spent the year before that working at both Queen Anne Elementary and Sacajawea Elementary.

During my master's program for K-12 school counseling I completed my practicum at Queen Anne Elementary and my internship at Franklin High School.

I am here today due to the elimination of elementary school counselors from the 2024-2025 budget that Dr. Fisher referenced as well.

And the subsequent requirement for buildings to submit a waiver to maintain a school counselor.

School counselors and social workers are each critical pieces to our success as a district.

To pit them against each other for funding is a disservice to students, staff and families.

School counselors provide social emotional academic and behavioral supports to all students and as the need in these areas has only increased students deserve more not less.

This position provides short term individual counseling small groups social emotional lessons and more for the American School Counselor Association program recommendations and the state's SSB 50 30 requirement.

Our youngest students deserve to have a school counselors as they start their journey at SPS.

To improve student outcomes we need to engage with those closest to the work, students, families and educators.

Many of these elementary school counselor positions have been in place for years and communities across Seattle depend on and benefit from these services.

Top down decision making will not achieve the results we all need and deserve.

I look forward to continuing to work with both the board and the district to move forward in a way that is student and community focused.

Without funding dedicated for elementary school counselors I feel I fear services will not be provided to the extent needed by students today.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

The next speaker is Kelly Perletti.

Kelly will be followed by Rob Bright and then Jennifer Hull.

SPEAKER_21

Hi my name is Kelly Perletti she they CTE media arts teacher at West Seattle High School.

I'm here to fight for full support of care coordination and support roles because these roles are pivotal to supporting our students furthest from educational justice.

If the district decides to no longer fund these roles we are cutting positions that are primarily BIPOC staff as well as taking away the main lifeline for many of our students.

Further our district would be going against what it claims to care about social justice for those furthest from educational justice.

I urge you all to reconsider and make these permanent valued positions in each school and consider paying a living wage.

When I think of the heart of our school, I think of our care coordinator, Stacy Fernandez.

In care coordination, she wears many hats for many students.

She runs food and clothing drives, is constantly in meetings, and communication to track down funding, housing solutions for students, advocating, packing up resources for students over break, mentoring, et cetera, et cetera.

Beyond her overwhelming caseload, Stacy is available for all students.

in a pinch and plans community events that impact our entire school.

Let me be clear, Stacey will not be able to accomplish nearly anything that she does right now without the support of her lead care coordinator, Brittany.

Cutting any of these roles goes against our supposed values as a district.

In my classroom, I've worked with countless students who rely on Stacy and care coordination.

Some of my most passionate and successful students have won awards and made great academic achievements in our school and are the very students that receive clothing, food, rental support, et cetera, from our care coordinator.

These students are primarily BIPOC, have dreams of changing the world.

They want to be lawyers, they want to be surgeons, they want to do all sorts of things and are facing homelessness and other things.

These students will lose that ability to dream and pursue their goals the moment you cut back on these positions.

Our school will lose its very heart its greatest resource for students who are truly the furthest from educational justice.

Cutting funding and care coordination it's condemning many students to drop out unimaginable struggle and loss of support.

I urge you to remember that when thinking of budget and make these positions permanent and better resourced.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

Next is Rob Bright followed by Jennifer Hall and then Kayla Seamster.

SPEAKER_40

Good evening, my name is Rob Bright and I've been a school counselor, specifically a middle school counselor for 10 years at SPS.

And currently I'm at Semin Bay K-8 in Ballard and previously before that I was at Washington Middle School.

And I'm here to ask you all in the district for more transparency around the decision to replace elementary school counselors with school social workers.

As a middle school counselor, I see the work of elementary counselors vital to help support our students to be successful all the way through.

And so to have better alignment K-12, we need K-5 counselors.

And a reminder from Senate Bill 5030 passed and asked all districts to come up with a school counseling comprehensive program.

School counselors play a critical role in maximizing K-12 student outcomes, including those related to attendance, academic achievement, high school graduation, post-secondary readiness, and social-emotional development.

And those relationships are built by our K-5 counselors.

Also, to quote the Superintendent Procedure and School Board Policy Number 2140, which under section 1A says, school counselors serve a vital role in the comprehensive school counseling program.

The school counselor plans, develops, organizes, and leads delivery of a comprehensive school counseling program that focuses on the academic career and personal social development for all students.

based on the ASCA, the American School Counselor Association and state standards.

So I'm here to ask that we get full funding for a counselor in each elementary school.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

Next is Jennifer Hall.

SPEAKER_36

Hello my name is Jennifer Hall.

I'm a special education teacher.

I've been one for about 20 years at West Seattle High School.

I'm also a proud member of the Seattle Education Association and I have been a Seattle Public Schools parent.

I'm also here in support of our students and families whose lives and educational programs have been supported and enhanced by our care coordinator Stacy Fernandez.

And I want to say thank you.

to all of the other care coordinators and to all of the dedicated hardworking family support workers who I have come to know and appreciate during my years with the Seattle School District.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for always doing your level best to make sure that our students have what they need to learn and to live.

Thank you for really seeing our students and our families and supporting them through hard times because you know that it is their right to be supported.

You know and embody the phrase public schools are the heart of our community because Stacy, you are the living, breathing heart of West Seattle High School and all of you collectively are the heart of the Seattle School District.

As a veteran teacher who sees you and all that you do, I thank all of you, and I know that you are doing what you do on a wing and a prayer, that you're not paid a wage high enough to live in Seattle, that you're primarily people of color who need and deserve higher pay and a living wage.

and I want to speak for teachers like myself and nurses and other educational employees in our buildings.

Our work environments are made so much better because you are working shoulder to shoulder with us care coordinators and family support workers.

What would we do without you?

I know from experience what happens when my brothers and sisters whose work is critical to functioning school communities get riffed or have their positions eliminated.

Those of us who remain are told that we must lift together to take over the work of our exited team members and we try to comply but as hard as we can we cannot sufficiently assume the work because we're already overburdened.

Please do not tell us we don't have the capacity.

Ask all of us and yourselves how do we build capacity to pay for the programs and the people that we need in order to have our functioning schools and communities.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

The next speaker is Kayla Seamster.

Kayla Seamster Kayla will be followed by Hardy Ding and then Megan McCann.

SPEAKER_35

My name is Kayla Seamster.

I come to you today with a profound sense of fear, retaliation for what I'm about to tell you.

But the quest for justice for my students is more important than my fear.

I'm an educator new to Rainier View Elementary this school year pleading for your help and intervention.

The high turnover rate due to a toxic and unsafe working environment has had a detrimental impact on the school community.

Students feel insecure at school and have become untrusting of educators.

The constant changing of staff has disrupted the sense of stability and continuity that students need to thrive academically and emotionally.

This unsafe environment has fostered a culture of fear and anxiety, making it difficult for students to focus on their education.

Students regularly talk about how they hate coming to school because of the strict rules and lack of support.

Additionally there has been illegal treatment of students with disabilities and staff members which cannot be ignored.

The frequent departure of educators mid-year prompted by unsafe conditions leads to constant staff reassignments depriving many students of going all year without vital multilingual and intervention services.

This failure failure.

exasperates educational injustice and is not new this year.

Our students are not allowed to wear jackets in the classroom or even when moving to portables due to a strict uniform policy.

This may seem like a minor issue but it symbolizes the lack of care and compassion for our students well-being.

Despite repeated pleas, SPS leadership has rebuffed us.

Our one meeting yielded no action or follow-up.

This decade-long pattern of willful ignoring of concerns raised about Rainier Elementary cannot continue.

We stand on the precipice of a staffing crisis demanding urgent intervention.

The school board must launch an investigation into Rainier View Elementary and enact necessary reforms to ensure our students receive the education they deserve.

Our students are counting on us to do the right thing.

We will not let the concern once again be swept under the rug only to have another new staff group come in next year to the same climate and students in crisis.

It's time for actions and change.

Thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_26

The next speaker is Hardeep.

SPEAKER_19

Hello my name is Hardeep and I'm a parent of two children at Rainier View Elementary.

I'm here today in hopes that the board will finally take the necessary steps to support their teachers and the children of Rainier View.

Multitude of concerns from teachers and parents have gone unanswered for years.

Our teachers are not supported to the capacity that they should be.

Many children reluctantly come to school every day.

This is not exaggerated by any means.

This current environment at Rainier View is not conducive to teaching and learning.

Teachers deserve better support and so do our children.

The turnover and retention rate is astounding and beyond concerning.

All of my children's teachers have left the school except for one.

As of this school year my oldest is on his fourth assigned teacher.

With having a long term sub in place who knows how long it will take to find someone to come work at this school.

He very well may end up with five different teachers before this year is over.

Tell me how a child is expected to succeed in a classroom with so much turnover.

There's no continuity, no consistency, and just constant change.

As parents we are our child's biggest and loudest advocate.

These last two months have been eye-opening for us.

We've experienced firsthand targeted behavior from our own principal.

Raising legitimate concerns per trainee to the long-term substitute and issues in the classroom has led to our principal now targeting our child.

Since we raised our concerns in January the principal has started to specifically make comments about our child's behavior alleging it's ongoing behavior but yet we've never heard this from this sub or previous teachers.

In fact the sub has only expressed positive comments about our child.

The targeting is clear as day.

The targeting by the principal has caused unnecessary stress and anxiety on my child.

This environment has impacted my child's physical mental and emotional health.

I've never had my child not want to go to school.

No child should feel that they are not safe and supported at school.

We are asking the board to make it right for the kids the teachers and the parents.

Your website states safety and wellness is a top priority for Seattle Public Schools.

Students are more likely to be successful when they feel safe and welcome at school.

It's time to make this statement a true reality at Rainier View Elementary.

The next speaker is Megan McMahon.

SPEAKER_33

Hello my name is Megan McMahon and I am the part time librarian at Rainier View Elementary.

I have come here today as a last resort and in a lot of fear of retaliation.

During my year in SPS I have witnessed a schooling crisis.

As the librarian I have been able to work with every student at Rainier View and see the direct impact the state of the building has on them.

I'm committed to my role in providing meaningful literacy opportunities for students especially those furthest away from educational justice.

Because of frequent reassignment I have not been able to provide deeper programming or even regular library classes.

I've had to substitute for educators at least 12 times so far this school year.

Other staff have been haven't been able to provide multilingual or special education services consistently for the same reasons.

Three out of 10 classroom teachers have gone on unpaid medical leave midyear due to the working conditions.

I have witnessed working mothers being denied their pump breaks and students who have become numb to teachers leaving midyear.

and that has been their regular experience being a student at Rainier View year after year.

Students assume this is how school is supposed to be and it is heartbreaking to see the sadness and hopelessness they are feeling.

I don't blame any of these teachers for leaving in order to protect themselves.

I blame a district that has allowed one school to have a ninety nine point five percent staff turnover in the last five years.

For a district dedicated to data this information has been ignored year after year.

Stability is staffing is critical to student success and implementing SPS initiatives successfully.

We have shared our concerns with our admin our regional director and we have also been working diligently with our union to find justice for our students.

All of our attempts have led to dead ends and stonewalling which has brought me here today for a public record.

Our students are not receiving the academic intervention social emotional literacy and multilingual services they need.

Our students academic performance is falling behind.

Educators are not able to implement best practices and our expertise is not valued.

The school needs immediate intervention to address these climate concerns.

I ask you to hear us and serve the community you are elected to protect.

It is time for district intervention.

Every student deserves quality education.

They deserve a school not in constant crisis.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Kristen Holliday.

SPEAKER_26

Kristen Holliday.

After Kristen will be Ying Yu and then Tim Ahlers.

SPEAKER_25

I'm going to cede my time to Hala Manao.

SPEAKER_23

Good evening.

My name is Hala Manao.

I'm a parent and president of the PTSA at Rainier View Elementary.

We have a Rainier View community whose members parents and families are uninformed or misinformed regarding its academic goals and pathways to achieving success as well as the school culture that lacks collaborative invitation from its administration with the PTSA.

As the current president of the PTSA and having been part of the board for the last two plus years I'm saddened by the lack of attention our school and its community is receiving from district officials to improve the conditions and the relationships that currently exist in our school.

Just to serve a laundry list of things just an example of what we experience as a PTSA.

So there's no community partnership regarding preventative safety regarding a sexual assault from a couple of years ago.

There's a culture of bullying.

We are concerned about behaviors and incidents that are happening in the school playgrounds are not being recorded or documented.

There's a confused process with the BLT and the parents involved.

There's no sharing of key information for making decisions.

Lack of communication with the PTSA.

She's an active barrier to the PTSA.

For an example last year during the move-a-thon which is one of our big fundraisers in the school we were not able to attain a permit for our activities so instead we brought generators so we can provide food and music for our kids.

Just before I end, I want to say this.

Our school community of Rainier View needs real help.

As enrollment continues to decline and families are pulling their children away from SPS, we need a solution that allows others a seat at the table to speak about who we're accountable to.

We should be accountable to those furthest away as you heard this before from academic and educational justice which are our students and families.

We should protect our children as much as we protect salaries or past reputations of individuals that are no longer meeting district standards.

Our community deserves that our educators and students deserve that.

And you as a board deserve to know what you're aware of and where of what you're protecting and what not to question.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

Next is Ying Yu.

Ying if you're on the conference call line please press star six to unmute.

Trying one more time Ying Yu.

I believe you were writing remote testimony please press star 6. Oh sorry.

You're here.

SPEAKER_39

Yeah I'm here.

Should I press the green button.

No.

OK.

So my name is Ying Yu.

I'm the Chinese teacher at West Seattle High School.

I'm here to show my support for care coordination because I have seen how important this role is at our school.

Our care coordinator Stacy Fernandez supports students furthest from educational justice.

She is a tireless advocate that works closely with our school social workers, counseling team, and across other departments.

This collaboration ensures that all student needs are being met to ensure that they are ready for school and learning.

There is a student and her family left a domestic violence situation since the mother did not have any resources to celebrate the children's birthday.

Stacy gathered resources from our community to make sure she had a celebration with her mom and siblings like cake furniture food and presents.

Our care coordinator ensures that at White Seattle High School we keep our student of color at the center of decisions that are being made.

I ask that you prioritize a program during this difficult budget time, like care coordination, that are necessary and save lives.

Thank you for your consideration.

I think I still have some time, so I can give you some examples.

In my program, I have some students, they really trusted me, and they even called their doctor in my room and in front of me.

That's what I heard.

And she told her doctor that, So I live in a multi-generation apartment with my grandma and my mom's boyfriend.

And they have a two-year-old brother.

And I have to sleep with my grandma in the living room.

The only furniture we have is a desk we got from Goodwill.

And this is another there's another another example like I have a student that told me that their mom their mom is crying because they don't know how to pay their rent for the next month.

So this is helping these kids in my school.

Please consider our request.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

Next is Tim Ahlers.

Tim Ahlers and then followed by Jennifer Motter and then Mish Vigio.

Is Tim in the room or online.

Please press star six if so.

I believe you are online.

We should be able to hear you if you start talking.

SPEAKER_17

And I'm a parent of an eighth grader and a school volunteer at TOPS K-8.

SPEAKER_26

And I'm here tonight.

Tim, can you just pause for a moment?

We're having trouble hearing you.

I want to turn up the sound to make sure we're able to hear you.

We'll make sure to restart your turn.

SPEAKER_17

Sure.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

OK, go ahead.

SPEAKER_17

All right.

Hi, my name is Tim Mollers, and I'm a parent of an eighth grader and a school volunteer at TOPS K-8.

And I'm here tonight to make sure you're aware of the math agency program.

Seattle Public Schools stated goal is that 45 percent of Black boys will achieve proficiency or higher on the 7th grade Smarter Balanced Assessment by June 2024. And I'm quoting interim metrics indicate results are unlikely to be delivered without significant changes.

So in today's budgetary environment SPS should be looking for programs that are effective that is provably work and cost-efficient.

According to both the district's MAP scores and state SBA data, the math agency has proven very successful in closing education gaps.

Over the last two years, their partner schools have had some of the highest math SBA growth rates in the state.

The program has done this with Black Boys and all other students who are behind in math, and they do it in a very cost-effective way.

For families that have the means programs like this could be expanded and potentially keep those families in Seattle Public Schools instead of looking at other school options.

I've been a volunteer coach which is what they call a tutor with the math agency with third and fourth graders at Top Skate and I've seen firsthand how successful the program is.

We're only a little over halfway through the school year and a number of students in our program have already learned more than a grade level of math since joining.

The students in the program at TOPS K represent many different backgrounds.

Black boys and girls bilingual students students from our Deaf and Hard of Hearing program et cetera.

I've had families with kids in the program tell me that this has been life-changing for their students.

We're seeing such strong success at TOPS that I'd encourage SPS to consider supporting this in more schools across the district.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

The next speaker is Jennifer, and then Mish, and then we'll go to Sarah Fingado.

SPEAKER_10

I'm Jennifer Modder.

SPEAKER_18

I'm ceding my time to Chloe Kimiai.

Good evening.

My name is Chloe Kimiai and I'm a counselor at Cleveland High School.

I'm also an adjunct professor at Seattle U's school counseling program and given my multiple identities I'm well versed in the ASCA model and the roles and responsibilities of a school counselor.

I'm here today to discuss a few items.

First I would like to discuss funding that was advocated for by the Seattle Student Union to city council for more mental health supports in schools.

Specifically students ask for more school counselors social workers and mental health therapists.

Secondly it's important to note that what students and other stakeholders have advocated for is directly aligned to the ask a national model and state legislation SB 50 30 in which a comprehensive school counseling program is mandated for each district.

Ask a national model states that school counselors should be funded at 1 to 250 ratio and that they support students in three main areas personal social encompassing social emotional learning and mental health college and career readiness for grades K through 12 and academics.

We are experiencing significant global distress, trauma, and a mental health crisis.

In my past four years at SPS, I have seen mental health concerns rise.

Since winter break counselors in my building have made at least 40 mental health referrals for students wanting therapy.

Mental health concerns show up in so many ways in the buildings across all levels.

It shows up in behaviors in classrooms lack of attendance direct conversations with students and families.

If we want to have successful schools that improve academic and life outcomes for students of color we need to change the systems that continue to oppress.

We need to make changes in our schools that increase mental health support and culturally responsive practices and we need to do.

be doing the work that early on the elementary schools before issues grow.

We know early intervention is important.

However despite that counselors at elementary schools are being cut across the district.

We cannot cut counselors and say that we're supporting students and working towards a comprehensive school counseling plan.

We cannot sever the relationships and trust students and families have formed with their school counselors.

I'm here today to stand with students asking for their voices to be heard fighting for what they need in schools.

They're asking for change.

They're asking for more school counselors at a ratio of 1 to 250. One school social worker in every building and a mental health therapist in every school.

SPEAKER_26

Next is Mish followed by Sarah and then Emma Rice.

SPEAKER_39

Hi Mish Vecchio ceding my time to Matt Burtness.

SPEAKER_37

Good evening.

My name is Matthew Burtness and I'm a second and this year after the October reshuffle also a third grade teacher at Dunlap Elementary School.

This is my 17th year in the classroom and since moving to Seattle in 2011 I have only taught in Dunlap Elementary School.

In October due to budget and staffing mistakes that you did not rectify until we were over a month into school you chose to displace two teachers at my school because we were under enrolled.

Against our own better judgment our staff readjusted our classrooms and went from zero splits to a split classroom at every single grade level.

This is an event that still affects our students and staff daily.

The stress is not only felt by teachers but the disruption can be seen in student behaviors most noticeably during our daily recesses.

Rather than two grade levels at a time, we now have as many as four grade levels outside at recess at one time.

This has led to a massive increase in fighting and bullying with students being assaulted on a weekly basis.

Now as next year's budgets are being unveiled two entire staff positions in our multilingual department have been cut as well as cutting our art teacher position in half.

Not to mention the hoops you make us jump through to convert the blanket social worker position you're giving everyone back into the already staff counselor position who we've had for years.

Our newcomer our newcomer and bilingual orientation center program which supports students who are new to the country has been essentially ghosted by district staff with the news that you've officially decided to cut the program finally coming from our principal not the department head.

Our schools continuous school improvement plan cannot be implemented with these cuts.

The progress that our multilingual students have made over the years will be halted by these disastrous decisions.

When we don't have staff to support these students the responsibility falls to the already overloaded classroom teachers.

We like to use the word inclusion a lot to describe a scenario in which each student can get all of the services and support they need while also staying in the general education classroom.

Given these allocations inclusion is a literal impossibility a hypothetical ideal.

I'm almost done.

There are members of the board and district staff who have described things such as the capital gains tax and other revenue source solutions as Band-Aids.

We are in crisis as another legislative session rolls by with public schools getting zero support from our elected officials in trying to fix this budget crisis.

You need to find the money so that you can continue to support students as you say furthest from educational justice.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

The next speaker is Sarah Fingado.

Sarah Fingado.

Sarah will be followed by Emma Rice and then our final speaker will be Heather Barker.

SPEAKER_15

I'd like to cede my time to Ms. Jayla Hall.

SPEAKER_34

Good day to all.

I'm here to give testimony regarding how students staff and family are being treated by Principal Jones at Rainier View and our concerns with the district's response.

Families feel the need to run to the state for support after expressing their concerns to the principal and the district.

I work I worked in the front office and my children attended school every year during the 2022 2023 school year.

I speak today as a parent and as a previous staff member.

Some of our children were being bullied and harassed by their peers.

The principal's response and responses to parent concerns were not appropriate.

Not only were our children faced with the difficulties with their peers But principal Jones provided an unwelcoming environment to those families most impacted especially to those parents who stood up for their children.

Jones made it very difficult for staff and staff parents of students who attend the same school.

The principal was mentally abusive to staff during our workday and has set up several one-on-one staff meetings with us to intentionally speak ill about us and our children.

Jones crossed boundaries between business and staff parenting.

We were forced to wear two hats in these meetings.

Jones treated staff poorly with the malicious intent eliciting an angry or irritated reaction out of us.

Jones has threatened our jobs several times if we did not do things her way.

Jones undervalued the accommodation request for those of us with disabilities and undermined the doctor's orders.

Her personal ties with the district staff have made all her misconduct invisible, which led to injustices within the workplace.

Staff are fearful of their jobs and feel defeated in any attempt to defend their morals, their jobs, their students, and their families.

Joan's abuse of power has caused staff to seek outside mental health counseling.

Rainier View Elementary under Jones leadership creates a toxic work environment for staff and even worse educational setting for our children.

Those moments when our children need support the principal made it very difficult for that for the teachers to provide that support and in some cases not at all.

Our children's IEPs are being violated without the necessary services and support.

Our children were labeled only by the principal as incompetent and or disruptive when normally they are not seen as such.

Families are fed up with the ill intended ways and we're forced to remove our kids out of principal out of the district and into other schools.

The mistreatment of staff students and families needs to stop.

Principal Jones needs to be replaced for the sake of staff students families and the overall climate of the school.

We stand before you to demand the district to finally step in and to correct this injustice and select new leadership.

SPEAKER_26

Next is Emma Rice.

Emma Rice.

SPEAKER_38

I cede my time to Elizabeth Ward Robinson.

SPEAKER_09

Dear Superintendent Jones and school board members, my name is Elizabeth Ward-Robertson.

I am the SEA Director of Center of Race and Social Justice and your prior Admin Secretary at Rainier View.

As you have heard from Rainier View Elementary, it is in a crisis and has been for years.

Through concerns have been raised through the appropriate channels, little has changed.

We need your help.

Rainier View isn't.

meeting obligations for staff, parents, and the community engagement.

The BLT racial equity team and MTS teams meetings which were meant to facilitate and collaborate working environments are willingful and discontinued or canceled by the principal.

Further staff who raise concerns do not feel safe, do so and have raised numerous concerns about retaliation.

educators are leaving at record rates.

Over 100 educators have taught at Rainier View since 2017, but only one staff person has remained and currently working there.

Nearly 40% of this year's staff have resigned or taking leave in the first six months of the school year due to unresolved school climate concerns.

We know turnover impacts student learning.

There is a pattern of school leadership Explicit and exploitation, excuse me, the staff, exploiting the staff and community at Rainier View over the past decade and hiding behind assertions that this school needs higher standards and more vigorous to be successful.

Educators and parents report students have received dehumanizing punishments, facing exclusion, receiving undocumented isolation and restraints, denied lunch, recess as disciplinary measures, and denied access to water, restrooms, during classroom, maintaining the Rainier View Way.

The district currently approached to Rainier View is failing our students, our school community, and we are asking our school board leaders to step up and in help.

This cannot continue.

We need intervention now.

We are ready to work with the district and meet the needs of the students and the families.

Thank you.

The final speaker is Heather Barker.

SPEAKER_26

Heather Barker is Heather somewhere in the room making their way up.

Heather if you're in the room can you wave your arms so I know you're on the way up.

OK we're going to go to the wait list then.

Jamie Papineau.

And then Jamie will be the final speaker on today's testimony.

SPEAKER_06

Hi good afternoon.

My name is Jamie Papineau.

I'm currently a certified teacher at BF Day Elementary School.

I'm also a Seattle Public Schools parent.

I've been working in Seattle Public Schools for 13 years.

I'm here today to share a message on behalf of our staff and student parent community.

At BF Day we believe in empowering students to become the best version of themselves.

Every child is seen, heard, and valued within an inclusive climate.

We educate all students to become responsible and courageous problem solvers who attain their highest levels of academic achievement and civic engagement.

We do this work not just with a focus on academics but a true commitment to the social emotional development of every student who enters our school.

This work does not happen in solitary classrooms but in a full teaching community dedicated to the work including administrators managers teachers instructional assistants engaged parents and above all our dedicated school counselor.

The school counselor role is one that is most high-faceted and unique.

Responsibilities may include individual student counseling, conducting small groups relating to friendship, anxiety, emotional regulation, or family separation.

collaborating with community resources to support families, advocating for students and families, and responding to the ever-present daily concerns from students and staff.

Our school counselor goes above and beyond, providing guidance around our classroom-based social-emotional curriculum, as well as important student programming around career readiness and leadership.

Realistically with overloaded classrooms and more and more being cut from our budgets and allocated staffing we cannot possibly provide the type of education every elementary student deserves without our school counselor.

Further our school supports both a resource and two extended resource programs where a school counselor is essential in providing support to both students and teachers alike.

Additionally no one can argue schools continue to deal with the societal impact of COVID.

While a social worker can provide a school community with connections and support, this role in no way can or should replace the important work of a school counselor.

We would like to say that we the community of BF Day believe every child has the right to the support a school counselor provides.

It will not matter how many new curriculums we buy or tests we add if the social and emotional well-being of our students are not made first priority.

It is our belief every well-resourced school should have both a full time counselor and a social worker.

If that is impossible at bare minimum we urge the school board to allow schools to retain their school counselor in a full time role in accordance with the most pressing needs of the school community.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_26

President Rankin that was the 20th speaker for tonight.

SPEAKER_29

speaker and concludes testimony.

SPEAKER_26

Thank you.

SPEAKER_29

Let's see it.

Who else needs a breather for a moment before we continue.

OK.

Yeah.

Let's see.

It's five fifty five five minutes or 10 minutes.

OK.

We will take a brief break and return at 6 0 5.

SPEAKER_30

Apologies I got caught out in the lobby.

It is 6 10. Could we actually.

SPEAKER_29

Could we flip and do the work session now and then come back to the business items.

We do have some staff waiting on these items if you wouldn't mind.

I couldn't remember if we.

Yeah.

Thank you.

OK.

So we have reached.

Welcome back everybody.

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

I would like a motion for us to entertain the consent agenda please.

SPEAKER_22

You want to do this.

OK.

I move for approval of the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

SPEAKER_29

All right.

If there are no.

Yeah I know.

I mean I was making sure nobody has any changes.

Excuse me.

OK.

All in favor of approval of the consent agenda please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

This motion has passed unanimously.

Wait.

Now we are going back down.

Oh OK.

We're going to now move in to our work session on our appointment process.

So we're going to move back to the tables and directors again please bring your mics with you.

So we are now in a work session for the appointment process to school board director districts 2 and 4. I'm going to kind of.

Oh and Director Hersey please note Director Hersey is with us.

SPEAKER_11

Hello.

SPEAKER_29

Hello.

SPEAKER_30

Happy to see you.

SPEAKER_29

I am going to kind of review what has happened up to this point and then we'll talk about next steps.

So we the board formally acknowledged as required by law the vacancies for the district 2 and 4 positions during our February 7th regular board meeting.

We then opened.

An online application the following week and close that application period on February 25th.

We currently have 11 applicants for the District 2 position and four for District 4. The board will appoint one person for each of those two positions.

The legal deadline is 90 days.

after the vacancy which would be May 2nd.

We're aiming for earlier partly because there's just a lot a lot to happen with you know board decisions after that and also because of how spring break timing is.

So our target is early April.

Directors and the public have access to the applications on the school board Web site including video statements which were posted today.

So directors need to review all those materials and then based on those materials we will determine finalists.

We had talked before about before we knew how many applicants we'd have about you know looking for.

three to four depending on how many applicants there were three to four for each position before we go to a forum.

And so we currently have four in one of those in District 4. So my suggestion would be that we aim for four for District 2. And.

And could I Ellie do you want to go over to you now for like some of the technical pieces that we have discussed about the numbers for each seat or do you want me to go ahead and do that.

Yeah go ahead.

SPEAKER_26

Good evening Ellie Wilson Jones director of policy and board relations so as as President Rankin mentioned the board had been talking about this number of three or four people in District four you've got four and so the thought would be that you select four candidates as finalists for District two and If through attrition you end up at three for District 4 by the time you meet next Wednesday March 13th for your special meeting to select finalists then you would select three finalists for District 2 but not wanting to get down to two finalists purposefully.

So if we had more attrition you would retain more people in District 2 still.

Is that the piece that you wanted me to cover or was it the next piece.

SPEAKER_29

Yeah.

No that's great.

Thank you.

So this based on what we had talked about the last time we were together as a board Miss Wilson Jones and I have worked out a few different things.

So does that sound does that reflect what you are all's expectation was about numbers.

And does that seem like a reasonable path to pursue.

Yeah.

Director Sardew.

SPEAKER_22

I have a clarifying question on what Director Elly just said.

What I thought I heard you say you said something about attrition.

And so I don't.

Are you saying ultimately we don't want to have less than three candidates.

No matter what.

For as finalists.

Because I was a little confused by we already said the four in district and I get the numbers mixed up.

The four in the one district where there's only four.

And so we're likely to choose four in the other just to have equality.

But then you said something about attrition.

SPEAKER_26

I can correct that.

SPEAKER_22

Sorry.

OK.

SPEAKER_26

So in District 4, you currently have four candidates.

If somebody decides that they no longer wish to seek appointment between now and next week, you might only have three.

If two people decided they didn't want to seek appointment for District 4, then you would only have two.

So what I was intending to note was that if you end up for, you know, the candidates' own choices through those, if they no longer wish to pursue District 4 and you end up with only two in that, district that you would still not you wouldn't want to match to is what I'm hearing from directors.

You might end up with a mismatch because people may say I don't want to pursue this anymore.

But in terms of the board's own scaling back the number of candidates that you would be looking for three or four and roughly shooting for a match between the two districts.

SPEAKER_29

Are there any other questions or feedback or does that seem.

I see you shake your head.

Brandon you don't have anything.

OK.

OK cool.

So we will.

Aim to.

Match.

Going no going no less on our end than three for District 4. two sorry too many numbers.

And yeah assume probably about four and four.

Let's see.

So now we can talk about how we will narrow down the numbers for the district two seat.

So well actually before we talk about our criteria to narrow down our numbers in District 2 I wanted to talk about how we will actually vote on those what that process will be.

So because we will be evaluating independently for ourselves who are recommended candidates maybe when we come next week.

And then we'll have because we can't we can't discuss it amongst ourselves outside of this of the board space.

So next week when we come we will have done our own determination based on the criteria that we're going to agree on in a few moments.

But the.

The voting process I was just going to describe what we could do for that which was to arrive at our final finalists during the last appointment process in 2021. Attrition throughout the process naturally brought the number down to three finalists.

So I was going to say that board I was on the board at the time.

We didn't have to do a process because number people people withdrew.

In 2019 when Director Hersey was appointed the board at the time narrowed down to a field of three from a pool of nine applicants.

And so the.

My suggestion after talking to Ellie would be that we use the method that the board used to narrow down in 2019 which is rounds of votes.

So we would bring our personal top numbers and present them to each other.

And anybody who didn't receive a vote from any director would be.

Disqualified.

So we could say we could end up with a total of six people and then we would do another round to narrow until we get to a top four.

Ellie can probably describe that better than I just did.

It took me a few times to get it.

Now that I get it it does make sense.

But if you could please.

SPEAKER_26

Better but I'm happy to take an attempt at different or also another attempt.

So if we have five directors that are voting, so I'm going to call the vote.

First, a caveat that there's nothing in your policies, there's nothing in state law that says how you have to go about these kind of aspects of the process.

you all get to build it together.

And what we're walking you through is just the last process a board develops.

So in the first round, I would say if you wanted, we're going to say that you're looking for four candidates for district two.

You would each have an opportunity to nominate four people.

You're going to see kind of a grid on the screen and it will kind of just not presently, but it will track whether or not somebody has received a nomination.

If at the end of everybody nominating four people, you have only four people with nominations, then you're done.

You magically were aligned in the first vote, and you have your four finalists.

If there's some separation, you have six people across all of your votes or you have eight people across all of your votes, then we take those eight people who received a nomination and they become those who you're voting on in your second round.

And then we would decrease the number of nominations you had.

So in the first round you got to pick four people, in the second round you'd pick three people, and we'd narrow it down.

This isn't a mathematical formula that will arrive at exactly four people and just work.

There may be needs for discussion amongst you.

You may have, you know, when you get to three votes each you might only end up with three people and then you need to figure out how to identify your fourth candidate.

So there'll be a little bit of space for deliberation on the board potentially but basically casting a narrowing number of nominations.

SPEAKER_31

I see faces does that.

Is it time can we chime in?

Yes please.

So I had sent this in an email to Ellie earlier and I don't remember if you were on it Liza.

So when this came up I did some research into other local districts that have had to go through this.

And Bellevue School District is actually going through an appointment process right now.

They might they might be done now but at the time that I looked into it they were in the middle of it and they I think I believe in order to narrow the candidates down to to finalists they did a executive session with the board.

And I'm just wondering if that's an option because to me it just feels it feels like doing the rounds of voting feels really awkward.

It feels like being the last person to be picked on the kickball team in elementary school.

SPEAKER_29

You will like the next thing I'm going to tell you.

SPEAKER_31

OK.

SPEAKER_29

Which.

SPEAKER_31

The Bellevue school board.

Yeah yeah.

The school board did an executive session so they could speak privately about the candidates so it wasn't this like public thing where I just feel like for me personally if I were a candidate I would I just I think that would feel really awkward for me to be like.

Oh, no one picked me, you know.

So I'm just trying to think of what's the most dignified way to do that.

SPEAKER_29

So the voting legally has to take place publicly.

We have to take our votes in public.

But the Open Public Meetings Act, which requires that we vote in public, does say that executive sessions can be used to evaluate the qualifications of a candidate.

So we can move to executive session to discuss qualifications.

We cannot vote.

So we would have the opportunity to say to each other here's you know if we get to a point where we're struggling to say kind of state our peace about why we might think a person is qualified or not qualified but we have to vote here.

OK.

SPEAKER_31

But so you're saying that state law.

Or is that Seattle specific.

No it's state law.

Because I'm pretty sure that Bellevue did not like what.

SPEAKER_29

So we're going to follow.

OPMA as it is in state law.

Not what somebody else may or may not have.

SPEAKER_31

I know I'm just clarifying though that that determining finalists like that is is that this.

Yeah I don't think you have to vote on that is the point I'm trying to make.

Like yes the final vote on who we're appointing to the board does have to be public 100 percent.

But does the does the do we have to publicly vote on who we are selecting as finalists.

That's what I'm trying to clarify.

SPEAKER_29

I mean, there's gonna be a finalist list produced.

So people are gonna know that they weren't picked Right.

Yeah, eventually I'm just talking about like I'll let legal experts speak to that Okay, so

SPEAKER_02

The exact wording of the statute, by the way, in terms of what's authorized in, oh yes, sorry.

The executive session is authorized to evaluate the qualifications of a candidate for appointment to elective office.

However, any interview of such candidate and final action appointing a candidate to elective office shall be in a meeting open to the public.

That leaves a bit of a gap because the general rule on executive sessions is you can't take actions or make decisions in executive session, which is why the strong advice is that even the culling down process, including who's not advancing to the next round, it's the way the City Council has done it as well, needs to be in an open public meeting.

Because if you're in an executive session and agreeing, okay, candidates A, B, and C are not moving on, you are making a decision in an executive session.

It is a bit like, yeah, not who didn't get picked for the team, but these are people who have commendably chosen to put their hats in the ring.

And at the end of the day, one person is going to be chosen for each seat.

That's part of the part of the process is there is a public decision making to narrow the field and then eventually choose one person.

But you are allowed to have as vigorous a discussion as you wish an executive session about.

Here's why I like A and not B.

Director Harris.

SPEAKER_22

So maybe the answer.

This is going to be quick.

This demands that we have objective criteria.

OK.

I don't need to continue audience.

You already answered my question.

SPEAKER_29

Yes we.

That will be what we'll talk about next.

Director Topp.

SPEAKER_24

So in your process here President Rankin is it possible for us to have an executive session before the voting in order for us to discuss as a board the qualifications and is that part of your process here.

Yes.

SPEAKER_29

OK.

And we could even if we do one round of voting and have.

some discussion and kind of think like oh my gosh we could go immediately to executive session and then come back if we wanted.

SPEAKER_24

But can we start with an executive session before voting in order to talk about qualifications as part of the agenda.

SPEAKER_26

Currently as President Rankin has designed it starts with an executive session and then at any point during your meeting you can by properly calling the executive session recess back into executive session for however long it takes.

The boards in the past have been really successful in talking about the candidates they're excited for in positive ways in this this space.

So I don't I don't think you would need to contemplate that you would have to sort of say all sorts of negative things about candidates publicly.

SPEAKER_29

Basically my understanding is the part we can't do is say we're going into executive session and then come out and say we have our top four.

SPEAKER_31

Sorry that I mean that that addresses my concerns.

I just I didn't want to be in a situation where we had to like where we were like publicly discussing people that just feels really inappropriate and wrong.

So I'm good.

Great.

SPEAKER_29

OK.

If we feel ready to move to.

The next topic.

Yeah.

OK.

So we need to talk about criteria and then we need to talk about the candidate forum.

Those are the next two pieces that we have coming.

So I think what I would like to do is talk about the forum first since it's kind of procedural and just go over that and then have room for the discussion about criteria if that's OK.

So the forum.

We plan to hold a candidate forum for both districts together on March 27th at Lincoln High School which happens to be the high school of one of our student board members.

But the reason it was picked is because it it sits basically in a little it's it's it's in District 2 but it's in District 4. So it's a nice there will be that that high school represents a lot of families and community from both districts.

So that seemed like a nice place to hold the forum make it more accessible to the families and community that these districts will be representing.

Although it is open to everyone because of course.

We come from certain districts but we all together represent the entire city and all of our kids.

So Director Vandernute and Director Hersey can talk about this more.

But I have invited staff.

student members to collaborate on the planning for the forum and asked Director Hersey as the student member liaison to work with them.

So student members and Director Hersey had an initial and an initial conversation on Friday and talked about what they might want their participation to look like.

And so would either or both of you like to.

share anything about that or have anything that you want to provide or want us to know.

Go for it.

Director Vandernaut.

SPEAKER_20

We had talked about potentially helping come up with interview questions to ask the candidates and then also have us like look over each of the candidates like applications and then write like a paragraph about what we thought about the candidates in our topics and stuff.

But since we can't directly vote that it would just be our input like for you to consider but not like as a final decision.

SPEAKER_11

I believe also that Director Muthuswamy was interested in facilitating the questions or not necessarily the questions of forum in some capacity.

Whether that be in a team format between directors and Director Muthuswamy or like school board directors and Director Muthuswamy or like however we want that to look.

I don't think that there was interest and correct me IU Shapiro in the room I can't see.

He's not.

I think he was the only student that would 100 percent be available on that evening.

So we wouldn't want it to be a situation to where it was exclusively him.

So we would need to plan out a little bit further for what that could look like whether it's like We're getting students from other organizations maybe like the NAACP Youth Council or some others maybe the Student Union would be interested or if we would want like directors and student directors to do it exclusively.

I'm open to whatever y'all think is best but that's kind of where we're at per our last meeting.

SPEAKER_29

OK great.

So it sounds like our three student board members supporting and being included in the development of questions on the planning providing their feedback and input on their evaluation of candidates and that then director Muthuswamy needs a co-host.

Is that basically a recap.

SPEAKER_26

And I think that not to speak for director Vanden Heuvel but director Vanden Heuvel was also interested in supporting the process.

And then hey I'm blanking on Luna's last name.

Thank you.

Director Cron-Veron has a potential conflict that they were going to try to address in order to be there and also potentially collaborate with Ayush on asking questions.

OK.

SPEAKER_29

That sounds really good.

So in terms of question development.

My thinking of a place to start would be to reach out to community partners and other you know go.

We're talking about the Seattle community not just you know families not just District 2 not just District 4. This is you know as we were elected by the broader community.

We want to get input from the broader community to the extent possible.

So as a starting point for questions I was thinking we could reach out to different community partners and ask for either topics that they want us to ask about or even provide a question that they want considered.

And we have relationships with lots of different community organizations that represent.

So many different constituent groups and also serve a lot of our students and families.

So I think that would be a valuable place to start with.

You know what ways to get communities input into the questions that we ask.

And then so you ask for input on the questions and then my suggestion would be that Director Hersey and I and the student members look over the suggestions and come up with a finalized list of questions for the forum.

Does that sound like a good approach to determine the questions.

OK.

Go ahead Director Topp.

SPEAKER_24

Maybe I'll get this to work.

How long is the forum.

I should know this.

SPEAKER_29

If Miss Wilson Jones would provide the technical information about the forum that would be great.

SPEAKER_26

You currently have three hours I held for the forum.

I believe I think we'd need to confirm the exact timing that would be available based on the availability of the facility.

I could go through sort of the general cadence or we're going to do the sort of technical aspects of the forum.

Is that helpful.

SPEAKER_29

No if you want to go through the kind of format that would be great.

SPEAKER_26

So the format that the boards used most recently and that I don't I don't think proved itself to be particularly flawed in any way and for your last appointment process was that there was an opening of two minutes for each candidate.

So they would each provide an opening statement and then moving into questions with responses limited to about 90 seconds.

Finally concluding with one minute closing statements and staff will support the timing of that so well similar to the way we do for public testimony but perhaps adapted for a bigger space.

will signal to the candidates when their time is up or about to be up.

Our moderators will be supported with prompts to help them sort of gently nudge or firmly cut off speakers as needed and we'll make sure that things are fair by rotating seats.

It will basically be a math problem once we know how long the forum is planned for and how long it's going to take how many candidates you arrive at and then we can figure out how many questions would be asked.

sorry it's a math problem for me it's not a math problem and for me that's about that's about as mathy as i want to get so yeah

SPEAKER_29

If there are four director candidates and they each have five apples.

So I mean basically a lot of us have participated as candidates and as audience members in forums like this.

That just seemed like kind of a standard way to go.

Two minute opening set time for questions.

Everybody gets a chance to answer and then a closing statement.

SPEAKER_24

Three hours seems really long.

I know there's eight candidates, but still three hours seems very long, especially for the candidates.

SPEAKER_31

I know I mean board meetings are longer but I know I agree.

That feels really long.

SPEAKER_29

I think three.

I think what you were saying is that three hours is the time that has been blocked.

SPEAKER_26

Three hours.

We don't have to take all the block necessarily.

I think I would defer to President Hersey to speak to what it looks like to be in multiple three hour forums.

It's not unprecedented but I don't know that it yields different answers over the course of your three hours.

SPEAKER_11

Yeah, no.

I mean, having lived through it, I would definitely not recommend a three-hour forum.

What I would say is definitely also, though, you can just work backwards to kind of see how long you're giving each candidate to answer the question, and that's really going to be your determining factor, right?

So if you give each candidate two minutes, 90 seconds or 60 seconds or less to answer some of the questions and those can be different, then that's going to tell you how many questions you can get in and whatnot.

So instead of like just, you know, looking at it from that lens, think about how long you want the responses to be.

SPEAKER_30

Director Sardieu.

SPEAKER_22

So that said I want to caution us by some people are not great public speakers.

That doesn't mean they wouldn't be good board members.

Some people need a little bit more time because of an unseen special feature they might have in the way their brains work.

They might need a little bit more time.

And so I'm not saying let's give everybody five minutes, but this is an opportunity where we can actually be mindful of people who have disabilities or have, I call them special features, because they're the things we can't see.

And just looking at the person, you're not going to know that they might have a slight speech impediment.

And so I really want us to have that orientation when we're deciding time.

Let's not give people five minutes, but also let's not just give them 60 seconds.

I don't think that's fair.

And it will take the time that it takes.

Some people will use the whole two minutes.

Some people won't.

But I don't want to short change.

Is that a thing?

Short change people's time to their detriment because we can't see something.

That's my opinion.

Take it or leave it.

SPEAKER_29

Maybe before.

I don't know.

We could as we determine our finalists maybe ask the board office to reach out to the candidates and ask about any accommodations that we should provide.

SPEAKER_26

I don't have a feedback on that piece.

I think it would be for directors to determine.

I could speak to how long a little bit with more precision about how long your last three forms were.

They were each three forms over the course of two appointment cycles.

Each were scheduled for three hours and each ended up taking less than that.

They each were about two hours and 45 minutes but differing numbers of candidates and those were each for one district and they did go on the answer.

The answers from the same candidate overlapped if that makes sense.

So people ended up talking about the same subject more than once.

SPEAKER_29

Got it.

So maybe that speaks to we should be really smart with our question selection to make good use of the time that we have to get to know folks.

OK so does the.

up to now what we've talked about in terms of the forum seem good.

Proceed.

And OK great.

Oh Director Topp.

SPEAKER_24

So to clarify we are all charged with gathering questions from different community folks and then.

SPEAKER_29

If you want to or actually you could.

So I have a list of different organizations that we've reached out to for like legislative platform and some different things.

This also is a little bit of a preview of next week's work session on community engagement where we should have a living list for ourselves as the board.

So I'm happy to take.

I'll send the email or I'll ask the board office to send the email soliciting questions.

If you have any organizations you specifically want to recommend we reach out to please send those to me.

That seems a little bit more streamlined than having us each separately ask.

SPEAKER_24

That's why I clarified.

So if we have organizations that we want to make sure are on the list or or specific groups of folks and then the board office will send out an email soliciting questions and then you and the student board members will work.

And Director Hersey and Director Hersey.

Sorry.

We'll work on narrowing down that list to whatever the math problem says spits out as the correct number of questions.

SPEAKER_29

Yep.

Sound sound good.

OK.

And not to exclude the other board directors.

Two of us is not a quorum so we can meet on flexibility of when the students can meet and narrow that down.

OK.

So now what time is it.

645. So now the final discussion item tonight is about the criteria that we want to use to narrow down.

District 2. And how we want to.

Guide our review of the applicants.

So.

I looked through the applications and spent some time considering what the areas were that we were kind of aiming to find out about through our questions and.

And what like what we were getting at basically what was important.

So based on that I kind of made some notes of overlapping buckets of things and I worked with Ellie Wilson Jones on a.

chart that has the areas on one side and some blank boxes on the other side.

So what I would like for us to do now is to spend some time talking about what criteria We might be looking for in each of these areas or if there's other areas you want to add that will support give us some common.

Common tool to support our own individual.

So we're looking for a common tool that we're going to use independently to come prepared next week with our individual recommendations for nomination to the rest of the board.

Does that make sense.

OK.

So we can take notes on this that Ellie just passed out and And then we'll be able to each have our own Guide for ourselves that has come from a common conversation about criteria that will though then you take your own sheet home with your notes about criteria and do whatever process you want to do to go through it as you evaluate that your review of the application submissions and the video statements.

Does this make sense and seem like a reasonable approach.

OK.

So the first area that I looked at was lived and professional experience.

We asked people about what their perspective was coming to the board why they wanted to do this position and what strengths and background they might have.

I also know that representation is really important to us as a board and the city as a whole.

And so what lived experience might there be that could add a diversity of perspective as well.

And and how do we want to sort of categorize that.

So we could sort of think of like questions to ask ourself like does this candidate represent a lived experience that is not already represented on the board.

Does this candidate represent professional background or experience that is not represented on the board.

If we agree that that's important if we're looking for diversity.

in terms of that.

But I'm open to what you all want to look at in terms of lived and professional experience.

We also, just to throw out, it could be, do we specifically want a person with?

I'm just going to make something silly up.

Excel spreadsheet experience.

If that is something that's going to be our top category in terms of lived, and I mean, it's not.

I was just picking something random.

If that's something that as a group we think is important to look for as we evaluate the applications we would want to tell ourselves like Excel spreadsheet experience yes no.

So I would just open it up to thoughts for what our criteria would be for look fors I guess in each of these areas.

SPEAKER_31

So I guess I mean what we're on what I'm feeling is that we have these five criteria here and I think these are great because I think they're they map to the questions that we asked on the application.

Yeah.

So and then I don't know like I guess it feels like it's kind of up to us each individually as we're like maybe this is what we talk about when we get together and discuss like.

The like I guess I'm just I'm not I'm a little bit confused by the getting more specific than these five criteria.

SPEAKER_29

Well so for example the second one is connect connection to director district community.

If we value a strong connection to their individual community would we want a criteria to be demonstrated strong connection to community.

Yeah, I mean I guess to me that's implicit in the criteria.

But how do we want to define what that means?

SPEAKER_31

Well, right, and I think, to me that feels like a discussion.

It's sort of like, I felt that this person demonstrated that because of this.

Yeah right.

But we're not talking about individual people right now.

SPEAKER_28

Superintendent Jones.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah may I.

So when we talk about lived professional experiences for example on this board currently we have public health labor teaching legal storytelling in terms of competencies.

So a way to get at this might be how might someone leverage their diversity of experiences into this into this board and so be seeking what.

What what's your superpower that you're bringing.

What's your what's your learned experience that you can bring forward to complement what we already have as a board.

So I think that's when we when we talk about lived and professional experience and not just do you have them but how would you leverage them and utilize them.

SPEAKER_22

For this.

So I understand why we're interrogating this like it's not exactly clear.

For example with the.

I can't really read that but I think it's my glasses are right there I should put them on but I'm not.

Connection something something.

What does the second one say.

Right.

So the way I would see.

how so we would we would look at the application we look at the answer because these are are very similar if not directly quote quoted from the application we would say um let's say the connection is um has lived in the community for 37 years and has been active in whatever ways they list like to me that's an objective uh extrapolation of their connection.

And so we're looking at the application, and if the question is, describe your connection, then we're looking at what was the answer?

How did they say they were connected?

I don't think we need to list criteria of what that means.

SPEAKER_31

I think we that's exactly what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_22

I'm totally agreeing with you.

I'm just saying yeah.

SPEAKER_31

Yeah.

I'm saying like we're.

Yeah.

I don't know what more criteria we're going to come together as a board right now and be like the person must have lived in the district for a minimum of five years or so.

You know what I mean.

Like obviously we're not going to say that but.

But my point is just that I think this is the criteria that we this is the lens that we're supposed to use to as we're reading the individual.

SPEAKER_29

Well so here's what I'm looking for some shared criteria is for example demonstrates racial equity analysis.

Would that be would we each do we want to define what that means for us as a group.

We might have different ideas individually about what we think demonstrating racial equity analysis means.

So do we want to say.

Yep.

you know, candidate.

So if we think about it in terms of some of our other evaluation tools, we would have either does not demonstrate racial equity analysis.

We would have approaching demonstrating racial equity analysis.

meeting, demonstrating racial equity analysis, and mastering, demonstrating racial equity analysis.

So we don't have to do four steps for each thing, but I think it would be helpful for us to come up with some shared definitions of what meeting or mastering might look like to us for each of these.

Does that help.

SPEAKER_31

Yeah.

And I guess maybe what I'm feeling.

Yeah I guess I think maybe I was stumbling on the lived and professional experiences because I just feel like that could take so many different forms.

So that's what we should like.

SPEAKER_29

Is it important to us as a group that we you know lean more in favor of candidates who represent different lived and professional experiences than already exist on the board.

Maybe it's not.

If it is.

You should say that a criteria is that.

Well I wonder if we should experience is not already represented.

SPEAKER_31

I mean I wonder if we should rank these criteria in order of importance.

Because that like maybe that's a tiebreaker thing or something you know like it's not the most important thing but if like all other things being equal this person has brings a unique skill set that's not already represented on the board like that might be the tipping point you know.

So I don't know that we I'm not sure that all of these things are equally important to us.

Like they're all important but I'm not sure that they're all equally important.

SPEAKER_29

Which is so like again because we're not going to we're not going to sit here in public and like we're not filling out a scoring sheet.

We're not giving everybody a number.

Right.

And bringing that.

So you could yourself be like oh man these five candidates I think are the ones I want to nominate.

I really value that this person brings a different experience.

That's helping me make my decision about my top four that I'm going to bring next week.

So we don't really have to rank them.

I think we're looking for just like a shared definition of what meeting the standard would what meeting the expectation or would would look like.

SPEAKER_31

OK.

Yes.

Is that am I.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We don't need to get too far.

So what does that look like.

So then what what would meeting an expectation and lived in professional experience look like that.

SPEAKER_29

Well, so the question would be Does it is it important to us that we consider?

Or that we sort of give weight to lived in professional experiences that are different than those already represented Or does it not I mean, that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_31

I'm like it would be great.

I Think it would be great.

You know, but I'm not like I That's what I mean, like, that's not, yeah, yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I'm sorry, I'm, I don't need, I don't, I'm not trying to like hog the conversation.

SPEAKER_11

Can I interject?

SPEAKER_31

Yes, please, please.

SPEAKER_11

Yeah, so really what we need to be doing is starting from our strategic plan and from the goals that we've set out for ourselves and really taking a look at those things because we need to be leading with student need first.

And like professional experience on the board.

Yeah that's all fine and good.

But what I want to understand is like what is the understanding of the goals that we have set for our students.

What is the understanding of their strategic plan.

I don't know if necessarily like these are the most like telling questions that result in that.

But And we also just might need more time, right?

Like, I don't see a whole lot of representation of, like, what students would want to know about in terms of, like.

the potential replacements here.

But I really do just want to like bring students into the process here in terms of making sure that we are doing things that are directly related to them and the goals that we have set for ourselves.

And then maybe that means that we need to take a moment and like think about what those questions and criteria can be and then come back together.

Is there a time issue that we need to have this particular piece done here tonight.

SPEAKER_31

And can I just say one more thing.

So I I I think what I'm what I'm trying to say is is actually very adjacent to what Director Hersey just said which is just that like I'm what what I will be thinking about is our goals and what are our and our mandate which is. focusing on student outcomes.

So I'm thinking about which of these criteria are most related to that.

And to me it's the understanding of board role and demonstrating racial equity.

Those are the two that that are the priority for me because they feel like the things that are the are the strongest levers we have to advance student outcomes.

So.

So then when we talk about lived in professional experience that's I'm like well it'd be nice but it really depends on where where the candidates land around those two things.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Director Harris.

SPEAKER_24

I think I understand what you're saying there because it's not like is there someone who has different experience or different lived experience than us but will their experience enhance our ability to reach our goals to meet student outcomes.

I think that is more and maybe it's not just defining board criteria but just.

expanding the area for review a little bit with with that context like we are looking for a connection to the director district community from someone who brings that experience that is going to help us then reach our goals for student outcomes.

I think that's sort of the underpinning of each of these is that we want these buckets to the most qualified person is going to help us reach our goals and bring the skill sets and the lived experience in order to reach our goals.

SPEAKER_11

Yeah, I could not agree with that more.

And what I would just say is like, how can we retool these questions to meet that, right?

So lived in professional experiences, Kim, maybe one of the questions is, or like the criteria, are we looking at utilizing these as questions per se, or just scoring metrics?

SPEAKER_29

No, this is a way for us to evaluate the questions we have already asked.

And so what I'm looking for is a shared understanding of like so we have so understanding of board role.

What would be the criteria that we agree on shows us that there is an understanding of the board role?

SPEAKER_11

Absolutely.

And so the criteria then is like what we go back to see like what is the board role, right?

Like have they shown us an understanding of like student outcomes focused governance?

Have they shown us an understanding of how are we moving through some of the policy decisions that we are moving in the next few weeks here?

So that's how I would just like make sure that I would want to characterize these to make sure that they are explicitly linked to what we've been working on for the past couple years.

SPEAKER_29

Yes, so that is exactly what I think we're saying.

That's exactly what we want, which is just, and again, we're not scoring these on our own, but what I'm trying to avoid, and I know what Michelle went to earlier, is I don't want us coming next week, and we don't have time, really, to go back and think about it and come back together, because we have to pick the finalists next week.

What I don't want to have happen is to have us all go, I don't know, I just like these four people.

That just, you know what I mean?

Like, I'm trying to give, like, for myself, I want kind of a shared understanding of what we're looking for, and also for just to put some objectivity it's not going to be objective obviously but to put some kind of objectivity into it to both help our help ourselves as we are determining our own candidates that we want to nominate but also give some give a foundation of you know actual evaluation on our part as opposed to just I just like these people.

SPEAKER_28

Yeah.

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_20

I'm wondering what criteria was used in previous years, like how did you guys come up with that before?

SPEAKER_26

There's some possibility that I'm forgetting some aspect of the process, but I do not believe that this was a process element in the last appointment cycles.

I can attempt to prompt that might generate what you're hoping to populate here, if that's helpful.

OK.

So I want you to imagine the words board criteria are not in the second column and that it instead says notes and that you've had this conversation today and you generally agree that the things in the left column are key focus areas.

So you're taking this document and you're looking at your applicants and you're kind of taking notes for yourself about what they've said in these areas and you're thinking about the things that are resonating with you.

Now if you were to come back together and discuss those things and those areas that were resonating with you and that were individual priorities for you, what might some of those things be shared across directors?

So we're kind of doing this like in the opposite direction.

But if you have things that you think might be sort of shared aspects of people's applications that you are like your priority in that area, You could talk about them today and that way your colleagues will also have the benefit of your ideas about what you're individually really looking for so that they can scrutinize applications based on sort of that lens.

So I heard, you know, lived in professional experiences, we heard from Director Topp that The thing she's gonna be really looking at in applications is will their experience sort of catalyze the ability of the board to reach goal and for the district to reach goals, right?

So that's one thing that you'll be looking for and that if you were to take notes, it'd probably be showing evidence of that aspect of it.

So my chicken and egg thing might be horribly unhelpful here, but that's how I kind of think about that column.

SPEAKER_28

What's that?

SPEAKER_29

Oh, OK.

So for like understanding of board role, like my criteria would be that in their application, they actually describe and demonstrate an understanding of governance as opposed to management.

That would be a way that I would look at an application and say, OK this person already totally understands what this role is.

Yeah.

As opposed to.

This person has no idea what the school board does.

SPEAKER_32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_26

Do you want me to catch threads like this visually?

I use this as an example.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_29

So that's what I'm looking at because we're not scoring it's just like so we all say yeah understanding the board role is important demonstrating racial equity competency or analysis is important.

But what are some things that that would actually look like that would help us know if that's present or not in an application?

SPEAKER_27

For any of them for any of them.

SPEAKER_26

And President Rankin can I cut in.

There were some other things mentioned but I'll let you re-mention them before I add them there so I make sure I capture it in your wording.

SPEAKER_20

Taking a note in the first column I said diverse experience that will actually help enhance the board's ability to reach our goals and help students because that was mentioned in the conversation.

And this obviously may be like common sense and just a baseline standard but for collaborative skill set I had wrote ability to communicate clearly and rationally because it's unhelpful when people are quick to get defensive and like kind of speak in a hostile manner.

People need to be able to communicate with people that disagree with them without getting upset.

SPEAKER_29

Director Vanden Heuvel you've been promoted.

This is her meeting now.

But yeah so I don't know.

I apologize if I was getting too like cagey.

Oh no no no no I know I'm apologizing to the rest of the group for like this is kind of what we're looking for.

Just a few just like a shared understanding of how we would define.

what we're looking for in these areas.

Because again it is it.

SPEAKER_99

So I can.

SPEAKER_22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_99

I was hoping.

SPEAKER_22

Black girl that speaks to racial equity but since nobody else is jumping up I will.

I mean I am the black girl so I'm not hoping not to be but I was hoping not to have to speak to this case you didn't know I'm a black girl.

So for that one for me, what I'm looking for is a demonstrated articulation of targeted universalism.

If they don't understand that, then they don't understand what we're doing.

And so that is critically important.

And it doesn't have to be fancy words.

There just needs to be a demonstrated understanding of what targeted universalism is and why that's important, specifically to student outcomes.

SPEAKER_29

I would add to that one to like that their application materials or interview demonstrates an understanding of the importance of the focus of our strategic plan which is specifically and purposefully on black boys and young men not because they're the only ones but because that I mean yeah understanding of demonstrates an understanding of why that is what is leading our work.

SPEAKER_31

Yeah I was going to say that one too.

Thank you Michelle.

SPEAKER_24

Gina do you have.

Struggling with that tonight.

I mean isn't the connection to the director.

Thank you.

Connection to the director district community.

Had like a demonstrated like isn't it just a strong connection.

What exactly are we looking for here.

What.

I mean so.

SPEAKER_29

So again we could also say we could also say we don't care.

They're registered voter in the district are eligible for the seat.

That doesn't matter.

That was just I was I looked at the questions we asked.

SPEAKER_24

No I think that.

And then kind of drew a line.

Figure out like what what a strong connection mean.

SPEAKER_29

Well it demonstrates a strong personal connection and experience working with community members from District 2 or Seattle Public Schools or like because here a question too is like would we would we want to describe a strong connection specifically to any school community or just generally demonstrated work in and with community where they live.

That's for us.

That's we could decide that.

SPEAKER_22

The I see the problem here is when we insert the word strong that is not objective.

Because what's strong like this.

Tell me how strong is objective.

What would be an example of an objective strong.

I mean I'm not asking for the answer but I think is that a yes no question for me.

It's.

Yes, they've for me the answer I would be okay.

They've lived in the district And they have participated in something, right?

Like not just living in an apartment and having no engagement, right?

Like that's, and I don't, I mean, I don't know that we've seen that in the applications.

I mean, I haven't gone through every single one yet.

But what do we, I think if we're going to put the word strong on there, then we have to define that.

Because otherwise, what may be strong to me is not strong to Gina.

SPEAKER_31

What what if we just say demonstrated like we did with understanding the board role like demonstrated connection and that could look like involvement in schools involvement and other community organizations but that there's some evidence that this person is actively engaged.

SPEAKER_08

So I think I think everyone should start with demonstrates.

Each one starts with demonstrates and each one finishes in a manner that advances student outcomes.

And whether they're strong or weak is your determinations as you see their demonstration.

So they demonstrated an understanding of the board role in a manner that advances student outcomes.

Demonstrated racial equity analysis in a manner that advances student outcomes.

Whether that's strong or weak is your determination as you look at the candidates express themselves.

SPEAKER_29

So the last time I thank you for that Dr. Jones.

Last time I participated in a process like this was actually for a task force selection as a board director.

And but it was more of a group meeting with scoring.

But this is essentially it was like yeah.

Do they demonstrate.

or have have evidence of this thing.

And then we did score and then there were some that were like they didn't like like connection to director district community.

I can't remember but if there are any applications that you know just say I live I live in this district and that's where it ends.

That's kind of like that doesn't really demonstrate experience and connection that would.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_26

Can I go back a moment and capture what you had dr. Jones for the beginning and end of the sort of prompts we wanted to include here I didn't get your exact wording and I wanted to capture that Don't don't you can I don't have a pride of ownership of these words so we can change them demonstrates

SPEAKER_08

Their lived their connection their understanding their racial equity analysis.

And then the last part is in a manner that advances student outcomes or in a fashion or in a with a strategy that.

SPEAKER_29

Or what about the supports our goals for student outcomes or the supports making progress on our goals.

Yeah.

OK.

SPEAKER_31

We know what we mean.

We know what we mean with that.

SPEAKER_32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08

And President Rankin, you talked about the approaching all the way to mastery.

And that's how I'm interpreting what Director Sarju said around a stronger week.

So would you all feel comfortable with putting some criteria around how well the demonstration is?

It was nice.

SPEAKER_24

I think that's fine, but I'm going to look at legal counsel here.

This will be publicly disclosable, right?

Yeah.

So like, I don't, I like to having this idea, this, these criteria and ready for discussion, but I don't think I'm, I'm not going to be filling in the, the squares with that, that information.

Cause I think that that, yeah.

SPEAKER_29

Yeah and that's the intent really and why like with like with the task force we all sat with the sheet in front of us and 1 2 3 4 and then had a result.

And this is you know not the same process.

So this is really more of just like a shared.

general evaluation tool for us to use so that I'm not going, well, I'm, oh, let me take a look at these candidates.

I really want someone who, you know, does these four things.

And then Gina's saying, oh, I'm going to rank my candidates now based on, you know, these totally other things.

That's, we're basically just trying to get to, you know, we're going to all have different opinions and different ways of, Yeah I think I think we're totally on board with that.

We're we're on the same page.

Yeah.

So we we we could get more specific but I don't know if we need to.

If if this is if this feels like we're headed in a similar enough direction and if this gives each of us enough of a framework enough yeah enough of a framework to go and make our own recommendations that we're going to bring back to the board.

SPEAKER_15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_29

And if this does that and we don't have anything else we want to add to it we're done.

And I would say too we can also.

So this is just for us to use to bring our top recommendations to the full board next week for narrowing down for the area where we have a lot of candidates.

And then we could continue to build on it if we wanted to use it after the forum.

We might after the forum have.

You know no need for any more.

We might want to add other things to it for ourselves because when we I guess we haven't talked about that yet have we.

The process for actual selection.

We haven't gotten there yet.

SPEAKER_26

You have not.

I can preview with the board Senate in the past if that's helpful but we can also hold you in suspense if that's more exciting.

SPEAKER_29

You can give a little preview if you want.

But I guess I'm saying if if we feel like this is helpful instead of grounding our own personal directions but it's it's so funny because we are individual people with individual perspectives and yet our responsibility is to be like we really don't have any.

We're not individual agents.

So I'm looking for basically the.

Yeah.

Common.

SPEAKER_32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_29

Making sure we're going towards common even though we may have different different.

different things personally that you know I don't expect us all to have the same four people for example.

I would imagine that these mean different things which is great which is what we want.

I think.

SPEAKER_24

Your criteria points us all in the direction we're always supposed to be focusing on and that sort of achieving our goals and how we're going to do that and how we do make sure that the folks that do join us help us in reaching those goals.

SPEAKER_29

Yes, thank you.

Exactly.

Yeah, now you all see what I was like as a set designer.

Everything at the wall, and then I start pulling things down and narrow it down.

Anyway, did you want to add about the final?

SPEAKER_26

Can I, before, I'm going to hold you a little bit in suspense.

Can I just confirm what you want me to do with what's on the screen right now?

And if your answer is provide it to us, then can I check the wording here to make sure that it's not going to, yeah.

Okay so first one area for review lived in professional experience I took off the S that made more sense to me but demonstrates diverse experience that will help the board's ability to reach goals and support students this one already had sort of an overlap with the advance of student outcomes so do we want to refine the end of it to just kind of just say demonstrates diverse experience in a manner that will help the board's ability to advance student outcomes, or this one was a little harder, because it was already geared in that direction.

It's harder to fit into the form.

We can come back to it, too, if that's helpful.

SPEAKER_31

I think that's good.

I think to just say that will help the board's ability to advance student outcomes, right?

SPEAKER_26

OK so the next one then is connection to director district community demonstrates connection to the director district community in a manner that advances student outcomes evidence of active engagement and then it says may include involvement in schools community organizations etc.

So you can let me know if you want the evidence there as a prompt or if you want to go.

SPEAKER_29

Can I just a tiny like technical thing so.

Their community involvement may not.

Already.

Advanced student outcomes.

But we're looking for experience and connections that will support the board and therefore the district in.

Improving outcomes for students.

I just just that the current connection might not demonstrate that they are currently advancing student outcomes with their involvement.

But that does that make sense.

It's like people are doing lots of different things with their lives right now that are positive and connected to their community and not necessarily focused on advancing.

Translate to that.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_24

Helping advance student outcomes.

SPEAKER_29

Or that will support our work something I think.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be for publishing this.

I mean.

SPEAKER_20

Remember also in the conversation earlier we were talking about potentially that they would have to live in the district.

Is that already a requirement or is that just a suggestion.

SPEAKER_29

That is a legal requirement at the state level and has been confirmed for all candidates with the King County elections.

SPEAKER_26

Not on that part but there were enough verbs that my my brain fizzled on this one.

So demonstrates connection to the director district community that if appointed they could leverage to advance student outcomes is that sort of the point you're getting at.

I forgot the meaning here.

I don't have to use my verbs.

I don't know.

SPEAKER_29

point we're trying to get well no but what was awkward it was like oh I'm just gonna you're sitting across from me so candidate Lola is highly involved with her you know the retirement community in her neighborhood that doesn't necessarily look like supporting student outcomes Right.

Right now.

Yeah.

But that connection shows an authentic connection to the community and working with community.

SPEAKER_31

A commitment to doing that.

SPEAKER_29

We hope will.

Yeah.

When brought to the board will help us improve student outcomes.

SPEAKER_31

But it's more it's more about the mindset and not about the the actual like oh we hope that.

SPEAKER_29

No I know it's just the wording was weird that was just like demonstrate it said like does this person demonstrate right now that they have connections that improve student outcomes right now.

SPEAKER_31

Right.

No, exactly.

I know that was weird, because I don't think that's what we're going for.

I think we're talking about the mindset and the orientation towards community.

SPEAKER_29

Well, and even just like authentic demonstration of doing work with the community.

SPEAKER_26

Yeah.

Can I defer to a director for the wording on this one?

All right.

Demonstrate.

SPEAKER_29

I'm going to phone a friend.

Thank you.

Demonstrates the potential.

No it demonstrates the connection to the director district community in a manner that.

SPEAKER_31

Has the potential to advance students.

SPEAKER_29

Can we just take out.

I mean we know that we're all connected to student outcomes but what we're looking for in this one is like an authentic connection to their community.

We just take it out.

I think so.

SPEAKER_31

I think we're trying so hard to make that work and it's not working.

SPEAKER_26

Yeah.

So demonstrates connection to director district community.

The part that's unsaid is building from that connection.

They will be better empowered to do their work as a director to support student outcomes.

But we didn't say the long part.

There you go.

Next is understanding of board role demonstrates understanding of governance as opposed to management in a manner that advances student outcomes.

SPEAKER_20

You could also add something about how they demonstrate a clear understanding of what their role on the board would be and what the board currently does for the community.

SPEAKER_26

Would that be some of the evidence that we'd be looking for this one since understanding of the role would be sort of a.

Yeah.

Or is this or is this another criteria or another?

Do I have the right?

Yes, I think you have the right.

OK, so understanding of the role of a board director.

And then you had another part that was crucial there, too, but still slipped my brain.

OK, and I'm going to say that one into the mic understands what Oh my gosh the board.

SPEAKER_20

I think there's a lot of things that people think the board has the power to do but they actually don't.

And so I think to show an understanding that they know what the board actually has the power to change and control.

SPEAKER_29

You know.

SPEAKER_31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_29

Thank you President Van Driem.

SPEAKER_26

The power and can I add to capture the other side of it the power and responsibility With great power comes great responsibility.

I'm so sorry Just I'll say okay to control I Next one is demonstrates racial equity analysis, demonstrates articulate, sorry, I'm not articulate.

Demonstrates articulation of targeted universalism and why that is important to student outcomes in a manner that advances student outcomes.

Thank you.

Evidence application materials demonstrate understanding of the focus of our strategic plan.

There is a specific question about board policy 0 0 3 0. I don't know.

But I mean that's in align with the strategic plan.

I don't know if you want to give yourself a prompt that you're also looking at that question too.

If so you have to give me the words for it.

SPEAKER_29

I think I think that's good.

OK.

SPEAKER_99

Yeah.

SPEAKER_26

Collaborative skill set demonstrates ability to communicate clearly and rationally in a manner that demonstrate.

SPEAKER_31

Perfect.

I think we're good.

SPEAKER_26

This was just to make sure you were paying attention.

In a manner that advances student outcomes is that the.

SPEAKER_29

Supports the advancement of student outcomes.

Or that will support the advancement of student outcomes.

SPEAKER_31

Well it supports the functioning of the board to advance student outcomes.

SPEAKER_28

That will support the.

SPEAKER_29

I think that's good.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Whatever.

SPEAKER_08

Can we go back to the one about role.

Can support and hold accountable a wild and crazy superintendent needs that needs to be in there somewhere knows how to support and hold a superintendent accountable.

SPEAKER_32

They need to be able to.

SPEAKER_29

That is how about also understands and commits to supporting the success of the school district.

That's really what our job is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_26

Can I hear that one more time.

SPEAKER_29

Understands and commits to supporting the success of the school district.

I don't know how to say understands that doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_25

Commits to supporting the success of Seattle Public Schools.

SPEAKER_29

Yeah or demonstrates a demonstrates a commitment to supporting the success of Seattle Public Schools.

Well that would be connected to supporting the success of the superintendent.

SPEAKER_26

You're doing a good job of pulling some of the points out of the board policy and state statute on the role of the board right now too.

So thank you.

You're you're identifying evidence here that is good would be evidence of you know understanding the role of the board.

SPEAKER_29

The one last thing with the collaborative skill set that I want to add that is also connected to understanding the board role is like demonstrates either ability or willingness to.

I don't know how to describe that like we're not like legislators.

We're not like city council members.

We don't individually go out and do whatever we feel like we actually share decision making.

SPEAKER_31

Is that what you're trying to get at.

SPEAKER_29

Again it doesn't like it doesn't mean we can't disagree but like there there is a different kind of understanding that like you're part of a body that and we're.

SPEAKER_11

To.

Or demonstrates the understanding of the difference between board governance versus representative governance.

SPEAKER_26

Thank you.

Yep.

Sorry it jumped off my end off the screen right when you said that.

So understands the difference between board governance and representative governance.

SPEAKER_11

Yeah or electoral district governance whatever the right word is.

We can we can fix it on the back end.

SPEAKER_29

And or as part of collaborative skill set demonstrates willingness to participate as a member of a board governance as opposed to.

SPEAKER_11

I don't think we can tell that by the applications.

SPEAKER_29

OK.

SPEAKER_31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_29

I didn't really ask that question.

No I'm trying.

I was trying to remember what we asked about being collaborative.

Just that collaborative.

Well maybe that.

OK.

SPEAKER_26

One place where you might see evidence of that would be like the educational issue they bring up and whether you know as a board director I will independently champion this one thing and make it happen because I will be a board director and I will have been able to do that but they will be able to do that.

SPEAKER_29

I'm running for class president because I'm going to bring the vending machines back to the cafeteria.

SPEAKER_26

Yes.

SPEAKER_29

Like that's we can't do that.

SPEAKER_20

Something that might be interesting to add for the last one is that they're good with adaptability because sometimes we can have lots of like really quick changes that need to be addressed and sometimes there will be lots of people that come and protest and you'd be willing to like solve that right now.

Yeah and like especially with like I don't know you can never really predict what's going to happen like with what happened with COVID that kind of completely changed everything for a long time and if somebody's not good with adaptability that probably wouldn't be great to have them in this type of role because it impacts so many people.

SPEAKER_31

That's great.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_26

For this one demonstrates ability to well this is redundant to the category but I added the word collaborate so demonstrates ability to adapt collaborate and communicate clearly and rationally in a manner that will support the functioning of the board to advance student outcomes.

Some of the evidence partial evidence would be their understanding of the difference between board governance and representative governance.

You might see that just coming out in various places in the application there might be a sort of a misalignment that also goes to the understanding of the board role.

area.

SPEAKER_22

Oh yeah.

OK yeah.

SPEAKER_30

All right.

SPEAKER_29

How do we feel about this.

I think we're good.

I think it's great.

Anybody have anything else.

Any other burning thought or question about either this or just the process because that basically.

Between now and next week we will be take Ellie will send send these to us.

Oh sorry.

Go ahead.

Do you want to.

SPEAKER_26

Oh no go.

I just need to chime in at the end because I failed to do one thing.

SPEAKER_29

OK perfect.

Ellie will send us these and we will each individually be responsible for on our own using this shared criteria to evaluate the candidates and be prepared to bring our recommended or individual recommendations to the board next week.

SPEAKER_31

So quick question because in District 4 we only have four candidates.

We're not worried about that for this particular.

We're not looking we're only looking at District 2 candidates right now.

Is that.

SPEAKER_08

Could I ask the board to consider not defaulting into candidates that we may not.

that may not meet the criteria to be board members.

So in other words, not just for the sake of four, but if there are four that are meeting the criteria, then go forward, but not just default into the four.

SPEAKER_29

We have this conversation about kind of the pros and cons.

We could say we're just looking to we're not looking at like qualifications we're just we're looking to narrow down District 2 to be the same number as District 4. Or depending on what the board prefers we could say we're going to use this criteria to evaluate all candidates.

Right.

And.

Potentially.

SPEAKER_31

Well I think we are using this criteria to evaluate all candidates.

It's just a question of is that what we're doing right now.

Next week.

OK.

OK.

SPEAKER_22

Can you say that into the.

think we should look at all the candidates.

We're pretty confident we're going to advance the four in whatever number district that is that only has four.

SPEAKER_31

It's four.

SPEAKER_22

But conveniently is it four.

Oh four.

That's like a rubric.

Yeah.

Mnemonic device.

Four and four.

Mm hmm.

And then we're going, I think we need to look, we need to act as if there aren't four.

Maybe that's a different way.

We need to act as if there's a whole bunch in both and we're evaluating them all.

Yeah.

That's the equitable way to do it.

SPEAKER_29

So that changes the conversation next week to determining finalists for both seats.

Right.

SPEAKER_31

But but I guess.

Well so but I I thought we were defaulting to we're not choosing finalists for District 4 because there are only four of them.

So is that different.

Are we doing something different now.

SPEAKER_11

What I would say for this is that like when we get to that conversation, I'm so sorry, Liza.

I'm just trying to make sure that we are moving quickly through this.

No, that's fine.

Please go ahead.

What I would say is like unless you have a very strong opposition to someone proceeding then we should operate as though we are moving forward with those four, right?

And then we can all, then the director, if they have a strong opposition, will need to raise their hand and say, hey, I think we need to put this to a vote.

But I think that accomplishes both of the aspect of what Superintendent Jones is asking us and just for the baseline in terms of if we were not to do it that way, we would have evaluated District 2 candidates with a measure that we did not use for District 4 at the beginning.

So I think that's how we should do it.

Unless you have a strong opposition, we should operate as if we are going forward.

But if you do, say something.

SPEAKER_29

So am I of I want to make sure I have the right understanding.

We will for ourselves individually use this criteria on all candidates.

But our end aim for next week is to have foreign for.

SPEAKER_31

Unless unless someone has really strong feelings about somebody and right.

Yeah.

OK.

So in which case we're not going to to Dr. Jones's point we're not going to advance just for the sake of advancing if we if we have like serious reservations.

SPEAKER_22

Yeah.

We'll do that in public.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

We will.

Or we have to put it to a vote.

We have to put it to a vote.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_99

Regularly.

SPEAKER_26

Can I can I ask a process question for how you expect this to look next week.

So you have a you take this as sort of your guide to reviewing applications you come to the meeting you have you begin an executive session where you're individually talking about candidates and then you get into the business portion of your agenda.

Does that have two action items.

One is a selection of the finalists for District 2 and selection of the finalists for District 4 and for District 4 You will definitely take a vote and then you would just sort of pass everybody on.

I mean they would potentially move on or you would somebody would suggest that you move only three on and then you would take a vote on moving three.

SPEAKER_11

Is there a way that we could just put District 4 on consent and if someone needs to pull it they can?

SPEAKER_26

So this will be a special meeting so we won't have a consent agenda.

It's just going to have sort of individual action items.

I think my my question is just whether you want to go into next.

I didn't frame it right.

But do you want to go into next week's meeting with an assumption that you will be taking an action on District 4 or do you want to have a conversation next week and if you get to a place where you feel like oh we should change the number of candidates in this we should narrow the number of candidates in the district.

this district and then you actually be voting on that district after the other district at a subsequent meeting which would lead to the candidates kind of being in a different place.

SPEAKER_08

So I think I took us off the path.

I'm just suggesting use the criteria for both both districts 4 and 2. If you become if you have 4 at the end of your evaluation of 4 then same place.

But if you have if you evaluate it down to 3 2 or 1 you're just using the same criteria for both.

I'm just saying use.

use the same rubric across the board.

SPEAKER_31

Yeah I think I think.

Oh sorry.

Go ahead.

Well.

I think I think that we're just we're stumbling because there's like we're saying we're going to we're whittling down one group but not the other.

And so it's just creating a lopsided process.

And I think operating from the perspective of that we're not nobody in District 4 is going to be.

scrutinized or evaluated, is the better word, that we're just going with that, I think that's what's causing the problem here.

I know but I'm but but we've also but we're the premise of this whole conversation is that we're not we're not changing.

We're not we're not narrowing down the pool of District 4 like that.

That's that's we went into this conversation saying we're not narrowing that pool down we're only narrowing down the pool of District 2. And so I think that's what we're struggling with right now.

SPEAKER_29

So here's I think I may have.

Unless we want to potentially end up with two candidates or three candidates in District 4. I'm just saying potentially I have no idea.

But we could say that for ourselves we are using this evaluative guidance to determine our top four in both.

And we only have to approve.

So basically what Ellie needs to know and what I need to understand too is if we are planning to eliminate any candidates from District 4 as well as from District 2 next week.

SPEAKER_31

Does it make sense.

Does it make sense to just make this cleaner to say we we need three candidates from each.

SPEAKER_29

And so that that way we're going to finalize.

A matter of wanting to use this tool on both in which case you can.

And then you have your own evaluation for district 4 candidates going forward even though we are not.

Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah.

That too.

Yes.

SPEAKER_32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_29

OK.

Thank you.

Because I I'm like I don't it doesn't make sense to me to eliminate like one person.

SPEAKER_32

No.

SPEAKER_29

OK.

So we will be using this ourselves for all candidates.

But the part that will be that will come forward next week is by manner of us providing our top four or coming to our top four in District 2. OK.

So we are we are only voting on advancing candidates or narrowing candidates for district 2.

SPEAKER_26

So next week your meeting will convene potentially with an executive session.

You're valuing your candidates as an opportunity to talk about the specific qualifications of your candidates from both districts because you will review the applications including the video statements posted today.

Prior to next week's meeting and then you will come into the public session.

The only action item on next week's agenda would be a selection of finalists for District 2. And yeah, is that correct?

No one stopped me as I was talking?

Then I realize I never circled back to the earlier question about the voting process way in the future in April or by the May legal deadline for how you would appoint to each seat.

So do you want me to answer that part now?

SPEAKER_29

If anybody feels like they want to hear that right now.

Sure.

If not we're we're quick.

SPEAKER_26

OK go ahead.

So the past process the board has done is president calls for motions.

I make a motion I nominate director or candidate X and then we take a roll call vote on that.

If candidate X gets four votes they do need four votes for this vote.

It's not three votes it's four votes.

So if they get four votes then you are done you have appointed candidate X and if candidate X does not get four votes then somebody else can make a motion for candidate Y.

You there may be other processes you could use but that's what was used in the past.

SPEAKER_29

And that sounds like the same process that we used for our president vice president member at large.

SPEAKER_26

Thank you.

It's it's the same.

Yes.

SPEAKER_29

I'm not going to make us go back up there to adjourn the meeting.

We can if you want.

Thank you for that.

We will get that document shared to us by Ellie to be able to do our own evaluation and we'll come back next week.

Director Hersey did the time use evaluation for January and February and is included in the meeting minutes.

That is partly for our own just tracking.

But Director Hersey if there's anything that you noticed or wanted to point out about either of those.

No.

OK.

So we have those on record.

Thank you for doing that.

And there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 7 48 p.m..

Thank you everybody.