Seattle Schools Board Special Meeting May 21, 2025

Good afternoon.

We will call the meeting to order momentarily and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

To those online, if you'll be accessing ASL interpretation for this evening's meeting, please use the QR code on the screen to join via Teams for improved viewing options.

the May 21st 2025 board special meeting oh there's a little bit of an echo there right let's try this again the may 21st 2025 board special meeting is called to order at 4 32 p.m we would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the puget sound coast salish people for the record i will call the role vice president briggs here director clark Present.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mizrahi.

Present.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Sarju.

Present.

And this is President Topp.

SO FOR THIS EVENING, WE'RE GOING TO START WITH A BUDGET PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION.

THEN WE WILL HAVE A PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION ABOUT THE INTERIM GUARDRAIL METRICS.

THIS IS FOLLOWING THE INITIAL DISCUSSION WE HAD AT OUR APRIL 23 REGULAR BOARD MEETING.

FOR TONIGHT, WE'RE GOING TO DO COMMENTS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENTLY.

I'M GOING TO ASK DIRECTORS TO TRY TO KEEP THEIR COMMENTS TO TWO MINUTES.

to give everyone an opportunity to speak we're going to start and we're just going to go around the table if we start hitting around four minutes I'm going to ask you to please conclude your remarks and then once we go around once we will see if we need to go around again um so with that being said we're going to just move jump right into our budget presentation uh we're joined here by chief operating officer fred podesta and assistant superintendent of finance dr kurt buttleman there will be an opportunity during the presentation for us to discuss what we've learned from our February 26th community engagement session in this presentation so that was a little bit ago pre the end of the legislative session but here are some of the key themes from that but now I will pass it off to staff to kick us off.

Thank you if we could advance the slides I'd like to go over the agenda briefly.

And as President Topp mentioned, we did want to allow some time for discussion amongst directors about the feedback that you've heard in your budget engagement sessions.

We tried to summarize.

Want to make sure that we understand what you heard and that if anyone wants to kind of expand on that.

We'll, as always, go over kind of where we are in the process.

The legislative session was a particular pivotal variable in our planning this year, so we'll spend some time on how that turned out and how Superintendent Jones will work that into his budget proposal.

And then talk a little bit about the process and how we have some re-engineering and budget processes that we've been talking about for the last couple years.

This year has been a bit of a transitional year because we had many variables going into this year that weren't really fixed.

Transition amongst strategic plan and the legislative session.

We have major bargaining going on with our biggest labor partners.

And we'll talk about that as well.

and then talk about what we see, what staff sees going forward in the long range future and immediate next steps.

So if we could advance the slide again.

you all know that but remind us all the questions that you asked in the engagement session with the public about in your board engagement sessions you really started off with what questions do people have about the budget what are the fact What are the thoughts of the community about how to more actively engage in our budget process?

And we've heard a lot of interest in transparency and better and clearer information.

And what should the board consider?

and we tried to summarize in the next slide if we can go forward to some level what we think that feedback was we'd like um to walk you you all actually really to walk through it and talk a little bit about um does this reflect what you heard are there any particular comments are there was there anything missing um and any guidance you'd like to give staff on how we work this into our planning, into our processes, and our engagement with you all and the public.

So if I could turn it back to you, President Topp.

Sure, I think the transparency theme was particularly strong for me in our engagement session of how we can be better transparent and more upfront, I think, in the budgeting process.

I also heard a lot of clarity on how the feedback will be used by the board staff.

You know, folks are giving their time.

How are we using the information collected?

We'll just go around the circle to see if board directors have anything additional they want to kind of add Director Briggs.

Are we talking about in response to the feedback?

so this is so we all took notes that eve so this was the engagement session on february 26th it was a full board engagement session i think each director took notes i think we've since refined that system um and uh staff are taking helping us take notes we gave those notes to staff to kind of collate and pull out the the major themes that they third so i think the question really here is does is this reflect what you you've heard anything additional you feel like you need to add as we go into the budget conversation

Yeah, I actually missed that engagement.

So I'm relying on my fellow board members to fill in the blanks for that.

So no comments for me.

One of the, not one, but several people asked me, and I think this relates to the transparency theme, that if we were really going to actually do something with the information and if there would be what i'm calling a feedback loop where in real community engagement there's a feedback loop that happens and i you know i said well historically that's not the way that it's worked here and so i think my comment relates to this if we are not or cannot give families if we can't get back to them and have a feedback loop then we need to just let them know right like that's part of of transparency and so if we set the expectation that right now our process doesn't work like that then we're not setting them up to be disappointed when we don't do something I also heard that exact same thing with this last engagement, like people are not hopeful that anything will come of what was said, what happened, what we talked about because historically it hasn't happened.

And so I think that's work on our part as a board and as a district and knowing our role and how we actually do complete that cycle because that is part of community engagement.

I appreciate that and I hope part of this is how we're using this information and before we go into the budget conversation here have us having a discussion about what what we heard so we we have that grounding and understanding director Hersey okay director Rankin I mean

That that engagement session was extremely frustrating I will say and not in terms of transparency I think a lot of times people want not just for the information to be available but to understand why and its context because we actually like there's quite a lot on on the district website but transparency doesn't mean relevancy.

And so where that session dramatically missed the mark for me was that it was the same presentation that we had gotten in a board meeting.

And we need information at a different level and for a different purpose as the oversight body than community members who want to see how money is being spent and provide their feedback on the efficacy of it.

It's just different.

We're different parts of the ecosystem.

And so I am, I don't know, I'm jet lagged.

I was visiting my grandmother.

So I'm gonna pre-apologize for being maybe crabby, but I'm even feeling like there's a lack of transparency in having this budget session today because building budgets are done.

Next year's budget, it's done.

It's too late for us to give feedback on next year's budget.

That should have been what we were doing in February, which is why with the board directed receipt of preliminary budget scenarios in January, we are failing our community by not holding the superintendent and the district accountable to having provided that.

And so this is a bit of a We can talk about it, but buildings already have their budgets.

Staffing decisions are being made because that's how the timeline works.

And so the lack of transparency in that process is a really big miss for the board and for the community and contributes to the frustration that Director Sarju is expressing.

People want to be engaged in a meaningful way.

And if we say, oh, we heard your thoughts, but don't tell them that actually the time for that decision was a couple of months ago, that's just not transparent or collaborative at all.

So none of these notes surprise me at all.

I also, one thing we'll add is in terms of the board needing different information and the greater community needing different information, Staff does not need the board's permission to inform and educate the community about the budget process that is actually part of the job of staff.

You don't have to do that through the board.

We actually already expect that to happen and it has happened in the past.

Online director Clark.

Yeah thanks president top.

I think just a couple things came to mind from the feedback session.

One, I think just piggybacking off of what Director Rankin shared around like preparing the presentation or the information that's going to be shared with community with the audience in mind.

I heard feedback from folks that the way that the presentation described the budget was just at such a high level or using terms that really only people in the system could understand.

And we had to spend a lot of time at my table just breaking things down before we really could even get into feedback and discussion.

So, yeah, matching the presentation and the information to the audience I think would be incredibly helpful, both for community engagement and transparency.

And then one other thing I wanted to lift up, we chatted at my table and there was some feedback from community around frustration that it seems like the way that we've been budgeting you know, we have this 100 million dollars approximately in overspend every year and that it seems like we're making cuts in other places to support that overspend.

And there isn't really folks were asking for clarity one on like what what is costing us 100 million more and being able to really understand specifically what those buckets are and and and the amount of money that we're spending um and i think the concern is that um if we're continuing to overspend at high levels every year how are we going to catch up how are we going to make investments um in our strategic plan and other things so I just want to lift that up.

Director Mizrahi.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have no additions.

I guess I would just wonder if, and maybe this will help inform the rest of the presentation and comments too, if staff had any response or thoughts on this timing question and, you know, where is their flexibility in the budget and if building budgets have already been allocated, is this more of a FYI or are there things that if the community or if the board had strong feedback about that could be altered?

All right now is the time I'm going to go and I'm going to just kind of look at board directors see if we want another two minutes per board director we want to move on and what I'll do is just see if there's a majority of us that want another two minutes we'll do another two minutes type of thing otherwise we will move on and I'm seeing.

I just wanted to echo Director Mizrahi's question about, is the purpose of this really just an FYI?

And to Director Rankin's point, too, I think there's very little that can be changed at this point.

So it would be helpful to know what are we actually doing here now, tonight?

All right.

We're going to now pass it over to staff.

I think the, well thank you for the feedback, thank you for facilitating that engagement, happy to continue take comments about what you heard from the community, either in that session or offline.

I think those points are well taken.

That in my time at Seattle Public Schools, the timing and the structure of this, we talk about school budgets kind of at the structural level of how we do allocation.

don't get into the details of, so after you turn the crank, what happens?

And then the timing is such that there is, it's not impossible.

I think the previous boards and the district have made changes this late in the game, but it would be very difficult and disruptive.

And so staff have been talking about, well, if we change the sequence with regard to the budget process, just as it is, and the several discussions we've had lately about wait lists and enrollment, since that's the key driver of those school-based budgets, do we need to do this different?

What are our options?

How quickly could we do it differently?

So if that's what Director Mizrahi was asking, yes, the staff are already engaged in that exact conversation to address the concerns that we've heard about.

Are we really offering a choice when we say school choice?

And then how would that fit into this timeline?

What are the impacts in school-based staffing and budgeting year, what might those changes be from one year to the next and within a year?

So yes, we're open to that discussion and then I think that would make, there would be different milestones for the board to provide guidance and that could have greater impact in the process if something's happened earlier.

And we're going to talk more about lessons learned in this process.

And what we see is some long-range next steps.

Again, this was a difficult year to re-engineer everything for a lot of reasons, just because there were a lot of unknowns.

And we still are in the transition of many issues.

But we're taking that to heart, the point that you raised, is at this stage, what discretion is left, and not that it couldn't be exercised, but it would be difficult for us to operationalize that.

We use this graphic many times we want to go on just and in I Think really trying to emphasize collaboration here.

I think the discussion we just had Working with the board on the feedback you've heard the wonderings you have about our whole process and Director Rankin's point is well taken We can provide that clarity to our community not just in collaboration with the board that's something the staff can take on and I think we're going to have many opportunities.

If we could advance the slides that would be great.

And so again, I think this timeline is the discussion we've just had.

Where could the milestones potentially change in terms of board direction and guidance?

In the last few years, we have instituted a new process where there's a resolution, where there is actually some real decisions up front.

They're kind of thematic general guidance.

If we change the shape of this a little bit, could they be more effectual on the actual numbers I think is the question that you're asking us and we're I can only go so far as to say we're thinking about it what what could we make work and what could we make work in time for the next fiscal year because it would take some fairly significant process reengineering and if we could go one more this is

something you said made me think we need to clarify that I well I'm gonna put this way I'm not I don't think it's realistic to ask you to ask building leaders to do something different I think the fact that we are this late in the process without the ability to do that is signal and a sign that we need to prepare to do it differently next time and now is the time actually to start preparing for that so I don't want people who are on the call or families to think that oh well the board might make some recommendations it might be hard but if it's the right thing to do they should do it I don't think that's gonna happen at this point The goal is not to disrupt.

The goal is to make the changes that we know we need to make now, so that come the next budget cycle, we're not having this same, or y'all, because I'm not gonna be here, y'all are not having the same conversation again, and families are yet frustrated another year.

And I think, so I want to keep us going, so we'll have a time for comments.

And one of, yeah, I will keep us going, and then, because I think the important point here on all of this is, I think this is a frustration we've all had, we've all expressed, I think staff realizes it.

We have a review or assessment of this process in August, and I'm hoping we can figure out what that, And I think that aligns a little bit with when we said we were going to get an enrollment sort of update on what that looks like come August.

But please continue.

And one small thing to Director Sarju's point, we are looking, we are trying to be flexible even for the coming fiscal year, not asking for things that are unreasonable.

We did make some We've talked a lot about moving wait lists and some other configurations.

We reopened the highly capable cohort.

Both those things, in terms of enrollment, both those things were relatively late decisions in our process, and we can accommodate some level of flexibility, and we're doing our best.

And we're not asking buildings to do things that are unreasonable.

We're going to help them.

But we can do some of this and we can do more certainly for the next fiscal year.

It still might only be halfway to what we think the right solution would be because this all starts early.

Before we know it, we're gonna be working on the following fiscal year's budget and certainly enrollment and all the things that, all the moving parts.

So there is some work to be done.

I think Director Clark may have a question.

I want to try to keep question director Clark we're going to try to keep question we're going to try to get us through the presentation here and then get to questions if possible my question is just about the slide that's on the screen is that okay to ask now let's let's have staff present and let's go from there

This was just a reminder, I've made this point already, that we had a lot of things going on this year that, as we assess how we did, that again were kind of unfixed variables that we needed to land a legislative session in particular before we could make other decisions around that.

And we had just highlighted that at the beginning, and I'm just reminding people what that is.

So.

Do you want to take questions on this slide?

Absolutely, if there is one in particular.

I was just curious.

The strategic plan and the weighted stopping standards have some months that have a black slash through them, and I was just wondering what that meant.

I don't see a legend.

I think we were just projecting uncertainty about how long some of that might take.

I'll ask Dr. Buddleman if he has any.

We had presented this slide earlier a couple months ago and the anticipation at that time the strategic plan work would be completed by June and the weighted staffing standards would have a proposal by May.

Both of those things are still under development so this is just trying to illustrate that those are still being worked on not that they've been completed or forgotten about.

Thank you.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah, so something that I would like to see or ask about is, you know, knowing that these things are when they happen.

These are when they happen every year.

So it's not a surprise that legislative session is in January to April.

And so...

My question is what you need from us, because my understanding of what the board directed in 2023 was addressing all of these pieces and a timeline for the weight of staffing standards for all these different things.

And it feels like we're in the exact same place.

And so I would like to know if we have not been clear or if we just have to wait for a different superintendent or a different board.

What's keeping us from?

These are knowns.

These are not surprises.

We directed in 2023 for the superintendent to bring the board a long-term plan to eliminate the deficit and to align resources with students.

We again in May unanimously accepted the reality that allocating resources to meet student enrollment could include consolidating buildings.

And that wasn't a consolidation direction.

That was a resource allocation direction.

As far as I can see, next year's budget looks a lot like this year's budget.

So what do you need to hear from us to start?

We know that these things happen every year and that they do lock us into different things.

I don't want to see that budget development slide again unless there's progress made on some of the things that are on it.

Because that's the same slide we've been looking at for two years.

And the long-term plan and these various things, I don't, this is feeling like Groundhog Day.

And so if there's something different you need from the board to kick off serious evaluation of our processes and actually make those changes that we did direct a year and a half ago, please tell us what it is and we will do it.

I think the biggest variables this year were the strategic plan work to make sure that, I think we've all agreed that we should be able to align budget proposals to specific components of the strategic plan.

still talking about some of the, the next part of this study session is about that.

So that's something we need, is that guidance needs to be complete as we go into the process.

We just had a conversation about, hey, we ought to re-engineer the process so there are meaningful milestones.

So I think we need to have that discussion, what is that gonna look like?

We know how much effort, what a big budget play potential school consolidations were or weren't.

And so we needed that to land.

And while there's always a legislative session, this one seemed more significant than usual.

And so there's the well we need to know how it's going to land and then there's what what are the what are the most helpful discussions for us to be having internally and in the public about our budget while that session is going on so i you're completely of course all these things happen all the time um but some some of them have have more of an impact on this than others and um we uh we heard you i think we were also trying to somewhat kind of maintain a status quo to get through some of those things for it to settle i think we all agree that we need some fundamental changes and while we're happy to present a balance that a budget that's ostensibly balanced for the coming fiscal year it has not addressed our long-term structural problems so um Yes, we're going to be having that discussion, and this time we really have to do something meaningfully different.

And then if we're also talking about doing it in a different order, that's two things.

And so we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

Can I interject something here real quick?

Please.

So what you're all saying is Kind of music to my ears as a person charged with facilitating this process.

So I've been reflecting a lot on this and your question around what do we need from you?

So looking at the student outcomes focused governance work, it says you've mastered student outcomes focused governance around the budget.

If the board approves an annual budget, only after determining if the board's goals are the first priority for resource allocation.

So continuing to work towards more clarity on what that means, what level of decisions the board wants to be engaged in that are not driven by policy is something that would be really useful, I think, for the organization to further understand.

I would say clarifying our policy because that is our direction.

Yeah.

So the question around, is this just FYI, here's what we're doing?

The main focus of this conversation tonight, I hope, is to how to continue to improve doing what we're doing so that we aren't just, you're not sitting there thinking, here's just an FYI next year.

But it's an iterative process.

We're not there yet.

And there's a slide that's coming up that sort of was going to prompt this conversation.

So I'm glad that it came up already.

So just wanted to add that continue to work towards this mastery of student outcomes focused governance, because it's a little bit opaque to someone in my role what the board really is looking for in terms of proof that this does tie to the goals of the institution.

So helpful.

Thank you.

Right.

So I think we're going to move into the major components that are reflected here and elsewhere.

And I'll let Dr. Buddleman lead us through that discussion.

And there are some parts that Chief Redmond will also take ownership of as well.

Next slide, please.

So we're gonna share what the outcome of the legislative session was for the board and for others with interest in this topic.

Before doing so, I just wanna acknowledge that there's a lot of people that do a lot of work to get to this point with the budget.

Last night, the budget book The formal document that will be a part of the public hearing on June 4th was put on the website.

And so I just want to acknowledge Linda Sebring, who's the Executive Director of Budget.

Dr. Pam Faulkner, who oversees our grants program.

Christy Magyar, who's our Director of Accounting.

Melissa Cohen, who does capital projects, manages that process.

The HR team led by Dr. Pritchett and Katherine Kleitsch with all the staffing components of this.

and the principals, the BLTs, and all the budget managers at the central office.

There was a lot of work that went into this process and this document starting August 1st with the leadership retreat at West Seattle Elementary to kind of kick this off last year.

So just wanted to pause and acknowledge that there's a lot of folks that have spent a lot of effort to get us to information that the board can consider.

the legislative applause for that applause for the budget team put that in the record somewhere so the legislative session was the longer legislative session the state was facing a 12 billion dollar shortfall they did prioritize k-12 education i think k-12 education came together for the first time in recent history around sort of what the needs of the systems were so wanted to sort of acknowledge that there was some real teamwork going across the state and sale public schools was a part of that next slide The state coalesced around the big three of special education, operating costs, and transportation.

So this is a quick summary of how Seattle Public Schools fared on those three.

You'll see that special education, the net for Seattle Public Schools is about $6.5 million in additional funds through some changes that were made.

And then the net for materials, supplies, and operating costs, where the operating costs is about $2.7 million.

transportation there wasn't a significant investment by the legislature there were some tweaks to alternative vehicles that can be included in the transportation formula going forward the items on here that say past legislature sent to governor have now been signed by the governor as of yesterday so it's just not updated on the slides the next slide A significant bill of note is ESHB 2049, which gave Seattle Public Schools and other districts with local levies increased authority to collect locally, so $500 more per student.

The impact of that for Seattle Public Schools in the 25-26 budget proposal that we're previewing tonight is about an additional $13 million for next year's budget.

And then additionally, because there's only one collection next year within the 25-26 school year, the second collection will be about another $12 million, which will add to that going forward.

So the net impact of this for the 26-27 year budget is around $23 or $24 million.

But we'll only collect half of that for the budget we're talking about tonight.

The other point of significance related to tonight is the legislature extended the payback period on loans that districts took from their capital fund to balance their budgets from two years to four years.

It's something that is part of the proposal that we're talking about tonight.

And then there's some other information there around parents' bills of rights.

And then there was a one-time At the end of the session, $50 per student for all districts for one time spending for the 24-25 school year.

We can go to the next slide.

And I'll have Chief Redman talk a little bit about the federal funding and how Seattle Public Schools is managing some of the uncertainty around that.

It's a fairly significant component of our budget, about 6.5% right now.

Yes, thank you, Curt.

Federal funding, as Curt mentioned, is definitely an important part of our budget.

And as most of you are fully aware, we've been, as a nation, having an elevated conversation about federal funding and its direction.

We've received across the nation various executive orders.

But how do we deal with that?

Before we go to that particular portion, as you can see on the slide, In that 6.5% you have important categories like Title I, special education, our school food services, Head Start and other restricted funding.

So all of that is a part of the services that we provide to students and having that compromised in any kind of way puts us in a vulnerable position.

So our superintendent did ask us to convene what we call a federal response team or a cross departmental team to begin to analyze Any of the executive orders that come through determine what steps need to be taken if any and then communicating with families staff any kind of impact or any changes or pivots that we will have.

At this point, OSPI has certainly prevailed and said, no change at this particular point.

Please follow our lead.

But our federal response team is certainly cognizant of that.

We're watching on a day-to-day basis.

We meet.

There are about three layers to the team.

There's a steering portion, a smaller steering portion.

and then a larger body of senior leaders that come together and then soon to be activated work groups as we need to bring expertise around the table to discuss next steps.

So federal funding definitely an important part of what we do 6.5 percent but that 6.5 percent really does hit some very significant and sensitive areas for our district.

And this functional team or cross functional team that has been developed is sort of standing in that gap so that our community as well whether it's internal or external they have a resource or a place to go and look to for regular information on what's coming.

In fact.

we're thinking internally when we're thinking about it even if there is no change making sure that we're lifting up to our our internal stakeholders and our staff that are working so that they know that if there's no change we're letting you know that too just making sure that people are comforted as we're going through a very difficult time thank you we can go on

And I do want to sort of just note, as part of the state budget, the K-12 education was not reduced directly, but there were reductions in the budget that will impact students at Seattle Public Schools.

I'm a board member of the College Success Foundation.

They have staff at Ace and Mercer Middle School, Rainier Beach, and Cleveland High Schools.

So those staff will be reduced as part of the state budget through the College Success Foundation.

So there will be impacts at schools, but not directly in the K-12 space from the budget.

So just bear in mind that there's other things that are happening in the state budget that are impacting the students at all public education across the state of Washington.

some camps that students from Seattle Public Schools went to, there was eliminated from the budget, so things like that will persist, but they're not part of the direct K-12 allocation process.

I saw a hand up.

Director Topp, do you want?

Director Mizrahi, does it have to do with the legislature?

It has to do with one of the previous slides, but I can wait until we're at a more appropriate time to ask questions.

I think so.

We're transitioning.

It looks like from the legislative update to the update on the update on budget development process.

Is it so if it's legislatively related, please?

Yeah, it is legislative.

Yes.

So I'm just I'm curious on the on the previous slide around the federal funding, and I'm glad that there's a task force looking at this.

Is there a contingency plan for what happens if mid-budget cycle that $80 million gets cut or some portion of it does?

When you look at that list, it's obviously some very essential services, so it's not like you could just not provide those things that the $80 million is going towards.

So what other levers do we have to fill in that gap?

Or is there any indication from OSPI that there would be a statewide plan, assuming we're probably not the only district dealing with this problem to address that?

There's not an official plan that the district has put together to plan on whether if any of these things happen or not.

I think the real results of that would be the district would look towards any of the committed or restricted funds and whether or not those would be eligible to fill these one-time gaps.

But if the funding for something like school food services at nine million dollars went away just tomorrow that couldn't be sustained going forward without dramatic changes to the system somewhere else so there isn't a backup plan sitting somewhere in case some of these just disappear overnight yeah I would just say as both a board member and a parent I would urge the district to come up with the contingency plan for what happens and you know to what

Director Redmond was saying, which I think is helpful, is also giving people peace of mind.

I think one thing that would give a lot of folks peace of mind to say, if this happens, we have a plan in place.

It's an uncomfortable plan.

It's not something we want to have to do, but we sort of know where these other cuts or where money can be moved around in order to fill in this gap.

And so the community knows that these very vital services would not be the things that are cut.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I was actually just on a call last night or the night before with some other folks from the Federal Relations Network through WASDA.

And we are going to put together a group to specifically go statewide coalition, go talk to OSPI about the impacts of the federal dollars to districts to urge OSPI to also think about how they will support districts across the state if some of these things are eliminated.

Tacoma has a federal grant that pays for a lot of the mental health services that they've been providing in schools that was a three-year grant.

They're in the first year right now, and the next two years have already been rescinded.

So things are happening right now that are going to impact children.

We have other grants that are connected federally that are not in that bucket of Title I and special education that are going to have an impact.

And so we have to, I actually was going to put in a request, but I'll just ask right now.

I would like a list of all the federal grants we receive and who the grantee is. because different department heads are sometimes the grantee through a certain grant that may not be reflected in our total.

And so, yeah, we need to know if there are other sources that we have that can replace those, if there are partners we can rely on that can come alongside us, but also there are some of us working to meet with our congressional delegation when they're in town, I think in August, the legislative staff person at WASDA is trying to figure that out, and also to talk to OSPI about their main role in the grant funding is to ensure compliance, and they're the mechanism through which it goes to districts.

So they don't as much look at the amounts and what it's providing.

And we're going to urge them to look at that statewide.

And we may have to, if things get dramatically shifted and those funds go away, we're going to need to ask our state legislature how they can support districts in making it up.

Because as we know, there are a lot of districts right on the edge and on the verge of state receivership, districts do not have funds they can move around to cover some of these losses.

So we need to be involved in the conversation at the state and national level with our partners.

Just because of the potential urgency of some of this, just sharing in response to your question about the list of grants on the web page, there is a list of active grants as of May 2025. So if you go to the school district website and put in grants, there's a grants office page with lists, its current list of all the active grants.

So people can have that information.

can go to the next slide we'll get into the 25 26 i think chief podesta covered much of this the challenging year that we all faced in terms of the budget uncertainties so we can skip ahead to the next here was the placeholder for the conversation that we started to have around the board's need for different information better information more timely information and similarly for staff how we can be more responsive to the board so I'll look to president top if this is a good place to pause to continue that discussion or if we think we've got what we need on that so far.

So I think we spent a little bit of time on this at the start looking to other directors if they want another two minute round or we want to keep going.

I'm seeing keep going, so keep going.

Let's keep going.

Great.

So we can go to the next slide.

So as this group especially knows, the district continues to have a structural issue.

The deficit for 25, 26 is going to be in the ballpark of $100 to $104 million.

As I stated earlier, we've tried to start this process on August 1st to get ahead of all those variables that we knew were coming this year.

In January, the superintendent presented two options with his recommendation, which is largely what you're going to see tonight.

And in February, the levy was approved.

There was some questions around what if.

So luckily, that did not transpire.

The levies were approved at overwhelming margins.

And then the legislature, as we said earlier, did some...

did some focused work to try to help k-12 education get out of the structural problem that it's in we can go to the next so this is the preview of what you'll see in the budget book and what you'll get on june 4th at the public hearing and we'll have for your vote on july 1st so the summary level of information next slide just a reminder this is the two options the superintendent brought forward in january in response to the resolution at that time he was recommending scenario two which i think was around trying to maintain as much stability as possible given the the instability that was generated over the course of the last few years, especially around the school closure conversation.

So the proposal tonight is largely around scenario two, which leaned heavily into hopefully some legislative investment.

Next slide.

So here's where I shared with President Topp, I think yesterday when we were chatting about today's meeting, it took a little bit of a risk trying to be more explicit about how the budget decisions, writ large, tie more directly to the strategic plan that the school board has put forward.

And so this may not be what you're looking for.

And this is your opportunity to tell me what you are or what is wrong with this.

So let me just go through this real quick.

And these are just examples of things, and they're not intended to be exhaustive.

What you're going to see here is the three goals on the next two slides, and then the five guardrails, with some examples of items that connect to those that are investments from Seattle Public Schools of the $1.3 billion in funding that it has at its disposal.

So goal one is around literacy for second graders, and you'll see Greek embedded assessments, ELA adoption, instructional coaching.

Goal two, you see some of the similar things around course or grade level math coursework in seventh grade we can go forward to the next slide goal three is around graduation and high school completion you'll see some of the strategies there at the bottom that are specific to that again this is not inclusive these are the items that are just simply a part of what the district considers its strategic plan budget So there's multiple initiatives, dozens of initiatives, I'm probably selling that short, that are all contributing to this, but these are just what the district has been talking about.

So we're trying to broaden that conversation around all the work that's happening here and how it connects directly to the strategic plan goals that you've outlined.

ERS, the consulting group that's working with us on that, is helping to better inform this.

So just think of this as some options for how we might talk about this going forward.

Next slide, you'll see the guardrails.

So the guardrail, the first one there.

is around high-quality educational opportunities and instruction for every student.

And so the 25-26 budget, as I think Director Rankin said earlier, looks largely like the 24-25.

So it doesn't reduce program offerings across the district.

So trying to be more responsive to providing that access.

Again, the ERS, the resource and strategy work, will continue to inform how the district is investing in that guardrail.

second guardrails around physical and emotional safety.

So there was an investment in the budget of about $2.3 million on top of what was previously spent for safety and security, so that's reflected in the budget.

And then the district spends about a half a billion dollars on facility improvements, many of which are around physical safety and learning spaces for students.

Guardrail 3 is around adult behaviors in school buildings and classrooms that are misaligned with the anti-racist values of Seattle Public Schools.

So we're investing in continuing professional education around anti-racism training for staff.

Again, these are just examples.

These are not intended to be exhaustive of all the things that are happening.

Guardrail 4 is around major decisions.

So in this budget that's being proposed, there are not significant shifts in bell times, numbers of schools, significant changes to school staffing caused by the budget.

So trying to be responsive to that.

And then finally, Guardrail 5, which is the most directly tied to the budget, not allowing people time, money, and other resources to be allocated in a manner inconsistent with student need.

As we talked at a meeting or two ago, one of the potential measures of this guardrail is around how much the district is investing in teaching and teaching support.

So the budget for 25-26 contemplates continuing to spend more than 70% of the general fund on that.

The budget contemplates spending more than 85% on FTE who are working directly in schools, not just the staff who are allocated through the WSS model, but the staff who are not, the food service workers, the custodians, the physical therapists, occupational therapists, all those people are in schools.

The way we talk about the budget doesn't make that explicit for people right now.

So we're working on trying to figure out how better to do that through the model or through different ways of communicating that.

But the reality is the budget we're proposing today contemplates 85% of staff time and cost to be people who are actually in the school buildings.

And then the strategic plan budget, the one that I referenced earlier on the goals, is being reconfigured to more directly align And then this budget is intended to bring a measure of stability for next year by not having significant shifts in what schools are receiving.

I'm super interested in feedback on that if President Taub will allow it.

I think this is the perfect time for the break before the next section for seeing if directors have any feedback or comments.

You don't have to say anything, but I'm just going to go around the circle, see if there's anyone, Director Rankin.

Thank you.

So the fact that the budget is not changing really in investment strategies or what we're deciding to discontinue, or add means to me basically that we should not expect any progress for students that we didn't already see this year because we're not we're not changing anything to increase progress and so i actually um uh some of you know not proposing major shifts in district operations that's not really responsive to not making major decisions without first implementing an engagement strategy.

That's just not making a major decision.

So I think we need to make major decisions.

And the guardrail is don't just drop those on people.

You have to actually include the community, not don't make major decisions.

So what I am anticipating we're going to see and we're going to have already started to hear about it.

I'm assuming we're going to continue to hear about it is because the way that resources are being allocated is not going to change.

and the staffing model and how resources are distributed, and because enrollment is still going to decline, and because we still have the same number of buildings open, buildings are actually going to receive less staff than they have this year, next year, because there are no changes were made to the way we're allocating resources.

So in the spirit of being extremely clear and transparent, Not changing the staffing model, not changing how we allocate resources doesn't mean that buildings will have next year what they had this year because they're likely overall going to be fewer students.

So we actually are not providing stability.

We're kicking the can on some really significant decisions that we have to make to better serve students.

We've decided we're not going to do that next year.

And so I don't want people to misunderstand what stability means.

We're not providing more stability and resources for children.

We're just not doing anything different next year than we did this year.

And I just need to be really clear about that.

Looking online, see if anyone has any hands.

In general, as we talk a little bit about As we look a little bit at the sort of examples and connections, I think this is the first time in a budget presentation I've tried to see that connection starting to be made between our budget and our goals or where we want to go.

And I think that that's a huge, huge step in the right direction as we're trying to figure out how to, I think Dr. Buddleman, correct me if I'm wrong, looking for how best to present or show this information for the strategies or for where we're going.

So I think that this is an iterative process, but I appreciate seeing this in the presentation.

So thank you.

All right, and keep going.

Great.

Next slide gets to some of the items Director Rankin was referencing.

So again, the summary of the budget is more than 70% will be in teaching and teaching support, maintaining all the current sites.

No changes to the staffing model.

However, some schools may see some fluctuations in their staffing due to enrollment shifts, reductions and changes.

There were reductions at the central office budgets that we'll go through a little bit later.

And then continues to close the budget gap by extending a portion of the Interfund loan, so contemplates repaying up to $17.6 million of the $27.5 million that was borrowed from the Capital Fund last year.

and then utilizing some one-time funds from the unrestricted fund balance, delaying the rainy day reserve fund repayment, the additions from the legislature and the local levy, and then again, those further reductions at central office budgets.

And then I know that, well, I know I'm excited.

I won't say who else is excited.

I know Eric Gersey and I are both excited about, and many of the other staff, and I think board members are excited about the longer-term visioning that's gonna come about as the, the strategic plan and resources and strategy work, so this is, as Director Rankin said, this is kind of a status quo thing, and hopefully it won't be a status quo thing going forward, and we'll be having some good conversations around this five-year plan to get to where we all want to be for kids at Seattle Public Schools.

The next slide is just some details, very big numbers that are very small font on the screen.

So just the math around how the $104 million deficit will be closed in the 25-26 budget proposal.

You'll see that the largest items are the the carry forward from the 23-24 budget process, or budget, or the 23-24 school year, and then the delayed repayment of the economic stabilization account, the rainy day fund, the levy capacity, and then legislative changes.

So if you added up the things on the other side, it was less than that.

There were some technical fixes and changes in the budget that add up to about $12 million when you had the special ed AMSOC money in.

So that's the next largest component of this.

AND THEN THIS PROPOSES CONTINUING $11 MILLION OF THE LOAN TO FINALIZE THE BUDGET BALANCING AND CONTINUES THE FURLOW DAYS AND THE LACK OF A VACATION CASH OUT FOR NON-REPRESENTED EMPLOYEES AT THE DISTRICT OFFICE.

The next slide is a sort of high-level look at what the $5.4 million in reductions on central office budgets would look like.

About 3.5 million of that is from currently vacant or eliminated positions.

There's been a hiring freeze of sorts in place the last few years.

And so some of that is resulting in some savings that'll be ongoing.

The next largest item there is some savings from building spaces.

So they're buildings with spaces that are underutilized that trying to get those spaces more efficiently used so we can save on utilities and maintenance and custodial costs in those buildings.

Some operational savings on math and science curriculum that's transitioned as the curriculum has transitioned to more online.

Less compostable throwaways, compostable plates and dinnerware and culinary is another thing, using more sort of dishwashers that clean the plates and they're just reused and then about three quarters of a million dollars in just reductions around contracted services and miscellaneous expenses.

Director Sarju has a comment and I'm curious about it.

You tickled me when you said using dishwashers that clean the plates.

That's it.

Noted.

I'll put that in the feedback.

Next slide.

So this is sort of setting up the long-term discussion that the structural deficit will persist.

As you've stated earlier, enrollment is projected to continue to decline.

There will be increases in legal, utilities, insurance, transportation, special education.

The need for school mitigation funds as the district gets smaller.

There's contingency planning around the uncertainty of federal funding, as Director Masrahi pointed out earlier.

There's multiple expiring labor agreements expiring August of this year.

The strategic plan task force, which we'll talk about a little bit later, how that engages in this conversation.

District needs to start to rebuild that rainy day fund at some point and then pay off that interfund loan that the budget contemplates continuing $11 million of.

This next graphic I think you've all seen, just trying to lay out the next five years and the big buckets of work that will happen around the strategic plan and how to resource that in the midst of hiring a new superintendent.

And I think we'll go to Chief Redmond for just a quick update on the strategic plan task force.

Yes, speaking of doing things differently and looking ahead, one of the things that the board asked us as we came into 2025 is to make sure that we established an advisory group that would work along with our strategic plan and make sure that we're aligned to our budget priorities.

and making sure that the two are very much connected.

So this last month, seems like a long time ago, last month, we did put out an application.

And drum roll for this board and how people want to be involved in the conversation, 211 applications came in.

I would have to say I was probably expecting maybe around the 50-ish.

Mark, so we are at 211 applications that are coming in or have come in.

And at this point, we're looking through those, making sure that we've taken out any kind of duplicates that may be there and ensuring that we have a fair process to get down to a smaller group now.

That said, one of my conversations that I've had recently is since we've had such a wide response or a great response to this.

How do we continue to harness the voices that are in that group?

Even if you are going down to a smaller group, what do you do with that body that came through?

Obviously, there's some interest there and there are reasons why they're interested.

We don't want to lose that feedback.

So we're working on a way to make sure that we focus group or have some conversations with the larger group before we come down to a final decision in terms of who will be a part of the task force.

Now, we will also be using a third-party facilitator as we begin our work.

We're hoping to have those selections done in June for the task force or early June, but using an independent or a neutral facilitator, so not necessarily the district staff standing before you at every moment, trying to shape a conversation or seeing that we're seen as an over influence on a conversation so that it can occur more naturally and also wanting to share what the key objectives of the task force will be as we begin to get started.

One, we want to make sure that we have identified and that we can ensure key groups and key stakeholders that will be providing feedback on our process and our planning process.

any kind of surveys any kind of focus groups we want their touches on it to make sure that we're being inclusive accessible and that we're touching as a great portion of the community as we possibly can they're also here to help us align our district emerging goals and then also provide that feedback to us as we're looking for that long-term budget forecasting so That's a little bit about the task force and the 211 people that are interested.

Sure.

Director Rankin.

And let's do, let's do, looking at this, let's do questions for the last few slides as well.

So start, so from the, yeah, from the header, which is, hang on.

the header of the 2025 proposed budgets summary all the way to the task force slide.

We'll do a round of, we'll go around.

Okay.

My question is specifically about task force.

Yes.

And I am wondering, you know, when we gave that direction, that was prior to notice that we were losing our superintendent.

Yes.

And so I am curious about the charge for that task force, what they're tasked with, because if, um you know uh if i were a new incoming superintendent i would want to be leading the development of my own strategic plan sure um so how how are we gonna make sure that these folks that their time is being well spent and that we're not going to say oh never mind sorry we're going to start over i just we i i am seeking real clarity on what the kind of, I guess, guardrails are around that task force because we also are not just opening up every possibility.

What do you guys think we should do?

We've already set the goals and guardrails based on feedback from the broader community.

So that's not what's important.

We're not repeating that.

I just don't, yeah, it feels a little...

I don't have clarity, so I would like to know more specifically about what the objective is and how the timing of any possible deliverables might be adjusted due to the superintendent turnover.

And then also would just throw out there that in the past, when there's been something like this, typically a board member is invited to attend not all because we're not we shouldn't be part of that but as a kind of liaison so i'm just kind of putting that out to director top that's something that has happened in the past when there's been something like this there will be a board liaison that may get go to one meeting and get a um you know where there's being feedback shared or get a report or something to share with the rest of the board just to keep us updated so we might want to think about that

noted on the final portion of that and certainly we can have conversation on how that should look going forward concerning the superintendent search fully cognizant of that and though the selection of the task force will occur in June and the contact will be made to make sure that that body comes together we are going to do a little bit of a pause We're expecting to be around a lot longer than we probably originally intended to be.

So we have to make sure that we're getting out of the way of the superintendent engagement process that's coming.

So we will make sure the body is selected, comes together, and then elongating our time a little bit to accommodate for the selection of a new superintendent.

Thank you.

I could, at one point, to Chief Redman's points, is in all these planning processes, you know, often the construct is a development of options, and we think an incoming superintendent would be well served by the existing team doing work along that line.

So what are potential options in the view of the existing team not baking things together?

kind of beyond that can we can we gather could we describe the landscape can we describe what we're thinking of our potential options for resolving issues meeting meeting goals and greater compliance with the guardrails and then having the board give guidance to the incoming superintendent amongst those or ones that we didn't think of but that that would be time well spent for us

Others in these past few slides?

Director Sarju.

I want to clarify that I'm actually reading this right.

So on the slide that says closing the budget gap, It doesn't have a page number, but it does say closing the budget gap.

It says projected, oh, 24, sorry, I can't see it.

Projected deficit, because the line of numbers doesn't have a total, does that add up to the 103?

Okay, so what we're telling the community is for the 2025, 2026, we are going to uh basically eliminate the deficit for that school year but the the correct it's going to continue to be a deficit so in other words we don't have a long-term solution that's for solving the deficit yes when is that going to happen

All right.

That's the $100 million question.

That's the $100 million question.

I will follow Director Sarju, because it's sort of along those lines.

So looking at this, obviously, everything's, like you said, in the sort of long-term challenges and opportunities, we anticipate increases in costs.

Everything's becoming more expensive, legal, utilities, transportation, special ed.

On the closing the list, roughly, what, 40 million here is structural deficit items?

Yeah, the legislative, the levy, those are both the district office changes.

The capital fund interest could be considered a longer-term solution.

We've done some initial work trying to project what the next years would be, and it's in the $87 million range.

We haven't finalized that yet, but as these solutions come forward, costs of everything go up.

um for example the staff 85 of the budget is staffing so when staff get a color increase of two percent that's not fully funded by the state of washington for south public schools and so there's immediately an increase in the deficit for that so you're chasing this growing number over time and so the district has made some progress i think three or four years ago before i was here was 130 something This is 104. We're looking 80 to 90 for the next year after that through accommodation reductions and increased revenue and changes in the system.

But it's not there yet.

As President Topps said, this is not the final answer for solving that problem.

I think an interest in really trying to forecast out here the long-term fiscal stabilization, which I appreciate all of the work on this task force, and I love the fact that there are 211 folks who have applied.

I think that really says how much people care and want this system to work and function so I appreciate the work there and I appreciate the looking out for also the work that they're going that the task force is going to do that and also bringing on a new superintendent in that process and also sort of the superintendent engagement that is going to happen want to look for other directors or directors on line.

I have one quick question on the enrollment projections.

I know probably now is not the time because probably wouldn't know until the beginning of next school year, but it would be helpful for the board to see how closely aligned those projections are every year to reality.

Are we over enrolled for what the demographers thought?

Are we under enrolled?

And you know, as we project out longer into the future, I know The longer you project out, the less accurate it is.

So just to be constantly for us to be seeing how closely those projections align with reality.

Thank you.

We can provide you more specific numbers.

In the current fiscal year, enrollment exceeded our projection by 426 students, if I remember correctly.

And year over year, seated enrollment actually increased by 14 students in the October count.

So it's too early to say if that's a trend.

And we're generally forecasting flat or gradual decline, but most recently the enrollment has exceeded the projection.

Thank you.

Director Clark.

thanks president top um you know just kind of thinking about long term and um dr buttleman i know you said that you know a few years back the deficit was higher and um spending is coming down a little bit through some of the reductions i i find it really hard to um to kind of grasp um Yeah, to have a true understanding of what you're talking about without having some sort of a visual to represent whatever the categories of spending are, where we're overspending and a timeline of years.

Is there a way that you could visualize maybe when the deficit was at its highest and you know, whether it's through a graph or a spreadsheet so that we could kind of, I just get a better understanding of, I guess, what portions of the deficit are from a lack of, I'm not saying this very well, but I would love to see some more specific information about the categories of spending, what's coming down in terms of our deficit through reductions, what's going up in cost?

Is that possible for you to provide?

Yes, it is.

And we can do that.

Thank you.

There is just, this isn't the clean answer to your question.

In the budget book that's published, there's actuals from 23-4 last year's budget and this year's proposed budget to give you a sense of some of the trend.

But what you don't have in there is the actuals from the last four or five years and that information is available.

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to apologize in advance if this sounds defensive, but I want to talk a little bit about the term overspending.

We've got a lot of people listening, and to me that implies that we budgeted something, we spent more than we were authorized to spend, and our deficit is a little bit different.

We've made choices that we're going to spend more than we get in state funding, and that's what that structural deficit is about.

For example, if we followed state funding, I think we'd have nine staffers supplying school security across our system, and we staff considerably more than that because we've made that choice.

And Director Clark, I know you know that, but that's a trigger word.

overspending and I just, these are choices we're making and we're gonna have to keep making choices to line up our revenues with our expenditures, but it's not that staff are spending more than we're budgeting.

Not that that never happens, but at the bottom line, it's a little bit, it's a nuance, but, and again, I'm sure that did sound defensive, but I just had to get it off my chest.

Not at all.

I can appreciate that.

And then no way was I trying to make any accusations against staff.

But I think, again, that just going to my point of like being able to have that information about what the categories are, what choices we are making in spending would be incredibly helpful.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

This is a quick follow up to what Director Mizrahi just brought up and so thank you for bringing that up Joe.

I cannot remember when there's a there's a flow analytics enrollment study was that in 2023 or was that just I think it was in 2023. So some folks on the board now might not have well weren't here for the presentation and uh may not um have seen it but uh because i have been hearing from so many different places that you know the um enrollment and birth rate and uh in migration and out migration numbers pre-covid formulas were pretty And a lot of that, those trends and things have just changed so much post-COVID that I'm wondering, connected to what Joe asked about updated, if can, could we ask, I don't know what the cost is, but the flow analytics did provide us with information based on their projections of declines in enrollment regionally like to middle school feeder patterns mostly i mean based on birth rates but also based on like housing costs like the x9 middle school attendance area has high housing prices and low density and so there's not a lot of new children that are going to come in there that would drive numbers up because students that were fifth graders are now in high school and they still live in the same homes and there's not, you know.

But if there's other I'm wondering how much those projections at the time that were accurate and based on a lot of assumptions that may have been true before COVID with different volatilities, if we could have an update of that and see if it still provides a similar, I mean, I don't think we're suddenly going to get a whole bunch of new kids in the city, but just in terms of the in increased volatility, if it would be helpful not only to have what Joe asked for, but also maybe like a refresh on that 10-year forecast with more current circumstances.

So the team does do rolling in a 10-year forecast.

Some of the help that we get from consultants is somewhat reliant on other external milestone, like census data.

And so when are new data available that it's, but we had President Top referenced enrollment update and we've been talking about enrollment a lot so somewhere in there I think we can give we can refresh that enrollment update and include you know what the broad trends are how they're factoring into the coming year and then some things that we've done recently whether it's around choice whether it's about how we're handling some advanced learning have those what impacts have we seen from those but yes we'd be happy to dig deeper and then the process discussion that we started this conversation with affects the timing of when we want to look at forecasts and frankly what forecast means, depending on how we build school choice into the process.

So yes, we definitely would welcome a session like this or some other opportunity to go in a little bit deeper on enrollment.

we you want to close us out close us out the next steps we are almost going to hit six which will be our official end time which means that we can we're precise how long people get a break for

A lot of power here.

So the next step is June 4th is the public hearing with the official budget presentation.

July 1st, the board will vote.

And as President Topps said earlier, we'll assess the process from last year, continue to improve on it going forward.

And then Bev talked about strategic plan task force.

The next slide, you'll see our buses moving along.

So we're making progress towards that roadmap to sustainability, but we're not quite there yet as we finally discussed.

And then last slide is just the typical thank you slide, but I really want to thank you for the engagement in the conversation around some of the process improvements we can make and how we can be better served the board and your decision making around resources for Seattle Public Schools.

I do want to hand down a high note.

My kids are both graduates of Seattle Public Schools, and my daughters graduated from college this weekend.

So a success story, a Seattle Public Schools success story.

So you're all doing very good work, and thank you for doing that.

I love it.

And we have high school graduations coming up, which is my favorite time of the year.

So we're gonna break till six where so we've got a six minute break in which we'll then begin and have our interim metrics for new guardrails.

Hey, hi baby.

Alright, it is 6. We're calling core directors back.

All right, it is 6 p.m.

and we do have a quorum here.

So we're gonna get started.

We're going to move to our interim guardrails discussion.

And I'm gonna pass it over to Chief Podesta.

Thank you.

I am just gonna tee this up and introduce the agenda.

And we have a different sequence plan for tonight.

If we could advance the slides.

And a couple I'd just like to talk about, just so people aren't disoriented, the order by which we're doing this.

Given that we had some discussion about guardrail five in a previous meeting, and that we believe guardrail one is a really meaty topic.

We'd like to put it at the end to make sure that we get to guardrails two, three, and four, so that's why we're doing the sequence this way.

Again, we're still partway through this discussion.

Some of these I think we're having really the first discussion with directors, so we really appreciate the feedback and kind of collaboratively creating these, and then we've retooled.

Again, we talked about, there has been some discussion about guardrails one and five.

There's been some major retooling based on feedback with respect to guardrail one, and there was some discussion there about five.

So we're combining those together.

We appreciate the feedback we got in the meantime.

A special shout out to Director Rankin, gave us some great questions and feedback that staff responded to and I think we posted with the materials.

We may need to backtrack but I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Howard to just ground us kind of in the process and where we are.

You guys did the budget part but this is the fun part.

Are we excited?

All right.

So good evening, board directors and community partners.

My role tonight is really to ground us in what we're going to do, which is sometimes people say set the table.

I'm saying tonight our soundtrack.

What do we want our soundtrack to be?

Think about the music you listen to.

Think about what's in your genre of music that you listen to, I just want you to think about that for a second.

And so as we think about that, it's about intentional design, like governance and leadership, to create a clear and build on the following strategic goals over the next five years.

So we're building on what we've started already in our conversations.

So think about your soundtrack for a second.

One of the songs that are in my soundtrack is Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke.

It creates hope.

What Was I Made For?

Billie Eilish is in my soundtrack.

That talks about reflective, it taps into student mental health, identity development, and belonging.

Another song in my soundtrack is by her, We the People.

It talks about civic voice, collective action, responsibility, and then my favorite is John Lennon, a dreamer, because we're all dreamers.

We dream about what tomorrow should look like.

That's why all of us are doing the work that we do on a daily basis.

And if we're not getting up doing that work, then you have to ask, why are we here?

As we continue to advance the strategic work, I want to take a few moments to reinforce our shared understanding about goals and guardrails.

Our goals are strategic priorities.

Our guardrails represent our community's non-negotiable values, conditions we must not violate while pursuing those goals.

Very, very important.

the board is responsible for setting those goals and the superintendent and his team are responsible for the guardrails in collaboration with the board the superintendent is responsible for achieving the goals while operating within the guardrails he or she is responsible for 80 percent of that implementation Why?

So we can shift practices if we're not meeting those goals when we're sitting with the time with the board talking about our calendar, our performance metrics.

If we're hitting them, if we're not hitting them, we can make adjustments.

So that's why the 80% is set up with the superintendent to be able to shift those practices.

The role of the district leadership is to ensure that every department within the Seattle School District including schools move beyond compliance to lead in ways that intentionally transform student experiences and outcome.

So going from minimum to leading change.

As we look ahead, we are committed to launching monthly progress monitoring calendars that will use timely disaggregated data to assess our advancement towards board adopted goals.

This tool will strengthen our ability to engage, to be reflective and results orientated.

This conversation with the school board and community supporting real time course corrections and a deeper accountability.

This continuous improvement cycle is designed to align strongly with our community's vision and ensure that our strategic strategies produce outcomes our students deserve.

In closing, tonight, we're not just revisiting our framework, but advancing toward more coherent and equitable governance systems.

We're constructing and designing our prioritized transparency, strategic alignment, and collective ownership.

This represents a pivotal step forward in applying our goals and guardrails to drive meaningful and measurable improvements in student outcomes.

So as we set the stage, I still want you to think about your playlist.

about hope, about creating a way for students to be themselves, for them to represent themselves.

And we do that every day in the classroom.

And then the last part about dreaming about the future.

Think about our current kindergartners.

In 30 years, they'll be running the city of Seattle.

So we don't have to wait.

We can see those current kindergartners right now as we go to buildings to see what they're learning, what they need from us, because we're going to make a difference with them.

Thank you.

Dr. Howard, and I hope everyone is thinking through their playlist right now.

I'm gonna be distracted for the next hour, but no, I think that was a great grounding.

So again, we're gonna do this in a strange order and we'll try to move quickly, but substantively through guardrails two, three, and four, and then revisit one and five.

So guardrail two, it relates to student safety.

Just the wording of it is important and how we think about this, that the student will not allow the existence of learning environments that did not promote physical and emotional safety is a little bit different than saying the superintendent will not allow anyone to be emotionally or physically unsafe.

It is, and in this discussion, it's difficult to come up with objective metrics of safety.

We can measure risks and you can measure safety and particularly physical safety in kind of an actual aerial time scale, but that is not very helpful in the near term or in real time to react to situations.

So we kind of appreciate the wording, and if we think about how staff are interpreting this, if we could go to the next slide, is somewhat of a due diligence exercise.

that we will take appropriate steps, maintain controls, improve our practices to promote a sense of physical and emotional safety.

We also very much appreciate kind of the broad scoping of this with both physical and emotional.

in terms of the current leadership, the staff leaders of this will be myself and Associate Superintendent Dr. Torres Morales to cover kind of both ends of the spectrum.

In our first iteration, we think the perception of students and again, it's hard to measure are you objectively safe And just as important to measure, do you feel safe?

Because, again, even if we had those objective measures, and you think in civic life, if we hear about crime statistics or anything else that people can recite, statistics and trends, if it doesn't end up with you feeling safe, it doesn't really matter what the numbers are.

So we think that first and foremost, understanding how both our improvements to controls and practices land with students, both with physical safety and emotional safety is the key leading indicator.

And so we're proposing intermetrics that would be a result of climate surveys that we really ask students, are they perceiving the actions that we're taking and do they feel a result in a safer environment for them?

And Dr. Torres-Morales, I kind of looked at that from the physical safety standpoint, if you want to talk about emotional safety as well.

Yes, good evening, board directors.

Dr. Rocky Torres Morales, associate superintendent.

And so when we were looking at this to what Chief Podesta was hinting, we were thinking about both sides of the metrics and how do we actually capture this for how our students feel.

It's not just about the physical safety and it's not just about the emotional safety.

So thinking about when we get into our climate survey data moving forward, being able to capture both of those constructs we believe aligns with what we received as feedback for what the community was asking for safety.

And then to 2.3, which we haven't touched on yet, when we first started processing through this, we felt like it was a little bit, hey, is this the direction?

But we landed at yes, we believe it is. because if we're not prepared for those sorts of things, we're not fully hitting the safety metrics, we don't think.

And so the intent of this is essentially to say, do our kids feel physically safe at school, yes or no?

Do they feel emotionally safe?

Do they feel bullied?

Those sort of things, yes or no.

And then basically look at it from a baseline and how are we doing better to make sure that we're aligning with those things.

And then the last part would be more so around the actual school preparedness.

Like are we ready for these kind of things if they happen?

It is another measure of safety.

So I'm gonna pause, I know.

If I could add also for 2.3, the participating and training drills are important in and of themselves.

It's also a comprehensive metric that applies to every student, every school, every staff member, and there are many observations during the year.

So we see it more than just the significance of those events, but the engagement that school leaders have and school staff, we're at this point proposing more counting and observations.

We would like to move this also to a more qualitative measure.

Not only are all these things happening, are we capturing lessons learned and the quality of these exercises and what were the gaps, but we thought it's a good way to start to get the whole landscape with many, many observations over the course of a school year and something that everybody sees and that it would be a good way for this initiative to have kind of a comprehensive touch point with schools, with school leaders, staff at schools, and with students because this is something that the whole system participates in.

Yeah, and I think just to piggyback on that quickly, when we look at 2.3, it's not written up there, but the intent, when you look at the metrics is 100%.

It's not up there in this moment, but essentially, it's not that we're saying, hey, we already do these things at school, and that's what we're gonna continue to do.

It's like, no, what we're saying is that we want to ensure that it's happening 100% of the time in all of our buildings.

Director Clark.

Thanks, President Topp.

So in regards to 2.1 and 2.2, and kind of like measuring perceptions of, I guess, physical or emotional safety, I think that could be helpful.

But if, or like, let's say...

students respond no or is there going to be a follow-up question that tries to narrow down why they don't feel safe at school it just to me like a yes or no question isn't going to give much data on what more could be done um in the event that um

students are not feeling physically or emotionally safe part of a larger climate survey that would have questions wrapping around it I think we wanted to bring kind of the key one forward for progress monitoring but yes we need to get to the root causes

Yeah, and then I go back to, you know, we just were closing out our last set of guardrails, and part of the feedback we heard clearly from the student board directors was around two pieces if we're gonna continue to use climate survey data.

One was making sure that we got the participation rates up so that we can really sit behind the data, and the other was actually aligned to getting more open-ended questions in there.

So I think to answer your question, Director Clark, our intent would be when we're creating the construct to allow for that so that we can have some details from students as to the what, how, and why they're feeling that way.

Okay, thank you.

Director Rankin.

So I can't remember what I said in my notes.

Hopefully I'm not contradicting myself.

But for the perceptions of physical and emotional safety, what we want to see is what our system can do differently to achieve that top guardrail being true of students or of there not being environments that are not safe and physically and social and emotionally.

I am not sure that the superintendent has enough control over how students feel.

to make that, I mean, I think the climate data is really important, but students feeling about physical and emotional safety, there's, I think there's probably too many other factors in there.

And then the idea too is that, we expect the system to make adjustments.

So if these were the measures, the system would need to, if we hear students don't feel physically safe, we would expect the superintendent to respond to that by um making changes that would increase the number of students that feel safe before the next time we monitor that to see that there's progress being made on the goal um so i i don't know if um that is enough of a a lever that the superintendent has control over um Yeah, does that make sense?

I think it's important to ask, but I don't know if it's the right thing to measure for the interim.

The staff had an internal discussion about that, that what's going on nationally might have an effect on students' overall feeling of safety, and so we're trying to get, are we measuring the bottom line if you will or how do students feel about our response to things that are in our control i i think it's and um again this isn't this is a new guardrail and how we work that response to frankly any of the guardrails i think is it feels to me is still a work in progress that um i think we expect you know the guardrails are structured while everything is compliant all the time, and it's not going to be.

Spoiler alert.

And so what is it that we do about it, and how does that fit into these progress monitoring conversations is important.

I think we're committed to measuring this one way or the other.

If it's not useful to the board as a metric, we can talk about others.

You raised, Director Rankin, a really good point is, can you use as a measure safety incidents?

And the trends in those, we very much want to.

We'd see that as the marquee metric, but we know that our current practices and infrastructure really don't support that, so we don't, and we are very concerned that those incidents are under-reported right now.

So we do not want to set a baseline until we fix those practices.

So we'd see that coming to the board with that as an interim metric in future years.

I'm happy to hear that, because I think that would act like just the fact that you're identifying, we already don't have a good, accurate representation of different instances that evolve physical unsafety, whether that be conflict between students, whether that be threats at the school, all kinds of different things that contribute to physical safety.

I think that also in terms of using the metrics to shift our practices, what you just said is probably a lot more important.

That if we think we're not getting an accurate representation of what incidents are happening, there's no way we can be, we are able to increase, we can't address it if we don't know it.

So I would maybe almost think about an interim metric, something around incident reporting to know that we are getting an accurate picture.

That could be something that, Because even though we as the board only do a progress monitoring public session on the interim metrics once a year, we should be getting that data multiple times throughout the year.

So you're not going to ask students three times, four times a year if they feel physically safe.

So that's not something that can be updated multiple times.

But if you're doing something related to tracking incidents and the response to them, that could be updated multiple times a year, and then we could talk about it at the end of the year.

And again, that's very much our goal.

We have technology being implemented in the coming year.

We have some training.

We just don't have quite the timeline for when do we think it would be appropriate to establish that baseline.

We can certainly report what we have.

I just don't want to create a perverse incentive to under-report because we set our baseline too early.

Others on the guardrail too?

Director Sargent.

I have a similar I think struggle internal struggle as Liza does.

Because again I don't I don't believe that the superintendent has a direct there's not a direct line between how students are feeling and the superintendent meaning a straight line.

But where there is a straight line is accountability.

What are adults doing.

What is their response.

whether it's peer bullying or we have reports and incidents of staff bullying.

And so really none of this means anything if there isn't accountability for the, what do you call that?

There's a word for it.

Transgression, right, of the act of bullying.

And so I think, Fred, you kind of got at it at the end of your conversation with Liza, like how many reports and what was the outcome.

But really for families whose children are experiencing bullying this means nothing to them.

This means absolutely nothing because their child's mental health has already been impacted and will continue to be impacted if they if they are forced to remain in the environment because they don't have any other choices.

They don't have a choice to send their kid to another school or they don't have the resources to uproot their housing and move to another location so that their kid can go to another school.

So I don't have a proposal but I think we're missing the mark.

on supporting our students by not holding the adults accountable that really the focus should be on the when this happens because it's going to happen.

It continues to happen.

What happens after that.

Full feedback.

Director Briggs.

My question actually is about actually all of these.

I'm just wondering, when are we going to have numbers here to plug in for the x and y variables?

I don't have the specific timeline.

I think it's part of design with regard to the, we can provide numbers immediately for 2.3, for 2.1, and 2.2, that the next iteration of climate surveys being designed.

And so I think what that process would look like would dictate how we set that baseline.

Because some of these are kind of new questions also.

Okay.

Guardrail 3. Good evening.

Sarah Pritchett, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources.

I'll be going over Guardrail 3. Guardrail 3 talks about the superintendent not allowing adult behaviors or instructional practices that are misaligned with the district's anti-racist values.

We see that as including curriculum materials, classroom interactions and school climate.

That's what we were looking at and we believe this also reflects the values of SPS our community and the expectation that all students feel affirmed and respected in their learning environments.

We can go to the next slide.

Next slide?

OK.

All right.

Thank you.

We're interpreting this guardrail to require both professional development, professional learning for the adults, and systems that reflect racial equity.

This means that our staff need to be trained.

There needs to be curriculum that is representative and that students must feel that they belong.

We are defining adherence through the lens of adult preparedness and the actual student experience.

So our underlying interpretation for this guardrail is that if the school staff are trained and prepared to implement anti-racist practices if students perceive that staff respond effectively and proactively to matters of race and equity within school and if students see themselves in the diversity of their and the diversity of their peers reflected in the curriculum then the school system is adhering to the community values reflected in guardrail three.

We are proposing to monitor.

So we have four.

And I want to start off by saying that these are foundational metrics.

So much like some of my colleagues have talked about, these are some of the things that we want to understand that we are doing.

So we want to be clear that all of our staff are taking the training that we provide annually on anti-racism.

So we want to get that out.

We want to make sure that that's happening, that everyone is doing that.

We want to also measure that staff are prepared to implement anti-racist practices based on the trainings that they've received that they feel confident in their abilities to implement and to address incidents of racism within the schools.

We also then want to look at what is a student perception.

Do they feel that the adults are able that are addressing issues as they come about.

Our adults our students percentage of students who agree based on our climate surveys that the school staff are responsive to matters of race and equity.

And then the last one that we have in there really talks speaks to the curriculum the percentage of students who agree that on our surveys that the curriculum is a representative representative of student diversity.

And so part of this for us when I say it's foundational for us gathering this information one have you done the training to what are staff saying about the training do they feel that they are prepared.

This offers an opportunity for us to then go out into schools and into focus groups talking with staff about what is it.

that is making you feel prepared because I think there's both sides.

So if we have schools that are reporting that they feel very prepared.

What is it.

So I want to dig into that.

What is it that they're seeing around the training.

Are there other things that are contributing to that.

Are there.

and then within schools that don't feel prepared if we have a significant numbers of staff that are not feeling prepared what is lacking in the training so those are so this for me is around that foundational piece then giving us a rich opportunity to go in and start talking with staff about what is it is the training meeting the needs what are some of the topic areas relevant and then of course ultimately going to our students.

So if our students are saying that they feel that staff are prepared, talking with student groups to find out what does that look like?

What do you mean by that?

Likewise, if they don't feel that staff are prepared, what's not being addressed what are the things that are that you feel aren't being that aren't happening or aren't being addressed within your school buildings and gathering that information it's one to develop training so looking at some of that feedback from staff and from students around what future training looks like what things are working are not working do we need to develop additional opportunities for staff and to grow their skill set.

So those are the types of things that we're looking at.

Again, these are foundational.

They don't have the information.

I've noted kind of the feel part of 3.2.

So really for me, and just in listening to that last conversation, it would be more around that staff are prepared.

And so take the feeling out of it, but that you are prepared.

So just noting some of those things.

I'll pause there for questions.

Discussion.

Well, let's just go around the circle here.

Director Briggs.

Oh, because it has like a yellow hand.

My comments are basically in the same vein as the comments for the last guardrail, and I'm wondering if actually instead of like perceptions and feelings, if instead it would be more effective to measure things like the tangible manifestations of a non-antiracist environment, like disproportionality in discipline, for example.

Maybe we need to see a metric on that.

Or a number of schools that have embedded ethnic studies into all of their curriculum.

those kinds of things.

Again, to Michelle's point about what are the adults doing in the buildings to ensure this, and less about what people's perceptions and feelings are, but what are the tangible things that we can measure that will help us know that Yeah, that are correcting the indicators that we have that show that racism is actually a factor.

That was an awkward wording, but hopefully it made sense.

You know it does make sense.

I do have some of the same concerns having monitored discipline when in a previous role in Seattle Public Schools I do get concerned about non reporting of disciplinary incidents when we're trying to look at them and then you know staff sometimes feel OK we're not going to report this because it looks better when we have less you know just just balancing some of that when we're thinking about the incidents and then For me I think when I think about this I want to ensure that our training and professional development is effective so that so there's part of that in there is like we can do all the training if it's not effective and you don't feel like you're prepared to handle situations we need to know that.

And then, ultimately, if I, as an adult, say that I do feel prepared, I need to know what the students think.

Because that's, I mean, I can say all day, yep, I'm prepared.

And I could have a whole classroom full of students who say, no, actually, you're not.

Or we don't feel that way because these incidents keep happening and no one does anything about it.

So that's, I guess, what we're getting at.

And I would say that even if we have, you know, 10 10 ethnic studies classes in a school that doesn't necessarily mean that because we have those classes that the behaviors of the adults have changed.

It means that we're teaching and we're giving access to students but I'm interested in what the adults are well I keep saying me but I'm sorry because I'm excited about I mean I'm I'm actually you know excited about this particular guardrail because we've been working on race and equity for so many years that you know I want to see results I want to see changes in how we do our day-to-day interactions with one another and with students so that's why I keep saying I apologize for that it is the collective we But again the number of things that we put in a school for classes or what have you may or may not necessarily change the adult behavior that we're looking at so that's kind of where we're going but I take that I'm noting that and thinking about that and want to bring that back to the collective group to talk about other measures.

I just have a quick follow-up.

I think that the ethnic studies one was just coming from having heard from community over and over and over again that that's really, really important.

And the failure to implement it district-wide has a racist impact.

So that's where that was coming from.

And so I feel like it is about adult behavior insofar as it is about changing a system and to make a system responsive to what community is saying it needs to see.

OK, I'm done.

That's you, Michelle.

Director Sargeo.

So I too am excited about the guardrail where my excitement falters is the checkbox with a follow up participation trophy that we do well in our culture.

Right.

People take trainings and they get a little certificate or a trophy that you took an anti-racism training and then they show up to the classroom exactly the way they did before because they're not being held accountable and so This exercise is an exercise that we have to continue to refine and try to get right.

Because honestly, our kids, I mean, you heard the NAACP Youth Council yesterday.

They know.

what they're talking about.

They know what these kinds of things look like.

And the fact that, and what I'm referring to is President Toppin, Director Clark and I went and met with them and they have alumni who are juniors, freshman, sophomore, juniors in college that come back to be mentors.

That says something about that program.

It says something about the value that they felt like they got in their time in being on that council and doing the work there.

They were real clear in their demands.

That's what they call them, demands.

They're not asks or we hope, they are demands and they're solid.

And so I don't know how we get, I feel like yes, okay, but in this I don't feel like there's a way to hold the adults accountable in practice.

They're gonna get the check box, they're gonna get the certificate or the participation trophy, but how does that land in the classroom?

And that's where we have to get to.

I get we're on a path to this but we've got to stay focused on the goal that it's more than just a flag or a trophy at the end of it.

I would agree 100 percent.

And I think that the most important piece on here is how students are feeling and how students are seeing and perceive the staff responding to incidents of race and equity and all of that.

So I do agree with that statement.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah, along the same lines, I think the first one, I think, is honestly in our system where it really is so variable building to building.

I do think where we are, that first one is important.

Just like, you're supposed to take this.

Did you take it?

We expect everyone to take this.

And it's also something that the superintendent can directly, I mean, you can't make somebody do something, but if they're not going to do it, and it's part of their job to do it, the superintendent can decide if they still have a job.

So the superintendent has quite a lot of control over that one.

I don't know that people who are, I'm including myself in this, on a journey to anti-racism are the best ones to assess whether or not they are the ones, they are prepared to, implement the practices.

I could be like, oh, I'm so ready.

I took the training.

I'm an ally.

And you'd be like, oh, you took one training.

I don't know that that's.

Or, I mean, also, people's self-perception, they could have taken a ton of training and actually be like one of the best accomplices in the building and still feel like they're not prepared to do enough for whatever reason.

So I think if there was a way we could get more at Actual actions being taken or not taken.

And even the students in the climate survey, I think climate survey is important, but I would also be interested if when students report an incident of racism, how they feel about its resolution.

And I know that's going to face the same thing Osnala reported.

Well, the ones that are.

Because if we expect our buildings to be implementing restorative practices and to be interrupting and disrupting unsafe and uninclusive and racist environments, the ones that are reported, we should, I don't know how those processes get closed, but part of the close of it should be, do you feel, the person who was harmed, do you feel this was appropriately resolved?

Because I am also hearing of some buildings where restorative, you know, everybody loves a buzzword.

So restorative practices are getting thrown all around.

In some places, it's very authentically done.

In some places, students are actually feeling more unsafe because they're being sat with an administrator face-to-face with the person who's causing them harm and are told, like, well, we're here to talk this out.

And that is not actually restorative at all.

So how we maybe try to capture, and then I have to say too that what I'm noticing here is when we talk about changing adult behaviors, We're talking about our own behavior and also the behavior of people in this building.

We're not just talking about those people out in the buildings need to change their behavior.

I want to see a little bit more percentage of surveyed staff who agreed they were fully supported by their building administrator and central office to implement anti-racist practice might be good.

Because if they indicate, like, I do not feel prepared and I do not feel like I have the support I need, that's something that the superintendent can then go, oh, hey, this building or this person, what can we do to make sure that they feel prepared?

Because it is about each of us behaving differently, not about waiting for other people to behave differently.

Because what we're really looking for is active change.

Oh, I see it.

Yeah.

Can I ask a follow up question if that's OK.

So when we're thinking about talking with folks who have reported so that so that to me feels different than like our wide student survey because you're going to have a significant percentage of folks who are like no I've never reported anything next.

So.

Perhaps we could get to some of that as we work with our Office of Student Civil Rights, an exit interview, for lack of a better term.

Maybe that's something that's different.

I think that sounds really interesting.

Because I also don't want to ask thousands of kids who haven't reported something, and they say, sure, it's great.

Because they don't actually know and haven't felt that process.

No, I think that's interesting.

And it also, you know, no one measure is going to capture like every single thing.

But if we do look at like, I mean, maybe the place to start would be to look at how many incidents come through the Office of Student Civil Rights.

And see, is that number going up?

Is it going down?

Like whether or not that's a good place to look.

And then an exit survey or a closeout, I think, is a really great idea.

And also because then a lot of times when there are incidents like that, they are resolved for that one incident and don't necessarily impact the rest of the system.

But if we were all looking at that together, did this get the response?

And talking about it a little more systemically, It's an interesting thing to think about if that would provide the right information and response.

Certainly could give us some insights into the process itself and are there spaces that we can make process improvements.

So thank you for that.

So I want to just do a check here because we've gone through guardrail two and three and we've provided some feedback.

The superintendent is in charge of the interim metrics here.

So is the board asking, I guess, to re-see and have another conversation on on two and three?

a question I have is again that we're going through a superintendent transition and so this is a much bigger I think this is all really valuable work and I wonder how Like, we could have someone that comes in that says, oh, I interpret that in this way, and in my previous district, this and this worked really well, and I'd like to try that.

And I don't think we should say, too bad, we've already interpreted it for you.

So that's another, I'm not sure how.

And remember, the superintendent can change the interim metrics at any point.

So this is the...

That's why I'm saying we're giving this feedback and I just want to make sure that staff feels like they have the direction to be responsive and do we want to pull this back in with our feedback come our retreat or something and look at it again, just trying to understand or gauge where you want to go here.

Yeah, I think that's a really good question.

And I'm wondering if maybe, I don't know, that maybe we do want to even pause on this.

Like, I don't know how, what other, I'm curious what other board directors think.

because i i guess what i'm like you're right that a new superintendent can change these metrics at any time but why why spend our time workshopping these if they're just going to get changed when a new superintendent comes in um without and you know i do think it's it would be really valuable to have that person's perspective on these so for that reason it i i feel like i could make a case for just pausing on these until we have completed that transition but curious what other people think.

My only concern there is you know scheduling trying to schedule out and looking at our calendar and our monitoring and the work that needs to happen in that place are we just going to miss having guardrails for you know the first six months of the school year type of thing.

I think because the guardrails get monitored so much less frequently than the goals, I think we could probably work around that.

Except that we want to see data more iteratively.

We just don't talk about it as much.

Right, right.

But I mean, there's just, we have a problem here, which is that we can't really do this right now.

I mean, that's just the reality.

Without letting, I mean, I guess we could, but then we're And there's a chance that the new superintendent would be like, yup, looks great, like, and then it would be done.

I don't know.

I don't know.

May I make a recommendation?

Yes.

And this is, um, This mostly probably reflects my own failings.

But I don't feel like we as a group have matured how guardrails actually work and what the process is.

And again, I'm probably projecting my own insecurity around this topic.

It feels like if we went with something and just worked on the practice of progress monitoring, even if they're not what you think will take the feedback we're getting to heart, make some adjustments, and then just work on it so we can work on how do these things work instead of what are they?

And that maybe would give that flexibility for the next administration to adjust, but they would be adjusting for a system that we have some practice with.

I think that's perfect and I'm hearing a lot of yes around the table and I think that makes sense because we can't stop doing our work just because we don't have a superintendent.

We've got the system in place.

So let's take that suggestion and then continue on to the next guardrail, guardrail four.

And I may have interrupted Mr. Howard.

I don't know if you can get it.

Fred, exactly what you're saying.

We need to continue to work, continue to pull the data, see where we're at right now, and work with the progress monitoring calendar so you see that feedback and growth, and you can continue to give us feedback.

Even if a superintendent comes in and shifts it we're still making progress and that's what we should be doing anyway with the guardrail.

We should learn from what we're doing make shifts in our practices from your feedback what we're learning what we learn from our students and keep making those changes because you're engaging the community.

We're going to make those shifts on a regular basis.

That's the practice that Fred's talking about that we have not had a lot of practice with.

We had a practice of writing one goal and then coming back to you at the end of the year saying did we hit it not hit it and then trying to defend it.

What we're going to be doing every 30 to 45 days is bringing you some data back to say hey this is where we're going are we on the right track if we're not we want to shift our practices but this is what we've learned and this is why we're shifting those practices.

So that's the calendar that's so important but you're right we need to give you some metrics so you can see if we're on the right track because we don't know if we are not until we grab that data first and that's what Fred's saying.

Well, I would love to see knowing that on the ideal, if things go as scheduled and a new superintendent is hired in August and is starting, we need to give them some time to just get to know us and our system And we still want to have something to measure.

So I think having, what I would really like is the outcome of this to be not necessarily scheduling another session, but maybe as you all work on the things that we're talking about today, maybe just over email, send us updated drafts and we could, you know, see if we come back to it in September or if we come back to it

I think so the system will be we're going to continue feedback today.

Staff will try to incorporate feedback.

We will have a draft just to look at.

We won't spend time reviewing at our retreat and we can go from there.

OK.

Perfect.

So the guardrail for.

Right.

Guardrail for engagement which will continue looking at it as we look at a new superintendent as we go into strategic planning.

So engagement is a bedrock of what we will be undertaking.

As you know, and this is a continuation of our conversation from our last meeting, we started talking about where we wanted to see engagement go.

Looking at the guardrail, it ensures that the superintendent will make no major decisions, underscoring major decisions, without first implementing an engagement strategy that includes students, families, staff, and community members.

So tonight is not necessarily about looking flatly at words on the screen, but we are talking about making this an essential part of the fabric of what we do and not just a checkbox exercise.

Yes, okay.

Hang on, hang on.

I haven't even gotten to the interim metrics yet.

Let's wait until we get to the interim metrics.

I'm good.

all right all right we're gonna keep cooking all right so knowing that we're trying to make this more than just a checkbox exercise again part of the fabric of what we do we believe and are taking a look at things to say that if our central office and our school leaders are trained and prepared to implement effective engagement at the building level.

And I believe at our last meeting we talked about a lot of our engagement does occur at the building level.

And if students, staff, and family members perceive, and not just feel, but they have opportunities to authentically engage in major decisions.

And if the board action reports as well as our updates demonstrate that our stakeholders and I almost hate the word stakeholders because it feels a little inhuman.

if our families, if our school community are effectively engaged before major decisions are made, then we believe not that we have arrived, but that we'll be chipping at and aligning ourselves with the values of guardrail for knowing that When we talk about major decisions, want to underscore that major decisions are decisions that could impact a student group.

And when we define student group, I want to expand that a little bit.

That could be a grade band.

That could be students qualifying for a specific set of services.

It could be a group of schools.

It could be the entire district.

Or it could be, and I added this, I don't think it's written down anywhere, significant slice of our school community so when we're talking about major decisions and who it impacts that's what we're talking about not just saying oh this was a district-wide strategic plan decision this is something that's impacting our community whether be it's small a smaller subset or whether it be the entire district we can move on to the next slide So looking at the interim metrics, and I am very interested to get some of your feedback, we did take a look at expanding this particular section.

At one point it was solely talking or speaking to a a climate survey or a question on a climate survey.

So we did expand out.

You will remember and it will seem familiar to you on 4.1 and 4.2 that we are looking at leaders at the building level and in central office.

Again, remembering what I said that a lot of our engagement does occur at the building level and it also occurs not necessarily always at decisions from this table there are individuals who are working on projects making decisions coming up with plans that they need that support so making sure that we have a percentage of our that we can guarantee each year that we have a high percentage of our central office and school leaders that have completed district training and know that there are expectations for an effective engagement and know what to do and making sure that that increases.

And of course, we would endeavor by 2030. My goodness, we should be at 100% in terms of the leaders who have access to the training each year.

Now I will align and say that this is necessary because I've heard from some of our principals are building leaders to say hey we want some more support on our operational decisions.

How do we do certain things outside of the academic decisions that we make on a day to day basis.

Then we should be able to come back and track after we have that number in place we should be able to come back and have discussions with our school leaders and say how did that work for you.

do you really have the skills that it takes to go out and impact change?

Not just the feeling, but have you had that opportunity to transform and use what you were trained on and put it into practice?

How did that work for you?

And I would say 4.3, I'm almost ready to shift it to 4.4 because that's the end result.

When you are taking a survey of students, families, staff, how many of them agree that they have the opportunities to participate in or inform decision-making processes?

That's the end.

And any of our climate surveys that we would put forth, that's actually the end.

There are other key indicators before that.

But going into 4.4 bar action reports, we have sat before you on many days at many points in times, and you have indicated your frustration.

I'll just underscore on frustration of being in a position to make decisions or vote on something that you weren't sure was fully embraced by the community, not necessarily agreement, but understanding and that there have been opportunities for input and what that input actually resulted in change or how it actually resulted in change.

We're endeavoring to add a piece to the board action reports or to deepen what we submit in our board action reports to show you.

How was the engagement provided in this particular instance?

And if the feedback was given, how did it change or how did it move the needle for us?

So tracking all of those particular components as a start, don't believe this is the ending place, but as a start to really move from checking it on the paper to some actual feelings and actual actualization of individuals involved and ready to engage with our families so interested to hear your feedback on how you feel that will enable you to monitor all right we'll start with director sargio then we'll go in the normal circle

yeah i'm not going to talk about the interim i want to make my comment on and first thank you for acknowledging that we are not at the place where we're effectively engaging you you said it i don't remember exactly your words but that you know that is the goal is to work on that and I don't know how many people are still a part of this riveting meeting online and are hearing this, but that is, I want our families to understand that we get that we haven't done engagement here, at least not to the expectations of families, and that we are committed to doing that.

The point I want to make about this, and I've said it before, Bev, I'm assuming you're not a gastroenterologist, but that your work has been in public affairs and as in chief of staff roles, right?

Because that is your expertise, right?

if we need a gastroenterologist we we know where to get one of those right if we need somebody to come in and talk to the community about that you're not going to pretend like you are one and start talking about something you know nothing about and i have said it before to this group we need we need to hire professionals to help us with this We have a really strong community engagement professional community here.

In Seattle, we're really fortunate.

Not every place has what we have to the plethora, to the level that we have it.

And so my hope, I know we no longer have a community engagement department, but we have got to stop uh what we're doing because it's frustrating people it's not working we're not getting what we want right in the end and we're wasting people's time i mean that's really what what is hard for me is wasting family's time you know i signed up for these wednesdays i signed up for you know what that means but i I was a parent of young children, and to come to meetings where I don't get anything out of it, I've wasted my time as a parent when I could be home parenting, making sure kids are doing homework, getting ready for the next day, whatever the next thing is.

I am excited to hear that acknowledged, because we have to first acknowledge that we have a problem before we can do anything about it.

And so I appreciate you stating it.

I think I heard it plainly.

I mean, I don't know what anybody else feels, but I feel like you were plain in your language about this is what we're going for, and that is the starting place.

Thank you.

Director Briggs.

Yeah, I just wanted to say that one of the things that I think we all encounter a lot with families that I'm not seeing necessarily reflected in any of these interim metrics is not just families who feel that they don't have a say in decision making, but also families who feel like an issue has come up or there's a problem or something and they have no way to get resolution.

They go to their principal, they don't get the answer that they need there.

They go through let's talk, and I've literally had parents say to me that let's talk feels like screaming into the void.

Like they don't know what kind of response they're gonna get back or if they will get one.

or more often there is a response but it isn't helpful.

And that's when they end up at public testimony bringing their problem to the board.

And so I guess I'm wondering what kind of metric we could come up with THAT COULD MEASURE HOW EFFECTIVE OUR SYSTEM IS AT ADDRESSING ISSUES AND CONCERNS THAT ARISE FOR FAMILIES WHERE THEY FEEL LIKE THEY'RE ACTUALLY HEARD AND THAT THE ISSUE IS BEING ADDRESSED SUCH THAT THEY DON'T THAT THEIR LAST RESORT ISN'T HAVING TO DRAG THEMSELVES DOWN HERE ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND SIGN UP FOR PUBLIC TESTIMONY AND BRING THEIR PROBLEM TO THE BOARD BECAUSE IT'S They don't know what else to do.

So just wondering if there's a way to reflect that somehow in one of these metrics.

We will absolutely take that back.

Just to enlarge upon your point, Let's Talk is a wonderful system.

It's a wonderful tool, but it's not the starting place for resolution.

So I think that's what you're trying to grab at.

And there's a great staff behind it, but often that's at the end of the line.

It's not at the beginning or the middle where people are struggling.

Director Rankin?

I'm still just kind of purple.

Like, this isn't rocket science.

And we used to have, and I found it online, the toolkit that I helped develop as a community member 10 years ago.

with Seattle Council PTSA and staff and Superintendent of the time, Larry Nyland.

And I don't know, sometimes it feels like we're pretending that never happened and that we don't know what to do.

And that was working really well.

We were at the brink of, I mean, actually, and people, I guess, didn't want to get too comfortable and decided to blow it all up.

And then COVID really took out all of that.

But my intense frustration is with the, and I don't know who or what force it is, but some entity whether it's a person or something in this building, does not want to do family engagement.

Because if they did, we would be doing it.

Because it's actually not that complicated.

So I'm just naming that.

All the talking around of it's actually not, not that it's easy, but it's not that complicated.

And we're not doing it because nobody's been directed to do it.

And the board has.

This is all we talk about, a lot that we talk about.

But people's, I would like to see, I mean, to Evan's point, a metric could be the number of people who sign up for public testimony that are speaking on things that are the superintendents, not the boards.

Because public testimony is actually not engagement.

It's one way.

It's where you come when you haven't figured out how to get resolution and you don't know where else to go.

But it's not engagement.

We don't even respond back to the things.

If everything was functioning the way it, quote unquote, should function, that time should be time for people to come and say their piece before we vote on something, if there's something we missed or something.

But that should be kind of the last in a process that involved the board being apprised, community being involved, and then a recommendation being made to the board to approve at the end of the process Not, oh my god, the board's about to vote on this thing.

We all have to go down there and yell about it because we didn't have a chance to be included beforehand.

So maybe something about a number of people who sign up in testimony on things that are that should have been resolved elsewhere.

I would love to see us develop that toolkit.

I'm sure it needs to be updated by this point.

But a metric on the use of the toolkit.

And probably a version for building leaders.

And then again, maybe a central, so completing strategies.

And then similar to another one about preparedness, school leaders who feel prepared to communicate and engage families I would feel I would maybe say prepared and sufficiently supported by central office because if we're going to ask building leaders to engage with their families on district wide issues we don't want people you know talking about a hundred you know we have a hundred hundred and however many principals if we're going to ask them to do some of that district-wide engagement central office needs to provide the the scope or the toolkit um or whatever so so maybe something about you know Do they feel they have the access to the right tools?

Or even if we identify the tool, use of talking points or use of let's talk and how that translates to resolution or even if people know which tool to use for what.

Thank you, Director Rankin.

Director Hersey?

So I think that there is a really interesting thread that Director Rankin brings up.

My question is just like getting to the base level.

Do y'all feel as though that we have a shared understanding of what community engagement is?

Because I feel like, and I'm not, this is not a gotcha.

This is just like a genuine question because like I've sat on several different iterations of the board and several different iterations of y'all.

And my question is like, And I'm not of one mind of this stuff.

I know that there was a lot of work that was done with Superintendent Nyland.

I have a huge amount of respect for that work.

And y'all, very few of y'all were actually there, right?

So my question is, And if it's easy just to nod your heads and say, no, I don't think that we have a shared understanding, or maybe we do, right?

I don't think we have an understanding, quite frankly, of what the community engagement is on the board's end, even though we do it.

So I guess the heart of that question is if we agree that we likely don't have a shared understanding, I think the first step is that, and then because I know even in this iteration you all have heard us talk about it.

What do you think is the barrier from getting to what we're currently doing to what the expectation of the board and community is like is it money is it personnel.

Is it the fact that it feels like a moving target because I know that that for me is true.

So I would love to just hear y'all riff a little bit about like, from y'all's perspective, and again, this is not a gotcha, I'm just genuinely asking the question so that we can bring it down to a level to where we can just have a brass tacks, plain language conversation about it.

All right, riffing.

Restyle.

You don't want to know about my playlist.

Lots of high energy and probably a lot of rap on there.

In terms of shared understanding, I think that's probably a challenge point across any of our goals.

So I'll just be honest about that, that there's common understanding between us, you, the public, everyone.

So I think there's work to be done across anything that we're talking about tonight to build common understanding.

Could it be a lack of resources?

Perhaps.

Yes.

But relationships cost you very little in terms of building those.

So I can't blame it solely on money.

Perhaps there is an additional personnel piece.

Yes.

I think we need and this is really basic.

I think we've got to slow down.

And feel free to challenge me on that but we do need to slow down.

Getting it across the board sometimes is a matter of date time all of those things but how do we back up that process enough time to make sure that we have room to work with our community work with you all build that common understanding about a particular issue.

It just may take more time.

So that's my first entry into the roofing.

my observation we talked about this in discussing that clarity and transparency in the budget we've had some recent conversations about enrollment sometimes explaining our capital program over and over we put technical experts in the position of having to do outreach on really complicated things and We need to find a way around them because they're great at what they do.

They understand it.

Can they explain it to a civilian is a whole different subject.

And we need to find a way to get better at that.

That's my observation on this front.

Follow up real fast.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

So yeah, that makes perfect sense to me, right?

Because I remember, again, in different iterations of this board, the first request would be like, well, are you going to come to my community meeting with me, right?

Where that might not necessarily be the best application of the expertise of that person, right?

You wouldn't send an astrophysicist to explain to second graders how, you know, the world orbits, or maybe you would.

But I guess my, yeah, they were probably, if it's Neil deGrasse Tyson, a lot of us would.

I think that where I really perked up was the fact that, to what Bev said, not that what you said wasn't great for it, I think it was, but like specifically around slowing down.

I think that between, there's, And this is likely going to be unpopular, but I really do think that we as a board, and I think that both of these things can be true at the same time, I think that it's important that we as a board, through the function of communicating the vision and values of our community, demand that we move at a breakneck pace to fix the wrongs that the district has done over many years.

Fred, I think, articulates this really well with like we're expecting our families to endure and like solve problems that have been created over decades.

However, and at the same time, I think that we as a board oftentimes have unrealistic expectations based off of heat that we are receiving from community that things should be fixed yesterday.

And I think that we have to come to an understanding of what is the balance between figuring out what is the appropriate pace to move that we push the system just far enough to where it bends but doesn't break.

And that is a really hard needle to thread across all of these things, right?

We're introducing a lot of change to our system all at the same time.

Like, again, we have just adopted this governance model like in 2021. We're still trying to implement it.

I think even more so than the governance model is like We had this conversation last week, or at least I brought it up in my comments, is that we have an understanding of what needs to happen at the top end of the system, and by the time it makes it to the classroom, it's completely different.

Again, I come from Federal Way.

I talk about ERLA a lot.

It took four to five years to implement that with fidelity, and now it's great.

I think that this is something that's very new for Seattle.

And I think that we haven't spent enough time level setting amongst us and really getting a deep understanding of what those goals mean, not only for us, but also for the day-to-day, or not the goals, but the guardrails, but also for the day-to-day experiences of Ted and his job, and all the way down to a teacher in the classroom, right?

So I am interested in, I guess I say all that to say, I am interested in taking some time in a meeting in a forum like this, not necessarily at a board retreat, but to do some really appropriate level setting about us coming up with some really clear, because even amongst the seven of us, we're all going to have a different understanding and interpretation of what each of those guardrails means and what those interim metrics should yield.

I can only imagine what that looks like for y'all.

And unless we have a really clear and plain language brass tacks conversation, we're going to waste a lot of time, money, and scorn a lot of relationships because we're all trying to accomplish the same goals and reach the same place.

And I feel like Unfortunately, we're heading in different directions occasionally, and that's not, I really genuinely believe it's not for nefarious intent.

I believe that there just wasn't enough understanding on the front end to really have a clear sense of direction for us as an organization, and that falls squarely at the...

I'm wrapping up.

She riffed for 20 minutes.

I'm joking.

I'm joking.

I'm joking.

I'm joking.

I got like 20 minutes left in this scene.

I'm going to be silly.

But my point being, my point being is that I think that we should take a step back and slow down a little bit and build a shared understanding of what it is we're trying to do and what it is we're trying to prevent.

Sorry, I really am joking.

No, I appreciate that.

I'm just trying to keep things fair amongst folks.

I don't know if staff wants to respond.

I appreciate this idea of getting down to the brass tacks and level-setting conversation.

Hello?

All right.

Accountability Officer Howard.

You asked a great question, and the question you asked is what's the biggest barrier in this?

And I think the biggest barrier in any time you have engagement is actually understanding the goals, but also sharing that process of who's going to have the power to make that decision.

And when you don't want to engage in a community, that means you're going to give the community some power that you want to kind of control the outcome.

And so if you don't want to control that outcome and engaging, you have to share what that's going to look like.

And when communities have been marginalized, they don't get a chance to share their expectations.

They are supposed to come and participate in a certain way, but not all the way to be able to make that decision.

And that's really difficult because they're sending us their brightest their kids, their love.

And so how do we engage in that conversation, but then also turn it around so they can actually see the outcomes, because they give us feedback, and then we turn around and give them feedback by making that happen.

So we always forget something that's so basic, and I think we just get so wrapped up, like you're saying we're doing too many things, which is our teachers are the input, the outcome is our kids.

So if we just stick with that, we'll know what's actually happening.

Same thing with our community.

Our community is giving us the output.

So let's invite them in, have conversations with them, but also be clear about where their power starts and where it ends so we can engage them.

But that's the biggest barrier that I've seen over my career, that shared power dynamic.

All right, closing remarks from staff here.

Then I want to move because we've spent double the amount of time, more than double the amount of time on these first three, and we have the very too complicated guardrails to go.

Closing remarks.

All right, let's move to guardrail one then.

Good evening.

Director Briggs has one quick thing real fast on this topic.

Sorry.

I just wanted to say, first of all, Brandon, such a good call to be like, what is our shared understanding of community engagement?

Because so often we're not even talking about the same thing.

And we don't even realize we're not talking about the same thing.

So always good to define our terms.

I'm totally on board with that.

I guess my feeling about we need to slow down, what came up for me with that was being on the audit committee and looking at the communications audit that came through like two years ago.

And that was such a good roadmap of everything.

So clearly delineated everything that was wrong, not working, and suggestions for how to fix it.

So I feel like we've had this information for a long time.

We've been sitting on it for a while.

So when I hear slow down, I'm like, For what because we know I really feel like we have we know So there's so much we could be doing that we actually should have already done so I just want to push back a little bit on that on that idea and just Remember to that we have that document that I think is full of lots of really helpful Suggestions for how we can improve how we communicate with families

I put my table up just for clarification.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I know we're trying to wrap and move to something else.

When I say slow down, I want to provide some clarity.

That doesn't mean you don't do it and you don't have urgency about what you do.

Sometimes I think we compress our steps so much that we don't give space to fully work an engagement process all the way through.

So just clarifying there.

All right, let's move on to guardrail one.

Good evening, board directors.

Dr. Rocky Torres Morales, associate superintendent.

Guardrail one, academic assurances across schools.

So as a reminder, the superintendent will not allow a student's school assignment, family income, race, or ethnicity, need or identity, determine access to high standards, rigorous programming, high quality teaching, and supports.

Next slide, please.

So essentially, when we were looking at this guardrail, and I go back to we discussed this once with the board and we received some feedback.

And essentially, what we were hearing was that families do not want to have the experience whereby, depending on where you live in the city, you can talk to a parent in another part of the city, and their kid is having access to something that's completely different from what they have.

And so next slide, please.

We've set up a couple of interim metrics for feedback from you all, but the first one talks about surveying our families to see, and I don't usually like to read out, but I'm gonna read out a little bit here for you all, the percentage of surveyed families who agree that their school provides access to a high-quality education that meets their child's needs.

And we're gonna set in the metrics.

I know Director Briggs has been pretty adamant with us to put some numbers in, so we will get you some numbers.

by 2030, so by the end of the five years, with equitable increases across demographic groups and regions.

Essentially what we were looking at here was, we know, think about what we're going through in this moment, we have some families that like their attendance area school and they wanna go there.

We have some families that go to option schools, they wanna go there.

What this is saying is that they're gonna have access to a school and that the families are essentially gonna tell us that they feel that they're getting a high quality education for their student based on what they have access to.

1.2 talks about advanced course offerings across our schools.

This one at this time is currently looking at middle and high school or secondary schools, but saying that the advanced course offerings are gonna be available at the schools regardless of where the family lives or regardless of what school the student attends.

And the third one is a little bit more complex.

So I'm going to take us to a forward slide and then come back to this, because I just want to do a quick talk on it.

And we have a graphic for you.

But can you go back real quick to previous slide?

Yep.

1.3, the percentage of elementary schools identified as foundational, not needing support by the state accountability system.

Ultimately, we want to get this to is that 100% of our schools are at foundational.

So now, could you advance the slide, please?

So essentially, this is a state metric.

I don't want us to spend too much time looking at this and really unpacking it.

I want to get it to the simplest level and then happy to talk to any of you offline to get into the nitty-gritty on this or get into the weeds on it.

But essentially, foundational support is where you would actually want your schools.

The term sounds interesting because it sounds like there's something that's maybe wrong with the school, that they need support.

But what foundational support is saying in this state...

metric is that your school is allowed to just be their school they don't need additional support from the state additional intervention and those sort of things versus as you move up on this pyramid you do need additional things or you're going to have to you know your kids aren't your certain subgroups aren't performing well your graduation rates all those sort of things get impacted in that so foundational support is essentially where you would want all your schools to be and just for a little bit more context in general the way this works is the lowest 5% of schools in the state qualify for some level of support, meaning a tier one, tier two, or tier three support.

So what that metric is saying is that we don't want any of our schools to be in the bottom 5% of the state.

We wanna say that by 2030, none of our schools are in the bottom 5% of rankings with the state.

I know I said a lot, so I do wanna pause for a moment, let y'all digest and take some questions.

Director Rankin.

Thanks.

Can we go back to the slide with all three of the yeah thank you.

I'm going to have a kind of the same I think the.

1.2 and 1.3 for me, I feel like seeing that information would tell us a lot about whether or not that top line guardrail is getting closer to being achieved.

1.1, I think I would This is, again, the conversation we had about other things, about people's feelings.

And we can't really do anything about how people feel about things.

Not that that's not important, general satisfaction, but in terms of this measure, this instrument, I'd like to see a little more leaning into some of the other categories in the first one about not allowing race, income, other things besides geographic location.

I wonder if there's an opportunity there to look at something to do with disproportionality.

about like which students do have access or don't have access to things being offered because that would sort of indicate if students with disabilities are not participating in something because there's less access that would be something that we would want to make sure that they do have access to or if there's you know if we look at I don't know IB program or something and see that there's there's big disproportionality it wouldn't necessarily mean that we have to add a bunch more IB programs but maybe think about who has access and who doesn't and how do we support increasing the access so that's my feedback on that thank you for that thank you

Director Hersey.

Others.

On to guardrail five.

He's coming to the table.

It's me again, Kurt Buttleman, Assistant Superintendent for Finance.

We did go over this guardrail at a previous meeting, so I don't want to belabor it too much here tonight.

But the guardrail reads the superintendent will not allow people, time, money, and other resources to be allocated in a manner inconsistent with student need.

Next slide.

The interpretation of that is that the district gets committed to meeting student needs by investing in high quality teaching and support.

We can go to the next slide and the two proposed metrics.

And again there's a caveat to these at the bottom.

You can see we're hoping to further inform this with the resource and strategy analysis and study and the strategic plan task force outcomes.

But the two currently proposed metrics are the proportion of expenditures around teaching and teaching sport.

will continue to increase over the five year period.

We talked tonight about that being over 70 percent in the 25 26 budget proposal and then school spending at each school will be at least insert percentage here of annual allocated funding in order to meet the needs of the current year students in an attempt to make sure resources intended to go to schools do get spent at schools for the students in that that year.

Happy to talk about these or answer any questions.

Director Rankin.

Thank you, really quick.

I would love a, and this may come out of the resource and strategy study, I would be really interested in seeing something to do with system wide allocation.

I'm not sure exactly what, but yeah.

other directors okay well thank you so much we really appreciate we getting us through the uh interim guardrail metrics uh and that concludes our business for this evening so there being no further business to come before the board the board meeting is now adjourned at 7 30 pm thank you everyone