School Board Meeting Date Feb. 3rd, 2016 Pt 1

I'm going to take a roll call.

Ms. Foti?

Director Burke?

Here.

Director Pinkham?

Here.

Director Peters?

Here.

Director Harris?

Here.

Director Geary?

Here.

And Director Patu?

Here.

If everyone would please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which we stand, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, there is no recognition for tonight's meeting.

The recognition of outstanding staff will be held at a later board meeting.

Tonight we have Ballard High School's Concert Choir.

Ballard High School's performing arts program has gained a reputation for excellence throughout the Northwest and beyond.

Concert Choir is the school's large mixed voices ensemble consisting of men in grades nine through 12 and women in grades 10 through 12. The 65 members of Concert Choir are also involved in theater, band, orchestra, athletics, student government, and numerous school clubs.

Performance highlights include a 2010 concert at New York City's Lincoln Center, an annual winter masterwork performance with the school's full orchestra, and a performance at the 2013 Northwest American Choral Directors Association Conference.

Recently, Concert Choir was invited by Governor Jay Inslee to perform the National Anthem at the 2016 State of the State Address.

In addition, they were selected as one of 10 high school choirs nationwide to perform in the Nationals for Top Choirs Festival at New York City's Carnegie Hall this March.

Please welcome, under the direction of Courtney Rowley, the Ballard High School Concert Choir.

And I invite all the directors, please, to have a seat in the front row.

Hello.

Our first song will be Indodana, a traditional South African piece arranged by Michael Barnett and Rolf Schmidt.

The lyrics sung in traditional Xhosa language are an expression of grief of a cherished figure.

Thank you.

Oum tatile, eee.

Oum t'wanawa, ooo.

Kula leinati, eee.

Ololo.

E-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le.

Oh, Lord, oh, oh, hey, hey, hey.

In total love.

Oh, Lord, oh, oh, hey, hey, hey.

In total love.

Oh, oh

Amen.

Oh, Oh, no, no, oh, hey, hey, hey.

This next piece is called Sweetheart of the Sun, arranged by Eric William Barnum, based off of the poem Ruth by Thomas Hood.

We will be performing it next month on the stage of Carnegie Hall.

O fair Amid the cold, last by the golden light of morn, like the sweetheart of the sun.

Many a glowing kiss had won On her cheek an autumn flush Deeply ripened Touch of blood in the midst of crowd was like red poppies grown with corn.

Found her eyes, her tresses pale, which were black as man could tell.

Light fell, spin all too bright.

And her hat with shady brim, And a jessie forehead dim, Praising God with sweetest gloom.

Alleluia.

Alleluia.

Alleluia.

For I said heaven did not be where I live thou shouldst but glee.

Like the sweetheart of the sun lay thy sheep uptown.

Fade thy sheaf of time.

Share my harvest and my home.

Share my harvest and my home Share my harvest and my home

Our final song is a song called Paisé Café arranged by Sten Kelman.

It's a Haitian song about a young boy who gets sent to the market by his mother to fetch some coffee.

And in all the chaos of the market, he loses it.

Chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug

Nambamboyen pese kapeyo, hanarivan muhsupotai meyoja damarete.

Nambamboyen pese kapeyo, hanarivan muhsupotai meyoja damarete.

Samadhi lakai lemari merizami,

Mama Boy am super tight, puma lepe se kape Mama Boy am super tight, puma lepe se kape Mama Boy am super tight, puma lepe se kape Samadhi lakha, samadhi lakha, samadhi lakha, samadhi lakha, samadhi lakha.

Mahaboy and super tight, my favorite is a cafe.

Mama boy and soup potai, kumale peze kafe, oi, samadhi lakai lemari vemezami, samadhi lakai lemari ve, oi, samadhi lakai lemari vemezami, samadhi lakai lemari vemezami,

is Boy, boy, samadhi lakadhi.

Boy, boy, samadhi lakadhi.

Boy, boy, samadhi lakadhi.

Boy, boy, samadhi lakadhi.

Boy, boy, samadhi lakadhi.

Samadhi.

I want to say you guys were marvelous.

And we want to ask you to say your first name and grade.

Melina Jr.

Olivia Sophomore Nicholas Jr.

Michael Sr.

Sophia Sophomore Elizabeth Sr.

Justice Sophomore Russell Sophomore Helen Sr.

Maddie Jr.

Alden Jr.

Julian Jr.

Rachel Jr.

Lily, senior.

Camara, senior.

Cece, junior.

Asia, senior.

Remy, junior.

Olivia, junior.

Samantha, junior.

Satchel, senior.

Alex, junior.

Olivia, senior.

Sophia, sophomore.

Paul, junior.

Ezra, sophomore.

Spencer, senior.

Diego Jr.

Declan Sr.

Elsa Jr.

Meg Jr.

James Jr.

Kai Freshman.

Zoe Sophomore.

Joslyn Sophomore.

Johnny Jr.

Gideon Sr.

Natalie Sr.

Ian Sr.

Owen Freshman.

Cora Sr.

Kincaid, freshman.

James, freshman.

Krista, junior.

Simon, junior.

Luis, junior.

Zipporah, junior.

William, junior.

Xun, sophomore.

Sonia, senior.

Amanda, senior.

Skyler, sophomore.

Logan, freshman extraordinaire.

Bobby, freshman.

Tasha, Jr.

Allie, Sr.

Sam, Sr.

Let's give Ballard High School a wonderful hand for a job.

And also, Miss Courtney for bringing them along here.

Thank you so much.

I will now turn it over to our superintendent Nyland for his comments.

Well, wow, awesome.

Can we go to Carnegie Hall to hear them there?

What a great performance.

Well, this is National School Counselors Week, and I invite everyone to join me in celebrating the week and honoring the important work that our counselors do as we do more social and emotional work in schools, the role of counselors becoming even more important.

Sometimes we think of them as being kind of career counselors and helping students get classes, but they do a whole lot more than that, and we certainly very much appreciate and celebrate their work.

Our esteemed board president, Betty Patu, was honored on Saturday night by the Asian Pacific Advocate Organization of Chinese Americans, also known as OCA.

Director Sue Peters and I had the opportunity to be there with her and to join her in kind of celebrating her accomplishments.

She was recognized for many many many many years decades of great advocacy work increasing graduation rates and college admissions and safety in the community.

So congratulations to Betty Patu.

Current updates, EEU has been one of the issues that we've been working on for some time.

I'd like to invite Wyeth Jesse to come up and comment on the work.

Wyeth has held many, many meetings with the University of Washington.

And thanks to a great meeting that we had last week with the assistance of the Ombuds Office of the Governor and OSPI and Representative Ruth Kege.

We believe that we're moving in the right direction and that we will get an agreement that will allow us to solve our legal difficulties and continue to preserve the partnership.

So invite Wyeth to give us some other updates on that.

Thank you, Dr. Vineland.

Hi again, I'm Wyatt Jesse, Executive Director for Special Education.

And it was a very fruitful meeting last Friday, I think, just to capture the atmosphere was everybody came to the meeting looking for a solution, right?

And so we all knew it.

There's a lot of complexities to this issue as I've reported many times to the school board and out to the public.

And so in this particular tentative agreement, the reason it's tentative is because there's still some details on the back end that we have to look at and we had OSPI on the phone.

They were also having to provide some assistance right in the middle of that meeting of the unique relationship, the unique services that the UW's EU program has and especially around kindergarten.

So this tentative agreement moving forward is we're going to be hammering it out.

In fact tomorrow representatives from the University of Washington and Seattle Public Schools will be meeting tomorrow to kind of flesh out how we're going to start to look at defining specifically the services for students with special needs there.

Also looking at the funding about general education funding is still a question out there, held out there.

Waiting for some correspondence with OSPI to assist us with that.

And I think the real, something really powerful that could come out of this is the expansion, the learnings of this unique program, right?

And so that's what the EEU is, Experimental Education Unit, and it has the element of that it's a research site, that it also has, provides training for teacher candidates that we hire here in Seattle, and also is just an ability to do some training.

And so we've always used the training element, so now we're gonna look at expanding, identifying specific schools here in Seattle, one school probably in preparation for next school year, one school in each region to take some of the learnings from the EU and try to replicate those things right there at school sites and keep expanding in the years to come.

So that relationship's there.

We've always had that relationship and I think that's where it gets really exciting for Both us, the UW, they've wanted to do this for years as well.

And this new relationship and agreement will provide us.

And then I think that's my one closing comment is that the way it was structured before wouldn't allow us and was keeping us out of compliance.

And that's where we did need the help of OSPI to say, this is unique.

They said that on the phone.

This is so unique that this is challenging.

And let's look at an interagency agreement between the University of Washington and Seattle Public Schools and call it out for what it is because we were just structuring it before just about Seattle Public Schools and servicing these 20 students.

It's really about a lot more than that.

It's really again about using the research that they have, the trainings that they can provide and again the teacher candidates and try to use those things and spread it out here and implement it in other sections of Seattle Public Schools so that it's not just so limiting and I've I haven't spoken to some folks.

People are getting really excited about this new opportunity and the way it's restructured and again there's many pieces that have to get aligned on this but that's where we stand and I'll have an opportunity to report back to you soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much to Director Gil Geary for joining us in that meeting as well.

The other item that we'll have a report on is capacity management.

So we've been challenged as we continue to grow as a district both from enrollment as well as for smaller class sizes which means more teachers and the need for more classrooms.

At the last board meeting the board approved plans to move forward with trying to find 66 classrooms that we were short for enrollment for next year.

Much of that through the cost of added portables and changes to facilities.

At that time we talked about the potential of 19 providers that might need to be either relocated within the building or find housing outside of the school campus.

And so I'd like to invite Dr. Herndon to come and give us an update on where we are with those issues.

Good evening.

Flip Herndon, associate superintendent for facilities and operations.

As Dr. Nyland was mentioning, we did bring this item forward to the board for action last week and a quick update, or two weeks ago, and a quick update in that amount of time.

Initially we had said that this would be kind of the first of several iterations of what we are doing to look at spaces and we had tentatively identified 19 possible classrooms throughout 10 buildings.

So initial enrollment projections went out to principals on Monday.

We had some conversations last week.

and those continue on today, even today.

So what I can tell you is we have worked that number in collaboration with providers, the city and the principals in looking at creative opportunities.

We've got that list down now to seven schools and about 11 classrooms and this is again, it's very fluid and we continue to work with all of our departments Even in these particular buildings or classrooms, it doesn't mean that these programs will no longer exist within the building.

We continue to look at multi-use spaces within the building to see what we can do and have conversations with the city about locations that might be close by to be able to continue these services.

We do have information in the back that talks about our timelines of what we have as well as the buildings and the programs being impacted at this point that we know about.

We do know again throughout the spring open enrollment there may be some changes to buildings being impacted.

So not every school being impacted might be on this list right now when it's all said and done.

But we don't expect massive changes to this particular list.

So it is an iterative process.

We'll continue to work with folks and keep you up to date and update our website.

And I believe all this information is also available on our main page as well.

So people can look there if they want more information.

Again, we do have materials in the back of the room.

While you're there you want to comment on the water bottles.

Oh yes.

Water bottle filling stations.

So we are going to apply for that particular grant.

The issue previously with a few of the options that we've been looking at at the filler stations are that they've not been able to pass our water quality testing that we have as a board policy.

We have a very high mark to have water quality testing.

And some of the devices just haven't been able to pass.

However, we have been looking at other options of devices that might work for us.

So that particular grant is due February 19th.

We're working diligently.

We will apply for that grant.

And we're hoping that we can get as many water bottle filling stations out to our schools.

We're trying to hope for one at each school.

But part of that's going to depend on the cost, time, installation.

And of course, we want to make sure the water is safe for everyone to drink.

Thank you.

Smart goal number four is early hiring.

We know that we want to be first into the market to get good teachers to come work in Seattle.

And we know that there's a pending teacher shortage.

And we've already identified several areas that we're finding hard to fill.

And so this last Saturday, we had a kind of an early hiring job fair for many of those positions that were hard to fill.

We were able to offer 102 early contracts, 35 of those in special education.

So a great event and compliments to our staff and all the people who helped coordinate that event this Saturday.

Also on Saturday we had an options school admissions fair attended by about 200 people to come find out what our options schools were all about.

We're just entering into the open enrollment time period for parents to put in requests for options schools throughout the district.

And so again a lot of work on a Saturday and great response from parents and appreciate the staff making that possible and appreciate parents taking advantage of that.

We've been working for the last year on creating an office of civil rights within the district and providing greater responsiveness and greater prevention I guess for Title nine sexual harassment sexual assault and a variety of other issues that we knew that we needed to address.

So that office is now staffed and operating.

and they're continuing to work uh...

on the task force recommendations uh...

the task force that we had in place last year completed their work made their recommendations we've responded to those recommendations and many of the people on the task force continue to work uh...

with the new uh...

office of civil rights uh...

to uh...

implement those recommendations so one of those that's coming up is that april is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and we're working on communications that will be translated and going home to parents during that time under the theme of a safer family and a safer world.

Coming up on the 18th of February is Seattle Education Association is sponsoring a day of action in concert with other districts around the state and around the nation.

This will be a walk in school will continue to be in session.

Teachers will be gathering outside of school facilities with parents and with community supporters.

and drawing attention to the need for full funding of McCleary and full funding of education in Washington.

In that vein, Director Jill Geary and Ken Gotch attended this past weekend the annual WASDA conference with our legislators or kind of around our legislation in Olympia.

I heard an opportunity to hear about the governor's priorities.

I heard an update on McCleary from Thomas Ahern, who is the attorney for the news consortium that has been pursuing the McCleary decision and implementation.

And I think the highlight of that session was the state treasurer's report that actually comes through with a pretty sound plan for coming up with the resources to fund McCleary, which has been the challenge for the legislature.

So glad to know that we do have people in Olympia that are working hard on finding the funds to make McCleary possible.

In addition Director Geary joined our new deputy Steven Nielsen, Flip Herndon and myself in meeting with our Seattle delegation in Olympia on Monday and we had an opportunity to talk about our priorities which include McCleary especially around the capacity issues that we just talked about and the issue of the levy changes that are coming.

the legislature in anticipation of full funding of McCleary made some reductions in the levy, recognizing that they were going to be picking up the difference.

Well, they haven't done that yet.

So we were there to say you need to make a fix if you're not going to fund McCleary you need to fix the levy so the schools aren't penalized further and have to make budget cuts.

So we're appreciative of our legislators hearing that message and hopefully the legislature will correct that that glitch in the levy funding.

I want to acknowledge the fact that the Seattle Council for PTSA was in Olympia today, I think, lobbying the legislature for greater support for McCleary as well as other initiatives that they have been fighting for.

And one of the kind of Other pieces of legislation that we're keeping an eye on is one that allows city and county employees a long time to pay back if we make a mistake and overpay people, but not for school districts.

The bill in consideration would allow school districts to be treated the same as other city and county agencies.

And Julie Davidson our payroll manager joined David Westberg from 609 in testifying on that bill.

Coming up within a few days are the levies that we have before the voters.

So everybody has their ballots and certainly encourage everyone to make sure that they do vote.

Two levies, operations levy pays for 25% of everything that we do, and it has a huge impact on the salaries that the state is not able to fund.

The other levy is BTA for buildings, technology, and academics and athletics.

helps take care of some of our older buildings 60 percent of our public school buildings are more than 50 years old.

And so this helps provide for that maintenance and repair of those buildings.

So coming right up get those ballots mailed in.

Our budget staff has had a couple of meetings with the PTSA.

I believe that Director Peters joined them in one of those meetings last week.

So we've been working with the PTA to have them understand the district budgeting process and the school budgeting process so that they can participate in the process as it's outlined in our collective bargaining agreement.

Couple of listening opportunities, research and evaluation has been working on updating the family survey that goes out each spring.

They met recently with the parent advisory committee and with PTSA parents to get their feedback on the survey questions.

And also on Saturday, Saturday was a busy day, many of the state commissions met hosted by El Centro de la Raza and they met to talk about the services that they provide from a standpoint of equity and justice.

So we had a long list of people from Olympia and good participation from the community to hear about services available to them.

Coming up this coming Saturday, sponsored by the Seattle Alliance of Black School Educators, is a My Brother's Keeper Symposium.

It'll be in this auditorium on Saturday from nine to three.

And they have a representative from the White House staff coming to talk about My Brother's Keeper, which is certainly in line with our SMART goal number two, which is how do we close gaps?

How do we close the opportunity gap for all of our students?

Moving on to good news.

It was a big game last night, I hear.

So Rainier Beach and Garfield met for the first time since they met in the state championship last year.

Garfield won that game.

This game was hosted at Rainier Beach last night.

And Rainier Beach.

Who won?

All right.

I want to thank many, many people.

The principals, our security, Seattle Police Department, Rainier Beach community and so many others helped make that event well operated, well run, allowed everybody to enjoy the game and great event to see the great athletics and great sportsmanship.

Two of the school visits that I made this last week, I just want to give a very brief highlight.

So at Washington Middle School, well, District wide one of our goals is closing the opportunity gap.

At Washington Middle School as I do in each school visit now I ask so what are you doing to help close the opportunity gap.

Washington Middle School got a grant from the city to buy laptops for 36 of their African American males and the principal and volunteer staff meet with the students and their families once a week.

So they eat together, they get some computer lessons, and then they spend some time together with tutoring sessions with the teachers.

builds that opportunity for connections with students and then the principal Susan Fulmer has used the students as an advisory committee to talk about some of the things that are going on in the school.

And so it's created that great relationship and a point of contact and a lot of good information on things the school can do to connect better and serve students better.

And at Madrona K-8 they have done a lot of work on the social emotional side and they've done a lot of work for student interventions.

They told me about one student that was new to the building And every day he would blow out in terms of being disruptive and have an emotional kind of meltdown.

And they worked with the student.

And they finally figured out it happened during reading every day.

And that seemed to be one of the triggers.

So they assigned the student to an intervention teacher during that time who taught the ruler social-emotional skills and some coping strategies for when the student was feeling out of control.

And supposedly that was supposed to go on for 15 days.

But before the 15 days were up, the student came back to the principal and said, you know, can I go back to the regular class?

And did and has been fine other than maybe checking himself out of the class.

periodically to give a little bit of cool down time.

So schools are doing great things and sometimes it's one by one, sometimes it's group by group and other times it's things that we can do as an entire school to work on closing those gaps.

Washington State High School Ethics Bowl was held last Saturday.

We had Rainier Beach, Chief Sealth, Roosevelt, and Nova students participating.

Rainier Beach team two received an award for civil dialogue, and Chief Sealth team two took a third place award.

They get to take a tour and visit with the Supreme Court, our legislators, and have a lunch reception with the Supreme Court justices.

So congratulations to them.

I mentioned earlier that Steven Nielsen, our new deputy, accompanied us to Olympia.

He started on Monday morning, and we put him to work early on Monday morning to get to Olympia to join us in talking with legislators.

So we welcome him back to Seattle.

He comes to us from being assistant superintendent of finance, operations, and government relations for Puget Sound ESD.

And he was here previously in the finance office and executive director of logistics.

He's also worked previously with the governor's office and executive director of business operations for Edmond schools and executive director for WASDA, Washington State School Directors Association.

Welcome, Steve.

Wave your hand there.

Yeah, all right, welcome.

And I have one more announcement but I will end on a note of personal privilege.

We've reached the end of the semester.

Fifty years ago today I graduated from Roosevelt High School and began work as a custodian in Seattle Public Schools.

My last announcement I would like to request a motion to amend the agenda to move the introduction item number one to action item number two on tonight's agenda to be introduced and acted upon at tonight's meeting.

The request was reviewed by the operations committee on January 21st and the committee recommended introduction and action at the next meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you Superintendent Nyland.

We do not have student comments this evening.

This portion is set aside for when we have a student representative sitting at the dais with the board.

As we do not have one this evening there is no student to give comment.

The students present for public testimony will have the first spot during the public testimony portion of the agenda.

We have now reached the business action item portion of the agenda.

I will note that the superintendent has made a request to move the introduction item number one BEX IV, Custodia Elementary School and Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, formerly Wilson Pacific.

Approval of change order number 04 to change the roofing system to multiply and modify Tuminous Roof Membrane System at both schools to action item number two on tonight's agenda to be introduced and acted upon at tonight's meeting.

This request was reviewed by the operations committee on January 21st, 2016 and the request was reviewed by the operation and the committee recommended introduction and action at the same meeting.

I will now entertain a motion to amend the agenda as I have just noted.

I so move.

I so second.

Ms.

Foti roll call please.

Director Harris?

Aye.

Director Peters?

Aye.

Director Pinkham?

Aye.

Director Blanford?

Aye.

Director Burke?

Aye.

Director Geary?

Aye.

Director Patu?

Aye.

The motion to amend the agenda passed unanimously.

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

Motion passed.

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I so second.

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

Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

The consent agenda has now passed.

Now we're actually, as we are, we'll reach to the public testimony.

It is now, let me make sure it's five o'clock, 5.06.

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

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

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

With two minutes have ended, please conclude your remarks.

I will call three names at a time.

Let me get my list back.

And please, if I pronounce your name wrong, please excuse me.

I have a habit of chasing people's name by the time I get through.

Justina Landfield, Noah Davis, Ishmael Simpson.

Chris Jenkins and Michael Bryan.

How's it going?

My name's Ishmael Simpson and your name is?

Angelina Baccarin.

We are here for the interagency recovery school and speaking on behalf of the interagency of the recovery school as I said.

I was here today not really planning too much but I just wanted to talk about the recovery school and put emphasis on that versus all the other interagency sites.

We have 12 of them.

They're for, I would say, they're for all the kids that, like, for my personal history, like, I went to a different high school.

I went to Roosevelt, and that didn't really work out for me, you know, and then they have interagency, and I researched those quite a bit.

I went to the one in the university district, and they're really cool because they give us a second opportunity to express ourselves and learn, you know, different, and it's really good, you know.

So they were really cool but then drug and alcohol was also a big part of my story so then I looked in, I heard about the recovery school through a friend of mine and I went and visited that and I saw some really cool teachers and I looked at all the things that they had to offer which they have a mental health counselor and they have a drug and alcohol counselor, you know.

It's one of those things that people don't really talk about with the recovery aspect of education because big high schools people tend to fall through the cracks wherever drug abuse may take them.

So that's really cool.

Like going to a big school at Roseville, I didn't really have anyone that I can reach out to and talk to about these problems, you know.

And that was really cool.

So now I can pull my drug and alcohol counselor aside and ask them any questions, ask them for resources in the community.

And that's really cool.

Plus, I have other students at my school that I can really talk to.

And it's kind of a smaller group.

Therefore, the educational aspect of it is really awesome.

Oh, that's the timer.

I have kids left and right that truly want to better their lives and stay sober.

That's really cool.

the mental health part of it.

Because there's a bunch of things that happen in life that lead kids to drugs and alcohol.

And that's not really talked about as well.

I personally don't have parents.

I have no one I can really talk to about that stuff.

So I really take advantage of all the opportunities that are given there.

And I've tried out other interagency schools.

And recovery is definitely something I'll vouch for to anyone that I come across that wants a better life.

And the opportunity that the recovery school brings is like no other.

personally.

And also, the friends that you guys named off wanted me to let them know that they're sorry that they didn't make it.

Justina got sick, and Noah had something that he had to take care of.

So thanks for letting us come up here and talk.

Thank you.

And my buddy wants to say something else.

Yeah, I'm just really grateful for this school because I tried out public school and then I tried out another alternative school.

And honestly, if it wasn't for this school, I would not be in school right now.

I'm so thankful for the support that they give us there.

And it's just a really big, like, it's not a big community, but it's a small one with a lot of support and you can get a lot of one-on-one time with all the teachers.

and the students and the counselors and whatnot.

And it's not like that at normal public school.

It's just huge classrooms.

The teachers aren't really paying attention individually.

So yeah, thank you for listening.

What is your name?

Angelina.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the yearbooks contract, the vendor has charged a high cost per student at smaller schools.

Essentially, smaller schools are subsidizing other schools.

Please vote no on this contract.

On the ORCA card passport program, four points.

Number one, the motion refers to the MOA agreement as an MOU.

Number two, the report rejected using yellow buses but cites no data for this rejection.

Number three, one of the program's original features is proposed to be eliminated because it might not be reimbursed by the state.

Number four, but city grant money is paying for the feature, which makes it sound like the district is double dipping.

Instead, the district should serve the intended students who live less than one mile from school.

Please vote no on this item.

On the $452,000 Wilson Pacific change order, four points.

Number one, the district claimed that it could not afford to fix up the landmark Wilson Pacific buildings.

Number two, the district sued the city landmarks board.

The current superintendent signed an agreement to allow the district to demolish the landmark Indian Heritage School.

Number three, now it turns out that the district has lots of money, just as long as it serves non-native students.

Number four, the district should reopen Indian Heritage School at the site.

Please vote no on this change order.

On the final acceptance of the phase two Columbia School project, the change order amount is listed as 7.44%.

It appears it should be 9.2%.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, superintendent, school board members.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

I am a Seattle City Council member.

So fun to be on this side of the microphone.

I'm here to speak on behalf of the entire Seattle City Council in support of action item one, the Orca Pass program and expanding that.

I'm so excited that we're at a point where we have an opportunity to move forward on this.

This program, if approved, will allow all high school and middle school students on free and reduced lunch who live more than a mile from the school to have access to an ORCA pass for the rest of this year, which is an outstanding step forward.

I want to thank the school district, the school board members, and the staff for working closely with the city of Seattle I want to thank staff at Seattle Department of Transportation, and I want to also thank the folks at King County Metro.

It's really exciting to have three government agencies working closely together in collaboration on a program that's going to be outstanding.

But mostly I want to thank the students, specifically the students at Rainier Beach High School.

These students identified a problem.

They found a solution for it by organizing, by doing some research, by reaching out to advocacy organizations like the Transit Riders Union, by reaching out elected officials like all of us, and actually advocated so that the city council could pass this in our budget last year.

and allow us all to move forward together to be at this point today.

I think it's a great agreement, it's a great step forward today.

I also hope that we can build on the agreement today and continue to work together throughout this spring to make the program even more robust in future years and figure out other ways that we can partner I believe that every young person in our community should have great access to transit regardless of where they live, what their income levels are, and where they go to school.

Thank you so much for your support.

Thank you, City Council, Mike Bryan.

Jarell Davis, Rita Green, Katia Oliver.

Before President Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act, he made a comment to Dr. Martin Luther King, make me do it.

Reflecting on this exchange, I'm reminded that no matter who is in office, nor their political position or power, it is us, community citizens and organizers, who hold the power to compel those who are appointed and elected to represent us.

Students at Rainier Beach High School have exemplified this by their civic action, as recently as this past summer and this current school year.

Let us not forget that it was them who actually procured the $1 million that will be funding the ORCA card passport program and brought this necessity to your attention.

At this point, these students and we who advise them have made the numerous affirmative arguments known and understood.

Please support all youth of the city of Seattle by voting yes for this passport program.

I must mention that there are still over 1,000 students in the district that live within one mile of their school who will be required to walk and should not be overlooked.

Washington State's Department of Transportation has a grant funding program called Safe Routes to School that seeks to ensure safety and mobility of students who walk or bike to school.

I suggest you contact Charlotte Claybrook, the Safe Routes to School coordinator for more information on how to take advantage of this program.

This advancement of the Race and Social Justice Initiative should not be made in isolation, though.

Complementary programs and progress are vital to producing any real and lasting change.

For example, you must support the African American Male Scholars Advisory Committee to the superintendent for the pilot has already been endorsed and evaluated by Oakland Unified School District.

You must also have on your radar that the continued funding of the international baccalaureate program at Rainier Beach is potentially coming to an end after next school year and Rainier Beach has maintained the highest graduation rates for the last five years while still remaining to be one of the most disinvested schools in the district.

Please show that you care more about our young people's future than the dollars that it takes to support them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Rita Green and Katia Oliva.

Hello, hi, my name is Rita Green, NAACP Education Chair for Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Seattle King County.

And I am a Rainier Beach alum, proud alum of Vikings.

and very instrumental in helping to bring IB to Rainier Beach High School.

So I'm glad to see the fruits of the work that we did.

But today I'm here to talk about civics and to urge you to support civics for all.

Civics is a very important subject for students to learn.

Most adults, let alone youth, know little about how to affect change in their neighborhood and even less about their democracy.

Since civics has been taken out of schools, the interest in and importance of voting has diminished among our young people.

On average, less than 20% of 18 to 29-year-olds vote in midterm elections, and we know what that did to us.

We've seen what voting can do to a group of people, Ergo Ferguson, We've seen what not holding your Congress people accountable can do to society.

Ergo, stand your ground laws that are applied and enforced differently depending on what you look like.

Ergo, Marissa Alexander, who was sentenced for 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot while Trayvon Martin's murderer was allowed to go free.

Now is the time for those most impacted by laws to understand how to make change and to truly understand the power of their vote.

Civics will help students understand how to change the laws right here in Washington.

We have one of the weakest police accountability laws which has made it impossible to indict officers in Seattle as well as Lacey.

Currently, we have housing and job discrimination occurring right here in the quote unquote non-racist city of Seattle.

The station apartments on MLK and Othello have recently been caught quoting higher rates to people of color than those of whites.

I urge you to bring civics back to our classrooms.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Katia Oliva, and I would like to yield my time to Clarissa Perez.

My name is Clarissa Perez and I am a ninth grader at Chiefs South International High School.

I am a part of the Green Team, the environmental club at our school.

I joined because I wanted to be heavily involved in helping the school positively impact the environment and ultimately become a greener school.

On that note, the water fountains at our school aren't of the highest quality.

Many of them, although only six years old, are broken or have little to no flow.

If a student wants to drink water or fill up their bottle, they have to walk to one of the few fountains that work, which sometimes can take up to 10 minutes of class time.

To save time, students have been buying more plastic water bottles because they are a quick fix instead of having to drink from our low quality fountains.

Not only does this cost more money for the student, but it's increasing the amount of plastic we as a school use.

Moreover, some fountains have broken because students twist the spigot to fill their bottles, which creates puddles of waters in the hallway.

The current condition of our water fountains causes extra maintenance and lost class time.

Our solution is to get water bottle filling stations for our school.

Not only is it cost efficient for the student, but it is also environmentally efficient.

You will hear from most students tonight on this issue.

Please listen to our concerns and help us find a way to install filling stations in our school.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Judith Ann Billings, Brandon Edwards, and Bryce Votoro-Thomas.

Members of the Seattle School Board, are we?

Can you hear me?

Do this?

Okay.

Members of the school board and superintendent Nyland, I'm Judith Billings and as chair of the civics for all board, I want to thank you for the opportunity to talk to you tonight about this terrific program that supports the state requirements for civics education.

three classroom-based assessments of civic knowledge throughout a student's K through 12 experience, and now a .5 civics-specific credit for high school graduation.

But Civics for All does much more than that.

Civics for All is the result of over 15 years of development by Webster Hutchins, a Seattle teacher who is passionate about ensuring that we educate each generation of students to understand how our government works, what the rights and responsibilities are as citizens, and how important it is that they become involved in the lives of their communities, their state, and their nation.

This is a carefully developed program that covers the full range of grade levels with age-appropriate activities, and many of them are hands-on activities that help the students grasp what being a responsible citizen means.

Hutch has presented the concept of Civics for All to the Seattle City Council, the King County Council, the mayor, the election supervisor, to name just a few.

Not only did they unanimously support it, but Cheryl Huff, King County Elections Director, awarded the program $250,000 grant to implement that program in the Seattle Public Schools.

It would provide annual mock elections every November, provide assistance with the classroom-based assessments, and have banners in every classroom with civics questions to remind every student of their responsibilities.

You know, there couldn't be a better time to be implementing this program in the fall of 2016 as we elect a president, a governor, and many other state and local officials.

So finally, Seattle School District has the opportunity to be a lighthouse for civic education for the rest of the country.

We desperately need a generation of educated, active citizens to maintain a vibrant democracy.

And Seattle has the opportunity to lead the way and the money to fund it.

Please do so.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Brian Edwards.

Hi, my name is Brandon Edwards and I represent Chief Sealth's Environmental Club, the green team.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for this time to speak.

At Chief Sealth International High School over the years, students like us have been passionate about tackling environmental issues.

One of our biggest problems is reducing plastic waste, especially from disposable plastic water bottles.

Many students have taken the practical action of using reusable bottles instead of disposable plastic ones.

But unfortunately, we've encountered problems with this approach as well.

Our solution, install water filling stations that make it easy for students to fill up their water bottles.

This would bring better water fountains into our school and raise awareness for the global issue of plastic waste.

This is where the school board comes in.

For more than three years, we've been trying to get a bottle filling station installed at Chief Sealth.

We've saved over $5,000 from our shared savings reward and Green Team grants to purchase the filling stations.

In our initial talks with the school district staff, we learned that these stations were not on the list of Seattle Public Schools approved water fountain fixtures.

As our talk with the district staff continued, Fairmount Park Elementary had a filling station installed as part of their remodel, and Garfield High School also had one installed.

We were pleased to learn last spring that a filling station was on the list of fixtures that would be tested over the summer.

We were very surprised in November to learn that did not pass the district's test.

Since then, we have learned that the testing process for water fountains has some serious flaws.

We found out that the fixtures were not being flushed out before they were tested for lead, copper and other contaminants.

New faucets out of the box are always going to have loose metal material inside.

By not running these tests properly, the district is getting unreliable results.

Please find a way for our schools and others to catch up to other school districts, private schools, malls, airports, and other institutions to provide an adequate water supply to students.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Prize, uh, Bellatora Thomas.

My name is Bryce Villatoro-Thomas, and my mom's friend, Mr. Hutchins, invited me here today I'm a senior at Ballard High School, and I want to tell you why civics is important to me.

During my junior year at Ballard, I discovered my love for words.

During this time, I realized the power words had to enhance my self-understanding and increase my sense of agency.

Education is essential to increasing our agency and increasing our freedom.

Through the lyrics that I write in my music, I'm able to help others see the reality of our society.

The more that we expand our education, the more we can improve our lives and the lives of others as well.

One example of this is Frederick Douglass.

Douglass was born a slave and had no opportunity for education.

Despite this, he managed to teach himself how to read and write.

Because of this, he was able to change his destiny from a common slave to a man with power who could awe crowds with his words, regardless of the color of his skin.

Civics isn't crucial to learn because it gives us, the people, the power to control their own destiny.

This is why I think the civics initiative is such a great idea because it will educate the youth to critically think about the issues going on around them.

Through civics, people are able to unite as one and stand for what they believe in.

This is the very belief America was built upon, the idea that together we are change, together we are unstoppable.

Today, my interest in civics has led me to follow the current primary elections, and I must say, America needs to feel the burn.

I'm excited to register for the coming election and to vote, as I encourage my friends so to do as well.

Martin Luther King Jr. said in his I Have a Dream speech, now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

This is why we should have civics for all, so that together we can bring justice for all of Seattle's children.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Noah Segner, Webb Hudgens, Peter Z. Sankrin.

Good afternoon.

My name is Noah Zeichner.

I would like to cede my time to Jessie Dirks.

Hi, my name is Jessie Dirks.

I'm the former president of the Chiefs Health International High School Green Team, and I now attend Seattle University.

Filling stations are everywhere on my campus at Seattle U and at the University of Washington as well as many other universities, airports and other institutions all over Seattle and the county.

Filling stations would reduce damage to water fountains in our high schools and they're the environmentally sustainable choice.

Chief Sealth's green team has ample funds to install at least two filling stations.

In November 2015, we received word that the filling station we wanted to purchase failed district testing.

We remain confused as to why a product that so many institutions have access to has been deemed unacceptable for Seattle Public Schools.

We are asking you, the Seattle Public School Board, to help us get water bottle filling stations into Seattle Public Schools.

In light of the recent water crisis in Flint, Michigan, we understand why Seattle has some of the strictest water quality programs in the country.

We agree that we must ensure that drinking water is safe for all students.

But if the current standards are preventing schools from installing safe, modern, and sustainable options, like water bottle filling stations, they seem a little unreasonable.

We request that the district write a letter of support for the OSPI grant mentioned by our friends at Garfield High School, which would provide up to $200,000 to the district for installing stations.

The grant application is due February 19th.

As representatives of the Chief Sealth community, we are not alone in our cause.

Several other schools have expressed the desire to install filling stations.

We are here today representing an entire network of student voices throughout Seattle Public School District who want filling stations to become a reality.

We heard earlier this evening that progress is being made to make these filling stations a reality and we're excited about moving with you towards a more sustainable future.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Webb Hutchins.

I've taught social studies and civics in the Seattle public schools since 1990. Uh, five years ago, my Franklin high school students passion for civics, and political engagement absolutely blew me away and inspired me to create the K-12 Civics for All initiative.

Many of the ideas in the initiative came from students that I talked about the ideas with them over the years.

First off, I'd like to thank the citizens who volunteered to speak today, especially the young people, not only the kids who spoke for Civics for All, but all these young kids from South and elsewhere.

You are the future of Seattle.

We love you.

And the whole idea behind Civics for All is to give all kids the opportunity, a clear opportunity, to become like these kids and engage.

There's a lot of kids sitting home right now who don't care.

My brothers, both of them dropped out of high school.

And it really hurts me when I think about the schools that we went to.

The public school I went to was so boring, I thought I would die.

But I liked school.

They didn't.

They dropped out.

We don't want that to happen anymore.

I'd like to also recognize just so many people who supported us.

Pramila Jayapal was going to speak tonight.

She could not come.

She really wanted to.

She sent a letter for me to share, which I'll do so later.

Everybody downtown in Olympia, et cetera, amazing support.

I've also been honored.

I just have to give credit to Judy Billings, who was a soldier for civics, Margaret McGuire, our other board member who's very active in K-6 civics education.

And then I have to give props to King County Elections and former director Cheryl Huff for offering us $250,000 to institute mock elections.

This program I really believe can change Seattle in amazing ways.

And it's for the kids.

I think it's for the future.

And I encourage your support and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

You bet.

Peter Z. Sungren, Aaron Jones, and David Wilkie.

Thank you for the opportunity.

My name is Peter Sungren.

I'm here to speak about the K-12 Civics for All initiative.

I'm a proud Seattle Public School graduate.

Elementary, Green Lake Elementary, Hamilton Middle School, and Nathan Hale High School.

I currently have a five-year-old in pre-K.

Recently, she's been having a very difficult time transitioning, dropping off at school.

In preschool, she loved to go to school.

She could not wait to get in that classroom and run down that hall.

My wife and I were thrilled.

It was awesome to see our kid love school because we love school.

When we were that age, all the way through college.

A few weeks ago, it was my turn to drop Thea off at school.

All of a sudden, she just was not happy.

She did not want to go to school anymore, trying to figure out what was going on.

Extremely upset, she was crying.

It was going to be a tough goodbye, pretty obviously.

As I observed the reaction of some of her classmates witnessing this, two five-year-old little girls walk up to us.

One offered her hand and asked if she could help, telling Thea, it'll be okay.

The other said, we're happy to see you.

I was so touched by their kindness and their sensitivity and how instinctively they took action to befriend and comfort and support my daughter.

I believe young children are naturally and wonderfully sensitive, aware, supportive, and unadhibited, and civic-minded.

We are all born with a foundation to be a good citizen, a kind, loving person to ourselves, to our fellow humans, to our family, and to contribute to our community, to our country.

Unfortunately, we all know too many children lose this natural born goodness.

We get older, they get exposed to some of society's darker sides.

School is where kids can and should learn to foster good relationships, to build trust in fellow friends and fellow students and teachers, and to become engaged in the community.

But kids need to be taught and shown how to do these things.

To create engaged and well-balanced, positive, caring, contributing citizens, I strongly encourage you to build on the natural good, citizenships exemplified by these two girls that helped my daughter.

By supporting the K through 12 curriculum of civics, all you can do and make the world of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that the schools make worthy citizens is the most important responsibility placed on them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, superintendent, school board, directors.

My name is Erin Jones, and I had the opportunity to meet Webb five years ago at a social justice event here in Seattle.

And he was so on fire about civics that how could I not join the team?

And so he asked me to come here today as the first black woman running for state office.

I'm hoping to fill the shoes of Judith Billings right behind me, her very large shoes.

And I stand here because What Webb is proposing to Seattle public schools is really what I believe is necessary for all our schools.

And I believe what happens in Seattle can happen anywhere.

And so I think you have an incredible opportunity today to do something that we could then model in Tacoma and Yakima and Spokane.

And so that was why, for me, it's worth my trip from Tacoma and then all the way back home to Olympia tonight to be here with you.

As I was thinking about tonight, I attended my first political event this weekend, the convention, the Democrat convention.

And I could count on one hand the number of people who looked like me.

And that broke my heart.

And I found a quote that really represented, I think, what I was feeling this weekend by Walter Judd.

People often say that in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people.

Of course, that is not true.

Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote a very different thing.

And when I think about who was missing this weekend, I think about a people group who feel like they have not been invited into the conversation.

And I believe that invitation can't start when kids are 25 or 30. It has to begin.

when they're 18. I just graduated my last son from high school last year, so my children will all be able to vote for their mother this year.

And my children will vote for me, but I think about the other children who don't have someone to vote for, who don't know why they should be engaged, and I think that is why, for me, this program is so critical.

I was lucky enough to go to school one mile away from the United Nations World Court, and our school shut down for an entire week every single year, and every child participated in the largest model United Nations.

And I think it shouldn't be the luck of being able to grow up in a community that cares.

You have an opportunity now to make sure that every single child in Seattle has this opportunity.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

David Wilkie, Dr. James Corr, and Corlin Rountree.

Hi my name is David Wilkie and since last August I was a full time employee of the school district and a long time instructional assistant and teacher but because of a mistake I made I lost my certificate.

Newer teachers now are required to do a pro cert or now they call it a pro teach and because of a definition of failure unfortunately I was not granted a two year extension to finish this pro teach program and continuing my teaching.

So as devastating as that was, I've taught at Upper Heights School for a very long time both as a teacher's assistant and as a teacher.

I have deep ties to the community and to the children and to have this happen to me, well it was gut wrenching to be quite honest.

I'm asking that you, if you guys can help me out.

Some way we've got to lift this punitive pro teach program because right now, because of the mistake I made, I can't teach for five years.

And now there's a teacher shortage.

I want to teach.

I want to be in my kindergarten classroom with my kids.

I want to be in the Arbor Heights community, but I can't.

I don't know what to do.

I'm 54, almost 55 years old.

If I wait five years to teach again, I'm not sure I can come back.

I want to be in the classroom.

So if you guys can hear me or help me out in some way, give me some suggestions.

Tomorrow I'll send you out a bio on me with my email and my telephone number.

If anybody that listens to this school board meeting wants to help me out, I would really appreciate it.

So I don't know if there's anything you can do for me, but I want to be in the classroom.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Dr. James Gore, Decorland Roundtree.

Hello, I'm Decorland Roundtree, an eighth grade student at South Shore.

I feel like civics is important because I believe it allows me to know about what's going on around me and what allows me to know what and what not to do in my area.

Members of the political community are citizens, hence citizenship in a republic is membership in the body politic.

Membership implies participation, but not participation for participation's sake, meaning do not go off and vote if you do not what you are voting for.

Civic education in a republic is education in self-government.

I believe education in self-government is the way you conduct yourself outside your home, and I believe it is also how you act inside your home and allows you to be aware of your surroundings.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sunny Nguyen, Nick Esparazo, and Jason Herring.

Thank you, Superintendent and members of the board.

My name is Sunny Nguyen, and I graduated from Franklin High School in 2009. And while I was there, I was lucky enough to be a student at the John Stanford Public Service and Political Science Academy, which helped me build an understanding of not only the tools of public service, but the importance of it.

I learned that personal success is almost meaningless if our communities aren't benefiting as well.

It is this message received from teachers like Webster Hutchins that has led to every bit of my personal passions and success.

Thanks to the foundations of a strong civics education, I have spent eight years working for a youth civic engagement organization called the Washington Bus.

With the bus, I have personally registered over 1,000 young people to vote, and I've led programs to register an additional 30,000 young people.

And as much as I like to brag about myself, that is not enough.

The average age of a Washington voter in an off-year primary election is 62 years old.

The average age of a Washingtonian is about 35. This discrepancy alone is unacceptable, and in a city where less than one-third of eligible voters mailed in their ballot last August, we should be doing everything we can to engage our communities in the democratic process.

In particular, Civics for All engages the most vulnerable populations in our state, those least likely to vote and those currently unable to.

Communities of color are less likely to vote, and in my experience, it is absolutely not because they don't care, but because political systems are not accessible nor inviting to them.

Civics for All remedies this underrepresentation by instilling strong participatory habits in people while they're young.

It also offers an intermediate way to politically engage our undocumented students as they seek citizenship, as a group all too often ignored in conversations around the democratic process.

Research shows that when people become politically engaged while they're young, they're 80% more likely to stay regular voters beyond the presidential elections compared to people who begin voting later in life.

Civics for All builds these habits of good citizenship while serving our most disenfranchised communities.

I urge you to adopt Civics for All and make a statement that Seattle schools are not only here to graduate strong students, but to graduate strong, well-rounded community members from all walks of life.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Nick Esparza.

Jason Herring and Laura Kramer.

Good evening, board directors.

It has been quite a while since I have showed up at this forum to speak.

I've taken a break for a while.

But I'm here to speak to you tonight about moving Rocks Hill.

And I'm kind of puzzled of why we're going to move a school halfway across town.

So I don't think that one of you that's sitting on this board would move your children like desk and furniture across town without engaging the community.

And it's always puzzling to me that you want us to support you with a levy and all these other things, but you don't want to engage the community in how you're going to move this school and how many people it's going to affect.

And that part is odd to me. the school that you're going to be moving to, the people that were there before told you 19 months ago that they were going to be leaving.

So you had 19 months to deal with an enrollment problem.

And on the flip side of it, you guys are floating a billion dollars in a levy that you want us to vote for because, of course, you always say it's for the children.

But in your billion dollar levy, you guys pay for teacher salaries, which you can't do under McCleary.

You let the do nothing legislature off the hook with the ability to not do their constitutional duty and then us pay for teacher salaries.

You make it more expensive for us And then you pay for this building that you sit in that you haven't paid the bond on for a long time, which is not affecting the children.

And so I have tried to reach out to board director six, but board director six has been MIA on this issue on what's going on with Rocksdale.

So I would like, hopefully Board Director Six will spend a little bit of time.

Can you please conclude your comment please?

I will.

I have like 13 seconds or something like that.

So I was hoping that Board Director Six would do a better job of reaching out to the community and working out with a way of what we're going to do with, with, uh, conclude your comments with, you know, a Roxhill and that's it.

Thank you very much for your time.

Jason Herring and Laura Graham.

Cramer.

Laura Kramer.

I got that holder.

All right.

Good evening.

My name is Laura Gamer.

Okay.

Are you a holder?

Okay.

Thanks.

I'm sorry that I missed a board meeting a couple of weeks ago.

I was in Olympia for a disability legislative reception.

I've been spending time in Olympia.

Um, but I'm happy to be here today.

There's a few things I do want to talk to you about.

I just learned that the deaf, hard of hearing supervisor now has a fourth area to supervise.

I am concerned about this because The reason why I brought this up, this issue last year, because all the previous deaf, hard of hearing supervisors had to supervise six or seven different programs.

Now that you're powering those back on to the supervisors, I'm kind of concerned that they're not going to be able to focus on the program, be able to advocate for these different services for these kids.

So I want to put it out there for you.

And the other thing I want to say, where is the communication and transparency?

I had to find this out through somebody else.

And when I asked the person about it directly, that's how I had to find out.

I think that's kind of sneaky.

There's still a lot of work to do to improve the deaf-hard of hearing program.

You probably have remembered when I spoke in December, I told you that the teachers were not following the curriculum because they didn't have any training to do that.

I know that they've been having someone from D.J.

Schultz provide mentoring once a week.

I plan on going next week with a couple other parents to see where the program is.

I'd like to remind Seattle Public Schools that OSPI has sent a memorandum to remind the schools to report the number of deaf, hard of hearing students you have.

And I have to say that I did ask for this number.

I gave a verbal request in November and I was told that they were still trying to figure this out, blah, blah, blah.

I'm going to be soon, I'm going to be making a written request to, because I really would like to see the numbers and be able to justify or try to prove that they need to keep looking for the students.

Okay thank you.

Thank you.

That is the end of our public testimony.

Thank you very much for everyone who are here and thank you for letting us know what is in your heart and we appreciate all the comments tonight.

We are now moving to a Board comments?

Director Steffen.

I'll start off by thanking the Ballard Choir for regaling us.

It was pretty impressive to listen to them sing and I'm wishing them the best in their competition in New York City.

I also want to thank all those who testified today, particularly the students from Interagency and Chief Sealth.

I want to thank White Jeffsy for reaching the agreement with the EEU, him and his staff.

I was excited to hear that there is a preliminary agreement in place and that the other thing that he suggested about the replication of the quality program there in our other schools is exciting and something that I am hoping to actually see.

I want to give a big thanks to and welcome to Steve Nielsen, welcome back and to Noel Treat.

Hopefully there is a trend of high quality former employees coming back to the district and then finally I have community meetings scheduled on the 20th of February at 10.30 at Douglas Truth Library.

Director Burke?

I would also like to thank the Ballard High School Concert Choir for the show.

All I can say is, wow.

They're snappy dressers and brilliantly talented.

So I'm blown away.

As a Ballard alum, I could never do that and still can't.

I appreciate all of the work of all the parties, Wyeth Jesse and his team, staff, the community, to work out a win-win agreement with the EU.

I believe we've really spoken about that as something to replicate.

And I'm excited to hear that that's the direction that we're able to achieve.

I want to also provide some kudos for the students with their passion around the water filling stations.

That's been a long time labor of love, raising money for it, standing up for what they believe in.

And your leadership is bringing us into a more environmental and hydrated place.

So I really appreciate that work.

On the school board, sometimes we don't see issues like that that doesn't come to the level of the school board, but it's really critical to student health.

And so I really appreciate that level of intensity.

I also wanted to thank all of the supporters for the Civics for All for coming out and speaking in favor of it.

I learned about it initially during the campaign process, and I find it to be a really fascinating and potentially powerful tool.

Running mock elections, it seems like a really engaging way for the teachers to link civics to other curricular areas.

So as chair of CNI I can say that we're looking at the potential impact of Civics for All in our buildings at this month's curriculum instruction meeting.

So I'll be interested to learn more about it from staff and what it could actually look like inside of Seattle.

Personally I had two school visits this week.

I visited Sacajawea thanks to Principal Rachel Friesen and the PTA for sharing your evening with me.

And I got a tour of BF Day from Principal Stan Jaskot and as an architectural fan.

Wonderful wonderful building.

I learned that it's the oldest continuously operating elementary school in Seattle Public Schools.

So it took me back.

I love the building.

I have a community meeting Saturday February 27th from 3 to 5 p.m.

and then in closing I'd just like to share a public comment about our capacity challenges because I know there's people that are working super hard on this within the district and I know that the community is super passionate about it as well so the trajectory that we're on with increasing enrollment and mandated class size it class size reductions it's really an indication of a healthy district in my mind.

But we have finite space and so that requires us to develop some creative solutions.

And in my mind that creativity means more than just the school board approving or rejecting a funding request.

It means more than just categorically prioritizing different educational services.

It really means that we need to engage and empower our communities to be partners, finding solutions.

And on the flip side, our communities need to be supportive in adapting their expectations.

So as we seek out ways to reach these solutions, I ask my colleagues and district staff to keep long-term actions in mind, including more transparent long-term planning, including buildings being notified early and often.

Think about years, not months.

I know it's a challenge, but we should set it as a goal.

And I think we should have a candid discussion about our priorities of how we value aftercare programs and how it impacts our K-12 student success.

So thanks again for the community, for all of their work to help make these things work out.

We do have challenges ahead of us, but we're going to go through it together.

Dr. Geary.

Okay, I will always start with the community meeting because I will forget it by the end of my comments, I'm sure.

So that will be February 27th at the Montlake Library.

from 11 to 1. I am looking for spots for March and April and would be happy to hear from people if they have a place in Northeast that they think would make me more available to the parents in that area or the constituents.

I'd be happy to hear other places than the libraries, but that's where we sort of have been meeting.

Thank you to everybody who's worked on the EU issue that one is so near and dear to my heart and I am so excited that we're going to keep this model program and so excited by the enthusiasm that it was greeted at the district the idea that sure these are 20 great seats but we need to make these kinds of inclusive seats available to all of our kids all over our district and the commitment to do that could not mean more to me and so I will continue to work on that personally.

So I will take responsibility for following up and want to hear from you all to keep me accountable on that because that's very important to me.

I want to thank so much Ishmael Simpson and Angelina coming and talking about the recovery school.

I look at those young people and the bravery that they're exhibiting to get up and talk about the hard things that they have faced and to fight for a program that will help kids that probably aren't even close to having the voice that they have at this point.

So that is just, it makes me so proud of them and so proud of what our district can offer when we do the right things.

So awesome.

Civics.

Again, great idea.

I heard something today on the radio that really struck me.

College students vote like 40-year-olds because they're in one place and they're very accessible to the process, to people coming and talking to them.

young people who don't go to college don't vote like that at all.

So whatever statistic it is, they're not out there voting.

And so providing this kind of curriculum when they are still young, they still have open minds, they're accessible to us, That would be huge.

That is really huge.

That will make those kids who don't go to college continue to have a voice in our system.

I think it puts us closer to that, and I think that's great.

Had a chance to visit Sandpoint Elementary.

Met with Principal Kristen Roberts and PTA President Chandra Hampson.

Awesome, love the squirrels.

And then had a chance to also meet the McGilver Wildcats PTA.

And I put each of the little stuffed animals next to each other and hope that, you know, peace for all.

And the choir, of course, Ballard Choir.

Beautiful.

So thank you, everybody.

Thank you, all of our students who came and spoke to us.

I know we're on the right track when our students can get up and advocate for themselves, so we need to keep supporting them in that.

Thank you.

Dr. Harris?

I've been called out.

of the Ballard High School Choir.

That was just awesome and inspiring and I wish I could go to Carnegie Hall to hear you sing there.

And mostly too as well to the parents and the teachers and the foundation and or the PTSA that helped put together the travel funds and the regalia That's a heavy lift by a whole lot of folks.

And I was thrilled to death to see that there were five or six freshmen on that choir, so they've got depth on their bench.

A huge thank you to the Rainier Beach students and to Assistant Superintendent McAvoy and the City of Seattle for the ORCA cards.

It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that when young people are inspired and they work together, they can make fabulous things happen.

And the fact that that was from the ground up is awe-inspiring.

I think the water bottle issue that Garfield students talked about before and that the Chief Sealth International High School students talked about and their extraordinary teacher, Noah Zeichner, again way to go and Associate Superintendent Herndon is working on it with his team and I believe him and it's going to happen.

Also a shout out to the parents and the staff at Chief Sealth International High School with respect to their uh...

willingness inability to sit down and talk about some pretty tough issues with respect to security and communication and another shout out again to peggy mcavoy who hosted a meeting with parents with the principal and those are lessons learned and we can do better and we are doing better and i'm excited about that kind of change when we put folks in the same room and we talk to each other honestly Civics for All, I'm a huge supporter of the program.

I can't wait to see it or something like it instituted and embedded in our curriculum.

was lucky enough to spend some time at the educational round table at El Centro this weekend and at the option school fair, was disappointed not to see middle college high school represented at the option school fair and now there is some question as to whether or not middle college high school is in fact an option school or a service school as with most things regarding Middle College High School to be continued.

We'll report back as we learn more.

I was lucky enough in the last time since the last board meeting to spend some really good quality time with the communications director, Jackie Coe.

I have embraced Smart goal number six, which is about community engagement and communications, and I am thrilled to be working with her and her team, which is very talented, and they want to hear from you in ways that we can engage, and engage means two-way communication.

And also spent some time with the community affairs folks at SEA and was pleased to be schooled or learned up, if you will, on several of their issues.

And any time we talk to each other, we do better.

and my community meeting next is the third saturday february 20th from 3 to 4 30 this time it'll be at the high point library which is 35th avenue southwest and southwest raymond i welcome you to come the last one was good thoughtful deep and a little bit rowdy and fun thank you dr peters okay well

Well, what all of them just said, I agree with.

So my thoughts tonight have a certain theme to them.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of an inspiring, visionary, and engaging education for our children and visionary and engaging teaching.

And I'll begin with my appreciation for the Ballard Choir, the high school concert choir, who brought us a very beautiful and vibrant performance tonight.

I actually thought all of their songs were worthy of Carnegie Hall, and I wish them the best.

I continue to be impressed by the student performances in the arts, theater, and music that we have throughout the district, and the importance of providing a well-rounded education for students.

and these thoughts were further inspired by a documentary I saw last week at Garfield High School called Beyond Measure which looks at different ways to inspire our students and to measure our students accomplishments and growth beyond standardized testing, beyond standardized curriculum, beyond preordained standards that may or may not actually have leave a child career and college ready.

The film offered lots of interesting thought provoking points, even some very fundamental ones like why do we have students go to six different periods during a day of 50 minutes and then change gears and go to the next one.

If you had a business that had that function where you had to change gears every 50 minutes, how would you possibly succeed?

So this leads to the idea of, well, how do we define our educational time?

And why don't we offer more block time?

Why don't we give our children more uninterrupted time to truly explore projects, multidisciplinary projects?

So it was a very thought-provoking film.

So along those lines, I was interested to see that the US Department of Education recently, I think yesterday, issued some guidance, some testing guidance, on how districts and states can reduce the amount of testing we subject our children to.

with the goal of reducing redundant and low quality testing.

And in fact, apparently there are some federal funds available for states and districts to conduct audits of their assessments so they can eliminate anything that is redundant.

So I urge us as a district to pursue this opportunity.

So also along those lines, we've recently had a number of teachers come and testify to us about various issues, including some of our retired teachers.

And I think that is a great example of where we as a district could tap some really strong resources.

Why don't we ask our retired teachers to contribute to curriculum, to assessments?

You know, there's some very fine minds that are still engaged in the district.

Why don't we use them as a resource?

And I'm thinking of people like Robert Fimiano, Patricia Bailey, you know, Webb Hutchins has brought to us his Civics for All.

There's some really great thinking going on that's very innovative, and I think there's more we could do with it.

So I'll go on to civics for all.

It's certainly a fine year to promote a discourse about civics and mock elections would make a lot of sense.

And so I would be interested to know what we can do to support this initiative and certainly take advantage of the $250,000 that's there for the taking to have our students engage in an election.

And so I look to our CNI committee and I look to Michael Tully and I encourage you to pursue that.

I'd also like to give a shout out to a committee that we have that people might not know about.

It's the Seattle Schools Fund, Scholarship Fund and there's a committee associated with that and they do something really wonderful.

They offer scholarships to students, our high school students, our graduating high school students, two from each school.

to help them as they head into college.

And what's unique about this particular program is they offer these scholarships to students who have overcome some kind of hardship.

So these are students who might not otherwise receive a scholarship and so they're asked to submit their essay or application and the committee takes a look at these and awards two scholarships per school.

I've had the honor of being on this committee for the last two years, and now my colleague Leslie Harris is going to take over for me.

And the other good news is we are increasing the amount of the scholarship from $2,000 to $2,500, and we're also increasing the number of them.

So this is just a wonderful committee that is under the umbrella of the school board that I would really like more people to know about.

And they are always looking for people to make a donation to their fund to help contribute to this very worthy cause.

All right.

Let's see, I would also like to thank the students who came and spoke about the Recovery School.

It was so wonderful to put faces to what has been a bit of an abstract discussion and to see how meaningful it is to have a variety of different ways to reach students so that they can graduate and move on with their lives.

I'd also like to give a shout out to our budget and finance team who made some presentations to the public about the budget that were very well received, very clear.

Thank you.

Let's make this a regular occurrence.

And then also, thank you to Wyatt Jesse for bringing us the good news about EEU over at UW.

That's heading in a wonderful direction.

And quick shout out, thank you to the 46th District Democrats.

They hosted an education panel last week, and I was honored to be amongst some fellow public education advocates, David Spring, Melissa Westbrook, Heidi Bennett, and Representative Jerry Paulette.

And then I guess I'll finish with, Gotta make sure I got everything on my list.

The list always gets very long while people are talking, because they bring up so many wonderful issues.

I would like to announce my community meetings.

This week I'm going to have one Saturday, February 6th at the Uptown Espresso meeting room in South Lake Union.

The libraries are currently very booked because of tax preparation, so I was not able to find space in Queen Anne or Magnolia Library for February.

And the meeting time will be at 8.30 in the morning.

I apologize.

That was the only time available.

But March, I will resume a more humane place and time.

Well, maybe not place, but I'll be at the Magnolia Library from 11 to 1 on Sunday, March 6th.

and I just want to make sure I didn't forget anything here.

Thank you Betty, I'm done, thank you.

I thought you were going to say time is up.

I, TOO, DEFINITELY WANT TO THANK ALL THE PEOPLE THAT SPOKE TODAY.

BUT I ALSO WANT TO THANK THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS THAT CAME OUT FOR MY COMMUNITY MEETING ON JANUARY 30TH.

I APPRECIATE THEIR INPUT.

AND I ALSO APPRECIATE DIRECTOR BURKE BEING AT MY MEETING AS WELL.

AND THE COMMUNITY APPRECIATED THAT WE ACTUALLY HAD TWO DIRECTORS AT OUR MEETINGS, AND SO THEY GOT TO ENGAGE WITH US.

Thanks to those that attended the John Rogers meeting on the capacity issues and boundary issues that are being addressed and thanks to the staff members that were there to share the news and let people know that yes we are looking at these boundary issues.

They're not drawn in stone and we are taking community input before the decisions are being made.

Thank you Ballard High School Choir for your music and songs.

I appreciate the diversity of songs that you picked.

and hopefully you know talk to me maybe I can recommend a group from a Native American perspective to add that to it but again just want to appreciate that and what you've done and shared with us today.

What they've done with the EU, thank you.

We're going to see that this program will continue and then not that it got to the point where we're thinking it's going away but now it's possibly going to become a model that we can extend to other schools.

excuse me i can't read my handwriting here uh thank you to the operations committee for reduce the impact on after-school child care originally from 19 going down to seven great work but i'd like to see us get that down to zero as we keep on moving forward uh chris jackins thank you for making sure we dot the i's cross the t's and lowercase j's and uh keeping us in line uh mr o'brien if you're still here thank you for the city council support of our efforts to make sure our kids get to school safely And thank you to the schools, Rainier Beach, Safe Routes to School, nothing I heard about, hopefully we'll see that as a possibility to pursue.

Civics for All, yes it is a time I think we need to do this, election year for presidential races coming in, if we get more high school students 18 years old registered to vote, hopefully we can see some good changes coming this way.

Chief Sealth, water stations, yes, we do need those.

Too many plastics out there right now.

I'm just starting to actually look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that's out there, you know, that's supposedly twice the size of Texas and anything that we can do as a school district with the student support to reduce plastics is going to be a big step forward.

Laura Gramer, thank you for bringing to attention the Deaf and Hard of Hearing program.

We'll see what we can do to help you get the information that you've requested.

Announcements for me, my next meeting will be February 27th at the Lake City Library, be from 2 to 3.30.

And also invite the community if you do have meetings you'd like me to attend just send me an email to the district account and I'll do my best to fit it into my calendar.

And finally I want to announce that for people that may not know February 26th up in the state of Alaska, which hopefully maybe come down here in the states as well, is Elizabeth Peratrovich Day.

If you don't know who Elizabeth Peratrovich is, I encourage you to look it up and find out who she is.

Thank you.

P-E-R-A-T-R-O-V-I-C-H, Peratrovich.

I think I'm going to ditto everything that my colleagues have already said.

I definitely would like to say thank you to Ballard High School for an amazing performance today.

And it was amazing.

We didn't want to end.

We wanted to continue on.

But definitely, you guys will be very successful when you go to Carnegie Hall.

Also, thank you to Courtney Rowley for doing a wonderful job of actually of leading that choir.

I also want to thank you to Wyatt Jesse for the great news.

It's always great news when we can be able to work together and save programs that are that actually that really speaks out to us in terms of how young people are succeeding.

So thank you for moving that forward.

Also thank you to Dr. Herden for the good news, reducing 19 to seven.

And I think that's amazing.

We thought it was 19, but now we realize it's only seven.

So keep up the good work.

I also wanted to to say that to the young people, continue on telling us about what is happening.

I think it's amazing when young people are sticking up, standing up for what they feel it should be moving forward.

Rainier Beach, you are the leaders and continue on to do what you do.

And also, The student that came and talked about the water, yes, we agree with you, we definitely need to look at our water and hopefully that we can be able to resolve that sooner than later.

For all the students, the marvelous story about the two, the young man and the young woman actually from interagency, yes, we hear all the time about kids trying to recover from drug and alcohol.

It's amazing when you have young people actually coming down and telling us about what's actually working for them.

So thank you for that, and interact and continue on the good work.

I want to also give a shout out to last night's game between Rainier Beach and Garfield.

It was amazing how everything was in order.

I want to thank the Seattle South Precinct for doing a wonderful job.

I also want to thank Seattle Networking and Safe Passage.

urban family itself and also wanted to thank you for urban family and for all the Seattle schools security for a wonderful job.

How amazing it is when we all work together and really see the positive thing taking place.

There was a lot of VIPs and politicians there last night and we had to make sure everything was safe so it was amazing.

So I want to say thank you so much for everyone that came out tonight.

We appreciate, we always appreciate when you come down and let us know exactly what's in your mind.

And hopefully that we can continue on to look at things that we need to improve and really be able to put our hands around and say, yes, we know that we have to do this.

So we ask you for your support.

This board wants to move forward and wants to do whatever we can together with our staff and our superintendent to make sure that everything that we need to improve will move forward for this year so thank you so much for your support and now we're going to take a short break so the board can be able to take a short break and come back later uh you guys want to take 10 minutes 10 minutes Yes, I'm going to leave now.