School Board Work Session - September 10, 2020

Good afternoon.

This is Director DeWolf.

Thank you for being here.

I am now calling the board special meeting to order at 3.01 p.m.

on this Thursday September 10th 2020. I will be for the most part chairing today's 2020 reopening update work session as chair of the Executive Committee.

And also obviously staff will be will be leading much of our conversation.

And so for the record I will start with roll and we'll begin with Director Hampson.

Here.

Director Harris.

Present.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mack.

Okay.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Present.

Okay.

Thank you.

I would also like to note that the superintendent is present as well as staff who will be presenting as we move through the agenda today.

Just for some housekeeping this meeting is being held remotely consistent with the governor's proclamation prohibiting meetings such as this one from being held in person.

The public is being provided remote access today by phone and through SPS-TV by broadcast and streaming on YouTube.

To facilitate this remote meeting I will ask all participants to ensure you are muted when you are not speaking.

There is not a public comment opportunity today and staff will be working to administer the meeting and may be muting participants to address feedback and ensure we can hear from directors and staff.

I know we have a great discussion ahead of us and so today's reopening update is focused on schedules and attendance.

Chief of Schools and Continuous Improvement Wyeth Jessee will be beginning today's presentation and will be joined by Chief Academic Officer Dr. Diane DeBacker.

Executive Director of College and Career Readiness Dr. Kayla Perkins.

Executive Director of Curriculum Assessment and Instruction Cashel Toner.

Chief Human Resources Officer Dr. Clover Codd.

And Chief Financial Officer JoLynn Berge.

At this moment I will now hand it over to Chief Jessee to begin with her presentation on schedules followed by an opportunity for directors questions and comments before we move into the second topic which will be attendance.

Given we have about an hour and a half today we want to try to keep our sections within about 45 minutes each.

I'm not going to hold us to that but just want to be thoughtful about how we kind of organize our time.

And so now Chief Jessee I will turn it over to you and then just let me know when you'd like me to engage with directors on comments or questions at the right time.

But as of now I'll turn it over to you.

President DeWolf this is Director Mack.

I have arrived.

Thank you Director Mack.

Director Mack joined us at 3 0 4 p.m.

Thank you Director Mack and back to you Chief Jessee.

Thank you Board President DeWolf.

So today for our conversation I'm going to provide an update regarding the schedules as well as to answer the board directors questions that were presented to us.

So I'll probably do that.

as expediently as I possibly can.

So I'll go ahead and kick us off and then at the end I'd love to have questions answers and of course my colleagues are here to help answer the questions and provide additional information as the board would like.

Next please.

So for the presentation we'll be really starting about where are the principles and the values that help guide the creation and guidance for our master schedules or daily schedules for our schools this upcoming 2020-21 school year.

We're talking about some of the things that went in to do some the illustrations as well as the live posts for some of our schools.

Then the review process that was set about or support of those posting of schedules with the assistance of communications Of course we do this work and benefit to our students as well as our families.

And then just briefly some next steps for us as we move forward with managing daily schedules.

Next please.

Through the engagement teams and other engagement with stakeholders we came and developed our values and some principles to guide us.

They're there for us based on these particularly five principals we helped make some key strategic decisions in the development of our schedules that we have for this school year.

And really thinking about as you'll go through this presentation you'll see why we wanted to have more live instruction.

Most certainly supporting social emotional learning instruction and support developing community making sure that we are partnering with our families in remote learning securing time around academic wellness and supports with most certainly small group instruction as well as individual instruction.

And then consistent and daily experiences across all schools as well as multiple methods for instructional methods.

Next please.

Some of the constraints In the context really do matter when we're thinking about the development of a master schedule.

Principals will tell you there it's it's both art and science.

It's got a lot of craft to it.

Some of the science parts most certainly are the instructional hours making sure that we're upholding OSPI's requirements for an average of a thousand instructional hours across the course of the school year because of the two waiver days that's 178 as well as 1,080 hours at our high schools.

We also know that we had contractual agreements with the recent MOA with SEA.

We know that there are things that help inform us around the workday the number of preps early release And as well as the input that staff have that they give the principals who are ultimately responsible for crafting the master schedules.

And then we have connection between schedules and other activities.

We are a school district.

So some of the things that we know that we had to craft was a lunch window.

Our lunch window is from 1115 to 115 daily.

And so all schools can craft and make their lunchtimes within those two hours allowing families to and students to get meals at the select 39 meal sites.

We also within that have other services that we're trying to hold as well as sharing staff.

We share staff across our schools and having consistency of those schedules help assist with that.

We have Skills Center for CTE credits which are a critical part of our graduation requirements as well as Running Start and special education.

So that that those things help impact how we develop the schedule coming forward as well as the own individual context of schools because of the way they've developed.

Master schedules while they are developed year-in every year they also have usually a build-up of multiple years of how they got and developed their schedules as well as just the configuration and adjustments that happen during the school year based on a number of variables such as enrollment or as well as just the skill set or certification of staff to just name a few.

Next slide please.

Flexibility is still maintained.

Teachers for example can pair synchronous with asynchronous instruction for what I would call a quasi-block schedule.

We have schools that elected to do that.

We have also for us is the selection of courses and the sequence of them.

For example at the elementary level we know that we're going to have 16 minutes of math and ELA where schools selects those and places those in addition to rotation of the specialist schedule is something critical and of course staff have input on where those those particular content areas are placed across the grade levels.

Integrated services and support are really critical as we think about how a whole group and small group instruction is designed.

And then the configuration of our Wednesdays is something that was developed through the MOA that BLT's helped craft at each of our 104 schools.

Next slide please.

Also through the MOA process we worked representatives for the district as well as SEA helped to define synchronous and asynchronous instruction.

So we have these posted here.

Something that we published and I know the schools worked to figure these out about how they're going to design that.

And of course meeting the different learning modalities and needs of our students as well as our families and family schedules and something that comes through just in the latter presentation on attendance.

But it really is really important to really recognize that good instruction really is borrowing from both of these particular delivery models even with the designations that let's say for example synchronous there is of course opportunities for asynchronous learning within a particular period or class that we have designed for our students.

And again that is about again meeting the needs of our students as well as your own pedagogical style.

and the lesson itself somewhere between direct instruction or project-based learning if you allow me.

So we're excited to have these common definitions out there so that we can work off that and provide clarity about what we're providing here in Seattle Public Schools this school year.

Next slide please.

This should look familiar to the board directors.

This is the illustrative model that we had put up there providing some guidance of what it looks like.

As any leader would know you need to have common vision.

The common vision allows for folks to do the some of the sense making and again back to contextualizing it for their own situation.

Here it's the differences around is some of the things that we know that are where we're calling class time is in pink.

And there is some independent or asynchronous work in blue underneath this illustration.

Next slide please.

So let's think about what that looks like today.

For example for Maple Elementary this is a live snapshot from the website that Maple posted their schedule.

All 104 schools have turned in and have approved with the input of their staff their schedules.

I think in the course of my career, this is one of the most outstanding turnarounds and teamwork that I've seen around master scheduling.

It's quite impressive.

And it also balances, again, the principles and values that we're trying to uphold.

So for example for our 60 minutes of instruction something that we wanted to make sure that we had for ELA and math and then it can in this particular model you can see how the specialists are early in the morning at 9 to 945 for our 3rd graders at Maple Elementary.

Next slide please.

So I want to show you what it looks like for the 5th graders at Maple Elementary on Wednesdays.

Here we have again a classroom meeting starting in the morning.

We know that we built in some break with the recess.

We have specialists after that along with lunch and recess and then some independent small group work and then our family connection which is something that we're we're we're having across all five days with our elementary elementary schools.

Next slide please.

Here's the illustrative model that we had at the secondary level for our middles and high schoolers.

In this particular illustration this is really about the pairing again as I mentioned earlier around you can see in the blue where it says period 1 lesson with period 1 small group.

That is matched with the period 1 lesson in purple so that after the synchronous lesson there's an opportunity for asynchronous instruction as well as synchronous instruction in a small group format for the students in a particular school.

And then Wednesdays does some of the same matching up through the six periods of small group instruction for most certainly our select students who need that as well as additionally acceleration.

And then we have independent work that's available for other students who are not engaged in the small group.

I think important to note here is also just the check-in for community that would start at this particular model and school that we have here from 9 to 935 on Wednesdays.

You'll see some of the changes and some of the illustrations at the secondary school schedules that are posted coming up.

Next slide please.

Here is the difference.

Instead of the pairing they this particular school would do asynchronous I mean asynchronous lessons in the morning.

having lunch and enrichment activities and then followed with the pairing of a of mostly asynchronous lessons schools had developed.

I think of note here is that there is the periods 1 2 3 4 5 6 and as I mentioned earlier we do share staff.

We do also have district-wide services that helps provide us with an opportunity to have consistent scheduling so that students can not only attend their school but also attend and reach the services that are outside of there such as Skills Center or Running Start.

And then this is something the work that we had done with the high school principals to try to pull us together to provide the consistency and again access to services.

Next slide please.

Here we are Robert Eagle Staff Middle School.

So they decided to pair up both their live instruction as well as the asynchronous lesson here.

So from 9 to 950 is the synchronous lesson and then there would be the break off from 955 to 1045 with for the same period for students to do independent work or small group.

That continues on for the schedule.

So with an A-B schedule so 1 2 3 on Mondays and Thursdays.

Periods 4 5 6 on Tuesdays and Fridays with Wednesdays having their advocate team meetings.

This is a great example of some of the historical things that happen at schools.

That's something they've already had developed to create community and provide advisory as well as the rest of the time allowing for independent reading library time as well as small group and student leadership.

Next slide please.

Here we'll have Garfield as our high school example.

You can see that they have advisory here on Mondays and Thursdays and in all reality it is also on Mondays all the way through Friday.

So all five days they have an advisory as check-ins at Garfield.

And then they have the synchronous lessons in the morning and asynchronous and small group in the afternoon as they elected at Garfield.

Next slide please.

Garfield this is what the Wednesday looks like.

Again advisory happening on all five days.

Here here's where students can check in and have discussions and then the small group some of the support team.

Obviously high schools have a ton of activities as well as student leadership opportunities and it helps of course with the power of engagement and development of our young adults.

Next slide please.

So with that the review process the complexity of the turnaround all the things that I mentioned on the constraints and context as well as the flexibility to provide leaders with the need to check in give some coaching and consultation some different ways not only on the things that are compliance oriented around instructional hours which we do have to review But as also for our Director of Operations and our Director of Schools to have an opportunity to maximize opportunities for our students to learn and of course meet the flexibility and the needs of our families.

Lots of questions came in.

Lots of work so that they can work back with their staff.

They had input whether that's a BLT or their teaching and learning committee we have different names for different constructions of the leadership teams at each of our schools.

But ultimately getting that input so the building principal can work forward and get their schedules done.

Meaning knowing the needs of our families to have a posted schedule so they can manage their own family schedules as well for the upcoming school year.

Again incredible work.

And thank you very much to the communications teams for helping us get those up on the website as illustrated in the previous slides for Maple Robert Eagle Staff and Garfield.

Next slide please.

So the benefit to our students consistency and predictability is something really that we have to accentuate and really embrace especially underneath COVID.

Rituals provide and routine and structure help diminish some of the feelings that students and staff can have around anxiety in these unpredictable times.

And so we want to address that and so we do want to make sure that we have consistency across our schedules.

And we also know that families have students across many schools and something they've asked for.

Flexibility.

We have obviously a diverse student set here different needs different learning modalities and preferences.

Those can are fluid and so we want to make sure that we had an opportunity to not only provide live instruction but asynchronous lessons as well.

An opportunity for students to access the learning on their own independent time whether that's something that they individually for the student prefer or benefit from or something again as I've said that meets the family's schedules or their own needs as well.

I just was fielding an email this afternoon of hey my student really doesn't want to participate in the live instruction could they do the asynchronous only.

And my answer is yes they can do that.

So then we have of course access and opportunity.

That is something that we want to uphold in our equity policy.

And then flexibility in working in partnership with our families.

I know Cashel Toner's on this.

She's usually really elated about the fact that I think and I agree this is some of the shift that we have here in public education is an opportunity to shift away from being the experts but actually being the partners with our families.

and our students as we work day in day out to educating our youth and that our instruction our systems are reflective of the diversity that we have in our community and uphold the values that we have collectively.

Next slide please.

So next steps.

Of course these are unprecedented times.

Kind of borrow the 80-20 rule as much as we plan.

We know that we'll have probably about 20 percent of the things we'll still need to require to shift on.

We know that enrollment is one of those things that we will have to monitor as a move staffing and also just the needs of our students.

And then the last part is just really around the directors of schools and the learning support teams which are cross-departmental folks.

We'll be working directly out of the school sites to make sure that we are effectively using our daily schedules to meet the needs of our students and our families as they are as we have.

And then also just what is our systematic approach to addressing things from anywhere from attendance to the needs for technology as well as our wellness and mental health needs basic needs that we have out there and connecting them to the resources that we have available.

So these are important things to know.

I'm glad to have these schedules posted.

Next slide please.

These are the questions that were asked by directors.

I'm hoping that we were able to get these questions answered in the presentation today.

But again my colleagues stand available.

to help answer any further questions that the board may have at this time.

Next slide please.

Director DeWolf.

Yes Chief Jessee.

Okay.

I'm happy to help facilitate our director questions and comments here.

And let's start with.

backwards from our alphabetical.

We'll start with Director Rivera-Smith.

Hi.

Can you hear me.

Yep.

Sorry I got a lot of fans going in the background.

Thank you for all this.

I am trying to take it all in I and I'm trying to keep my questions regarding attendance separate because I know we're going to go over that later I don't want to overlap too much here.

And I know that well let me ask first are you going to go through the questions here because some of my questions are listed on the screen so I feel like I should just let them get answered there or should I ask now.

Director Rivera-Smith I tried to answer those questions if you want any further information about that.

Like I think one of your questions were teachers engaged in the building of their of their school schedules.

I'm happy to go further wherever you would like to go.

Okay so again are you going to go through these questions after our questions or comments or should I just pull them off the screen.

Director Rivera-Smith I think what he was saying was he incorporated these questions into the presentation.

For example how are teachers engaged in the building of their school schedules.

As an example if you'd like to kind of engage further with them that's what he's asking.

I see sorry about that.

They were technically answered.

I understand.

So then I might have missed that one because how were the teachers can you repeat then how were teachers engaged.

Yes so teachers are engaged in the process directly in the process of developing school schedules every year.

They always give input.

Here's the content I would like to teach.

Here's the courses.

I would like to do partnering some cases at the elementary level.

For example I will only I can be the content expert at my grade level.

That's something that I know that happens at a number of our schools especially during this particular situation.

So the engagement process is there.

There are different levels of engagement based on the decisions that do need to be made formally.

So anywhere from assignments and courses that's additional input and just the sequencing of courses and the partnering those are things that are ongoing and.

the professionals at the school work together so they have that.

But there are things like I said like on Wednesdays the formal formal BLT's every school having a BLT has to formally vote to.

Any more complexity to this conversation is if they were to move from a 6 period day to like a 7 period day that requires a two-third staff vote to make that change.

Those are just some examples of how teachers are engaged but every but every educators at every school we're engaged in the development one way or the other on their on their schedule.

And I hear that your response to the question it's on the next slide actually.

Why do we require the 1 2 3 4 5 6 for high schools versus We have a couple high schools who have already been using the 2 was it 2 4 1 1 3 5 2 4 6. So and I hear your about the consistency we're trying to achieve but what how how how is it hurting us to let schools continue the 2 4 6 1 3 5 schedule.

I'll have Executive Director Perkins ask that.

I think I've heard probably my voice a little bit much.

I'll have him chime in here please.

Yes.

Thank you Chief Jessee.

This is Executive Director Kayla Perkins.

I assume you can hear me.

So in brief we needed to have all high schools follow one pattern so that they could engage in district-wide opportunities.

The most specific example being a skill center.

So Skills Center is a course that requires students to be scheduled in 3 periods.

It currently had we had over 200 students from our district across the district from every high school interested in Skills Center pre-registering.

And so if we implemented a system where in this case Skills Center courses were either going to be periods 1 2 3 or 4 5 6 because again they have to be 3 periods long per state requirements.

We couldn't have some high schools doing 1-2-3 and some high schools doing 1-3-5 because otherwise they'd be in different those periods would happen at different times and students wouldn't be able to engage.

This is actually a constraint that exists pre-COVID.

Schools need to make changes to ensure that students can engage in skill center courses.

During pre-COVID this would be about reserving the whole morning or the whole afternoon because most high schools have 6 periods per day.

So the shift is that now there's there's it's every other day to ensure that we're not having students engage in too many courses in one day.

So ultimately we did need to decide one consistent approach to ensure that students would have access to these district-wide programs and that's where we decided 1 2 3 4 5 6. I will just share that for those who were planning 1 3 5 246 in many cases and we work directly with them to help them figure out how to in some cases move those classes so that that teachers had the the connections with students and the sequencing that they had hoped when they were planning in the Spring.

I hope that helps.

Director Rivera-Smith do you have more questions or can I move to the next Director.

I have one more question.

So I'm looking at the Wednesday schedule you had up I think it was Robert Eagle Staff.

It's not on the screen anymore clearly but.

And I see that so for Wednesday Advocate Team meetings library time etc.

Is Wednesday purely a drop-in time then.

Are we just.

So I'm thinking of kids at home.

I'm thinking of how this really plays out at home for families.

And I see where there's very little structure there.

Is that what that is.

Is it purely drop-in whenever they want in the hours of 9 or 3 and 50.

You know and I I appreciate that question Director Rivera-Smith.

That's the they don't have the exact time.

I think they got they had to get a little creative here in the text box there's a lot of information trying to fit it on the screen.

There is always more work for us to do to make clarity.

We'll go back to them but for this particular reason they will have all students will have to attend the app advocate team meetings.

They they splitter off the students for that.

And then there is small group throughout the day like I had illustrated for Garfield High School.

There are broken out times for those small groups so it's not just drop-in.

It is designed specifically to meet the needs of the students based on the input and assessment information that educators have and the individual stories during the need of students to to have them jump into small group or in other cases to go off and do asynchronous lesson.

But then again that's dependent on the need of the student.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Hi.

Thanks.

Yeah.

I actually spent considerable amount of time over phone and email working through some of the schedules with kind of the last schools to figure out their schedules.

So I don't have questions particularly about this.

My my question that may be related to attendance is how are we.

So I know we have a lot of I don't want to say rigid as a pejorative but People who want to know what to depend on.

Yes no.

Right wrong.

Follow directions.

Do what the teacher says.

That's families and students.

And I'm just I'm so I'm wondering the what is the communication to families about the flexibility that is available to them and how are we making sure that families know that they don't have to you know drive their sanity into the ground trying to make sure their child shows up for everything in the way that it's presented to them.

How are we making sure that they know that they just need to communicate with their teacher that they can access things you know that are recorded later on.

And how are we making sure that teachers are not or have all that information too and are being flexible and students are not being penalized.

I really appreciate that question Director Rankin.

As a former special education teacher myself only because there's so many different needs for our students.

You know each one having very unique learning modalities and again experiences and just interest.

But I would say around that is for us that's the beauty of Strong Start.

Strong Start was an opportunity to not only just initially develop relationships with our students which are absolutely critical getting to know them but then we also have as you and I discussed around the family connection or what OSPI is referring to as the universal screener.

So we know that we have a set of standard questions that all of our educators are asking each one of our students and families to find out just that.

What's going on.

What's your needs.

What are some things that your student may need that's different than is in this schedule.

That time that connection that relationship building should continue on.

That's why we have family connection time built in for younger students and also for our secondary schools to further adjust where needed.

So the educator the teacher.

should be the one that should know that learn that learn more about it.

If they need to adjust as we know students are can change very quickly in their needs.

So that's what should be happening.

I think the last part is too is the teams that's why we have a team approach.

How people come together how the FSW the counselor the school nurse for example the school administrator coming together when there are issues that need flexibility that you're saying.

that may just not might be in the toolbox for that particular teacher for the student.

Okay is is I'm just wondering I guess if it's kind of centrally laid out in messaging to principals and teachers.

For example when we when we in the spring we had the situation where most buildings had the understanding that the grading situation was changing and we were trying to support students and hold harmless but then I would hear of you know students getting penalized for missing a test and a test that we kind of decided shouldn't have even been administered.

And so I just want to be sure that this is really consistently and strongly to you know even students who would be Tier 1 in the social-emotional needs or the typical responses that we just have a general agreement on everybody that you know you participate.

You do what you need to do.

You do what works for your family and we'll still support you and you'll still access education.

Yes.

And you'll hear some of this in the presentation on attendance like you were alluding to.

But I just want to reiterate that again everybody has to do that family connection and get that information.

That that is a requirement.

They must get it done this month.

We are really essentially we have trained on it.

And we've also trained on the ability to to manage the different instructional needs of our students.

And then we have the built-in release time that we were able to negotiate in on Wednesday so that we can continue to train up and adjust.

And then I'll just leave the attendance and I'll I'll I'll tell you a little bit more about the tiered supports as well as the district oversight and how directors of schools and learning support teams come around our flags.

Thanks.

Okay.

Director Mack.

Hi yeah.

Can we go back to the questions around the 1 2 3 or the 1 4 or 2 4 6 schedule decision.

I did hear in the presentation that one of the constraints was considering students running start because I think this This this structure in middle school may not have as much of an impact to students as the high school schedule and that perhaps the shuffling around of when the courses were being taught and which periods they were taught in could be shifted around to accommodate the teachers who felt like having math after lunch is the best structure.

The different reasons why they've needed to have things how they wanted them.

But my question is about the running start students who have to register for those classes that are off campus or at you know specific times and that they would have signed up their schedule to match that and having the shift now with this schedule maybe not matching it and potentially their running start courses being overlapping with their high school courses.

Is how how are we handling that for those students.

Do they have the opportunity to re-juggle their other courses their SPS courses to accommodate and maybe if they were supposed to be in fourth period math they get first period math or whatever.

Are they able to move classes at this point.

And is that happening so that that Running Start students are being accommodated.

Chief.

Chief Jessee it would be helpful if I responded.

Yes please.

Go ahead.

This is Caleb Perkins again.

So two two pieces.

One yes when it was clear that we were going to 1 2 3 4 5 6 it's our understanding that a number of high schools that wanted to make those shifts to match up Running Start courses did so.

But on top of that the good news in connecting with leadership in Seattle Colleges is that the vast majority of courses at all three campuses of the Seattle Colleges where most of our Running Start students are are offering asynchronous options.

And therefore they will be able to accommodate students at a variety of times during the day for the same range of courses.

Okay but but are are we actively supporting students in juggling their schedule.

And I guess that's a question at this point too about I mean we're all overloaded.

Counselors at all the schools are massively overloaded.

And then you know.

how many students are actually showing up etc.

Like the master schedule at high school is already really complicated with matching the right number of students to the teachers to the specific course and the time.

And my question again is are requests to change schedule or courses being accommodated actively at this point or are Or is it what was you know what was designed a few weeks ago or whenever it was set and they're not accommodating course changes.

Are we accommodating course change requests for students.

The short answer is yes.

And there's always again pre-COVID there's no — That's not on schedules.

Oh sorry.

Go ahead go ahead.

It it is because it's about their schedule and whether or not they can change their schedule.

So yes it is.

It's very directly on point.

President DeWolf.

I'm sorry I didn't I didn't quite hear your response Mr. Perkins.

Yeah.

So as it happens even pre-COVID there's a lot of shifting around that happens in the fall related to Running Start because college courses can move around as well.

So that's happening.

Tara McFarland who's part of the College of Peer Readiness team is leading the school counselors with guidance on how to approach that given the additional options we have this year with more asynchronous options.

But it is it is happening actively.

Okay great.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

No no further questions at this point.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yep.

Let's make sure our questions are on topic here.

So Director Hersey up to you.

Hey thank you for the presentation.

A quick question that I have is I've been hearing some rumblings around that some elementary schools are only allotting 30 minutes or like 45 minutes for lunch and that is not enough time for them to get over to a meal site and to get back.

I've heard that some buildings have had workarounds but that the district has been denying one-hour lunches.

Can you give me any feedback or information on that.

Yes Director Hersey.

So that's that's something that we had discussed all summer long about the meal sites and about the distance and the timing.

And so one of the things that we designed and tried to make sure that the locations were within even 45 you know so that you could walk there and back so that basically like a mile and a half.

So we would try to work on the distances to try to accommodate them.

That's why we gave it.

45 45 minutes coupled with the regular teacher work day that Chief Codd can talk about.

So stretching it.

So we got the 45 minutes coupled with the instructional hours Matt.

Coupled with the fact that we were working to make sure the locations of the meal sites were within a reachable zone to try to accommodate the 45 minutes.

If there was something else to have there we can again provide the flexibilities as meals is a basic need and we would want to make sure to accommodate that if somebody initially had that.

And then the last point on that issue because we've talked that deeply into this was about grabbing meals for multiple days too.

Head of Erin who's the head of nutrition has also been working on that as well.

Okay.

Yeah that makes sense to me.

It's just for me from my perspective thinking about our students furthest away from educational justice like you know given in a scenario where we have a student who lives a mile away they're going to take their full 45-minute lunch break to walk to get food and then I'm not really seeing time for them to be able to eat food within that 45 minutes.

Especially when the rain comes like that's going to take longer.

So I'm just really wondering how are we going to get to a place to where we are providing enough time and buildings aren't having to make up.

with breaks and things of that nature.

It's just it's concerning to me that because this seems like a big equity issue on my end and I know that y'all have had detailed conversations about this but we have not.

And I'm just really struggling to see how the district could deny an additional 15 minutes to a school for an hour lunch break so that we can give our kids adequate time to have a lunch break and not necessarily a span of time where they have to walk to get their food and then as soon as they're back they have to hop on a computer and they might not even have necessarily enough time to eat.

So there are just a lot of a lot of problems that could be solved with an additional 15 minutes.

But you know maybe I'm missing something here.

Maybe there's some piece that you know I'm not grasping completely.

So I would love to hear some additional feedback.

Yeah we definitely have the shared we definitely have the shared interest to make sure that students can get their meals in a timely manner and access it.

That is something that's been again on the forefront.

I think the issue does get around some of the constraints and I know perhaps Chief Podesta he's talked about hey if we got to move or be flexible either here either he or Chief Berge can talk about it because I know they've also been shared in those conversations.

Yeah I understand that.

I think that what I would just say in response is that we've done a pretty terrible job in terms of like making sure that all of our families know what resources are available or even how to reach out to them.

So for me that's kind of a moot point.

That doesn't necessarily get to the heart of my question because we can have these conversations on this call all day long but then we still have like half of our kids who are not logging in.

Families that are hitting me up on a daily basis asking me for information as their board director.

And so you know at some phase we need to figure out like okay yes that answer satisfies my question at this moment but there are still thousands of families out there that don't know what they don't know.

Right.

So I'm really just struggling to wrap my head around at what phase are we going to have like a serious conversation about what we can do on our end.

Because obviously there's a communication breakdown somewhere in our system and it needs to be addressed.

This is Chief Operations Officer Brent Podesta.

I would say we are.

Monitoring closely we serve 10,000 students on Tuesday or excuse me on Wednesday a little bit less than that on Tuesday which is more than we had been serving during the summer and late spring.

We have added sites.

We.

are monitoring other ways to deliver meals if the transit back and forth to school sites.

So people are aware and taking care of the service and beyond what they taking advantage of the service beyond what we had done before.

We will monitor that very closely.

And if schedules or other impediments you know become a barrier we will keep looking for ways to limit that.

But so far With the with the schedules and and this week we haven't seen the drop off in demand.

In fact the new sites seem to be serving people well.

Yeah.

So I'm not saying that the sites aren't serving people well.

What I'm saying is is that there is a gap in our system where even though our sites I'm sure are serving people well my big question is for our students who are going to utilize these sites it is an inequity while some students who have the luxury of sitting at home with food in their refrigerators to eat and enjoy a proper lunch break we have students in our system who are utilizing that break often from minute to minute to go and retrieve food.

So what I'm saying is what is exactly someone explain to me why are we denying additional 15 minutes for lunchtime.

What is the instructional hour barrier that cannot be overcome.

Because I'm not.

Frankly just you know to put it bluntly I don't believe that there is a barrier for us to overcome but I'm really trying to understand what am I missing here.

Why are we denying additional 15 minutes for lunch for kids to go get their food.

Hi Director Hersey.

JoLynn Berge here.

So nothing that I'm going to say isn't going to make anyone happier but we did try to reach a longer lunch period for the things for the reasons that you're saying.

And it's far from perfect.

But what we ran up against is we couldn't find enough instructional time to meet the state requirement and at the same time meet the CBA requirements of only having teachers there seven and a half hours.

So those were the constraints that we had to work around which we totally understand aren't are not student-focused.

Right.

And so we tried to expand that time period.

I think that what our expectation is is that as we understand these such situations are arising we would expect that there is some grace for students to be able to use the time that they need to get situated when they get back from lunch.

And so as you know being a teacher it can't be a wide open but We need to understand each student's perspective about their day right.

And however we need to adjust to make it work for those kids we need to make those adjustments to make it work for those kids.

I'll stop there.

No and that's really helpful.

Thank you JoLynn.

Another question that I have is why did it take me asking the same question three times to get an appropriate answer.

You know this is the same runaround that I think a lot of our families when we're talking about us at the top with educational jargon and trying to figure out like what is the real answer to a problem that I think a lot of folks are frustrated by.

So in the future if we could just get down to the meat of it I would really appreciate that.

Thank you.

I have no further questions.

Totally hear you.

You know that I'm we're getting down to the bare bones of the response.

Thank you.

Most definitely.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Thank you Chief Berge.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

Let me ping off of Director Hersey's question.

So have we sent letters to the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent about this exact issue.

This is JoLynn again.

JoLynn Berge again.

Not that I'm aware of about this exact issue.

I do think that there is some ability for us to be have some flexibility.

I mean that's what the OSPI rules about what counts as attendance and participation really are focused on right.

It's it's making sure that students can participate at the level that works for them.

Just like when we know that maybe some kids can't be on in the morning because of either family situation work situation I have to help my younger brother or sister situation.

But there is the autonomous participation that we are counting as attendance and that if students if we have to flex time for students because of those situations we can make those accommodations.

Wyeth would you hopefully agree with that.

No that's that's whether whatever the need is that's where the flexibility has to be there and that'll be covered in the most certainly in the attendance section of it.

Okay.

So if this student is consistently 15 minutes late back into class and has to say I went to get my food aren't we outing those children and students.

And what harm could sending a letter to the state board and the superintendent of public instruction do for this very specific issue.

Two questions.

So we.

I want to be thoughtful that we have a short amount of time.

So please answer quickly.

I'll quickly answer that question.

Yes we could send something to him.

We do talk to OSPI.

Chief Berge and I do talk to OSPI about some things and so we will directly we can directly raise that and we can send a formal letter stating as such about just this conversation.

And aren't we outing our students that have to walk to get to lunch by doing it this way as opposed to adding the 15 minutes in.

The haves and the have-nots.

There's a lot of students just based on the experiences that are shared with me across our schools.

Kids are coming and going for a variety of reasons.

That would happen in any given school day whether that we are in place but given that we're in remote learning it has only increased for just meeting the needs of what's going on for different families for different reasons as well as just the needs for our students.

non-responsive answer but I will pass.

Director Hampson.

Hi.

Yeah I have some follow-on questions to that.

So let me just state that I do have two question areas.

One is connected to what we stated before and I'm going to ask what was just discussed prior.

So I'm going to ask for some clarity about that but I do want to have the chance to ask my second question as well.

So in terms of instructional hours I believe that we have in our resolution directed for there to be advocacy.

I personally have written a letter around advocating with the State Board of Education for waiver of instructional hours in terms of what what it consists of.

I think that there's generally a lot of flexibility.

But I do believe that the district has that directive to provide that they are meeting about it in some way shape or form on the 16th and doing rulemaking.

I don't know all the details of that.

That is on their calendar.

And and I guess I'm still struggling to when I look at at a range of schedules the whether it's our district or other districts building to building and then looking at the information that you provided Chief Jessee and Chief Berge about our instructional hours it looks like we have a little bit of extra time such that we could have that flexibility within buildings to do a full hour.

Is there some aspect of that that's that's due to contract.

the MOU or because I'm just not the math isn't really playing out for me in terms of the of why we can't have that full hour.

Yeah this is this is JoLynn Berge.

We don't I can't get that calculation to work.

So I've been the one running the calculations.

That calculation doesn't work for us.

I've tried because of the instructional hour days that we waived and the strong start.

We didn't have enough time left.

And then the CBA says that we have to teachers can only be on-site or at work seven and a half hours with a 30-minute duty-free lunch.

Okay yeah so I wasn't sure if it was the educator part of the day and I know that there is some piece of it that I mean we do have a recess component built in and I don't know if we're stuck with the day based on that.

I'm not I'm not sure what flexibility there is there but that kind of leads me.

Well we had to put the recess part in to even make it as far as we did.

Say that again.

We had to put the recess recess part in to just make it as far as we did with instructional hours.

Okay well I'll try to pull up the what I was seeing in terms of the.

the time but that was part of why we had put in our resolution the request to advocate or the directive to advocate for more flexibility in instructional hours.

And that kind of goes to my other question which so one that's my expectation that we would be advocating for that as a district.

Two the the other piece of the question is or my question has to do with The way that we communicate the the day the sample day looks to me like what you would want to communicate to as far as expectations for building leaders and teachers.

It's not what and I don't know who this falls to but what we are communicating to families via our website and the expectations we've gotten a tremendous amount of feedback about that.

And when I've tried to go in and reconcile And I'm looking at these you know 60 minutes of math and then you know it takes going into the individual school schedules that you presented and some arrows and and asterisks asterisks that demonstrate that oh that's not 60 minutes of math every day.

That's you know 15 minutes of instruction and then some independent work time.

And it appears incredibly onerous.

And I think That's one thing that we need to really given that we haven't actually reached the 14th yet that we need to restructure how we communicate what expectations are as far as those school schedules because it really is overwhelming to look at.

I can't there's no as a parent I look at that and say there's no way that my child can do spend an hour doing this and an hour doing that you know online live with their teacher.

And that's what it looks like because of how it's presented.

So it's a it's really a poor.

form of communication whereas the individual actual schedules are are better examples.

So I think that's one thing that we need to say that we haven't done well and we can do better in terms of how we communicate that.

I'd like to know because we had discussion as a board about that these decisions the expectation about you know traditionally BLTs have made these decisions.

What's an example of.

of something that when schedules were submitted to central office that was overridden.

One example would be less than a 50-minute instructional synchronous structural period at a secondary level.

So we had there was a couple of schools trying to get underneath 50 minutes of a synchronous instruction instructional period so that we knew that every class had to have two 50-minute synchronous instructional hours.

That's very much mirrors what would happen if we were in in brick-and-mortar.

But it also allows at least twice a week that they have class that has ability to bring the learners the students together.

Okay.

So I think kind of having a better understanding of that from because I think the overall sense that we that I felt since that wasn't really communicated to us that we're going to be checking for compliance in terms of these things that it felt like that decision was being pulled out of the individual building hands and and and that is not I don't think it's not what was stated in your first slide in terms of expectations.

Can you go back to that first slide around the community input.

Please quickly we need to move to the next section.

So the one thing that I want to state really clearly that I that I believe we as a board and as staff and as community need to get closer aligned about is the consistent predictable daily experiences across schools.

I what that meant in the spring and what that means for potentially a full year of remote learning primarily is is very different.

And consistency in my mind has to do with things like making sure that all you know laptop delivery is done in the same way and that there is a consistent set of you know handouts that every student is getting paper instructions as well as access to online instructions.

that they're getting consistent access to tech with its headphones.

There are expectations I think around consistency that that is true versus what the kind of flexibility that is needed.

And I don't think that we're we're necessarily on the same page.

I think we're hearing that as a reason to do certain things is because you know quote unquote we asked for consistency.

And I don't think we're on the same page in terms of what that consistency is.

If anybody would like to respond quickly please we need to move to attendance.

Yeah I'll directly respond to that.

Thank you Director Hampson.

I think one of the things that I hear out of that is a need for a continued conversation.

I'd love to meet with you along with Chief of Communications Carrie Campbell to just have that conversation about getting clear about how we're communicating and where there is the flexibility so that we have that ability to you know for families to understand this so it's not so mucky as you were mentioning.

If you're up for that.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

I'll hold my questions for email because I want to get to attendance.

So I will now turn it back over to Chief Jessee to begin that presentation on.

The second topic which is attendance.

I do have some questions for that section and just want to do a time check.

We are at 4 this is scheduled to go until 430. So Chief Jessee over to you.

Thank you Board President DeWolf.

She's going to move this slide so she'll pull up the slide deck.

There we're going to be discussing three distinct areas regarding attendance.

One is just about the why why why is attendance what what does it do for educators.

How do they use that information.

And then the next one is just around the technical.

I know some of the questions that came from board directors around some of the technical information.

Second second slide please.

Technical information.

So what is constituted attendance.

State Ledge recently was able to revise some of the whack underneath this.

And then also the last part is just about practices.

Educator practices themselves.

What do you do.

What's the response.

I know that was some of the questions that came up from the previous session.

So next slide please.

So for us we want to make sure that we first start building relationships.

Again Strong Start provided an opportunity for us to build those relationships what's going on and then also engaging our families with some information so that we can learn as a district as a staff to what are the needs specifically for the families and the students as we start remote learning an unprecedented event for us for the 2021 school year.

As we take that and we think about one of the key variables or the key pieces of data is attendance.

Having students just up front participate and I'll separate that from engagement is just knowing hey yeah we got you know did they show up.

What were they.

Where did they show up.

What are some patterns that we have going on.

And then additionally using other pieces of information whether that's direct interview survey information or some of our more traditional academic or social emotional learning data points that we may have.

Coupled with this what what are students qualified for.

Are they qualified for EL services special education MKV.

These are really things that are really important and you'll hear that in this presentation because we want to have inclusive environment.

And then also it's reflective of us as adults as a system.

Are we responding to the needs of our students and our families.

We know that we are always underneath continuous improvement and so where where can we continue to learn and adjust and react like the previous conversation around for example for lunches.

Down here for the other pieces are so instead of just in a regular approach of going after students you know what is it truancy it's really about a position of inquiry and support.

In this time or moving forward I think this is again like some of the changes we have around family partnership that should be a radical shift.

I think we should have also another radical shift around just how we handle absences.

Again trying to learn more to meeting the needs of the students and the families.

And then how are we learning from that again and adjusting wherever needed.

So you'll hear that in some of the pieces moving as well in the next slide.

Next.

Please.

Next slide please.

Oh thank you.

So this are some of the things that we do just to how do you what constitutes a tenant.

How do you take it.

Well in this environment it's you know instead of just a student showing up it's also just about daily logins.

Are they logged in.

Are they on Teams.

Did they log into Schoology.

Is there other interactions around Attendance did we get a message did we have an email or a phone call with a with a parent family member student.

And then then some of the new practices you know obviously that started this last spring are around did they participate in a posted assignment or task.

That underneath the new WAC it constitutes a form of attendance.

And so did they get that work done.

It doesn't even have to be done during the traditional bell times but as actually can handle outside of regular school hours as well.

And so we have our educators taking typically attendance through login.

Did they show up.

Did they participate.

But also again is to if they didn't.

They have another opportunity to look in and say oh wow they didn't show up but you know what I did notice that they were able to complete some of the assignments or they participated in that or I just simply had a conversation with a family member about what some of the things they need for their student and they're handling some things at home whether that for that day or for that week or whatever else may be the case again around the flexibility.

Next slide please.

So excused.

So we have an abundance of issues in response to this again unprecedented case of COVID-19.

Lots of things are going on for families here in Seattle Public Schools.

We want to respect the individual situations that we have anywhere from what would be traditionally illness but also a family member illness or condition.

Students' employment or family work schedule.

What are the necessary tools.

Connectivity broadband.

Most of us have had our own experiences of either our phone or a hotspot or our internet not working.

And so we most certainly don't we want to call that an excused absence.

And then other forms of any other circumstances may come up and that is can be handled by the school leader.

Next slide please.

So further attendance is recorded.

We put that into PowerSchool.

That's a traditional source.

We've had to change some of the coding again in response to COVID and some of the things that may happen.

We do have ability within a 48-hour turnaround.

If we have not heard from a student or a family member you know that really does become the trigger for us to say wow that student didn't attend so that would be marked as an absence and then that can be picked up and I'll and I'll tell a little bit later in a couple of slides about what happens out of that.

But again calculation is out of the 178 days.

There is no tardies or truancy truancy for most certainly this first month as we have remote start according to OSPI.

But we will not have tardies for the entire 2021 school year as as we have planned now.

Of course when there is an absence the parent is notified notified that day.

Someone has reached out to them to figure out what's going on.

Again we're in an inquiry cycle and then a tiered support plan because all schools are required to have a tiered support plan specifically not only related to other things but most certainly attendance in this case.

Next slide please.

So we have a

Progress monitoring it's not just the teacher but it is a team approach at the school level.

What's going on.

We want to analyze some of the patterns of the behavior patterns of the attendance.

It may be for the whole whole day maybe partial day maybe some of those particular periods at the secondary level.

We want folks to look at that.

But we also want central office we've dedicated two specific staff members to analyze the attendance data.

So we'll be keeping track of that and working that generating reports pushing that information out as I'll show you in some of the dashboards that are coming up.

And then just ongoing learning support teams.

Again the Director of Schools learning support where where are the allow me issues or some of the things where we see some of the patterns around logging in participation rates.

So that we can go out there and do inquiry with those staff to further better our practices and think about that.

Is that a happening you know what is that isolated to a teacher or classroom school or is that something we have to shift here as a district.

We also have the data tools such as Atlas.

I know it's been documented and presented to the board previous work sessions.

We also have Homeroom which I just discussed last night at the school board meeting.

But one of the key things about those two tools is that we are able to break down into different student groups and then also about the different services programs as well as desegregated data by different program race gender grade level courses of course if you allow me.

Next slide please.

I'd love to show you these tools.

I know this is moving a little quickly.

Happy to send some more slides or again if you would like to have a separate session with us to talk about this I'm happy to do that.

Here on the left you'll see a dashboard attendance dashboard that is in Atlas.

Just this is just a opportunity.

There's other different charts and graphs that we have in Atlas specific to attendance.

This one just gives you a year to year gives you a nice all school district glance.

But you can also get that for your individual school.

And then the one on the right is really more about the practitioner view for homeroom.

Could be just for a particular teacher or grade level broken out for different groups of students to monitor their attendance by a period.

Here is the illustrated in this example on the right.

Next slide please.

This is the last piece.

So our business intelligence team in DOTS is developed a tool for us to have a view within Atlas specific to multiple pieces of data so that we can triangulate information not only for if they are marked as attending but also the login information for teams.

Schoology and we are now helping to work on integrating which will take some time Seesaw.

These tools take some time to develop.

Right now because we have live data we are doing some of our data integrity checks to make sure that the data as it says is actually intended.

Coupled with we have those to enter the data the teachers themselves.

We are doing ongoing training.

It's a new way of taking attendance.

Not in the tool itself at Power School but it is new ways like I was mentioning earlier is just what is asynchronous.

When does that happen.

And you know I'm used to doing parties for example and they're no longer there.

So next up.

I'm sorry next slide please.

Sorry.

School tiered response.

I think Director Rankin was mentioning like so what happens.

Like where do they come together.

What happens when there is absence.

How to come around on this.

So they take the daily attendance.

Say they weren't able to connect with the family or the student within 48 hours that escalates to a team.

The team takes that information.

They may know a story somebody else in the office may have had a.

had a or on that team may have had a phone call may already already understand that should be an excused absence because of the conditions.

Something's going on with the family a work schedule an illness whatever.

So that could already resolve it working in a team approach.

But there may be a need for further assistance whether that's connectivity help safety needs that the team does need to work to address differentiating their approach based on the needs of the family.

and the student and so we are working with all our schools to have that outlined making sure that we do follow up because they may have to you know like I said make a change for the flexibility based on the needs of the family or the student and so forth.

I'll give you one example of why this should be an inquiry based session.

We had a young male student.

knew we gave a knew we gave the family and him a device had it on there and the staff at the school were wondering why.

Why is the student not attending.

Really wanted to figure it out.

Got was able to get an interpreter on the line.

We had the principal and the interpreter and the and the parent and the student all got on the line.

They had a great conversation.

Found out that the student And the parent they were able to figure it out that you needed to actually log in and use the device to attend the class.

It was an awesome opportunity.

The parent was there to reinforce the ability to attend the class.

The staff were able to make some adjustments to meet the family's schedule so that that partnership with the family and adjust the needs.

and partner with our families.

So it was a it was a touching story of how we need to shift.

Again in previous times it'd be like a letter home.

Your student didn't show up and now we're really trying to do the more personal outreach and then also like I said inquiry.

Next next slide please.

So these are some of the questions.

Today again in this presentation I tried to answer the questions that were asked.

If there's any further questions I or my colleagues can help answer them.

Thank you very much.

Board President DeWolf.

Thank you Chief Jessee.

Okay we'll start with Director Hampson and thank you for the presentation.

Thanks.

Yeah I would that I.

asked for data and I appreciate that seeing some of that.

And so I would love to see more of that and I hope that we will be getting regular updates because I think we will have hard decisions to make if we don't see the numbers that we need to in terms of engagement.

And so I think my question about that is when we have a How are we facilitating students connecting through other mechanisms besides their individual teachers if they're not getting online.

If you know their Wi-Fi is out.

They don't have access to a cell phone.

They're a foster student.

How what is the protocol do in that data.

I didn't have a chance to see it went by too fast.

a note for you know did anyone call this student to check in on them.

Meaning since it's not just walking in the door is anyone calling or stopping by or doing anything every single day to make sure that.

I know that we historically would have called.

So but it can't just be the attendance person sometimes it's got to be the counselor.

So is that being tracked in that same way.

Yes Director Hampson and that's thank you for pulling up that slide.

That's that's what this process that's why we want to have it documented.

They do have to document their outreach and their methods.

Homeroom as I was mentioning yesterday I know you and I have had that conversation as well is just you know documentation that who did call where were they at.

One of the things nice about Homeroom that we worked with the MKV team I know it's a long story here but previous You know using Excel spreadsheets is is is something that I'm trying to get rid of it that illness to the system because when we can't share that information and someone like Tyra Williams or Alicia Jessie you know those folks work at MKV and Foster they need to have that information too.

So just only a couple years ago they would just call.

They would have to call the individual teacher and do check-ins as opposed to everybody could have view of putting that information around the case management if you'll allow me.

It's the common term we use just around tracking.

Hey I made the call.

We did this.

And they did qualify for FOSTER or MKB.

What's going on.

So they can have live real information and share it with the school without you know having to create separate spreadsheets or not sharing that information.

That's just one way we have a checks and balance now using these common common devices.

Thank you.

I'll pass to my next board member.

and Director Harris.

So taking that one step further as we know we have a whole ton of schools that don't have social workers or counselors or family support workers.

Are they being given additional resources from central office.

So underneath these conditions we on these teams there is a repurposing of some of the staff that be on these teams to pinpoint directly around attendance because the attendance again is one of the primary flags attached to the other things I Director Hampson could be a connectivity issue.

It could be that they're moved somewhere else so that those teams whether they had FSW or not there is somebody there is at least a team of professionals Nurse for example.

They may if they have a counselor.

They have a principal.

They have other interventionists.

They have yell out yell staff.

Sorry.

They work together as a team and if they need additional assistance that's what those learning support teams are there to provide the expertise that sometimes is required to make those connections for different services including with our CBO's who we so have to partner with on so many of these kind of issues when there is absenteeism and we're trying to resolve things.

Okay and my next question then when we talk about our director team I noticed and I appreciate you sending out the new ledger for which directors oversee which schools or work in partnership with which schools.

The number of schools are not at all equal.

for the directors of schools.

Can you tell us what the reasoning behind that is.

Underneath our strategic plan.

Yep.

Sorry.

Sorry anything else Director Harris.

No.

Go ahead please.

Okay.

Thank you.

So the underneath the strategic plan we called out for our African-American boys and teens as well as our students of color furthest from educational justice.

So using the traditional metrics that are in the STRAP plan and our student population we tiered the supports for those schools that based on the information that's the data that we're using to drive our work drive our outcomes the The KPIs you know those objectives that we have.

That's why we tiered those schools.

So there is for those who who should get more support based on that.

That's why there's less number of schools but the same number or estimation about same number of staff so that the ratio was a lot higher again for those who don't need but a lower ratio for those who do need additional supports.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris.

Director Hersey.

Hey yeah thanks for this.

Again really appreciate all this.

I do have some serious concerns about how are we communicating this information to families.

I don't think that we've heard an adequate answer for that quite yet.

Additionally I have some huge concerns about our ELL communities especially our East African communities and our various you know English language learner students.

How are they or what special systems are we putting in place to centralize or at least try to centralize translation in some way because it is so varied from building to building.

And I believe that that is a big reason why we have so many students falling through our cracks.

So could someone speak to what we are doing to ramp up our translation services and to reach our ELL families.

Hi this is Carrie Campbell Chief Public Affairs Officer.

How is everybody.

So I'm happy to speak to that.

I think first I want to address just the attendance policy and and where the attendance information is posted because that's what we're talking about.

So it's in the FAQ.

It's been communicated out through School Beat.

This translated into our top 5 languages.

And then we're also just in general how are we reaching our EL families.

For example today we're sending a robocall in our top 10 languages specifically focused on food distribution and the EBT.

Tomorrow we also have another robocall going out.

So almost daily we are sending a translated robocall centrally.

I would also say that schools do need to share that information translated with their own school communities because the context might be a little bit different.

Thank you for that update.

You're welcome.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Mack.

Apologies for the slight delay.

My question is around I I really appreciate the extensiveness of which she's explained the systems and there is a robust system of reporting the attendance et cetera.

Appreciate learning that and that that's all in place.

What I'm curious to understand is how the attendance and enrollment and also the engagement dovetail in terms of when for enrollment numbers to be reported to the state they're based on attendance on a specific day.

So the 4-day attendance is the tip there's a there's typically a 4-day and then October 1 et cetera.

So there's a typical process by here's the day you take attendance and that's your enrollment.

I'm curious to know how we're going to be managing in the current environment with so many students not engaging yet or we don't you know we don't we they're they're likely our students just we haven't you know they're how are we going to be taking that how are we going to be getting that data in the most accurate way.

Did you want me to answer or you want to.

You I can go go ahead why don't you go and then if there's anything else I can add to it.

Okay.

So JoLynn Berge here.

So 4th day count in September is the count date for enrollment.

We would need to see some evidence that they are attending that day.

Right.

And we're going to have the additional 48 hours after to make sure that we see whether we check on asynchronous activity.

And then we'll have time to say whether or not that 4th day count for September is they were present or not present.

And then in October is the first school day of the of the month.

It's the same thing.

So I would just say that there remember that we're able to go back and adjust our enrollment counts based on new information or updated information.

So if there's confusion there is time in the system from the state for us to update and correct our enrollment counts.

So hopefully that helps.

Are you going to be sharing out that that 4th day count and when it when it comes.

Can we have that information when it's available.

It'll be our September enrollment count as of a certain date that we report to the state when we make that report I can share it.

And when does that happen.

I can't remember the exact date.

It's like a few a couple weeks later.

It's not.

Okay but it's within.

It's not it's not on day 4 but it's a couple weeks after day 4. But yeah I would appreciate having that information shared so we can see that.

I mean we'll talk about enrollment at the budget session in September as well.

Okay great.

Thank you.

I think I just wanted to tack on to the concerns around engagement and attendance and appreciate any additional activities we are going through to ensure that our students stay enrolled with us and stay engaged.

So thank you.

That's it from me.

Thank you.

Thank you Director.

Thank you Director Mack.

Director Rankin.

Hi.

Thanks for all the info.

I have a.

Concerns similar to this as I did with scheduling which is how are we communicating all of this to families in a way that they can understand and is useful.

And and same for teachers.

I a general theme that we we tend to have is being very inside baseball and there's so much information coming at everybody from so many directions that my concern is that We're not taking time to make sure that we're providing information about this type of thing in ways that that families and teachers are able to absorb and follow.

I mean for families to know to know what penalties might might be or what what they need to be checking on for their student and for teachers you know what we as a system are asking them to track enforce and how.

So I have just I mean.

That's a like a broader concern even than this is just that there's so much information all the time.

How can we really go back to my flowcharts that I talked about yesterday.

How can we really break this stuff down so people kind of know have the need to know the need to know information in a way that doesn't take them you know 45 minutes to sit through and study.

So that's one question.

And related is is Director Hersey asking about and Chief Campbell was talking about translation and that some buildings will need to provide also translated materials and I am concerned about the resources that buildings have for translation that they're you know I see requests and periodically of who do you do you know anybody who can translate this for us at the building level or Well we don't send that translated.

The only information that's translated comes from the district.

So how can we build not just and it's not just about communication.

I'm talking about family engagement which we haven't heard from family engagement related to this.

How are we bringing all those things together to set everyone up for success.

So we I can just initially start off on the part Director Rankin that you're talking about around Staff staff are really critical to educate about these pieces.

This amongst the other things like health protocols the new digital platforms the methodology of some for some folks leading community meetings to you know how do you work and partner with with parents in a more way more productive way.

There's that and a bunch of other things.

The method right now is that we are working with SEA to make sure that the that we are lifting off the protocol here or the or the procedures around the tenants.

Just keep working on the language.

And then additionally putting out more kind of like a cycle right of professional development that we keep cycling back with school leaders and teachers you know on these really critical things that are in the remote learning playbook that we continue to lift them and keep clarity and then we get really direct support for where they can get answers made.

And so that's they when they can understand it and they're lifting it off they they in turn are the best people because they have a relationship with the families and there's a lot more of them.

And that's where the connections and some of the things that that help us system in addition to the things that we like like Chief Campbell was mentioning that we send out or we post on the website which are other pieces that we'll do.

But I'll let I'll let her and Chief Berge finish off.

So this is JoLynn Berge again.

So Wyeth and I have been working on the attendance documentation And we've been working with SEA as well so that we're all on the same page giving the same information.

And really what we're doing is there's a one-pager that we're working on for this is the role of the attendance monitoring team at each school where they have to have a plan about how they monitor attendance and who does what.

A one-pager for the attendance specialist that each school has that reports it up to the central office.

And then a one-pager for teachers at each grade level.

So K-5 K-8 secondary.

So sending that out.

Making sure it's all lined up that it's consistent and then our family communication will be built off of that.

We had done one draft.

There were a lot of questions.

So this is complicated and we know that we have to go back and clear things up and that's what we're in the process of doing.

Carri.

And then this is Carrie Campbell.

I really I really appreciate the questions about the family communication because it is very complicated.

We have committed to making sure that our school leaders and our staff know our approach first and then we will work hand-in-hand with colleagues across the organization to make sure that it is in family-friendly language.

I love the idea of a flowchart.

We've also been helping the Department of Technology create translated explainer videos that are graphic in nature.

And so Director Rankin you and I have worked together for a long time.

I'm also super you know I invite your feedback as we kind of develop those out so that families really know what attendance will look like.

And also this ties directly with the master schedule questions that Director Hampson had.

So more to come but all to say that it will be translated we'll provide it through a variety of different channels so that families know.

And I also just want to sort of touch on the question about school-based communication.

That was not to say that the district office is not fully committed to providing EL supports.

We absolutely are.

It's that oftentimes we're providing sort of broad brushstrokes and that sometimes the context at the school is a little bit different and they can reach out to Michelle Oda's team to get support.

Thank you so much.

Thank you Director Rankin.

All right Director Rivera-Smith you're up.

I have several questions but I'll try to keep it to just the two that I think are most important right now.

I also have some as well.

I'm sorry I'll try to make it faster.

So we were just talking about the communications and I hear that there's information if you go for attendance to the FAQ.

It doesn't look like the FAQ has actually been updated since COVID because it doesn't really say what is attendance.

I think that's a lot of questions that we have right now is what counts as attendance for families.

It talks about what's excused so it doesn't It doesn't refer to like but even in that context of excused there's no reference to the excused due to connectivity excused due to your parents work schedule.

I know I've seen that somewhere.

So I'm really hoping we can get that on the FAQ page because that is a static place where it's not you know sending in e-mails and school meetings like that.

It's great but it's also not the people are going to go to our website put attendance in search bar and they're not going to see anything about COVID-related attendance so.

I'd really request that that gets updated.

Second question is about some students are only going to be able to attend in the evening because they won't have anybody during the day that can realistically help them navigate the online learning.

So our my question is are our synchronous lessons being recorded and if so do we have permission from students to have them recorded in those and posted for other students to see after hours.

Yes there are teachers recording lessons and posting them depending on what the content or the instruction is.

There may be different methods but there are definitely teachers posting live lessons and then that some of those issues that like we were mentioning earlier in different conversations around just the flexibility or needs of the families that we would have that also available.

There are things things whether that's in a 504 or also IEP that also we want to make sure that we do those kind of things for students who are qualified for those services.

Okay so to speak to the permissions to record students do we have have we obtained that or is that something.

I mean I want to make sure that we're not violating any privacy.

We're not requiring students to be to post themselves online.

That's the question.

Sorry.

In the list are they somehow in the recording a synchronous classrooms students are there they're talking they might be in the videos.

How is that not are the students completely out of those lessons that are synchronous recordings.

So we we get permissions for anything that's posted online.

If it's in within the compounds of the video that only that only the students in the class have access to then we would be not in violation.

of the ability for them to share that information because it's not being posted online or it could be accessed by others any more than somebody like in a regular classroom.

I understand.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Rivera-Smith.

My only question excuse me my only question Chief Jessee I had a LGBTQ community meeting on Tuesday and One of the questions I had from a student was around attendance sheets.

And I think another you know there's always opportunities where kids students are going to be either potentially dead name referred to the wrong pronoun.

And you know the stories I heard from Tuesday were just how harmful and problematic it was for these young folks to be either outed in this way or made to feel you know embarrassed because the teacher wasn't utilizing the correct name or pronoun.

The question I got was just around our attendance sheets.

And so A where do those through what system are we are teachers calling out names or what have you or are taking attendance.

And wherever those are the request was if we could add pronouns to those.

So that information goes into.

Thank you for that question and that is a very unfortunate event.

We that information is in PowerSchool and they have a direct workstream on that to change the coding in PowerSchool to change so that there is the fluidity of pronouns for that.

I don't know if Director Chief Berge has something to add but that's it.

Yeah we've been yeah.

Hi this is JoLynn.

reiterating that information and sharing it out with our students about how you go about either getting a name change if you have a preference about changing your name or your pronouns.

And so actually some of that goes through Enroll in Planning.

It comes through PowerSchool and then it comes out on the class rosters.

So that that's how that is handled.

But we are putting together more we're going to put together a simpler and reiterate that information out on our FAQ's and push that back out to everyone.

Okay.

I'll I'll circle back with some other questions from that LGBT community meeting too that are kind of centered around this too and would love to continue following up on this just any way we can make our systems better particularly.

Yeah that sounds good.

Thank you.

Yeah that'd be great.

Thank you.

Happy to talk to you Director DeWolf.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well.

I think this puts us to the end of the presentation and thank you to our staff and thank you to directors for a really really great and thorough discussion today.

And I know we have our meeting next week.

Liza can you remind me what the topic is for next again I cannot remember our.

Yeah.

Next week we are talking about grading.

Grading the universal screener that Chief Jessee mentioned which is just a sort of overall consistent check-in with every student.

It's not a screener sounds like it's a exam.

It's not.

So grading universal screener and priority standards really basic building block academic standards for each grade level for kind of throughout the year.

Awesome.

Okay.

Well I appreciate that.

That meeting is I believe that's on Wednesday.

So thank you for that reminder.

And there being no further business on this agenda for today's meeting this meeting will stand adjourned at 441 p.m.

Thank you everybody.