November 2, 2016 Part 2

Okay.

That is you.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

All right well that was a fantastic energetic performance from the John Stanford International Schools Choir.

I would like to welcome Director Leslie Harris who has joined us and we also have Director Betty Patu on the phone with us.

Are we ready for the next item?

Okay Betty.

You can say your name, you can say hello.

Thank you Board President.

Alright thank you Betty.

So now we are going to go on to a presentation from Gail Morris.

I think we're transitioning between the choir and our next presentation.

Hey, hey, oh, hey.

I'm going to talk Yippee.

Good evening, my English name is Matt Remley, my Lakota name is Wakiyama Anaton.

I'm Honkapapa Lakota from Standing Rock and the proud parent of two of these youngsters up here in Seattle Public Schools.

Thank you.

Hello my name is Gail Morris I am the manager for Native American education and what you see here are students in grades K-12 some are missing traffic I would imagine but they are students in all regions in Seattle public schools from all tribes.

and behind them are their parents and our PAC committee as well.

I am going to let Janine Tillotson go ahead and facilitate this.

Janine has been with the district for over 25 years and I will let her introduce herself but I am Nachalna First Nations born in America but grew up in Vancouver Island.

Good evening my name is Janine Tillotson I am a member of the Tlingit tribe of Alaska I am from the Eagle Moya Tee Killer Whale clan.

And I have worked with a lot of these kids from the time they were very young and I am so proud to know of the amazing young people they are becoming and the leaders in their tribal communities and so we are really proud of everyone and our goal tonight was to show to the school board and to all of you that all through Seattle school district in every school there is Native American kids and the students here tonight are from all regions, all schools, all grade levels and they are all doing amazing things in their schools and they are going to tell you a little bit about it.

So we are going to start with Evelyn.

My name is Evelyn Brandon and I am from Licton Springs K-8 and I love art and I love math.

Spokane tribe.

Hello my name is Talon Madison White Crow.

My tribes are Cherokee, Comanche and Macaw.

I go to Licton Springs K-8.

I am in second grade.

I am good at lacrosse and I enjoy doing mathematics.

Thank you.

I am Rain Foster.

I go to Fairmont Park.

My tribe is Hickory Apache.

At school I like to do math, science and writing.

For fun I like to do soccer.

Lakota, Napa'i, Namayan, and Hemacha.

Hi, I'm Tronton Ramley.

I go to Cascade, I'm fourth grade, and I like to play games, make stories up, and pretty much writing, watching anime, main character designs, and I like regular robotics.

My name is Evan Lott, I am LU in Kootenai, I am in Spectrum at Lawton Elementary, I am in fourth grade.

And my favorite things to do are basketball and parkour.

I am Jo Foxley, I am Jewish, black and Seminole.

I go to Pathfinder K8, I like science and math and play volleyball.

Hi my name is Rikari Barquette.

My tribe is Salish and Kootenai.

I'm a 7th grader.

I go to Denny International Middle School.

Things I'm good at, math, science, reading.

Stuff I like to do for fun is football.

Rebecca Remley of Chiappe.

Hello my name is Cheyenne Remley and my tribe is Lakota, Paiute and Mayan and I am in seventh grade and I go to Cascade and I am good at math and computer science and things I like to do are soccer, games, climbing and running.

Hi I'm Jack Brown and I'm from the tribes of Yakima and Muckleshoot and I'm in eighth grade and I go to school at Bradford Thompson K-8.

In school I'm good at algebra and science and outside of school I like to do ultimate Frisbee basketball.

Hello my name is Emad Alshamassalli.

I'm Tlingit and Haida.

I'm in eighth grade I go to Whitman middle school.

My school interests are PE, art, math.

My outside of school interests are American football, basketball and that's it.

My name is Sparkles and I'm Tlingit and I go to Franklin high school and I like science and language arts and some things I like doing out of school is volleyball, theater, cooking and Latino dancing.

Hey my name is Morgan Blackton I am from the Blackfeet Nations and I am a junior at Chief Sealth International High School.

My school strengths would be reading and writing and science.

And what I like to do outside of school is play football, I wrestle and I play piano.

Hi I'm Owen Oliver, I'm a senior at Roosevelt high school.

I'm Quinault in Isleta Pueblo.

I like to do science and math and outside of school I do mountain biking and traditional native paddling, canoeing.

Thank you.

McKayla, you can come down here too, honey.

My name is Boo Balkan Foster.

I am Hickory Apache and adopted Macaw.

I have been working for Seattle Public Schools for over 20 years.

First at American Indian Heritage School, then at Middle College and most recently I am now back at Title VII.

Starting second semester of last year I was hired to be the Shikachi teacher that is located at Chief Sealth International that also serves Denny International.

Shakachib, I'm going to teach you how to say it real quick, it's Shah, S-H, Shah, say it with me.

Ka-chib with a B, chib.

Put it all together, Shakachib.

Shikachib is a southern Lushootseed word that means raising of hands.

This name was gifted to us through partnership working with the Muckleshoot Indian tribe.

Muckleshoot and Native education worked together to gift us this name and it means to raise hands.

We raise our hands as nonverbal expression to say good morning, hello or to offer respect.

And I loved the idea of raising hands for all those things and when I was gifted and blessed enough to get this position I decided that that was going to kind of anchor my work and we use it as a metaphor in our class and I think of my challenge every day is to raise my students up.

and that takes a variety of forms whatever they need.

And it's been wonderful, I've only been there for a semester but to see my students buy into that and together we're raising each other up and supporting each other.

Sometimes it's a simple thing making somebody a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to me going to IEP meetings, discipline meetings or making sure students are safe or perhaps helping with college entrance essays.

So it takes a lot of forms and I'm humbled to do this work.

I'm also really lucky that I have a huge support network in native education and also I made a support network through the Bureau of fearless ideas which is a wonderful organization.

Last year we published little chapbooks And the topic that I challenge my students to write about is what lifts you up and it takes a variety of forms.

Students rose to the occasion and last June we hosted a reading in the library to a packed house.

We packed that Chief Sealth library and it was pretty amazing.

I just want to say publicly that I cannot thank the leadership of my supervisor Gail Morris and Dr. Nyland for their wisdom in putting this classroom together.

I've worked in Seattle schools for 20 years and this is transformational and it's amazing to be part of so I just wanted to say that publicly and also publicly say that I am moved each day by the warmth of the administration at Chief Sealth and the staff.

It's truly been a wonderful partnership and I'm excited to see what transforms over the years.

We have a couple of students tonight that are going to share their readings from those books that I just mentioned but before we do that I would like to introduce you to my instructional assistant Ben Hoyrup.

Hello my name is Ben Hoyer, I am from the Ute tribe.

I work at Chief Sealth International High School in the Shikachi class.

We have chosen two of our students to read the stories that they wrote that they had published.

Again the theme is what lifts you up.

Okay my name is Morgan Blackton, I already introduced myself and I want to tell you guys a little story about myself.

So when I was in 8th grade at Denny International Middle School I didn't really care about my grades and you know the average good grade for me was about a C and I was just a bad kid.

I was falling off the wagon and I was also really out of shape too.

I was about 240 pounds and I didn't get the necessary amount of exercise nor did I have a good diet.

I also got suspended at the end of 8th grade year for something that I had done and it was really stupid and I regret it.

And it was a long term suspension so technically I was not supposed to return to school but luckily I did and I appreciate that very much.

And despite how terrible my grades were I passed 8th grade year.

And you know after I learned my little lesson I started doing a variety of programs throughout the summer that surrounded me with positive people.

And I had a great experience throughout the summer.

I went through a diet, lost about 30 pounds.

And I felt like I increased.

My social life increased as well.

And when high school started in my freshman year, my main priority was keeping my grades up.

And that I did.

I stayed above a 3.0 pretty much the whole year.

And I was still out of shape.

So I had to do something about that.

So I decided to join the wrestling team.

Throughout the wrestling team, in the beginning, I was about 220 pounds.

And in the middle of the season, I went down to 195. And at the end of the season, I was 182. I was in the best shape of my life.

And also, I also ended the year with a 3.7 GPA.

And yeah.

And so this story was basically answering a question, who lifts me up?

And my answer is I lift myself up.

Thank you.

This next story I want to preface with Mikayla and I worked in secret on this story.

We kept it hidden from Ms. Boo the whole time.

We wouldn't let her read it until the very day when we unveiled it in front of all the families and all her coworkers and I think that you will see why she was moved.

Hi my name is Mikayla Yellow Bear Eagleheart.

I come from the tribe of Northern Arapaho and Kiowa Apache.

And the topic that I said that lifts me up, I said the person that lifts me up is my teacher Boo.

She fascinates me, inspires me in so many ways to improve myself and to help others.

Boo loves to make sure everyone and everything and everyone is okay.

She gets everyone what we need whether it takes money out of her pocket or her time.

Boo is not like any other teacher in my eyes.

She is a good teacher, she taught me so many things to help me in my life.

She has this big heart for everyone who comes across her path.

She is a kind and warm hearted person that is always eager to help students with their needs.

Before bringing a guest she makes sure everyone is okay with it.

She checks on students to succeed and overcome their adversities.

She has so much pride in herself and her ethnicity.

I always hate being Native American because of the stereotypes that people and other students make fun of me of and now that she came into my life I am very proud of being me and myself as a person every day.

The same way she wants her students to succeed is the same way I want my siblings to succeed.

The same way I look at her is the same way I want my siblings to look up at me.

Every beautiful thing I see in her is what motivates me to be a good, humble, determined, motivated person just like her.

So thank you.

I would like to also say that the name Shikachi is southern Lushootseed and it comes from the Duwamish band here in Seattle.

I just am so proud and looking at all these kids and how amazing they are.

and how well they do in school and with each other and for their communities.

And I know that everyone here is proud.

We also have, if you can raise your hand, the PAC, the Parent Advisory Committee Board.

We have the Parent Advisory Committee Board here and then first staff can you raise your hand.

We have staff here.

Shikachi students can you raise your hand.

I'm very proud you know I hope to see this program move into other schools as well because we know that it's working very well for our students and I'm very honored to have Matt come in and bring his family to sing for us tonight.

And I just you know I'm a little speechless right now because I'm always in awe of how well our students are doing and how great our families are and how much they contribute to their success.

So I'm going to let Jeanine close this out.

I just wanted to say the same thing.

I am so proud of everyone from the youngest to the seniors.

We are so proud of you and you are doing such a great job in your schools and to represent our communities every day.

You are the leaders in our tribal communities today and in the future.

And I lift my hands up to the parents who are all standing here because they They are the rock that their students stand on and they brought them here through Seattle traffic.

So thank you very much and way to go you guys.

Awesome.

Thank you.

you.

So I want to thank our Native American education services manager Gail Morris for this presentation and all the people who participated in recognition of the Native American heritage month.

I understand that Deputy Superintendent Nielsen has some remarks pertaining to this recognition.

Good evening I too want to thank the students and the staff, the support families and the community that is here to support our Native American students.

I have an especially fond place in my heart for our Native American students.

I am a proud graduate of Chief Sealth.

I have done as much as I can to learn about some of the Duwamish and their presence here and we recently honored the Duwamish by recognizing that we live on their ground and I want to honor that tonight as well and the fact that we have the opportunity to serve students and hopefully can do more.

So it's an honor and to be able to hear them and they lifted us up tonight so my thanks to them.

Thank you.

So because we already had our student presentation from the John Stanford students earlier we will now move on to our, what is normally our superintendent comments but tonight is comments from our deputy superintendent.

Back to you.

Good evening again.

So Dr. Nyland is away and I sit here humbly to represent a few important things to all of you that are watching on television as well as to those of you in the audience.

In the spirit of trying to reach a lot of people we have a number of communications to our community, to our board, and to you.

One of them are these superintendent remarks, another is our Friday memo that is posted to the board on Friday and goes public on the following Tuesday.

You can find it also on our website.

So I would refer to you those documents to give you more detailed information.

I would like to briefly share a little bit about our ending the opportunity gaps work.

Highlight a little bit about what's going on around the district and give you a bit about how you can become more involved in our schools.

To begin with I'd like to introduce and have come to the podium one of our fine principals, Dorian Monza from Lawton Elementary and he will be sharing with us a few of the ways that his staff and he are working to work on ending the opportunity gaps.

Thank you.

I would first like to thank the board and Dr. Nyland for inviting my mini MTSS team here tonight to present to you.

I want to share the great work that we are doing at Lawton and the hard work we are putting in in regard to MTSS.

I will be speaking in regard to our goals and beliefs and our philosophy and then I will hand it over to my amazing staff members who had to come up here and share this with me and that is Kerry Wheeler and Jenny Rudisill and I think they are blushing a little bit but they are amazing.

First and foremost This work is grounded in knowing all of our students by name, strength and need and that's basically the cornerstone and the building block for this work and MTSS correlates directly with that.

What we are trying to do, our big goal and our belief is to mainstream all of the great work that we are doing at these schools.

And so our MTSS team correlates with our PLCs.

Our PLCs are working with our BLT.

And our BLT is working with, you guys like all the acronyms, building leadership team, multi-tiered system of support, professional learning communities and our instructional leadership team which is the career ladder teachers.

So we are not all working in silos, we are working together for a singleness of purpose and that is to provide success for all students, each and every single one of our students.

This also correlates with closing the opportunity gap.

and that is in regard to positive learning, positive beliefs, positive relationships and positive partnerships.

This is the heart of our work at Lawton and we are really working on enhancing our MTSS protocols and process so not only can we build capacity at our school but so we can share that with the district and other schools and that can spread in a positive manner.

I had the opportunity this summer to go to Hattie's visible learning conference in Washington DC and I took a couple of things away from that that were really impactful for me.

One of those things was I saw Pedro Noguera speak and he talked about equity in deeper student learning and some of the keys to that were the fact that equity is addressing the needs of all students and equity needs to be the equalizer of opportunity.

That's incredibly important.

In addition to that, Hattie speaks to the fact that the single most important thing that drives student success is collective teacher self-efficacy and that's the belief that we have the impact and we have the power to have the biggest impact on student success within our own building regardless of what's going on outside of school.

And so that's the positive beliefs in our teachers and our school and it's a collective effort.

But perhaps the most important thing is knowing our students by name, strength and need, understanding that we share the responsibility of improving student learning for each student in our school and that relationships matter.

I talk about relationships, relationships, relationships.

Students don't care until they know how much we care and those are the most important things.

I don't want to take too long because I know we have a lot of important things on the docket tonight so I will pass it over to Jenny and Kerry to talk about some of the processes we have in place and the improvements we are putting in place for our MTSS.

But I also want to end by saying that we are doing the work, it is messy and it is hard work but my core philosophy as a principal is do what is right for kids no matter what and we are going to work as hard as we possibly can.

So thank you.

One of the things we started with when what used to be known as the SIT another acronym of the student intervention team and switching to the MTSS is the idea that SIT used to be looked at as a meeting.

A meeting with a family and we want to turn this into a process where the entire staff of a school is elevating the kids we need to elevate.

And so it's not a meeting it's a process and that's what Mr. Manza was talking about with connecting the PLC groups of grade band teams with the BLT with the MTSS so it's all one organization working together.

So to do that we kind of developed a process and I will let Jenny kind of start with what that looks like.

Sure yeah so in light of the philosophy that Dorian shared with you and that we tried to adhere to as a building at Lawton we spent a lot of time in conversation this fall in our MTSS team really trying to define what MTSS is and what it should look like again as more of a process and a system than a standalone meeting.

We developed a document that kind of defines that process and outlines three basic phases for the MTSS.

The first in which as we get to know students again building upon the relationships that we are all establishing with students in our building we are identifying concerns.

And when students are of concern are identified the first step in this MTSS process is to look to the expertise in the building and inventory that and really within our grade level team meetings and in our PLC work we are conferring with our colleagues to try to brainstorm some tier one intervention and supports to address those concerns as a first phase.

Part of that tier one support was something that was identified with teachers was knowing what interventions they can put in place in the classroom so the teacher is not feeling like they are a lone island to support that child.

So we developed kind of a teacher toolkit that talks about organizational strategies, attention strategies.

different supports can be put in place and that is something that our special ed team has been helping develop along with the other expertise that's in the building so we have this working ongoing document of a teacher toolkit that strategizes different tier one interventions.

Another really important element to this is it's not just work going on in the building.

We are really trying to establish a connection between what's going on at home and what's going on at school and make sure that parents and families are very aware of what's happening in the building with their kids.

So at every phase of this process there is very clear and intentional communication with parents as well.

So at that moment of identification of a concern you know the general teachers are talking with the parents and here's what we are seeing.

When strategies and accommodations and modifications at the tier 1 level are chosen again that's being communicated to parents so they know what that's looking at, what's being tried as a strategy and and you know whether progress is being made or not.

The tier 1 interventions and strategies once those have been established they are being then consistently implemented across the building in all different facets for a consistent amount of time.

So that and data is collected I should say over that period of time and so whether it's three weeks or six weeks there's clear data that's being collected.

Again that data is being shared with parents so they understand the road of progress and If after that established period of time adequate progress has not been made or the student has not grown in the manner which we hope at that point is when a more focused MTSS meeting might happen where we bring in different people in the building in areas of expertise that are relevant to that child's needs.

We invite parents to come on board.

and we initiate the process to discuss tier 2 supports.

The hope is not only to elevate all students and for all of us to have a knowledge of all the students that are in our building.

The other hope is that the SIT meeting was kind of a gatekeeping process for special ed and we are trying to take that not be a gate process for special ed.

That special ed is the last resort and that we want to give all the students every opportunity to succeed in the general ed environment before we go down a route of special education.

So hopefully with this process it's no longer a gatekeeping process.

It's also educating you know teachers and then building on tier 1 supports which aren't just beneficial to you know children in need.

These are you know strategies and accommodations and modification supports that benefit all children.

So it's really a process that I think is going to build up and support you know the entire student body along with those students of concern.

Thank you we appreciate it.

It's always best to hear from the practitioners so thank you for braving traffic and coming and helping us understand what happens in our wonderful schools.

I'm going to abbreviate my comments just because of time so I'd like to hit on a little bit of good news and there are many good things that go around our district and I think it's worth celebrating those things.

We received schools of distinction award last week at the Puget Sound ESD with 11 of our schools being honored.

They are, and they include BF Day, Broadview Thompson, K-8, Cleveland High School, Hawthorne Elementary, Hazel Wolf K-8, Madrona K-8, Olympic Hills Elementary, Rainier Beach High School, Rainier View Elementary, Viewlands, and West Seattle Elementary.

Nine of those schools are repeat recipients.

You can see some of the others on the wall back there.

This is not an easy award to receive.

And I would like to honor those and make sure that those watching and those here understand how hard those staff members work to help our students be successful.

The other thing I would like to highlight is for those of you that read the Puget Sound Business Journal.

It evaluated the 135 elementary schools of the Lake Washington, Bellevue, Mercer Island, Issaquah, Bainbridge Island, and Seattle school districts.

So all of the 135 and they looked at student performance in context of the diversity of the students and the performance of those same students.

Oftentimes schools are rated in performance only by a singular test score and it doesn't look at other factors that contribute to the overall perspective of how well those schools are doing.

So again those are all very good school districts and represent a lot of very good education across the Puget Sound Basin.

So of the 135 we received an inordinate number of recognitions and of the top 10 of the 135, six of them are from Seattle.

The number one school of all 135 is Olympic Hills.

Included also in there are Kimball, Van Asselt, Maple, Wing Luke and Rainier View.

So we want to thank again the staffs of those schools, all of our schools for what they do to educate our students.

Just a brief advertisement promoting the Seattle Public Schools.

It always warms my heart when we see data like this and we can share with our public how well their resources are being used to improve education for all of our kids.

We have some opportunities coming up, some tonight I believe depending upon the board agenda.

Some issues that may be delayed based on some absences of members so I don't want to get ahead of the board agenda.

Nevertheless the boundary issue of course is a very large and somewhat disconcerting exercise when we look at growth.

Now the good news is we have growth.

I worked here once before where we had population decline and in spite of the pressure that growth may feel like to all of us and the difficulty that boundary changes create and they certainly do and we appreciate the difficulties this puts families and kids in in terms of where they will be next year and in the future.

Growth is a far better thing than having to look at what do we do in decline.

That said, I want to thank all of the public who have responded to the many many community forums providing feedback, offering ideas about how we can make this work best for our families and students.

So on behalf of the superintendent, thank you all.

And I also want to thank the board because this is not an easy exercise as we get into this.

To that end we have been requested by one of our terrific representatives to speak to this issue.

Those of you that sign up for public comment know that when you are an elected official you get a little special dispensation.

I don't think it's much but in this case we allow for elected officials to present to us during superintendents comments.

They do not have to sign up at 8am on a Monday.

So Representative Pollitt thank you for being here and we look forward to you sharing your thoughts with us.

Thank you very much.

I want to thank you for from Superintendent Nyland and Superintendent Nielsen and Dr. Herndon and many others who met with five members of the Seattle legislative delegation yesterday in a very productive meeting.

I'd like to talk about both the Cedar Park boundary adjustment issue and the legislative agenda tonight and these are actually closely intertwined.

What's a boundary adjustment got to do with the legislative agenda?

Let me start with a little history here.

It took a lot of parents and legislators dragging the district to start requesting funds to meet our serious overcrowding and capacity issues several years ago.

Cedar Park was one of the first schools that we spearheaded asking the state for money to rebuild.

When we asked for that funding it was for a school that was expected to have and only has the capacity for 240 to 280 students.

Not 400 students, not 350 students.

And I'm here because I am extremely concerned that after having provided funding from the state to reopen the school we are in danger of opening what I very after great care still call a proposed segregated school.

And I use that word with great caution but that's what we are proposing to do because of the boundary adjustments.

We are talking about a school that would open at 70% free and reduced lunch, very high needs It would be serving the highest poverty census tract in Seattle.

People think that the highest poverty areas in Seattle are south of the Ship Canal.

Indeed, it is in the Lake City area.

And we need to look at this and say we can and have to do better.

We have to look at this and say, We can look at options including an option school but what we should not do is try to open a school that is going to be overcrowded for students who need more supports, more special ed resource location, more capacity, a library in the building, more than three boys toilets.

if we are going to have a high needs population served by this school.

Now we have to look at this in light of the fact that what we are functioning in is a state where the Supreme Court has held the state in contempt for failing to provide not just the funding for teachers to lower class sizes but also the funding to have the physical capacity.

And you should expect that your delegation is committed to fighting for capacity funding and to change the school construction formula which is very important to have on your legislative agenda to understand that the state school construction formula for years and years has penalized Seattle.

not just penalize Seattle, it has been entirely biased against Seattle and school districts that are A, growing and have older schools.

And that is why I like to point out when you go to suburbs and you see brand new spanking schools built with state dollars they look like they are in Florida or California because the construction formula is based around a premise that we should only provide classroom space so there is no interior hallways being built with state dollars.

But our buildings have interior and they have staircases and they go up not out.

So we need to change the formula, and you should expect that we will be providing significant help towards that, or we'll be going to jail.

And deservedly so.

You're welcome to comment.

So it is important that the legislative agenda include close collaboration on capital support.

And at yesterday's meeting, I was very pleased to discuss the potential for getting early money for renovation of John Rogers, where the John Rogers along the Olympic Hills community have done an incredible job stepping up It's truly heartwarming to see how the parents and the teachers and everyone involved in both communities have stepped up to say we want to be serving the high-needs students of this area.

And they've welcomed them and they continue to fight for them and what we need to do is look at a rebuild of the Rogers school which could bring us a 600 plus student school instead of trying to say that we've got a long-term fix at John Rogers.

And finally let me just say that you should also not expect us to fail to provide you with additional transportation funding because that is also inadequate along with the fact that the state is not paying for special education and ELL bilingual education which are part of basic education.

and we are certainly not yet paying for a regional adjustment for MSOC and I encourage you to put that on your agenda as well.

So with that I just want to say we are looking forward on behalf of the five delegation members, Senator Peterson who will be the prime sponsor in the Senate of the Capital school construction formula change and I will do so in the house and Senators Frock, Carlisle and Farrell who met with you yesterday thank you very much.

We look forward to collaborating with you very closely and we think that we can provide you with options so we don't have to do things like saying we are forced into opening a segregated school.

Thank you.

I want to thank Representative Poulet for his help and support in Olympia.

It is not an easy place to be and we appreciate what you do for us and what you do for the state of Washington so thank you very much.

I just want to hit on a couple of other highlights that are coming up that we don't want you to be uninformed about.

There are a number of other things again that will be in the Friday Memo so take a look at that when that comes out.

State of the district next Monday at 5pm at Franklin High School.

There will be an event with Dr. Nyland speaking to the community, hearing from community voices on how we are doing, what we are doing, and why we are doing it.

So book some time to be over there at that event and we'll also have that videotaped so you can watch it later on our public channel television.

Finally I want to thank all of the students that have been here today representing why we are working, what matters, what makes a difference in students lives.

I aspire to be as articulate and as capable as the young wrestler sometime in my life.

And so it's wonderful to hear those kinds of stories.

And I just appreciate being able to be here in a very secondary manner to represent Superintendent Nyland and his work to support our schools, his commitment to all of our students.

And from far across the country he is learning more about early education.

and other important topics he says thank you and expresses his appreciation for all of us and what we do.

And that ends my remarks.

Thank you Deputy Superintendent Nielsen.

So we will now turn to our student comments and again I'd like to welcome Stella Ramos from Nathan Hale High School.

Stella is a senior and a four-year member of ASB holding the 2016-17 president position.

She's been a cheerleader for the past three years, president of both the Native Club and Stress Management Club.

I'd like to know more about that one.

and involved in various other clubs and sports within Nathan Hale.

She is passionate about social justice and is planning on pursuing a career in the social sciences at a four-year university after graduating in June 2017. I will now turn it over to Ms. Ramos and thank her for being with us tonight.

I want to begin by thanking you all for this opportunity.

I just want to talk a little bit about the school I am representing today.

There are many reasons I love attending Nathan Hale and why I enjoy serving the community at Hale.

Every day teachers and students strive for a more inclusive environment.

It's apparent in the clubs we have the activities we host and the mentalities that are taught and promoted.

Working for the students at Hale through ASB is an easy task because of how civil minded and passionate the student body is.

They ask for what they need and as ASB president I simply have to facilitate how to get them there.

The student body at Hale consistently impresses me with its progressive mindset openness spirit and kindness.

It makes my job very easy.

Students are encouraged to find their own thoughts opinions and passions and there truly is a space for everyone.

One thing I admire most about Hale is how much the teachers care about the students.

I see students and teachers at Hale who have friendships eat lunch together and understand each other.

It makes academic success easier and attendance and participation in class better.

The level of trust and mutual respect I see between students and staff is one of the many things that inspires me about Hale.

The staff and student body work together to promote diversity, acceptance and involvement.

I am proud to represent Nathan Hale today and excited and humbled by the invitation to sit with you all.

Thank you.

Thank you again.

So we have now reached the business action items portion of our meeting where I have a request from Board President Patu to delay one of our action items.

So I guess I move that action item number two approval of 2017-18 implementation amendments to 2013-20 growth boundaries plan for student assignment be delayed to the November 16 board meeting.

I second the motion.

Thank you.

I would now ask if Director Patu would like to make any remarks about the delay.

Thank you.

The reason why I had asked to postpone this to our November 16 meeting is because I would not I'm not going to be there.

And also Nyland is not going to be there.

And I I didn't realize that that Director Peters is going to be back but she is back there.

So we figure that when we have missing board directors and also our superintendents not there I would, especially if this is a very important issue, and we needed everyone to weigh in on this, and that's the reason why I thought it'd be a better idea to actually take it into, transfer it to the 16th of November board meeting, so that way everyone would be there to be able to comment on it.

It's a very important issue, and I believe that everyone should all be able to weigh in on this issue before we vote on it.

Thank you Director Patu.

I would also like to add that this is a complex issue.

It touches on so many different aspects of our district's functioning and it affects families in such a profound way that we want to make sure we make the right decisions and so having more time to make the right decisions is what is being presented here.

And so we also are planning to have, if this vote should pass, we are planning to have a work session in which we can take a look at the number of amendments that directors have put forth in response to different issues that have come up and responding to our constituents.

And so that is part of the logic behind asking for just a little bit more time to look at this decision, these many decisions carefully and doing it well.

Thank you.

All right so this is, I'm now asking for, have we done a motion yet?

Okay so now we are on to the roll call.

Oh yes, would anyone else care to comment on this motion to delay this for two weeks?

Oh Director Burke.

I'll bite.

I want to speak to this motion a little bit in terms of what I see as my personal concerns or dissatisfaction with our process which we are partly all on this ride together and what I've heard from the community about their dissatisfaction or concerns with the process.

And so we have a sequence of boundary adjustments that we are looking at between 2013 and 2020. And staff has done yeoman's work trying to navigate which ones we should implement and which ones we should not implement and done a lot of community outreach around that as well.

And now we as the board have also had an opportunity to interact really closely with both with staff and a lot of people in the community to try to understand are there ways to navigate this in a manner that is less disruptive.

And the challenge that I see is we create amendments, we discuss options, we think about alternatives and there is no formal feedback mechanism.

There aren't community meetings by which we can say here is the amended plan.

Rather we have to do it individually as directors at our community meetings and then we can do it jointly as a work session but the level of formal community engagement around the plan that might consider some amendments is not well structured.

So that is one of the reasons why I really believe that the addition of two weeks will help firm up which of those amendments have positive impact and which ones wouldn't and help the community provide us feedback on any unintended consequences.

Director Harris.

It's probably not shocking to anyone that has read my amendment to continue this matter until the student assignment plan is put together and that middle school pathways are identified and so that data for these proposed changes is brought forth in this quote data driven school district I'm in favor of moving it to two weeks and I'm very hopeful we can see some of that data and come up with again collaborative creative solutions and Director Burke's point is well taken.

Taking testimony in two minute snippets on very complex issues is a crazy way to run a railroad and we've got to do better.

There are some great ideas in terms of taking that information in, in terms of community engagement task force etc.

And that work session is important to come to.

Depending on who chairs that meeting they can take testimony from those folks under our policy and or you can fill out index cards and bring them up to the table to the directors.

We hear you, we appreciate your feedback immensely from your emails and those of you all that suggest solutions and the consequences of those solutions thank you ever so much.

All right does anybody else have any comments?

All right.

Seeing none then I ask Ms. Ritchie for the roll call.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Are you still there?

Betty can you hear us?

Oh there yeah.

Fantastic.

Thank you Betty.

This motion has passed unanimously.

All right.

So we will now move on to the consent agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move passage of the consent agenda.

I second.

All right.

Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

All right seeing none those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

All right the consent agenda has passed.

So we are right after 530 and now is perfect time to move on to public testimony.

The rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

I would note that the board does not take public comments on issues related to personnel or individually named staff.

I would also like to note that each speaker has a two-minute speaking time.

When the two minutes have ended please conclude your remarks.

Ms. Ritchie will read off the testimony speakers.

Thank you.

Jada Standing Rock and Guy Oren.

After them will be Kim McCormick and Karen Morton.

Please be prepared to give testimony directly after the others.

Thank you.

Hi I am Jada Standing Rock and I am a junior at Nathan Hale High School.

First I would like to thank the board for this opportunity to share the successes of Nathan Hale's school model.

At Nathan Hale we are a completely inclusive school in all areas and aspects and strive to make sure our students are honorable, skillful, thinking citizens.

We accomplish this in many ways.

First being our credit requirements One of the general Washington State graduation requirements is that you need to have 21 credits.

With the new core 24 requirement Nathan Hill shines as a great role model as you need 23.5 credits.

As a result we prepare our students for all of the challenges beyond high school and college.

Another way that we set students up for success at Nathan Hill is through our AP and honor courses.

Instead of having separate AP and honor classes we integrate both groups of students into the same classes where they can choose whether or not to strive for more challenging materials.

This creates a non-discriminatory learning environment for all types of students and ensures everyone learns all the essentials for the course.

Through this integrated program Nathan Hill builds students up for a lifetime of educational success.

At Nathan Hill not only do we focus on academics we strongly believe in community building.

There are numerous ways that we implement this belief especially through mentorship and ninth grade academies.

Mentorship is a set time for students and teachers to bond and have a safe place together.

This is especially beneficial for freshmen because they are able to integrate into a new environment with a small unit of students and caring caring unit of students and a caring advocate to help them navigate the school.

This also promotes positive relationships between staff and students which helps prevent harmful or dangerous activities and also punitive punishments such as suspensions.

Furthermore 9th and 10th grade academies are another system that we implement to make our students and teachers feel safer and more connected within the school.

Students are placed into random groups of students their freshman year.

These groups have the same health science language arts and world history teachers together throughout their 9th and 10th grade years and allow the students to better assimilate into high school environment.

We have also set times during the week called support where students can also go to the teachers and get extra help they need to various schoolwork.

At Nathan Hill we have students of numerous races, ethnicities, genders and sexualities involved in numerous clubs, sports and other extracurriculars.

Please conclude your remarks.

What?

Can you please conclude your remarks.

Okay.

Through Nathan Hale's unique school system we are able to increase educational opportunities for students while setting them up for success in a safe and inclusive environment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi I am Guy and I am also a student at Nathan Hale.

And I would like to thank the board and Jada for your remarks.

With the new core 24 requirements the school district must undergo significant curriculum restructuring.

That is where the Nathan Hale model shines.

At Nathan Hale we have consistently one of the highest graduation rates of any high school in the district.

Our classes are completely integrated in all ways including race, gender and mental and physical disabilities.

Our school district right now has the fifth highest level of racial inequality in the nation.

With these new district reforms we have the unique ability to close this gap.

Currently separate AP, IB and honors classes reinforce the existing socioeconomic and racial inequalities.

by passively encouraging white affluent students to join them and discouraging students of color.

By applying the Nathan Hale model we can fully integrate these classes and lead to decrease this gap.

Right now our school district suspends male students of color disproportionately and even imprisons them in juvenile detention programs.

We must stop the nonviolent suspensions and end this abhorrent violation of the 8th Amendment.

At Nathan Hale we have a model based off staff to student connections and developing positive relationships between students and staff through programs such as mentorship and support.

If we scrap the inclusive and positive system at Nathan Hale we will worsen our district's current inequality and violate Title IX of the educational amendments of 1972. Right now we have no time to go backwards and scrap this model.

Let's instead use what we have learned at Nathan Hale to create dynamic integrated curriculums that promote a wholesome equitable education throughout our school district.

Thank you.

Hello my name is Kim McCormick and I'm a proud Nathan Hale parent but anyway.

I'm also the Northeast rep for the capacity management task force.

I would like to thank the board for your thoughtful amendments to the growth boundaries plan.

I would also like to thank Representative Pellett and the Seattle delegation for their continued advocacy for our students and their families.

I support amendments 5A and 6A which would place an option school at Cedar Park.

This would allow Olympic Hills to move intact into their new building and would prevent a cascade of geo splits throughout our north end schools.

An option school is the best fit for Cedar Park.

The race and equity analysis showed that no matter how the boundaries are drawn an attendance area school at Cedar Park will be a high poverty school.

A capped enrollment is needed at Cedar Park.

With its eight portables the Cedar Park site is maxed out and cannot be expanded to accommodate growth.

The Cedar Park building is substandard.

It would be much more equitable to implement Cedar Park as an enrollment option rather than an assignment.

With the Jane Addams Middle School service area as its transportation area Cedar Park would relieve enrollment pressures at multiple schools including John Rogers.

I do not support amendments 5B and 6B as they would implement boundary changes that would segregate northeast schools and would result in split siblings throughout the north end.

If amendments 5B and 6B are approved I doubt that Cedar Park would ever become an option school.

Olympic Hills would gain portions of the Olympic View and Sacajawea attendance areas and this would likely necessitate the continued assignment of the slice and other areas to Cedar Park.

Please work with community members towards the implementation of an option school with equitable access at Cedar Park.

Please support our attendance area schools by implementing the least disruptive plan possible and approve amendments 5A and 6A.

Thank you very much.

Next is Karen Morton followed by Andrea Baumgarten, Anne Hillman and Phillip Chung.

Hello, I'm Karen Morton.

I want to cede my speaking time to my neighbor, Daniel Vaughn.

Hi I'm Daniel Vaughn I live at 6524 4th Avenue Northwest.

I'm speaking on behalf of the families in section 126 a two by three block sliver of the West Woodland area scheduled to shift to Whittier next year only now it's being considered for grandfathering.

Although we are grateful for your responsiveness to our concerns thus far we still cannot understand your rationale for removing our neighborhood from West Woodland.

We sent you a letter about this on Monday morning.

Our concerns are safety, walkability and stress.

Safety.

Our children now cross four or five streets walking to school.

The one arterial they cross is narrow with two crosswalks and good pedestrian visibility.

Our children walking to Whittier will cross 15 to 20 streets.

One of these 8th Avenue Northwest is basically a drag strip between 65th and 80th with terrible pedestrian visibility and no controlled intersections.

Crossing 8th Avenue in dark rainy rush hour traffic is dangerous for adults and inconceivable for unaccompanied kids.

Switching 126 to Whittier increases children's walking distance by almost half a mile.

Meanwhile much of the western part of the West Woodland area would be less impacted by moving to Whittier including a section larger than 126 that is actually closer to Whittier than West Woodland.

Redirecting 126 seems arbitrary and unfair.

Stress on families.

West Woodland is such an important part of our lives and grandfathering is still an eviction notice.

Furthermore our currently enrolled children will be split up from their friends at middle school And younger siblings not yet enrolled will be sent to a different school.

This will impose a time and financial burden requiring rearranged work schedules and additional childcare.

We therefore propose a revision to amendment 3. Keep section 126 assigned to West Woodland.

Please allow our children to keep walking safely to school.

Let them attend school with their siblings.

Let them go to middle school with their classmates.

Keep our community intact.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Andrea Baumgarten and I am a teacher at Olympic Hills at Cedar Park and a member of our school's race and equity team.

Four days ago our race and equity team read the proposed amendments and wanted to make sure our families, especially families in Jackson Park and Little Brook otherwise called the slice had access and an opportunity to weigh in.

The survey that Susie Henderson is holding up also on our race equity team asked families to weigh the four alternatives.

Attendance area school as proposed by enrollment planning staff, amendment 5A, amendment 5B and the motion to postpone until January with the student assignment plan.

The vast majority of our families preferred Amendment 5A, option school.

Families were excited.

Here's one mom, Yardute, who can't be here tonight, to tell you why she feels this way.

Hi, my name is Yar.

My children do go to Cedar Park, and I have three children in that school.

Their names are Dio, Wad, and Baraka.

And we live in the little Brook Park for seven years at least now.

I am here today to say that I have chose for the Cedar Park option with the Olympic Hill.

As a parent, we would like to have a choice at least and have two things at hand to decide.

So I choose that because I would like my children to be together in one place and I have talked to friends that live here in this neighborhood and we both support this idea.

I hope the decision is made and it's to all the parents' favor.

Thank you.

As Yara said our families like parents everywhere want access to great choices.

Please support a solution to Cedar Park that gives some of our city's most marginalized families the same access to great options that exist in other areas of the city.

Directors and Deputy Superintendent.

My name is Anne Hillman.

I have a kindergartner and a 5th grader at Olympic Hills Elementary where I also serve as the PTA president.

I love our wonderful teachers and staff and the diverse community we call home.

I also believe that people truly want to do the right thing and that includes the board as well as district staff.

Last week our PTA board and membership approved the letter I submitted to you.

The amendments were posted after that so we solicited feedback from our PTA and families via email as well as one-on-one conversations.

You've already heard Andrea present this data and despite the diversity you saw that of the choices given there is overwhelming support for 5A and strong objection to 5B and opening Cedar Park as a neighborhood school.

Absolutely no one who responded via email favors Cedar Park as a neighborhood school or amendment 5B.

Splitting up kindergartners from their older elementary age siblings adds an unnecessary burden on the same families who lack transportation or resources who definitely can't divide their time and resources between two schools.

And as we have already previously established Cedar Park simply cannot open as a neighborhood school without creating huge race and equity issues across the entire north end.

Seattle Public Schools stated goals of improving communication and community engagement are difficult for families when language, Internet access, time or resources are barriers.

But our staff and our teachers at Olympic Hills made concerted efforts to reach those families by providing pizza, interpreters and childcare so families could attend the community meetings.

And those families came out in droves.

They provided feedback, many attending multiple meetings, but because nothing ever changed, they felt that their feedback was not heard.

A parent who lives in the slice told me adamantly that he wants his daughter to attend Olympic Hills and not Cedar Park.

When I told him the school board might vote to amend the boundary changes and asked if he would write a letter, he raised up his hands in defeat and scoffed.

It wouldn't matter if we yelled and screamed, he said.

They won't change anything.

They won't realize they made a mistake until it's too late.

So please hear us now.

Our community, our rich and diverse community is unified in our overwhelming support for amendment 5A.

Though not perfect please approve 5A.

Thank you.

After Mr. Chung we will have Douglas Doan, Erica Delavan and Melissa Taylor.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I am a father of two Olympic Hill students.

I was planning to cede my speaking spot tonight to a first-grade father who would be going to Cedar Park but he couldn't make it down here tonight.

Instead I am going to share some of my experiences this summer using the race and equity toolkit.

Director Harris in the last board meeting you and actually several of the other members stated that you were concerned that the toolkit failed and I wanted to share a bit more about the experience.

I was part of a cross team made up of the district enrollment planning, district race and equity team, principals and parents.

We spent about 10 hours over three meetings evaluating 12 different boundary scenarios.

Personally for me I spent a majority of my time just trying to understand the jargon and intricacies of the enrollment process which I am sure we are all inundated with right now.

Not enough time was spent defining what equity means from a boundary perspective.

As an example of how the race and equity analysis broke down is the mitigation process.

For the proposed Cedar Park boundaries there is a section that lists six mitigations.

The most important of these is to fund building improvements to Cedar Park.

Today I got an email from a future Cedar Park parent that illustrates these needs.

These are his words.

In our house we agreed to stay in Cedar Park but can the school district offer to improve the little school?

We need a dedicated library along with some other classrooms for Head Start.

The restrooms are not big enough for the number of students.

This is from a father preparing to keep his daughter at Cedar Park.

I haven't seen anything in these meetings or proposals or amendments with progress on these mitigation plans.

I believe these mitigations are lip service and I don't have any confidence that improvements to the Cedar Park will happen.

Which brings us to where we are today.

I believe amendments 5A and 6A which open Cedar Park as an option school is the best solution for the Cedar Park community.

As an option school families will willingly choose to attend Cedar Park.

With the ability to cap enrollment the school can ensure that there is room for a library and a computer lab and there aren't lines to use the bathroom.

Many believe that an option school creates barriers for underserved families because of the additional process to enroll.

I agree but in this case it makes sense to have Cedar Park as an option school.

Thank you for delaying the amendment for more time.

Please remember that Cedar Park as an attendance area school just doesn't make sense and that an option school gives our community the best choices.

Hello my name is Douglas Tadoan and on behalf of the Green Lake community I would like to take this opportunity to support amendment one that would allow grandfathering at areas 41 and 44 for the current students.

It is the very least you can do to prevent a serious disruption to a very vibrant school community.

But as a resident of change area 44 I also want to say that 41 and 44 really do belong to the Green Lake.

Green Lake is a neighborhood school for the Roosevelt area.

I put together some maps showing the area, how small it is relative to the overall Green Lake attendance area, how it fits in with the Green Lake area and how these changes will split the Roosevelt neighborhood into three different schools.

Remember 41 and 44 were built or put together to address middle school changes not to relieve capacity.

Now with the Eckstein, Hamilton, Eagle Staff, Whitman imbalance going on it does not look like the feeder alignment in the Northeast will happen without drastic outcomes.

I am also in support of amendment number 2. 41 and 44 are now being used to relieve capacity at Green Lake.

And I will agree there is capacity issues at Green Lake.

The school just added a fourth kindergarten class and installed a portable.

A fourth kindergarten class you would think there would be a huge baby boom going on in Green Lake attendance area but the fact is the total number of kindergartners last year dropped seven students.

I repeat it decreased seven students in the overall Green Lake attendance area.

Here are some facts.

Green Lake added 20 kindergartens this year, Stanford kindergarten class dropped by a combined 27 students.

The two option schools have combined capacity for 40 more students.

This year John Stanford will be graduating four 5th grade classes with only three 4th grade classes come behind.

I suggest tabling 41 and 44 to next year, put an amendment to address the John Stanford BF Day geozone relocation and address it next year.

Thank you very much.

Good evening my name is Erica Delvin and I have a fifth grader at Olympic View Elementary.

I would like to thank Directors Burke, Geary and Pinkham for the time and effort they put forth in crafting amendment 6A and to express the support of Olympic View community for these amendments.

As the mom of a fifth grader you may think that my primary concern would be for the middle school assignments but that's not the case.

I am here because I care deeply about the Olympic View elementary community and I have grave concerns about what the boundary implementation plan would do to that community if it is not amended.

With a very minimal grandfathering proposed Olympic View stands to lose fully 50% of its students.

More importantly this disproportionately affects our ELL, FRL and families of color.

These families would have to uproot from the community that has worked very hard to reach out and include them only to have to start over again.

My primary concern however is that the district is not effectively reaching out to these vulnerable populations to let them know about the changes.

Our PTA has made a concerted outreach effort and still we know that many families are unaware of these possible changes.

Even when they are aware many are not able to advocate for their kids to attend the school of their choice for a variety of reasons.

Many of these families don't have access to the Internet at home.

Some parents are not literate in their home language.

status as they are concerned about the status of refugees or immigrants.

They are experiencing unstable housing or domestic violence.

These are the families that need stability.

So please let's make sure that they get it at least at the children's schools.

This work should not fall primarily on volunteer PTA families to reach out and communicate and listen.

We want to work with the district to understand the impact these changes will have and come up with equitable and common sense alternatives.

The strategies used to inform and engage more parents in our OV community can be used with our neighboring schools to communicate the choices parents have and to create an innovative and inclusive option school for Cedar Park by tapping into its local families.

Thank you.

After Ms. Taylor we will have Maureen Keeley, Chris Jackins and Chandra Hampson.

Melissa Taylor parent to Olympic View second grader.

Thank you all for the additional time and energy you have invested so far in understanding community concerns around the grandfathering recommendations.

At Olympic View we hosted a community event put together in less than a week that served both to raise awareness as many families had not seen the recommendations and then also to develop a shared response.

You can see photos here on the back of your sheet.

We had significant turnout and a rapt audience.

This event and events like it are particularly important for families that have challenges accessing information due to connectivity, language or other similar barriers.

As you go into your working session our ask as a community is that you continue to involve us to provide insights beyond what can be seen in a spreadsheet and that you appropriately value the benefit that this school district and its students receive from the tight-knit well-organized parent communities we've built and carefully weigh the impact that not grandfathering will have on that intangible asset.

Olympic View supports amendment 6A.

There were limited speaking spots, lots of people to speak more about grandfathering and so I will turn it over to Leah to cover her topic.

My name is Leah Africa.

I'm here from Emerson Elementary where I've been for six years with three boys.

I'm speaking to the removal of Dr. Drake tonight.

I believe it's imperative that we restore the positive culture at Emerson and regain our focus on supporting students.

Take a breath.

Use this opportunity to come to Emerson, hold a parent meeting with reasonable notice and provide translators.

Listen to the Emerson families.

Listen to current and past teachers.

Listen to affected substitute teachers.

Listen to custodians and lunchroom staff and IAs.

Share their stories.

Listen to the staff that have weathered this storm at Emerson before.

Continue listening to your gut.

It's gotten you where you are now.

You are making the right decisions.

You have the information.

And I understand that the privacy issues must be handled with care and not at the expense of the community.

Madam Chair, excuse me.

Yes.

I have a point of clarification and a rule issue.

This is a personnel issue and I don't think it is appropriate under number seven on the public testimony.

I would like a clarification of that please.

Yes, I would like to ask our general counsel to advise us on this matter please.

Good evening Noel Treat General Counsel.

Yes your current board rules on public testimony do preclude having testimony on personnel matters so issues related to individual staff are not supposed to be part of public testimony but it is up to the board and its discretion as to what exactly those parameters are going to be in any given meeting.

The board rules provide that it's up to the board president to make a determination and That is subject to the rest of the board weighing in as well if they don't agree with the president's determination as to whether a particular testimony is in violation of the rules.

Director Harris did you want to speak to that?

I do.

I don't necessarily agree with this rule let it be said but I do think it should be applied consistently and over the past year we have not allowed any testimony regarding particular personnel issues and I think it's inappropriate and I would ask that it be terminated.

Thank you.

Would anyone else care to weigh in on this particular topic?

I would say that if people who are providing testimony can present their testimony in a way that doesn't identify district staff in a named fashion, speak to building climate, culture, your personal story, I think that can still be really valuable for us and not in violation of our board policies.

General Counsel Treat would that be correct that what was just described by Director Burke?

Yeah I do think the way that Director Burke described it would be testimony that could be allowed and still be consistent with your rule on personnel matters.

All right if there are no objections then I would ask for those guidelines to be followed for any such testimony.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Emerson is in the hands of a strong and capable principal Moore.

Allow Moore to continue bridging the gap that has been created between the staff and between the families.

Allow yourself the time to deal with the mess that has happened.

This is going to get louder and it's going to get messier but our kids are worth it and it's just about our kids.

Thank you for your time.

Good evening my name is Maureen Kiley.

I work at Emerson elementary school as a school counselor in Seattle Public Schools.

Dr. Drake inspired me to leave my tenured position as a counselor.

Excuse me Madam Chair.

Yes I would like to point out we have just said that we cannot name any personnel by name so you have to keep your comments at a different level of specificity.

Thank you.

Our principal inspired me to leave my tenured position as a counselor to join the Emerson community.

I have been involved for decades teaching, counseling students and families from high needs, diverse cultural backgrounds including deaf and hard of hearing students all marginalized by their communities.

I am nationally board certified.

I accepted the position at Emerson because I believed in the vision of our principal.

Our principal informed me that transforming Emerson under her leadership would not be easy.

While she was transparent about the challenges ahead she communicated hope and maintained a positive attitude that it would happen.

Our school team was energetic.

We were solid.

Our systems were organized.

Our teams were formulated.

At our PD on October 14 we were strong.

The Emerson team was ready to move forward and there was a spirit of unified focus and action.

The email in the news about our leader, our principal being put on leave the following Monday was completely unexpected.

I believe the abrupt non-transparent manner.

Madam Chair, excuse me.

Yes.

This is inappropriate.

Yes, we are getting into detail that is not appropriate for comment.

When I went into the available classrooms the students expressed being sad, confused.

Why was the principal not at Emerson?

Inappropriate Madam Chair could you please shut this down.

What parameters shall we provide?

If we are talking about principles and its identification it is completely and utterly inappropriate.

Do I agree with the policy?

Absolutely not.

But I do believe that we ought to apply it consistently.

And I would suggest that our HR department is probably having puppies right now.

Okay so I ask that you take your comments to a different level please and not be specific about matters of personnel.

I am concerned about the most vulnerable constituents of Emerson elementary school and that is our students.

It is time for reconciliation and bringing the Emerson community together.

We have a lot of work to do.

We were all served to lead and serve our scholars.

It is time to build bridges.

Thank you.

I believe next is Chris Jackins.

Sorry Chandra.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on board governance priorities and superintendent's goals.

Please provide data on the performance of school districts which have this process compared to those that don't.

On the intent to construct and the constructability review for Loyal Heights and the value engineering report for Magnolia Elementary.

The projects as proposed will drastically shrink school playgrounds.

Please vote no on these actions.

On approval of amendments to boundaries for student assignments.

Six points.

Number one, current problems are not one-time problems.

Every year the public is being given little scraps of territory to fight over.

Number two, in the previous system once a student was enrolled in a school they were guaranteed the right to stay there.

Under the new system boundaries keep changing and families have to beg for grandfathering to allow their children to remain at their schools.

Number three, the district consciously chose a student assignment plan that it knew would cause racial imbalance.

Number four, the district recommends its racial equity tool for evaluating tiny tweaks to the system while averting its gaze from other problems.

One example the district has refused to reopen the African-American Academy and Indian Heritage High School.

Number five, the district closed a bunch of schools and sold a bunch of schools and now the district says it can't find places to put students.

Really?

Schmitz Park Elementary has zero enrollment because it was just closed.

Number six, the school board should do what it can to help families.

Grandfathering can help.

The board also needs to address past and ongoing errors.

Thank you.

After Ms. Hampson we will have Eden Mack, Yolanda McGee and Melissa Palper.

My name is Chandra Hampson and I cede my time to Daryl Davis.

Good evening my name is Darryl Davis I am an Emerson school teacher, a physical education teacher.

I am a Seattle public school parent.

Two daughters that went through South Shore, what's up Sea Dragons.

And I am here just to I guess speak my piece.

I have been at Emerson 24 years, 25 years and Emerson is home.

And what has been happening to my school not just this year, not just last year.

but for years is kind of what has me up here now.

I wasn't planning on speaking today.

I was planning on doing my laundry and getting something to eat, watch the Cubs play.

But I found myself down here.

I found media in front of my school.

I'm finding myself in blogs being talked about.

And I've never even read a blog before until Monday.

And I don't understand this.

I'm not sure what we're fighting for if we're not fighting for the kids.

And for 25 years at Emerson, that's exactly what I've been doing.

I've got people talking about me like they know me.

And I don't know if it's slander or what the case might be, but we're getting off the issue.

Emerson has been beaten up for quite a long time, quite a long time, neglected.

And I don't know how long y'all been there, but this has been happening for a while.

My trust with downtown, where I'm standing now, I don't have much.

because of the way we have been treated down there.

I am not going to start talking about personnel and all those other things.

Let's talk about the 98118 Emerson elementary, the little school on the hill that most of you probably don't even know where it is.

It was built in 1909. The graduates from Emerson include Fred Hutchinson.

So this school has been around for a while and why folks have been treating us like this I do not know.

We have lacked resources, we have lacked support, period, from downtown.

And this is all I can really, oh that does go quick.

Good evening I am Eden Mack I am the legislative chair for the Seattle Council PTSA and I just really wanted to quickly speak to the district's legislative agenda and then I am going to turn the rest of my time over to a Garfield high school parent that was down further on the list.

As you might imagine PTA shares a very similar agenda to what is being introduced today.

At our statewide legislative assembly a few weekends ago we adopted 10 issues to our short-term platform and the top three social and emotional learning, amply fund basic education, closing the opportunity gap.

There are seven more on there as well but please let us know how we can partner with you in this next upcoming session to help support our shared goals.

My name is Corrine Krabs I am a ninth grader at Garfield High School.

I am here to represent Garfield High School and the newly formed group Garfield Friends of Permanent Teachers.

We have an ongoing situation where students are assigned for classes without teachers assigned to that class.

We are talking about geometry and a health class this year.

Last year it was Spanish and pre-calc.

This year there are 290 students impacted.

290 students sitting around during the classroom hanging out because a sub either hasn't shown up or doesn't have a lesson plan for them.

They hang out, they do their other homework during geometry and health.

These substitute teachers do not like I said have a curriculum.

We are missing the basic element for education.

We need your help at the board level to help at the school level to resolve this situation.

We have already wasted nine weeks.

nine weeks to catch up and we don't even have a resolution in sight.

We would like to see the district stay true to their mission statement which is every student, every classroom, every day.

Thank you.

Hello my name is Yolanda McGee and I am actually the family support worker at Emerson Elementary.

I have been a family support worker for 17 years.

The family support program was started by Dr. Drake Williams in 1988 in conjunction with the mayor, the former SEA president and supporters from the school board as yourself.

with vision and mission to create a welcoming environment, support to students and families and address barriers that would have a negative impact on those students academic success.

Over the past few years the family support worker program has experienced a significant change to our overall FEL program funding.

This allows some building principals a way to opt out of hiring family support workers.

In 2005 we had 51 FSWs that served 71 schools.

Today in 2016 we now have six staff members that are centrally funded and serve six schools.

Emerson levy team did not opt out in hiring a family support worker because they understood the value of family engagement.

Emerson chose me this year under their levy grant plan.

My first couple of weeks at Emerson, I was so excited because family engagement is my passion.

I also have four young adult children, all the way from highly capable to needing help and in between.

So I was that parent that was a PTA president and there with my children and advocating with them throughout the years.

But I noticed that there was some that didn't have that same passion because of the things that happened last year.

It felt like they was carrying on what happened last year over to this year, and they didn't have that same vision to move forward in collaboration, to working together.

I addressed our director, our executive director in the Southeast, and I asked him at the beginning, can we do mediation?

And that mediation never happened before Dr. Drake was removed.

Sorry the principal was removed.

I'm sorry you cannot.

But in this short time school has only been in for two months we have been able to do a lot.

Please conclude your remarks your time is finished.

We have created a space center for families, a welcome environment we have started a new PTO and I just want to say that.

Excuse me can you please honor the two minute that everybody has.

Yes ma'am.

Thank you.

Like one of the ones already said that we have built systems and we want to continue to move forward and working together and bringing you guys on board to help us move forward.

Thank you.

We would appreciate that.

Thank you.

After Ms. Pailthorpe we will have Dustin Cross, Joseph Massimino and Andrea Teichler.

Hi I am Melissa Pailthorpe I am a Washington middle school parent and I came here tonight to speak in support of Director Harris' motion.

Considering the incredible demographic transition that Washington will likely experience under the proposed changes.

and with the reopening of Meany.

Our community and teachers are struggling to understand fully what the impact of the changes will be and while there is strong sentiment that two strong schools emerge from this we need time to plan, we need help and especially we need information.

So since you have given yourselves two more weeks we will take those as well and I will cede the rest of my time to Lisa.

So I am Lisa Levy.

I am a parent in the district.

I'm going to try and make this shorter.

I want to see the students in the school succeed and I also know how the quality of instruction and use of instructional time impacts our students achieving their goals.

Over 300 students at Garfield are without a teacher who is qualified to teach them.

My guess is districtwide that number is in the thousands.

It is clear parents and families are invested in helping solve this problem.

I ask that if and when there is a shortfall in the budget the board continue to offer contingency contracts.

The teacher shortage is real in Washington.

SPS can't eliminate recruiters or early hiring.

If so the district problem of having thousands of students without teachers will increase.

Also schools need a plan such as online courses for when staffing issues arise.

It will happen again.

but hopefully the option of having no instruction at all for an entire quarter won't happen again.

Students of all backgrounds and cultures are affected by this lack of staffing.

The board needs to be able to offer funding for online courses to all students so there is no cost to families otherwise equity becomes an issue and some families will obtain private tutors for their children.

As the district moves ahead with planning and budget allocation I hope that the board will consider increased funding to ensure all students are getting educated and schools can be properly staffed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dustin Cross Emerson Elementary.

I'm here today to address the growth boundaries that Emerson Elementary is facing.

Seattle Public Schools has failed and is failing Emerson.

Our growth boundary occurred on October 17. This was done without any warning or due process.

No reasoning has been given.

Excuse me.

Please we cannot talk about personnel issues.

All right.

Momentum at our school has come to a halt.

I know that many including almost every single person in leadership roles at Emerson is excited about the changes that we are trying to make at our school.

This year our school hosted the school's first ever college and career fair.

Under our principal's leadership and guidance we set up systems and structures for accountability.

I personally have appreciated serving with a principal that was open to feedback.

one who is tracking data and ensure a positive learning culture.

It has been great to serve at a school where my principal has provided training on addressing implicit bias in instruction and how trauma impacts learning and provided training and positive behavior support in classroom management.

All of these things are consistent in the norm at at-risk schools and these things weren't being done previously.

I appreciate the new staff that has been brought in at Emerson.

Most of the new staff are truly amazing teachers who were brought in because we believed in the vision.

The majority have deep Northwest roots with extremely impressive service records with exceptional achievement in turnaround schools and are coming from leadership positions at our former schools.

The other bond we share is that Emerson was our first choice because we believed in the vision.

This has been an extremely uphill battle.

I stand here today because I am asking for the betterment of our city and our community to identify how to provide support in turning around Emerson, provide clear communication to its staff and to close the achievement gap that we are trying to turn this year.

We want our school banner up on that wall.

It's time for Emerson to have our school on that wall.

We as a staff are committed to making that happen and we need your support to make that happen.

I just want to thank the school board for letting us speak about obviously about Emerson.

I work at Emerson and I teach 4-5 split there.

I'm going to give a little bit of a narrative.

I chose to work at Emerson and in a way Emerson chose me.

Motivated by its challenging history, my personal values and the belief that all children should receive the same education that my three girls receive at schools in SPS.

There is an administrator there and she has consistently spread a positive message beginning with our very first interaction last June.

We are going to make history.

We are going to provide an environment where scholars come to school wanting to learn.

and we are going to close the gap.

Those are the words that I heard.

I knew I wanted to be at Emerson before I even left my interview chair but it wasn't all rainbows.

She expressed how difficult the work was going to be and how we didn't have all the answers but if we all work together as a collective we can and will break through.

I'm baffled by those who say that this person lacks leadership.

I have had the opposite experience.

These are just a few of her characteristics that I have personally experienced.

Excuse me please we cannot address personnel issues.

All right well I want to talk about what an amazing person I work for.

and the difference that she has made when I am there.

But I guess we will talk about something else for the last 45 minutes and I will just wing it.

Here tonight is a lot of staff from Emerson.

Staff that sits on both sides of the fence.

Before October 17 the staff was on the same side of the fence.

At least they thought that they were.

I believe that SPS has dropped the ball.

I believe there is a lack of communication and because of that Emerson is starting to I came to Emerson to make a difference and I want to put it on the board's table to fix it.

Thank you.

After Ms. Teichler our last two speakers will be Celestine Bolton and Brittany Gaines.

I too am a teacher at Emerson.

Seattle Public Schools has given Emerson Elementary over 20 year history of not doing right by our students.

Imagine as a parent that the growth boundary changes mean that your soon to be kindergartner will now have to attend Emerson.

Last year the district finally took drastic measures to help Emerson students succeed.

And when it's drastic people are left uncomfortable.

One of the measures taken was to allow teachers to displace themselves and many did.

Our administration has worked diligently this year with all teachers to bring us together as a team.

It's easy to blame individuals but what happened would not have been possible if not for the district failing to do the work of facilitating positive growth at Emerson.

The district needs to take responsibility.

The teachers and staff who come before you today to speak were hired to work towards a single vision.

To close the achievement gap at Emerson Elementary and finally show the world what smart, diverse, vibrant scholars are at Emerson.

Emerson is now very divided and I want to know what support we will be receiving as we continue to hold ourselves as professionals and move forward as a team for our students.

More importantly how will you ensure that this sort of thing never happens again?

Investigations are confidential and the people who are part of that prove their trustworthiness.

Please refrain from referring to personnel matters.

Thank you.

Okay what I want to know is when the support process is not held accountable from the district questions of institutionalized racism will continue to poison SPS.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Celeste Bolton I am a parent of a kindergartner that goes to Emerson.

So I was very excited this is my first child in Seattle Public Schools and you know I came into Emerson with no past knowledge of what went on in the past 20 or however years.

I am actually at the school almost every day I volunteer all the time.

I have also helped with starting the college fair and the PTO, worked with Yolanda McGee, we give kids food every Friday, we give kids over 100 kids uniforms and things like that so Emerson was definitely moving in a positive direction.

I wanted to speak on a personnel matter so when is a good time for that because I have yet to hear from Kelly or Mackie.

It's been two weeks.

I came here to address the situation and you guys are not allowing us to talk.

It's obviously a full house of questions wanting to be answered so I would like to know when is the time because we need to be heard.

There has been no intervention, mediation or anything of the sort and we asked of that before the situation happened and we did not get any support, any help and I hold you guys accountable for that so can you tell me now when can we talk to you guys?

Right, what's at issue is whether we can discuss these things publicly in fairness to any of the people involved.

I'm saying that you guys are not allowing me to speak in privately on the phone, email, or here.

No, privately.

No, I'm going to, oh we'll talk later, we'll talk later.

I see you face to face, it's still nothing, I'm busy.

So when is the time?

If we can't come to the meeting that we're supposed to be getting heard, when is the time?

Because it is going to be continuing to be segregated, it is going to continue to be a negative environment and instead of we could all be tutoring the kids at Emerson right now but we are here dealing about this personnel matter that we can't even address.

Okay absolutely, absolutely needs to be addressed.

Madam Chair.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

Please appreciate that you are elected Directors up here have to follow the law and policy.

I appreciate that I'm asking when can I get the time.

Let me finish my sentence please.

I gave you the respect of letting you speak.

Please appreciate that this goes to the very core of why we are sitting up here.

There are a number of ways to impact the administration of the Seattle Public Schools and your board of directors.

Name one.

You excuse me.

Name one.

You can write us emails.

You can come to community meetings.

I'm not going to yell back and forth with you sir that's inappropriate.

Won't do it.

I'd appreciate a little respect for folks that work very very hard in this building and who have been elected to represent you.

What we're hearing is distressing.

I can assure you that the superintendent and the deputy superintendent, human relations, labor relations, legal etc. are all and the executive director of the executive directors and the executive director of your region have this number one on their scopes.

Can I ask what the name is of the executive that's above the executive of the southeast region?

It's on the internet and his name is Michael Starosky and I'm pretty sure he'd be happy to talk to you out in the lobby.

OK.

Thank you.

It's my pleasure.

Hi.

That was great.

I'm going to try and speak between the lines here.

So my name is Brittany Gaines and I am a parent to a kindergarten at Emerson.

I was disturbed finding that our principal was placed on leave suddenly.

I'm sorry again you cannot speak to these matters publicly.

Okay okay I'm going to cut that.

I know that her main focus for the year, we were talking about the achievement gap were we not?

We were talking about the academic, this is the academic gap.

Okay and to change the unfortunate history that Emerson has had in the past.

There are no answers you could possibly give to comfort the kids at Emerson that have already experienced a great deal of inconsistency from teachers and administrators so early in the year.

Here was a woman that was seen at the beginning of the year and was now gone with no explanation.

Again, please, please refrain from making specific references to personnel matters.

Okay.

She was willing to engage us through family support workers but only some people would come.

Again I'm sorry we cannot continue with this detail at this time on this issue.

Okay I can end it with the Emerson community is making a conscious decision to move forward in excellence and to execute the objectives that our principal gives us for the future success of our students.

I leave you with this.

Our failures does not have to be final.

We have many options to make positive changes for a better future.

Reviewing our past, admitting that injustice still exists, and coming together will help fight for justice and equity for the south end region of our students.

All things are made possible when we zoom in our realities of life and are no longer impaired by the falsity of society.

By taking this step, we open ourselves up for positive cycles to be repeated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right I believe that concludes our public comments for this evening.

So thank you all for coming we will now move on to board comments.

Director Geary.

Hello everybody thank you for coming to the board meeting tonight.

I can tell there is a lot of passion and always it is appreciated up here.

We have rules to follow as Director Harris said but don't feel that we haven't heard you.

We have heard you and Well I will get to that in a moment.

I want to thank Gail Morris and Boo Balkan Foster and our native students coming in and sharing some of their thoughts with us.

That was wonderful.

Stella Ramos who is no longer here our student board member from Nathan Hale and our other Nathan Hale students speaking about their school.

You can, it's always A highlight for us up here to hear our students talk about the love they feel for their school and it always warms my heart most when they talk about an integrated environment where everybody is appreciated for the gifts and strengths that they bring to every classroom.

So I thank you so much and I think Principal Jill Hudson who was here I'm not sure she's here anymore for creating such an environment.

Thank you for that good work.

I know you're very proud of those students.

I could see you thanking them.

So that's wonderful as well.

Congratulations to Laura Tyler our environmental education teacher at South Shore P8.

Good work.

Keep it up.

I'd love to hear about that.

While since our last meeting I attended the Council for great city schools with Director Patu and Brent Jones our chief strategy and partnership officer.

We were joined late by Superintendent Nyland.

The Council of great city schools is an opportunity for us to get together with the other urban school districts.

And it was very exciting to hear how much focus is being given to eliminating the achievement gap and the opportunity for us to share ideas and Brent Jones and Director Patu I hear gave a wonderful presentation and for the rest of the weekend people approached us and thanked them for their presentation because it had been very enlightening and they had shown a lot of passion for the subject so it was great to see how well our ideas are being received across the nation so thank you to them.

During that presentation I got to hear one of the keynote speakers was Sal Khan and he is the gentleman who started the Khan Academy and was a wonderful just just inspirational that he has taken all this time and passion to create a resource for students that can be accessed through the Internet for free.

And the one thing that I learned that I want to share with everybody and I'm sharing with everybody as I go along is that the college board has joined with the Khan Academy so that anybody who takes the PSAT can align it with the Khan Academy and the Khan Academy's website will then give you an individualized study plan for your student to prepare for the SAT.

And so it is free.

We provide the opportunity to take the PSAT.

I just want parents to know that is there.

It is a it is a game changer for kids that don't have the ability to access private study tools for the SAT.

And one of the members at the council had gone on to the Web site and had was really impressed that they told you how much time per subject you should be spending based upon your results on the PSAT so I encourage everybody who has a student taking the PSAT ask them about it and make sure that we are taking advantage of that gift that's being offered to us.

At my community meeting I did get to hear mostly from people speaking as to the boundary issues.

And I want to give a specific shout out to Director Burke on that issue in that I know he spent so much time really talking to the staff and thank you to the staff for taking your time to talk to him.

And he would talk with me, he would talk with the staff, I didn't want to double tag but Thank you Director Burke for all that time and I know you were so busy with work as well and the rest of running the board or you know being a board director.

So I just want to give a special shout out for you and I'm really proud and happy for our the amendments that we put forward.

I'm happy that people are coming forward and giving us their input that they're taking the initiative and organizing their own communities to be able to provide us that feedback quickly because it is flawed in terms of us putting out amendments and then not actually being able to engage with the community fully to vet them to make sure that they are going to solve some of these issues.

And so thank you for that.

The other question I would say is if we do go with the Cedar Park option school I would It's never too soon to start gathering information from your communities about what they want that option school to look like.

What will serve the people in that geo zone so that they have two great schools to choose from.

I want that to be a hard choice for them.

whether they're going to go with their community to Olympic Hills or whether they're going to take advantage of something really cool that speaks to their community and the future that that community sees for itself here in Seattle.

So if you can do that work in those communities and continue to provide us that information I'd appreciate it very much.

As to the Emerson contingency it's very disturbing to hear what has happened within your community.

A lot of us haven't had a lot of chance to get to know what has happened.

We haven't had a lot of chance to vet that within the district.

I know Director Patu is very concerned by it.

And we do need to make sure that within each of our districts that we are being given a heads up when there are big issues.

And whenever a principal, whenever the leader of a school building, when there starts to be shifts with regard to that leadership it affects the whole building.

And I think that it is fair that the director at least of that district be put on notice that there is something happening within their community so that we can take some time to see what resources can be brought to bear on the situation before it gets out of hand.

I so appreciate the passion that the Emerson community brought to us about their school and the hopes they have for the future of their school and I would love to come visit so I will be in touch with somebody I hope somebody will reach out to me I'd love to come see your school.

My next community meeting is Oh gosh I think it's November 12 I forgot to write down the date.

November 12 at the Northeast branch library from 10 to 12. Thank you.

Director Harris.

I'll make mine pretty darn sweet and short.

My huge thanks to Gail and Boo they are both heroes of mine and now you can see why.

working with the community and putting heart and soul into it and it's a heavy lift.

And they are making that lift in the district and getting the recognition and frankly the money I think My first board comment was to look at Superintendent Nyland next to me and ask how we could identify more Native American kids so we get the federal money in order to better serve our youth.

And we talk a lot down here about equity and targeted universalism and a whole lot of other things but you know it's the heart and soul of folks like Boo and Gail that make the difference.

And huge thanks to them.

I would echo the thanks to Principal Wakefield.

Nathan Hale has done great work.

Principal Hudson excuse me.

And it serves as a bit of a roadmap for replication at other high schools.

And I appreciate very much the fact that you are working on the 24 credit issues is one of the planning principles.

One of my big concerns about lending AP and honors classes is making sure that our teachers who are working in stuffed classrooms have the tools to actually differentiate and I'm still waiting for data on that from teaching and learning.

Now I know Chief Sealth blended honors a few years back and we still have yet to see data.

We talk an awful lot about data here but we don't have proofs to go with that.

So most interested in that kind of follow-up.

To Representative You know I'm a huge fan.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate knowing that there are folks down there swinging for the fences on behalf of our Seattle Public Schools and our children and our staff.

$44.5 million is the total today at $100,000 a day fine from the Supreme Court of the state of Washington.

over $1 million has been donated in an effort to defeat justices currently up for election on the state of Washington Supreme Court by no fewer than some of our local luminaries like the Gates and the Allens etc.

And if that doesn't make you worry I'm pretty sure I don't know what would.

If you haven't voted please vote.

Please bother everybody in your family.

Please bother all of your neighbors.

We have to decide as a state here whether or not we're going to buy elections with dark money.

I don't have a community meeting set up and I didn't have one last month and I apologize for that.

because I'm having trouble finding a space.

I can assure you though that I'm working really hard and as are my colleagues given the sheer abundance of emails that we are getting on boundary changes etc.

I said in my little piece about postponing the boundary changes and hoping that we are going to have a whole lot better data in two weeks and who knows.

If the data is really good I might withdraw my motion but don't bet on it.

It really is an honor to sit up here and it really is frustrating to sit up here and to have our hands tied by rules that we don't necessarily agree with.

But please know that and I never can talk for all of my colleagues but on this one I'm going to take a shot at it.

We truly appreciate hearing from you.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

All right Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you and good evening.

First I want to thank Representative Pollitt for coming out here and sharing your concerns as well and I think we seem to be at least in some kind of alignment with what direction our school district needs to go and having your support means a lot.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you.

I also wanted to thank the John Stanford choir.

Thank you for their presentation and their songs and also to Principal Manzo with sharing what he's been doing at his school with the multi-tiered support system.

Congratulations to Lauren Tyler for her EPA award and all the schools of distinction and top elementary schools.

Thank you to Estella Ramos who is our student representative from Nathan Hale high school.

I had the pleasure of meeting her last year during Nathan Hale graduation and Principal Hudson introduced her as the Nathan Hale native club president so I look forward to working with her and they did invite me to come speak at their assembly so we just have to get that rescheduled and I look forward to doing that.

Thank you to Gail Morris and the native students that came out here and in particular to Matt Remley who provided us with the song as the students came in and as it exited.

I am grateful for what they are doing down at Chief Sealth and Denny middle school but it needs to be repeated at other schools because our native students aren't just in the south end they are all over the school district.

And if we can't find the funds to hire the staff as one of our speakers brought up we have to see about opening up schools that again help those students that are at most risk.

The African-American Academy, the American heritage school, how can we get schools that are going to provide those students that are the most underserved that leg up that they need.

Because often what I see when our students are out there if they are the tiny minority they don't feel like they are welcome.

They don't see themselves in the schools.

And having Boo there for the students at Chief Sealth let them know hey I can still be Native, I can be American Indian and still be a good student.

Listen to the story of the student that you know overcame obesity and found someone that believed in him and the other student I forget her name that shared her story.

Once they find someone that believes in them they start believing in themselves and you see the success.

So we need to replicate that.

At all schools or at least as I said the African-American Academy and read opening again or American Indian heritage school which is one thing I'm going to try to push for.

This is Native American heritage month so I wanted to just put that out there that people be aware of that.

And I also want to mention that I am one person that stands with Standing Rock.

I won't go on more further than that but read your newspapers to see what that is in reference to.

All the people that came here to talk and share about the boundary issues, yes we put out these proposals and I want to thank Nate for helping us with drafting some of these, that we didn't want to just go right in and say hey make all these amendments.

We wanted to put options out there.

We wanted to again hear from you because time is short.

And I do agree with we need to postpone this until we get the data.

We need to see how these impacts are going to happen.

To me what is on the docket now for boundary changes won't work.

So changes need to be made and given the extra two weeks hopefully we will get the data that we need to make wise decisions.

Unfortunately I am not sure if there is going to be a right one size fits everyone decision.

There are going to be some sacrifices that may have to be made.

You know just the repercussion that can come from that I've had community members talk about the highly capable cohort as we are exceeding limits at one school do we send those students to another school but how does that look we need to keep those in mind.

Yeah Cedar Park.

I fully right now do support that it become an option school.

And that's things that we'll discuss as we move forward with data.

Remind people I guess as Leslie mentioned vote on November 8. If you don't like the way things are going this country is based upon you sharing your voice and voting.

So make sure you do that.

For myself I am going to have to reschedule my meeting that was for November 19. I may move it to Sunday depending upon what I can find that is available.

The reason for that, I'll be at a black and brown male summit at Highline College that day as well and trying to make both events won't be possible for me.

And I do want to ask the community as well, I'm sorry I wasn't able to make some of the requests for meetings this weekend but keep on asking.

You know my schedule unfortunately fluctuates but I hope I want to again be engaged with the community as much as I can and share your concerns with our staff here.

It's got to be a give and take.

We can't just make decisions here without community input and community be aware that we are taking your input into our staff.

So your voices are being heard.

Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

Okay I'll try to be fairly brief since I know that maybe people are getting a little word weary here.

I want to start with a thanks to the John Stanford choir and it's a huge honor to sit up here and serve the community.

It's sort of a special unique honor to sit in this specific seat because when we have high school guests I get to sit next to them and we can make small talk and idle snide comments during the meeting although that doesn't actually happen.

It was really a privilege to sit with Stella Ramos today and hear what she had to say about the work of Nathan Hale and their values.

I've heard that as well from Jill Hudson and the leadership she provides there.

I want to honor the families, students, staff who presented on behalf of the Native American heritage month.

It's tough as an adult to get up here and get in front of a crowd and cameras.

to do it as a student and to tell stories like that those are spine tingling and eye tearing sort of moments and it's really moving so I really want to appreciate them and thank them for that even if they don't hear it I know they will feel it in spirit.

I want to also thank Representative Paulette for his comments, his willingness to come down here and both share his comments and sit in the audience and listen to us rant and rave.

But his guidance and leadership at the local and the state level is priceless so thank you again for that.

I want to provide a general A note of gratitude to everyone who provided testimony because as Leslie said what she said is true that we do want to hear even if it's things we don't really truly want to hear we need to hear that.

That's the sort of guidance that helps us understand the challenges and some of the polarities that we have to figure out how to unravel in our district to truly make it excellent.

I want to put a couple of pointed comments around the presentation we got from Principal Monza and Ms. Wheeler and Ms. Russo about the work they are doing at Lawton around MTSS.

The district has put a lot of enthusiasm, resources and words behind the MTSS work and what I've heard from staff around the central work that we are doing It was really mirrored in the comments that they made that when we look at the schools that are implementing MTSS at a successful level they have clarity in their goals and their procedures.

They are putting together a toolkit that their educators can use.

They have explicit strategies and there is a consistency in that implementation.

So this is something that I hear from when I talk to people at the schools that are up on the wall.

that I heard echoed in the comments today.

And one other thing that I heard during that testimony that I hadn't heard before that really resonated with me so I want to say it loud and clear.

Transparency in data sharing with families.

I can't stress enough how important it is when we as a district put together a system that involves data that we figure out how to engage families in that.

So we don't end up with something where we've got a black box an educational black box that the families can't can't reach.

It's a really really important piece for me so I just wanted to share that.

Boundaries has been one of my favorite topics for the last few weeks and it's you know the engineering side of me sees it as a very unique challenge sort of a systems challenge and I started with the approach of how can we come up with the best solution possible and I've changed that perspective a little bit to how can we come up with the least worst solution possible.

And we truly do have a situation where there isn't a clear win for everybody.

And so trying to find strategies that we can put in place that balance the capacity and the enrollment of individual buildings with the needs of the whole district and shifting demographics in the city is really tough.

And so I want to also be explicit because I've heard in the past concerns from communities saying do they even know what's going on?

Do people in the district really even know what they're doing?

And I want to say decisively yes.

There's some really wickedly smart people working extremely hard on this and I'm grateful to them for when I have a question I put it out I get some sort of an answer that's like oh that's not an easy question.

I understand now.

And we've created a lot of our own problems with how we structure our boundaries that we have to figure out either how to live with or how to change over time.

And change is disruptive.

I look forward to another two weeks of work on that.

I am extremely grateful to Nate Van Duzer for his support putting together amendments from me and my colleagues helping us kind of negotiate the process and the language.

A couple of things that took place in the last month.

I had the pleasure of visiting the skill center at Rainier Beach High School.

Principal Dan Galsman gave me a tour of their fire sciences, their culinary arts Institute and their aerospace technology center and there is some cool stuff down there.

I've just got to say we have some really neat pockets of amazing in the Seattle Public Schools.

And I really appreciated both what they are doing at the skill center and the opportunities for what else we can have them do.

There is extra capacity, there is extra space, there is extra expertise that we can leverage when we are looking at our CTE programs.

And then the other thing that happened last month that was really fun was a community meeting around Lincoln high school that I had announced at a previous meeting which I was thinking might be an opportunity to get together with a few of my close friends in the community maybe 300 or so people.

And so the original plan for small group discussions in the Lincoln or Cascadia library sort of changed a little bit and we went with a long-term kind of Q&A share your comments format.

I'm grateful to everyone who attended.

I'm grateful for the staff that attended.

Flip Herndon was there, Sherry Cox was there, Michael Tolley was there.

I can't even remember who all was there but Jill Hudson was also there representing the school design advisory team and her role as a principal, planning principal for Lincoln.

So, I heard some very distinct set of, a very distinct set of questions that the community was asking for.

The first one was boundaries and assignment.

Will my kid go to Lincoln?

That seems like a reasonable question and I would like to figure out how we can provide that information to families soon.

The next question was well if I'm there what's going to be there when I arrive?

What is the program going to look like?

That relates to HCC, international or language immersion programs.

AP IB programs.

Excellent questions and we are going to continue to do outreach.

I committed to providing another meeting within the next three months which three months seems like a long time but when you look at boundaries, holidays I think January is probably going to be a really good time frame for the next meeting.

And then in closing I had a community meeting last Saturday where I got some really good feedback from the community on boundaries.

It was largely supportive of the amendment language.

I do not have my next meeting scheduled.

I am targeting December 3 and as soon as that is scheduled I will have it posted on the website.

Thank you again.

All right so that leaves me.

Well like my colleagues I want to thank all of the people who came to speak tonight and I would also especially like to thank the students who came out and shared with us their inspirational stories, their performances and their input.

And I too would also like to thank Representative Jerry Paulette for sharing his perspective and all the work he does.

And there was one point in particular that he brought up that I would want us to be very cognizant of and that is when we talk about economic disparities throughout this district.

It's not located, these disparities are not unique to just one part of our district.

We do have pockets of poverty in different parts of the district and I appreciate him pointing out the fact that we do have areas in the Lake City area where we do have a high percentage of free and reduced lunch students and that has been very much a part of the conversation with the growth boundaries in that area so I appreciate him bringing that to everyone's attention.

I would like to thank my colleagues for all the work that they have been putting on into the issue of finding fair, logical, reasonable solutions to our growing district and boundaries that don't upend families any more than we absolutely have to.

I would also like to reiterate the appreciation of staff for the thought they are putting into it.

It is a difficult, very difficult task and so I appreciate having two more weeks to sort through these different amendments and heads up I have some amendments coming as well, some other ones.

But I look forward to being able to.

do this in a thoughtful manner in which we are not doing any kind of redundant work or work that contradicts each other's efforts.

And I think the two extra weeks will allow us to do that.

As far as my next community meeting I will take a look at the calendar and see what makes sense in terms of the holiday season but I'm hoping to have my next one sometime in November.

To the parents from Garfield that was a very disturbing statistic you gave us as many as 300 students who do not have teachers.

I know this is not a unique experience but that is a large number of students who are being left to their own devices perhaps.

But aside from that we have a responsibility, a very fundamental responsibility to provide teachers, instruction, meaningful engaging classroom experience for our students and if we are failing to do that we are failing in our most crucial task.

I ask everybody who is involved with helping out Garfield specifically and any schools in general who are lacking teachers I ask you to step in and help address this matter as soon as possible and I don't know whether that should be addressed to the executive director for Garfield, whether that goes to HR, I think all of the above.

What can we do to bring in teachers?

I know we do have, there are shortages but we cannot leave these students with nothing to do.

We are failing our students if we do that.

So I know the story is probably more complicated and I would like to know though what the solution is here.

Nine weeks into the school year this is unacceptable.

To those of you who came to speak about Emerson you know as Director Harris has pointed out we are bound by rules and policies but I also want to point out we are also bound by considerations of fairness and due process.

And that is why we have to be very careful about what we say publicly about matters that are being determined.

And that may be sensitive matters and I know parents feel passionate and teachers also of course but we have to be careful about what we say and whether it is appropriate to say certain things in this venue.

So it is a very hard balance to strike allowing people the freedom to say what they want to say but also being fair to all the people involved in the topic they were addressing.

Because this is also about being fair to the people they were not really allowed to identify.

And that's probably about as much as I can say.

So I just want you to know that I appreciate the efforts that people made tonight to come out and testify to us but please understand that our constraints here are not ones of censorship but are ones of trying to do the right thing by everybody involved in these matters.

All right last week was the annual conference for the Washington educators of talented and gifted students.

It is held in Tacoma every year and normally I go but I was unfortunately not able to go last Friday.

But I know that we had representation there from the district.

Dr. Matt Okun from our advanced learning department did a presentation on what our district is doing.

to tackle a problem that districts are having everywhere in the nation and that is how do we identify our underrepresented by and large students of color for gifted education services.

And there's various reasons why that's been a challenge but the district has actually made progress in that realm and he did a presentation about that and I've asked him to make that presentation to the board sometime in the near future.

And so I look forward to everybody sharing that information and learning more about what we can do to support those efforts.

To the comments that were made by the teachers and principal from Lawton Elementary.

I've had the opportunity to visit Lawton a couple of times and I really appreciate the work they are doing there.

I was particularly impressed with the focus that Principal Manzo was saying.

Knowing all our students by name, strength and need.

I think that is an essential approach we need to take with our students.

And this very simple obvious statement which is relationships matter.

Time and again we are hearing that that makes a difference for students and we have had students say that as well.

That when a teacher knows me, if a counselor cares about me, when someone knows whether I am at school or not it makes a difference.

And so these are really basic things that don't need any special name.

They don't even need acronyms like MTSS you know.

EOG it's common sense we need to show every student every single one of our 53,000 students that each one matters and we need to make that very clear.

All right thank you all we are about to take a 10 minute break.

you