School Board Meeting Date March 16th, 2016 Pt1

I want to welcome everyone to the March 16 regular board meeting.

I would like to also welcome our student representative for this evening Duane Jack from Middle College at Northgate.

Later in the meeting Mr. Jack will have an opportunity to provide some comments.

Also I would like to welcome Anya Ritchie our new board office administrator.

She has a bachelor's in sociology with an emphasis in social work and a minor in inter-study.

She is finishing her master's in criminal justice this spring.

We are very excited for Anya to be here.

Welcome Anya.

Okay Ms. Foley roll call.

Director Blanford.

Here.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Harris.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Here.

Here.

If everyone could please stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Before I hand it over to to Superintendent Nyland I wanted to say a big thank you to Lauren for holding down the fort because she's been in there by herself these last couple of weeks so thank you so much Lauren for all the work that you do to keep us going.

We do not have a recognition for this evening meeting.

Student presentation tonight we have the Young Artists Academy performance.

YAA is an innovative day and after school program housed in Seattle and Highline public schools designed to help scholars improve language and writing skills as well as the ability to collaborate and present effective oral presentations.

By integrating these skills with performing arts, young scholars write, perform, present original speeches that address relevant issues such as bullying, peer pressure, self-esteem, leadership, racism, politics, and diversity.

These works are developed into fun yet impactful culminating projects that are viewed as guide standards for scholars of all ages.

I would like to invite all the directors to please have a seat in the front row so we can watch the performance.

Thank you.

How is everyone?

Okay, we're used to a little more energy so I'll ask again.

How is everybody doing today?

Woo!

There we go.

My name is Toya Taylor and I am the founder of We Act, present and perform Young Artists Academy.

And today I am very honored to have a few of my scholars with me from ORCA K-8 and South Shore PK-8.

And these students in WEAP Young Artists Academy we are a day school and after school program where we teach young scholars grades 4th through 9th to speak with purpose.

Our mission is that every child's voice deserves to be in the front of the classroom and never the back.

We learn to use our voices as an instrument that are a gift to our community therefore we become advocates of ourselves, our peers and ultimately our community.

So we are proud to be here today.

Every single speech that you will hear is an original speech written by our scholars.

Their voices are unscripted and uncensored and these are their words to you.

So with no further ado I welcome and give a big cheer to the Young Artists Academy.

So we just had an oratory competition over the weekend at South Shore K-8 they hosted it where we had 35 scholars who are part of the WEAP Young Artists Academy compete with original speeches.

This is one of our first place winners, Naima who attends ORCA K-8 and she is going to present her piece.

Hi, my name is Naima Mohabba.

I am in seventh grade.

I go to Orca K-3.

My piece is called, Who Are You?

Dear Mr. Racism, you judge me based on the color of my skin and I'm sick and tired.

I'm sick and tired of you telling me that I'm not pretty because I'm black.

I can't become a doctor or who I want to be because I'm black and me being black won't get me anywhere so I might as well give up now.

Who are you?

Who are you to put a label on me and say that I'm not good enough?

Say that being black isn't good enough?

Then there was that one day.

You said too much that it actually got to me.

I rushed home, ran to my room and I started to cry.

I looked at myself and I wondered, why?

Why am I black?

That's when I thought maybe he's right.

Maybe I'm not good enough.

Because in society, if a black person and a white person are battling for a job, it's most likely for the white person to get it.

Right?

No, that's not right.

We have to fight.

Fight for what's right.

And I thought that was to let go, so I did and went to sleep.

But the next day is just like the rest.

I have to hear you judge me because I'm black.

But guess what?

Being black isn't a bad thing.

To you it might be, but to me it's not, because that's who I am.

And who I am is fighting for my identity, because you're not going to rip that away from me.

The only thing that's ripped off of me is the label you put on me.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Kira Maynard.

I'm in eighth grade.

I go to ORCA K-8.

This is called I will not apologize.

Don't wear that, you'll look like a whore.

Cover up, what are you, a slut?

Why are you dressed so provocatively?

Girls hear things like this all the time.

We can't fit into these boxes society creates for us.

We try to escape but are pushed back down by the labels that seep into our skin and brains, making it impossible for us to be ourselves.

Be smart, but not so smart that everyone is intimidated by you.

Wear makeup to look pretty, but don't look fake.

Show people that you are a strong, independent woman, but make sure men feel like they're needed.

We are told these things that contradict each other, that make it impossible for us to do anything right in society's eyes.

Every day people tell us don't wear that, you look like a slut.

Show some skin, you look like a prude.

I do not want your opinions.

I am not dressing for you, I am dressing for me.

And so what if the shirt I am wearing shows a strap?

What do you want me to do?

Apologize for being a girl with female body parts?

And if you get turned on by the shorts I'm wearing, that's your problem.

But don't make me change just because of how you feel.

The inner struggle in girls' minds never lets up.

There is constantly the battle between society and your heart.

You change three times before deciding on what to wear, because the first outfit you try on is only what your boyfriend likes, and the second one shows way too much skin.

And the third one is comfortable, but you know that you're going to get laughed at if you walk out of your house with sweatpants and a messy bun.

So you go with the outfit you think society will approve of, the one that makes you look like a girl that has fun, but not too much fun, and sensible, but not conservative.

Society tells us girls that we don't need makeup to look pretty, but that we look ugly without it.

The girl who spends hours in the morning filling in her brows and staining her lips becomes fake.

But do you really think that she bought those 75 lipstick colors for you?

The girl that wears no makeup becomes ugly just because she didn't take the time to color herself in.

Society tells us that when someone looks at you, it shouldn't look like you tried too hard.

So we spend hours every day to get that natural look.

We get told lose weight you're much too fat and oh my God you're so skinny you must be anorexic.

Society makes us uncomfortable with the bodies that we were born into.

I will not apologize for weighing what I weigh or not having that hourglass figure that society says is essential to look hot.

I will not apologize for being a girl with emotions.

I will not apologize for being a girl that can take a hit.

I will not apologize for being a girl that doesn't wear makeup.

I will not apologize for being a girl.

Thank you.

Hello everyone my name is Ethan Siapush I am in eighth grade at Orca K-8 and this is called Today's Dream.

53 years ago Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous I have a dream speech.

In that time he was referring to the mass racism towards African-Americans across our nation.

In my eyes the biggest problems we have in the world today are injustice and judgment.

These are the reasons that young people across America are ashamed of who they are.

These are the reasons that there is such a thing as white privilege.

These are the reasons that black men across our nation are being murdered without cause.

Injustice and judgment, they go hand in hand.

Judgment is the cause of some of the biggest social issues in the world, such as sexism, racism, ageism, and homophobia.

Eventually, these social issues begin to turn into physical injustices.

First, you judge, thinking you know someone, even if you truly do not.

Second, you change your actions based on that one singular judgment.

Right now, if a white man in the audience were to pull out a gun and shoot 20 people, police would arrive on scene and do their best to calm him down using words.

However, if he was African American or Middle Eastern, would that be the same story?

I do not think so.

Remember Tamir Rice?

The 12-year-old black boy was shot and killed seconds after police arrived on scene of his crime.

My grandfather moved to America from Tehran, Iran many years ago.

He faced countless challenges due to his race, as would I.

If my skin did not make me look like the average white teen, I am able to hide behind my skin.

Many people cannot.

But the truth is, no one should have to.

Solving this problem is much, much easier said than done.

We, as a society, must always be 100% aware of how we are seeing one another.

We must be able to look at each other and see human beings and think nothing more.

We must learn to recognize our differences and to honor them.

Our differences should be what make us special and unique, not what drag us down and tear us apart.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Rena Mateja I am in sixth grade and I go to South Shore.

The title of my piece is Untitled.

People think it is okay to sit down and laugh at Donald Trump all day while he thinks it is okay to talk about how he is going to send Muslims back where they came from and diss black people and objectify women in each and every way.

People don't realize how they failed the education system and say no child left behind but yet there are about 10 sitting in class thinking they are going to fail the rest of their life because they failed almost every test they took because the education system is so messed up.

People think it is the norm to listen to the radio and you know they will objectify women in each and every way.

People think it is ordinary to arrest smart boys for building clocks and just because he is Muslim they accuse it for being a bomb.

People think it is not cruel to laugh at Strange Fruit and how they killed all the Indians when they arrived.

But it wasn't even their lands to begin with.

Yet people think it is justified how KKK stood up and blew up the church with those pretty little black girls in there.

People think it is cool to walk down the hallway and act up and cuss and drop people's books because they are about that hood life, that thug life.

People think it is okay to do this and continue doing this but yet they don't want to change because they are afraid of getting arrested.

People think it is okay to walk down the street with their pants halfway down to their knees and then the police think it is okay to racial profile them so they have to say hands up don't shoot.

And this is the America we choose to live in.

When they saw Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin get killed, they thought that that was mandatory because those cops are white.

But it won't be OK until we realize where we're standing, on top of the bones of the blacks, on top of the bones of the Hispanics, on top of the bones of the Native Americans, on top of the bones who fought just to speak.

Thank you.

We want to on behalf of WEAP Young Artists Academy and our parents who are here today to thank you for allowing us to share our voices.

I often say that we advocate and speak on behalf of our children but our children are quite capable of speaking for themselves.

So I hope this isn't the last opportunity for us to come and be a part of a board meeting or at your schools or in your communities because our children are healing through their voices.

So thank you.

You can find us at, I have business cards I will leave them.

I would love for you to stay connected and support the work we are doing in our school district.

Thank you so much.

That was amazing.

So can we give them another hand.

And actually I would like for them to please come up and just say your first name again so we can all remember.

My name is Naima.

Hello everyone my name is Ethan.

My name is Rena Mateja.

My name is Kira.

Thank you so much.

This is such a treat.

It's also motivating for the rest of us.

Thank you so much.

We would love to have you come back again soon.

Have a great one.

And thank you, what is your name again?

My name is Toya Taylor.

Thank you Toya Taylor for really doing a wonderful job.

Thank you.

I would like to say that we are joined by Director Sue Peters.

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

Thank you.

Thanks for the great presentation by our students.

Thanks for Duane Jack for joining us today.

Recognitions tonight.

Maybe we'll.

Oh there she is hiding in the back.

All right.

So we want to recognize tonight that Mia Williams is with us.

Principal at Aki Kurose and recognized recently very recently last week.

by the Association of Washington school principals as the middle school principal of the year for the state of Washington.

We will bring you up front here in just a minute and have you, let the board congratulate you and take your picture.

Mia is certainly the proud principal at Aki Kurose and kind of a tremendous success story for Aki, Denny and Mercer working together in a partnership with great commitment, dedication by staff.

and great ownership by students and great leadership.

They are part of the eight schools that we've identified as being positive outliers that we continue to look for opportunities to learn from them about what works and how they make good things happen for students year in year out.

And so we think the recognition is very very well deserved.

Mia also had the opportunity to represent Seattle schools at a White House event not long ago and so proud of Mia in many regards.

Mia come on up front and we will invite the board to come down and congratulate you.

you

One of the many things that I'm impressed with when I get to go to Aki is their incredible use of data.

And so they've got their principal offices with student data up there and they know where each student is and they know what the next target is for that student and they've got a great partnership with City Year.

and have folders that have the students work there and so the city year people come in after school the students stay after school the city year people pull the file out they know exactly what the teachers have been working on in the regular classroom and continue that good work.

So it is exciting to see the good work that all of our schools are doing and led by Aki and by Mia's leadership.

Ernestine Anderson, famed jazz singer, passed away last week at 87. She graduated from Garfield High School after which she went on tour with Lionel Hampton's orchestra.

Recognized throughout her life and her career she released six albums, nominated for four Grammys, performed all over the world including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the inauguration for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

and continued to come back to Garfield to perform with the Garfield high school jazz ensemble.

So great loss and great tribute to Garfield students and Garfield just does such a great job of showcasing and promoting those who have gone before as an example to the students who are there today.

Some of the current staffing issues, current issues that are before us, one of those is staffing.

We are in the process of doing budgets for this coming year.

Staffing information and budget information is out in the schools and the schools are working diligently the last week or so and this week putting together their staffing plans and their budget plans for next year.

One of the challenges that we're coming to realize is that there's good news.

The legislature is making more primary teachers available.

Roughly one per elementary building.

Last year or current for this year and then one more teacher for next year.

As we've discussed here before that's a challenge for us in that we have to then find space and some places we don't have that space.

facilities is scrambling to find portables or find other accommodations for space in those buildings that are very very close to being out of space.

And then this will make major major major changes in the way that we assign staff.

Historically we've used a formula.

to give staffing to elementary schools and then the principals have worked with their staff to allocate staff and probably a little smaller class sizes at the primary level but pretty equal from K-5.

The new state funding is targeted specifically at primary grades.

and the state I suppose is a little I don't know what a good word would be.

They want to make sure that we use the staff the way that they intended and so they're holding us accountable for putting the teachers where they designated them.

So that means that we will need to staff primary classrooms at around 20 students and we will need to staff intermediate classes at around 27 students.

So that will create a much bigger difference between primary grades and intermediate grades.

In addition we are expected to meet our targets grade by grade and so that probably means that we will have far more multi-age split classrooms at the primary level going into next year.

So we are still trying to figure out what the state requirements are and we obviously applaud the smaller class sizes and the addition of much needed teachers to lower class size.

But it does seem to come with some consequences and some challenges.

Smart goal number four that the board has approved for superintendent evaluation is around early hiring.

HR has set a target of hiring 215 teachers early before we absolutely positively know exactly where the openings are.

And what does it say, they have made contingent offers to 197 teachers of which 157 have accepted.

Many of those are in high-need areas, special education, bilingual and then we are doing early hiring in elementary where we always have, we know that we have a large number of openings each year.

Several more career fairs to go but HR is well on track to meet their goal and particularly for those areas that are hard to fill that's really good news.

They're also doing work on recruiting teachers of color and trying to figure out how we can do that creatively through promoting the programs that we have and they're doing some interesting things with social media and virtual recruiting.

Bell times, the school board not too long ago approved the bell time plan for this coming year which allows us to start high schools later in the day.

As far as bio rhythms and later starts for kind of the improved learning for high school students.

There is now an implementation task force that is beginning to figure out okay how do we make all of this work by next fall.

So they have another survey that they will be coming out with and so we will look for that and they will be translating that information and looking for opportunities to engage with our communities.

Advanced learning had another email error this last week.

127 families were told that their child qualified for advanced learning when in fact they did not.

We caught that right away, apologized that and I think within a few hours notified them of the correct information but that's disappointing I'm sure to those families.

We do know that this is one of the high priority areas that we need to work on as we use the BTA monies to figure out how to make sure that our technology systems are compatible and working together.

The mayor's summit is is coming up.

It's technically it's advertised for the 30th of April.

kind of as a practical matter it has a lot of parts to it.

So there's about two dozen focus groups community conversations underway right now.

I think some of those started on the 8th and so we may have had a few by now.

Several of those will be held in our high schools and the city is doing a good job and we support them in that to get good participation out for those community conversations.

We do now know that the conversation, well we knew it was around education.

We now know that it's around education and closing the opportunity gap.

So that's what people will be being asked.

They'll be asked when they come to those events what are the things that are causing those gaps for students?

What are some things that the district could do?

What are some things that the city could do?

Kristen Bailey Fogarty a teacher at Eckstein middle school is one of the co-chairs.

President Patu and I are on the advisory committee of about 30 or 40 people along with Phyllis Campano who is here in the audience and I think three of our district or school administrators.

So we are fairly well represented on that group and that group is committed to meet every month or maybe twice a month from now through July with the idea of coming up with some pragmatic suggestions and solutions for closing the opportunity gap.

With regard to the district's work to close the opportunity gap which is smart goal 2, The district will be hosting a series of community meetings around our efforts to close the gap for African-American males and other students of color.

We are going to be doing that through the neighbor to neighbor program and working with some of our task forces, advisory teams, partners in our community to get feedback on the plan that we have underway and how we can partner with others in that endeavor.

The focus of our work has been around three things, positive beliefs, do we believe that each and every student absolutely positively has greatness in them and that we can work with them to help pull that talent out.

Second, can we build great relationships and move beyond behavior issues to work on social emotional issues and make sure that there is a warm welcome and a sense of belonging for each of our students.

And then thirdly, can we know each student by their name and their strengths and the needs and then teach to that so that we close gaps early and help them be successful.

This last week was classified appreciation week and I had the opportunity to go out and visit with quite a few of our labor groups throughout the district.

Had the opportunity to meet with SEA groups, PASS groups, Teamster groups and SEA groups at the John Stanford Center and then went out and visited some schools with some of the labor leaders.

Some of the things that I found out, transportation has a big board up, whiteboard, with lots of data on it.

One piece of data was that for February their buses were 97.7% on time and they told me that they drove 25,000 miles per month.

So once around the world every That's not every month it's every day.

There we go.

Yeah do my math right here.

In the warehouse they're working hard on cross-functional teams and they have 15 people that make deliveries for us and have a great track record of getting materials out to the schools as quickly as possible once they get delivered here.

And they help work with nutrition services to deliver 22,000 breakfasts and lunches each day.

And found out that our nutrition services is the second largest provider of food service in the Northwest.

Second only to joint base Lewis-McChord.

So lots of, actually I did that last year, got to go through the food service piece and saw how they go into high production mode starting at 4 o'clock in the morning to get those breakfasts and lunches ready to be sent out.

And then right outside of the foyer here had the opportunity to visit with security and see new fingerprinting, no more ink, electronically.

And then a lot of the ways that they are tied in with the city.

So they've got a big monitor up there that shows the location for each one of our schools with a little half-mile circle around it and instantaneously if there is an incident in Seattle Police Department it comes up on the screen and so they know right away where it is, how close to a school it is and then can have the conversations with the police department about having our student shelter locked down or making sure that we are working on their safety.

One of the major parts of our work this last year has been with regard to sexual assault prevention and we've had quite a few parts of our work underway.

We've redone our policies and procedures both for Title IX, sexual assault as well as for field trips.

We have opened up an office of civil rights internally so that we can be training, taking preventative steps and implementing our procedures.

And we have been working with our task force to implement many of their recommendations, one of which will be communications home to parents in April with regard to some of the things that families can do to help keep all of our students safe.

So I'd like to invite Clover Codd assistant superintendent for human resources and John Halfacre executive director to give us an update on some of the things that are underway, some of the things that are completed, and how we're trying to make sure that we're preventing and keeping our students safe.

Good evening Director, Superintendent Clover Codd, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources and John Halfacre, Executive Director for the Northwest region.

So we are here to provide you an update on the annual report required under policy 3208. Board policy 3208 requires that the superintendent make an annual report to the board.

Board policy 3208 states that the superintendent shall make an annual report reviewing the use and efficacy of this policy and related procedures.

Recommendations for changes to this policy if applicable shall be included in the report.

The superintendent is encouraged to involve staff, students and volunteers and parents in the review process.

The district's policies and procedures for sexual harassment and assault are located in policy 3208 and superintendent procedures 3208 SP.

The superintendent's annual report which is typically due in August will be submitted to the operations committee on April 21. 2016. The annual report to the board under policy 3208 is different than the annual reporting requirements of superintendent procedure 3208 SP.

Under 3208 SP the title IX coordinator and the assistant superintendent for human resources submit reports to the superintendent discussing in more detail the number and types of sexual assault cases reported, the steps taken to disseminate information about sexual harassment and the training provided to students and staff.

The superintendent did receive an interim report from the interim Title IX compliance officer on May 29, 2015. There have been several updates provided to the school board and community regarding the district's work related to the policy 3208 and associated superintendent procedures under 3208 SP.

On August 2015 at an operations committee meeting Deputy Superintendent Ben Charles Wright distributed the May 29, 2015 interim report of the Seattle Public Schools task force for prevention of and response to sexual harassment and sexual assault.

He also provided the May 29, 2015 interim Title IX coordinator's interim report and he also provided the July 30, 2015 addendum to the interim report of Seattle schools task force for prevention and response to sexual harassment and sexual assault.

He then went on to provide an overview of each of those documents.

There were four updates provided in the Friday superintendent memos to the board.

Those memos were provided by Deputy Superintendent Charles Wright and include December 4, 2015 an update regarding the annual report required under 3208 and the task force prevention of and response to sexual harassment and sexual assaults work that was underway.

December 18, an update on and a copy of the December 9 final report of the task force.

On January 8, 2016 an update regarding changes to the superintendent procedure under 3208SP and the communication and process used to include and inform the staff regarding the revisions to 3208SP.

And then again on January 29, 2016 an update regarding the hiring of a permanent full-time Title IX coordinator and the district's response to the task force final report.

On January 21, 2016 the operations committee, Kelly Schmidt the district's new student civil rights compliance officer described the work of the new office of student civil rights and the revisions to 3208 SP and reviewed the district's response to recommendations made by the task force.

In addition to keeping the school board and community updated regarding the efforts to comply with board policy 3208 the superintendent and the district have taken several steps to ensure that students and staff have access to an education and work environment free from discrimination including sexual harassment.

In November 2014 the district convened the task force.

The task force consisted of a multidisciplinary team including four principals, one teacher, two parents, two students, three sexual assault experts, two specialists, one classified employee and one district staff person.

The task force charter required the group to produce two reports, an interim report and a final report.

Both reports contain recommendations that are intended to move the district beyond mere legal compliance with Title IX.

In October of 2015 the district opened a student civil rights compliance office and hired Kelly Schmidt to lead that office.

The office includes an accessibility coordinator who started in November 2015, a full-time Title IX compliance officer who started in January 2016 and another full-time person will be hired to respond to other types of harassment, intimidation and bullying to begin March 2016. In July 2015 the district convened, excuse me, the district convened a joint team made up of PASS, risk management, executive directors, Department of Technology services, policy and our communications department to redesign the field trip procedures and processes for supervision and oversight.

The district adopted a revised sexual harassment procedure 3208SP in December of 2015. The information that I am sharing tonight will be expanded upon in a written annual report and shared with the board on April 21 at the operations committee meeting.

At this time I am going to turn it over to John Happaker the Executive Director of the Northwest region to provide an update on the field trip processes and procedures and then we will answer any questions that you have after that.

Good evening, afternoon still.

Still getting that daylight savings time figured out again.

Thank you Dr. Codd and as mentioned in her report the work that I'm going to share with you is work that we've been doing to strengthen our field trip processes, procedures as well as just the transparency around field trips both internally and externally for our community outside of the working staff down here.

As mentioned work began in July of 2015 with a joint team coming together.

Erin Bennett and PASS, risk management, the executive directors and our senior administrative assistants who primarily do a lot of the background work related to the field trips as they come in.

Department of technology staff, policy and procedure and communications all came together to meet and look at the current system that we had in place and the ways that staff accessed the field trip process.

and try to make it usable in basic terms.

In our work we look to reduce redundancies to streamline the application and approval process to strengthen the supervision plans and especially those that relate to overnight and out of state and our international trips.

We also are working to as much as possible create transparency both for the staff internally as well as as I mentioned our families and community.

Our work was reviewed multiple times by PASS, by legal, by risk management and by external consultants that we consulted with who are familiar with both field trips and supervision plans.

And in the end we presented our work twice to the entire principal core as well as senior leadership both in December and then again at the March learning leadership day and we went live two weeks ago.

We are going to now flip over and I think you can see it on your monitors to take you into what the new website looks like.

Hopefully it comes up here in a second.

It does work for the public out there.

Alright technical difficulties on our end on that side but I encourage you and it's an easy thing to do now.

So during the work we developed a two phase plan.

The work is broken so we would not do something that we had to then go back and undo completely once we actually implemented phase 2. What you are seeing right now is phase 1 of that plan.

Key points and this is again I encourage you to take a look at this.

For the first time ever F in the guides actually stands for field trips.

There's a clear access point from inside and outside the website.

In prior times you had to go through trying to find it through risk management and dig further and further into it.

If you were lucky you found links to some of the forms and other pieces.

We've cleaned that up entirely.

If you click in and type in field trips in the search engine it will take you right to that site.

If you're external, if you're a parent and you want to know how field trips work you can get there.

Internal you can get there.

There is a single page now that has a clear tab format to it.

If you were to look at it you would see four clear tabs, one for local field trips, one for overnight field trips, one for international and then one that is a clear link to resources.

The clear process is on each tab and it ramps up as you move along the tabs so that they become more and more complex related to the trips that you are trying to take.

So a single day is a fairly simple process.

The international one is clearly much more complex but it's the same process as you work your way along.

The resource tab has clear links to additional resources and supports.

Resources are also dynamic with sample documents to be replaced using exemplars from distinguished trips and trip planners.

We pulled in a number of documents from people who have been doing it right for a long time and we used those to build the resources that we were putting out to people and we made it very clear in terms of the layout so that you can see if you are looking for how to do a trip to Thailand the documents are there to allow you to actually do it and do it safely.

And again the clear supervision plan is now part of the processes and documents with key timelines and expectations.

This was a piece that the outside consult that we worked with recommended that we build and we ran it by them a number of times in order to make sure that what we were putting together was a plan that would be successful for our principals as well as the trip leader who actually leaves the building to make sure they had a plan in advance for the students.

how they were going to support them during the event whatever it is as well as in the cases of overnight and out of state how they were going to monitor their safety and well-being not just during the time that they're with them but at those times where they're doing other things along the way overnight etc.

Phase 2 is in the pipeline now and will help us move to a truly automated planning submission and approval and tracking process.

Right now we still have a lot of pieces that have to come into us and get printed and sent back and forth but that's the next piece is to get the automation piece and DOTS is part of the work that's going to help us with that.

So, with that, if there are any questions?

Any questions?

Comments?

Director Harris.

One of the things that came up in the quarterly audit meeting last night was having the statements of what one's rights are with respect to harassment and how does that actually make it into each of the student handbooks throughout the district.

Are the executive directors taking a look at that and crossing the T dotting the I so that we have that information in the hands of every family in the district.

We do send out as a district we send out the rights and responsibilities and all of the documents associated with that on an annual basis.

Within each individual school handbook those are kind of a site by site determination of what they put in.

But again we send out those key documents are sent home at the start of school by every school.

I guess what I am asking is the accountability piece that makes sure that that is in fact in every handbook in the Seattle school district.

I don't know that accountability has existed but I'm sure it will be part of our planning going forward.

Thank you.

Dr. Peters.

So I continue to hear from schools that the amount of paperwork associated with field trips is pretty extensive and somewhat onerous so anything you can do to streamline that and make it less of a burden for everybody without losing the important content I strongly would support.

I believe we are on the same page on that exactly.

As a parent myself and having had to fill out a form I would agree with that.

We have really worked hard with risk management and others to make sure we have the necessary pieces of paper there and to streamline as much as possible so that you only have to fill it out once and those kind of pieces.

As I said phase 2 is where we really can get to an automated system that will cut down on a lot of that but right now we still are in back and forth on some pieces.

If we could show you and I'm sure again I would say please take a look at it, if you look at the field trip forms that were now using that are now live.

They are much simpler to work with.

They are actually more comprehensive for the principal to review but it is a better process for us to get the trip approved and moving forward and really again our emphasis is the same as yours to reduce as much of that paperwork as possible while still keeping our kids safe.

Thank you.

Any comments?

Thank you.

I want to thank all of the team they put in a lot of time to make this better trying to balance the paperwork versus the need to actually be compliant and do what we need to do.

A few more items to comment on.

OSPI was here this week along with representatives of the federal government to do their quarterly overview for special education.

This is now kind of moving toward the end of our second year of being I guess getting technical assistance now from those individuals but have built some good relationships over the last two years.

And so OSPI comes out and they've been doing region by region visits to buildings in each region around our school district.

They've been doing focus groups with parents and they've been inquiring on a variety of things that we've agreed to do in the MOU.

Are our IEPs on time?

Are we delivering the services that we promised through the IEPs?

What is the experience of our parents and a variety of other issues that are in the MOU.

So we have had, well all of the visits are now scheduled.

We are well over half of the visits completed and so far the visits that we began with have resulted in a return of the funding that was withheld from us.

last year.

So a lot of good learning along the way and a lot of improvements along the way.

OSPI did comment on the fact that a year ago 47% of the complaints regarding special education at the state level were from Seattle and were about 5% of the state population.

And this year 5% of the complaints to OSPI are from Seattle which tracks with the number of students that we have in the district.

We had a lively meeting with our Native American representatives a few weeks ago and we revisited the issue of how do we get out of the data reporting the information that we need.

So there was a lot of conversation around what the federal government requires, what the state government requires, the 57 entries that are currently in the menu that we have to provide to the state.

I'm told that we had another follow-up meeting today and I think that we've made a breakthrough in trying to figure out how we can comply with the state and federal regulations.

Part of the problem is that if you comply with the state federal regulations you might check a box like other in which case then your underlying ethnicity as a Native American would be currently lost in our system making it very hard for those who work in our Native American program to go and find students that might need services or students that might qualify for additional funding.

I'm excited that our team is excited and I think that they found a way to do what we need to do to make everybody happy and get the data that we need.

Also met end of last week with the PTSA Seattle Council.

They have an event coming up on April 4 they have invited several departments here from the John Stanford Center to be there and make a quick two-minute pitch on why you want to know more and then they will be stationed around the outside of this room and available for Q&A from representatives from each of the PTSA's in the district.

They are also helping us build awareness for an upcoming family survey that we have been working on and as always challenged with how do we get that information out to parents in many different formats.

Many prefer it and we can send it electronically for others we have to mail it.

We are working on getting that information out here in the next few weeks.

As part of classified appreciation week I met with the staff here at the John Stanford Center.

A couple of meetings this last week.

Thank you to Director Harris for being there.

Continuing with our theme with regard to customer service, we had staff kind of recognize each other for some of the good work that they are doing.

Kind of get them involved in the process.

One of the things moving forward that we will be working on is asking each division, each department to set their standards for how they are meeting the customer service expectations.

Who answers the phone, who gets back to them, what's our standard for getting back to those who call with questions.

So a lot of good conversations in those sessions.

And finally some good news.

Hazel Wolf K8 has won an international award for building design recognized in the world architecture news.

And they came in second to a Brazil project and were said to be extremely close so we will have a ribbon-cutting celebration at the start of school in September and kind of the more important part is that we will have a great new school for students to serve our students and nice to have the recognition as well.

Hazel Wolf K-8 students have also been active in doing some community fundraising.

One of their classes, a class of artistic students has helped raise $2900 to buy a tiny house for Othello Village, part of the tent city for our homeless.

So kudos to them.

We had several, the windstorms just continue so we've had a couple of bouts now.

We had Northgate that was out for a while, they came back on.

Jane Adams was out for an extended period of time and the staff did a good job.

with some support here to figure out how to accommodate the number of students and figure out how do you serve breakfast when you have no power.

And then McGilvra this last week we had challenges as well.

Pacific Lutheran University has awarded their president's scholarship to an Ingram student Carissa Liao.

600 applicants turned in applications and the average GPA was 3.98.

So she did well to be recognized.

It comes with a scholarship worth $25,000 a year and puts her in the running for a next round of scholarships that might double that amount of money.

So congratulations to Carissa who graduates in June.

CNN filmed at Garfield High School today revisiting a story that they had done before titled where they are now.

It was a story related to the 6th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.

Marcellus Owens a student at Garfield was at the White House for the signing a while back and was featured in the news.

His mother was recognized at the time as one who had not had insurance and had passed away before the affordable health care act was available.

And then I commented last time on the Cleveland STEM award that they have received $20,000 and they will be designated as a STEM lighthouse and the money is for them as well as for them to act as a lighthouse for other technology schools in the area that want to come find out more about what they are doing.

They were featured in a King 5 profile this week.

And finally I would say thank you to Assistant Superintendent Ken Gotch.

He has been leading our business and finance section and has made a decision to move back to Chicago to support his parents.

So, we very much appreciate and will miss the stability that he brought to the district and kind of the hard work can do attitude that he's brought to the leadership team.

So, best wishes to Ken and thank you for great service to Seattle schools.

That concludes my remarks.

I too would like to say thank you so much to Ken for all the work that he's done and he has brought a lot of sustainability for the Seattle Public Schools so thank you and good luck as you go back to Chicago.

Again welcome to Dwayne Jack, a senior at Middle College at Northgate.

His tribal affiliation is Nooksack and Coedgen.

He is interested in a career in culinary arts.

He is a board member of the Urban Native Education Alliance.

He is a star student and student leader at Middle College at Northgate.

Thank you for being here this evening.

Mr. Jack if you would like to provide your comments now would be a good time.

You don't have any comments tonight?

Okay well.

Well thank you for joining our board tonight.

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

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I second.

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

Director Blanford.

I would like to remove item 4 from the consent agenda.

So you want to read the motion?

So, before we are now going to, before we remove the consent, we need to first take a vote for the remaining of the consent agenda items.

Motion first, go ahead Sue.

I move approval of the consent agenda as amended.

I second.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Those opposed.

Consent agenda has passed as amended.

So Sue will read the motion.

All right this motion is the McDonald international school 2016-17 annual fund for language immersion.

No it's not what I just said.

There we go.

All right.

It is item 4 kids in the middle grant from the Nesholm family foundation.

Approval of this item would authorize the superintendent Okay here is the motion.

I move that the board authorize the superintendent to accept the kids in the middle grant funds from the Nesholm Family Foundation in the amount of $531,655.

I second.

All those in favor?

Okay.

Any discussion on this item?

Director Blanford.

I'm sorry for all of the chaos associated with this.

It is not deserved in the sense that the only thing I wanted to do is to make sure that we make note of the fact that the Nesholm Foundation has been involved with Seattle Public Schools for 14 years now and has contributed if I read the bar correctly $6.1 million and has been responsible for a lot of the schools that are up on that list of high-performing schools.

And so I thought it was important to appreciate the foundation for their generosity and for their smart investments they have made in my experience with Seattle Public Schools they have made smart investments that have helped those schools to accomplish the goals that have been set and the recognition that they have received.

So I thought it was important to not just have this be something that doesn't get recognition as many of our items on the consent agenda do.

So it was just, it was less to make any changes to the language and just for that recognition sake.

Thank you.

Ms.

Foley roll call.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

This motion is passed unanimously.

I move for the approval of the minutes.

All right since it's after 5 o'clock we are now going to move into public testimony but before we do that we want to remind you of the rules and then also before that I also want to note that starting at April 6 board meeting public testimony will be scheduled to begin at 5.30pm instead of the current time at 5 o'clock.

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

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

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

When the two minutes have ended please conclude your remarks.

So I will read the first three names.

Jessica Nakamatsu, Phyllis Campana and Lauren Hipp.

Good evening school board members and Duane.

My name is Jessica K. Nagamatsu.

I am currently a high school senior attending middle college at Northgate.

I started out as a student at Roosevelt high school.

Now don't get me wrong Roosevelt is a great school but it wasn't the right fit for me.

I couldn't handle a six-period schedule where I had to speed walk around a crowd of 1,700 students inside a giant school building just to get to my next class on time.

Combined with my ability to get sick easily which forced me to stay home and fall further behind along with the large amounts of homework I received due to being sick caused me severe anxiety and also dealing with the stress of being my ill and dying mother's caretaker I was definitely failing academically.

I even ended up taking my freshman year over again with only minimal improvement in my grades the following year.

I was directed into middle college's direction during the summer credit retrieval program.

I took the summer program two years in a row plus another year at Roosevelt in order to earn enough credits to qualify for entry into middle college.

I lost my mother in the process, dying of health complications caused by type 2 diabetes.

I ended up just falling even further and deeper into this downward spiral where I only had a handful of supports left by my side.

I joined middle college at the start of the 2014-2015 school year.

The school changed my educational perspective.

I walked into school every day only to be greeted by a small supportive community of staff and students working hard together in order to achieve our own academic goals.

I was given a second chance at my education.

I not only got back on track to graduating which will happen for me this June but I was able to partake in a variety of opportunities that most high school students, most high schoolers don't even get a chance to participate in.

These opportunities have opened quite a few doors for me.

The curriculum focuses more on obtaining practical life skills along with mastery based core and elective subject classes.

We remember and retain what we have learned.

In closing, Middle College is a school that has made an impact not just in my life but also the lives of many other students, mainly those who are considered at risk.

We accept everyone regardless of their situations and circumstances.

We work with them, accommodating around their schedules just so they can earn that diploma and move even forward, even further forward in their lives.

For a school to have a 100% graduation rate and to have most all students enter some form of postsecondary education after they graduate, I strongly believe that Middle College deserves some more support and a huge round of applause for their hard work and their dedication.

Let's all keep Middle College going strong and soon enough there will be a generation of students where there will be no such thing as a high school dropout.

Thank you very much for listening.

Thank you.

No, that's not going to work.

Okay.

Good evening school board members.

My name is Phyllis Campano and I am a special education teacher and the Vice President of Seattle Education Association.

In 2013 myself and another educator representing SEA went with Seattle Public Schools, community organizations and city officials to visit Boston and Jersey City to visit their preschool programs which are now the models for Seattle's program.

I went because I truly believe that quality early intervention is essential for all of our students.

One of the biggest takeaways that we had in that trip was that the students in the preschools run by the public schools made more gains than the students in the community organizations.

We have the structure here in Seattle to provide the jumpstart for our students to close the opportunity at an early age.

You've heard from educators at Seattle Elementary.

The educators can pick out the students that had quality pre-K by their abilities to manage their bodies so that they can learn.

You've heard from educators at Arbor Heights about the struggles of students, the struggles of our students who have experienced significant trauma in their early lives and the need for early intervention to help them be successful.

You've heard from educators in the existing pre-K programs who are collaborating with kindergarten teachers.

They are attending staff meetings.

They have fourth grade reading buddy programs.

Those pre-K programs are part of those communities.

Increasing the number of pre-K programs run by Seattle Public Schools will not only help more students, will only help more students.

So let's not hesitate to take the opportunity to close the opportunity gap, we here in Seattle Public Schools are the best people to provide that experience for our kids.

So we all need to step up.

Please vote yes on the preschool.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me here today.

My name is Lauren Hipp and I'm with MomsRising.

We are a grassroots organization of over a million members nationwide with over 40,000 in Washington State.

I'm also a mom of a toddler and a resident of Seattle and I know firsthand how difficult it is to find affordable early learning in the city.

In fact many Seattle families have to forego preschool due to the high cost or lack of availability with Washington ranking 10th worst in the nation for access to affordable care for preschoolers.

This could have devastating consequences because preschool has been shown to close the opportunity gap among low income and children of color.

Leading economists agree that the investments in high quality early learning saves future dollars by 8 to 1. Studies also show that children who have high quality early learning experiences are more likely to succeed in school, graduate from high school, gain stable employment and are less likely to be arrested.

Yet many of these Seattle children will not have the opportunity to participate in these with these potentially life-changing outcomes unless you act now.

Tonight you have the power to expand access to preschool by voting in support of the Seattle preschool program by maintaining existing and expanding to new classrooms.

At Moms Raising we urge you to do so for families across the city.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

John Bancroft, Alyssa Jacobs, Shelley Hurley.

Good evening.

I am the grandfather of a child who will be eligible for the Seattle preschool program in two years as well as the father of two graduates of Seattle Public Schools.

I think you have a unique opportunity tonight to serve 80 more children in Seattle preschool program in addition to the 60 currently being served.

And these will be children who will come off the waitlist for Head Start and ECAP.

or families who are too rich for Head Start because they earn more than $25,000 but not affluent enough to pay for preschool themselves.

I would like to focus on just a couple of specific issues.

The issue of the timing of payments from the city to the school district is a red herring.

Many of the other district funding sources have much more difficult funding requirements.

I'll name two, the USDA school lunch program, every lunch has to be counted every menu checked before the district gets a penny from those funding sources and if there are any mistakes it has to be paid back.

By contrast the city is giving the school district 75% of the funding up front and the remaining funding at payment points.

My understanding is to date all of the payments have been made on time because the requirements are things like the teachers meet their professional development requirements.

And the school district also has a reserve fund in case these payments ever weren't made so I think that's a red herring.

In addition I think that the Seattle preschool program and the district are working well on serving children with special needs which is a high priority for both groups and that those be worked out quite easily in the future.

So I ask you to vote against the amendment and for the main resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Lisa Jacobs in support of the pre-K and I cede my spot to Kristen Lee.

Hello my name is Kristen Lay and I am a kindergarten teacher at Van Asselt Elementary School which is one of the sites of the preschool.

So I have been coming to visit the preschool during my PCP time to interact with some of my future kindergartners and I cannot tell you that this is, how much this is such a benefit for my students my future kindergartners and for me as well because we get to know each other and they get to see who their future teacher will be and I will get to see who my students are before they enter kindergarten.

And in the past it's always been a scary thing to teach kindergarten because you didn't get to know who your students were.

You had no idea.

It was a mystery and it was something that was very unpredictable.

And so because of this preschool I can easily walk over to see who they are, who they are as individuals holistically.

And I can plan how to better serve my students, my future students based on observing their behavior, how they've grown socially from being in a preschool and of course most importantly their academics.

So now I'm going to switch gears and tell you about how I've been interacting with one of the wonderful little preschoolers at Van Asselt.

He has tons of energy, he is very wiggly, And he has grown so much ever since he has been in preschool.

He, there are four different dialects of Cantonese spoken in his home.

So you can probably imagine that he is processing quadruple times, so often times he is in his own world.

Because he has the preschool he now knows how to socialize.

He is exposed to being in a classroom with other students and that is something that is very consistent and that is going to be very helpful for his growth.

Please support the preschool.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Shelly Hurley and I am a special ed teacher.

I am also the chair for SEA on the partnership committee which is involved in closing opportunity gap and equity.

And I am here today and I could sit up here and spout all sorts of numbers again about why preschool is good and why we should have it and to tell you the truth I am quite surprised that I was asked to come and speak again about this because I spoke about it last year and to me this is one of those things where it is kind of a duh kind of a thing.

As educators we know that early intervention is best.

We also know that there are families in Seattle Public Schools that cannot afford preschool.

If we have the opportunity as a school district to make sure that those kids get what they need so that they are then able to enter kindergarten ready to go, I do not understand why We have to come down here again and ask you to vote yes on this again.

I don't understand why we have to come down and say please open more.

To me this is just something that should happen.

It is what is best for children.

And with that I'm going to cede the rest of my time to David Sandler.

Thank you Shelley.

David Sandler physical therapist assistant 10th year with the district.

I have 25 seconds.

I sent an email to the board saying I support this even though it is a stopgap measure because we don't tax the rich and we insist on having a war economy with bases I think at over 120 countries in the world.

So, until we really push to have a more decent way of acting, we have to do this.

Thank you.

Chris Jenkins, Casey Osmore-Hedman, Kim McCormick.

My name is Chris Jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124. On the city preschool program agreement three points.

Number one, watching the board's discussions the situation is reminiscent of charter schools.

The rules governing city preschool programs would not be solely under district jurisdiction.

Number two, some funds are not reimbursed to the district if certain targets are not met.

Number three, in that circumstance the district would have spent common school funds on non-common school education.

As recently ruled by the Supreme Court to sign an agreement to do so appears to be illegal.

On athletic field turf replacement at Franklin, district staff indicated that new studies on safety from contaminants from the filler material won't be available until the end of the year.

Please vote no on this contract.

On policy 3246 on the use of reasonable force, please discuss recent changes to the policy.

on private funding of language immersion instructional assistance.

Two points number one for English-speaking students is the approach of teaching mathematics in a non-English language an easily extendable strategy for closing achievement gaps.

Number two, other language immersion schools use public funds meant for ELL or English language learning students.

It is my understanding that such funds are required to be spent for the exclusive use of ELL students.

Are such funds being properly spent in these programs?

On Loyal Heights, please change the plans that would remove 30% of the playground.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Casey Asporn, Hintman.

Good evening my name is Casey Osborne Hinman I am the parent of a 19 month old Tappan who really likes your microphone.

I live in Director District 5 and I am also representing Save the Children Action Network.

Save the Children Action Network engages an advocacy network of supporters to increase access to quality early learning across the state and across the country.

I'm here today to testify in favor of accepting funding through the Seattle preschool program to preserve the three existing classrooms and SPS and expand to four additional sites.

In the fall of 2014 only 58% of children in Seattle Public Schools 31 highest poverty schools met kindergarten readiness standards for literacy and only 31% met standards for math.

We know that this opportunity gap disproportionately impacts children of color and children from low income families.

High quality early learning is a proven solution to close the opportunity gap.

A study of Chicago's parent child centers found that children who attended high quality early learning programs had a 29% higher rate of high school completion, a 41% reduction in special ed placement and a 40% reduction in the rate in the ring of grade retention.

My backup.

and a 41% reduction in special education placement and a 40% reduction in the rate of grade retention among other improved outcomes compared to their peers without the same opportunities.

Seattle Public Schools vision is that every student receives a high-quality 21st century education and graduates prepared for college career and life.

To make this vision a reality for all students we need to make sure that high-quality early learning is available to all students.

With today's vote you have the opportunity to help level the playing field for 140 students.

I encourage you to take advantage of that opportunity.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Kim McCormick.

Hi my name is Kim McCormick and while I applaud Seattle voters and our state legislators for supporting levies to fund new school capacity I ask that the planning for the Magnolia and the E.C.

Hughes building be done transparently and genuinely involve the communities for which they are intended to serve.

Several schools will soon receive new buildings to grow into.

Other schools are not as fortunate.

For example rather than build a new larger building to support enrollment growth at John Rogers the decision was made to open the interim Cedar Park site as an attendance area school.

The roll-up method of opening new schools is supported by the NSAP so we were shocked to learn that plans call for John Rogers students to be reassigned by GeoSplit to Cedar Park in 2017 along with students who will be GeoSplit from Olympic Hills even though Olympic Hills is receiving a new larger building.

In 2013 John Rogers staff undertook the in-house identification of students who qualified for but were not receiving ELL services.

There are now about 70 ELL students at John Rogers many of whom will be impacted by the geo split to Cedar Park.

The plan for Cedar Park does not make sense.

It does not balance enrollment upon building capacities.

The Cedar Park walk zone is not safe and instead of distributing the region's ELL and free and reduced lunch populations between several schools it concentrates these students at two schools, Olympic Hills and Cedar Park.

The Seattle school board has directed SPS staff to reexamine the Cedar Park boundaries.

Thank you.

Community meetings were recently held at John Rogers and Olympic Hills during which the growth boundaries that had been approved in 2013 were presented and feedback was taken.

We are looking forward to continuing this discussion at additional meetings this spring.

Please learn from the Cedar Park situation when planning for Magnolia and E.C.

Hughes.

Please plan transparently and get it right the first time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Erin Acuna, Melissa Westbrook, Matthew O'Connor.

Good evening my name is Erin Acuna I am the executive director of the Southeast Seattle education coalition.

We are for the pre-K program and I would like to cede my time to a parent from Bayley-Gatzert.

Hi I am Joanne Griesemer.

I am a parent in the Bailey Gatzert area.

My oldest is currently in kindergarten and last year he participated in the pre-K and it was phenomenal.

The things that happened in that classroom were magical.

I mean Every day those kids were eager to learn.

They were engaged in special activities and they came home exhausted and who doesn't want that for their pre-k kids.

And all those things were just wonderful but the icing on the cake for us were these were our neighborhood kids.

I was anxious to send my child to our neighborhood school.

Knowing nothing about the building other than their test scores were kind of shady and so to go into the building and have a positive experience to learn about the neighborhood, learn about the different cultures, meet kids, develop friendships and build my child's stamina to learn have all been beneficial.

Seeing the benefits this year in kindergarten has been super rich.

The kids are friends because they had that last year to practice and engage and do school together.

So when they began kindergarten in the fall they were ready on day one and that is something that I think is the biggest benefit that isn't measured on any of the tests.

And then to also realize that these kids are sorry these kids are also wanting more.

I mean there are parents in the halls that are picking up and envious of this program and the fact that this class is already full at Gatzert and there are people who are eager and want to sign their kids up and aren't allowed to is. heartbreaking.

So please vote for more programs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

About the bar for the city pre-K for the record I love pre-K.

As I said to you when this item was introduced I hope the district is prudent in what it does to protect itself as well as serving all students whose parents want to access this program.

If you want to do that then vote yes on the amendment.

The city says the district is a partner and yet that wants to have a 25% hold back of payments.

First of all the district is a governmental entity with elected oversight.

That puts you on a very different basis than other community groups that the city is working with.

Second, the city says the benchmarks are just some kind of classroom checklist and it's no problem to fulfill them until that checklist changes and until the district doesn't meet those benchmarks and the Gates Foundation takes its funding away.

Where will the district get the money?

The district should not be getting the money from your reserve.

Where is it going to come from?

So the only thing is the city must take that out.

Third, the city needs to understand that if they want to operate in the district then they have to follow federal rules that the district does.

That means every child who comes through the door must be welcomed and have their needs met in inclusive classrooms.

Passing special ed kids to district Pre-Ks is not right and it makes the district's job harder.

Why should some Seattle preschoolers get this wonderful six-hour academic day that the city offers and not others?

That is an inequity that should not stand.

In summary if you want to vote yes on this BAR do so but also vote yes on the amendment.

Protect our district's funds and help serve all the preschool children who participate in the city's program within Seattle schools.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Matthew O'Connor and I'm a career early childhood educator.

Having taught pre-K and kindergarten for six years, three of them here in Seattle Public School District at South Shore Pre-K 8. I've been involved with the Seattle preschool program from the beginning.

Testifying at city council and community meetings myself and holding parent discussions in the classroom in order to elevate parent and educator voice in the formation of this legislation.

I later served on the mayor's advisory committee along with a parent from the South Shore Pre-K program and other community and education leaders.

We made recommendations around teacher training and curriculum selection and enrollment structures and facilities that became specific policy line items in the preschool program.

From the beginning the formation of this program in these classrooms has included first-person community voice.

It's been built in collaboration with our city's policymakers.

It's included and respond to our voices including in the most obvious way when the citizens voted overwhelmingly to approve the Seattle preschool program.

The inclusion of these voices is part of what makes the program a strong one.

The study coming out of Vanderbilt University recently concerning the impact of pre-K, a study that's been cited frequently by members of this school board, does not invalidate the power of early learning.

No one study can overturn decades of neuroscience and cognitive research that proves the tremendous potential of the learning of young children.

For many examples, see the academic journal Science of Early Childhood Development or pieces coming out of the Center of the Developing Child from Harvard or the Haskins Laboratories from Yale.

What's more the Vanderbilt piece is not attempting to do this so don't allow it to be misconstrued by politics or have its implications examined in part rather than in whole.

What we can learn from Vanderbilt in Tennessee is that we need to watch our programs closely and put in place qualitative and quantitative measures that include first-person student parent and teacher voice to ensure that our classrooms are meeting the needs of students.

The city set us up for this when they delivered us legislative frameworks for classrooms that already included the solicitation of first-person community voice.

What we do with that framework is of course up to you.

Whether we use it or whether we abandon it and turn our back on that community input is up to you.

I strongly encourage you to continue serving Seattle Public Schools students through Seattle preschool program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Michael Tamaya, Cecilia McCormick and Susan Wilson.

Cecilia McCormick.

I am gratified Directors Geary and Harris have offered an amendment to the further expansion of to me an obviously flawed city pre-K program.

Forgive my skepticism about a task force however.

You know if SEAC, PICDAC and FACMAC are any indication not much may come of it without leadership and political will.

Apparently district staff has rationalized the differences between various district preschool programs as funding related.

OSPI the same agency that was asleep at the wheel while district SPED hit the fan.

finds that this reasoning doesn't constitute discrimination.

This is disturbing to me, sounds too much like inferior schools and high minority neighborhoods are so due to finances.

Or boys sports get better gear because they bring in more money.

It is not discrimination, no it is funding or zip code or curricular focus etc.

You know this is absurd and unacceptable.

Districts like Seattle with major over identification of minorities in special education can be compelled to use 15% of its IDEA Part B funds to provide true coordinated comprehensive early intervention services.

Including pre-K for children with or without disabilities.

We have funds.

Are we using them correctly?

No. were shortchanging the disabled preschoolers.

So do this right and do it right now.

Rewrite this MOU and make this a district led program for our 670 needy children you serve now.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I have been a teacher for over 30 years.

I currently teach kindergarten at Arbor Heights.

Most of my years of experience are in kindergarten, first grade and head start program.

I have seen the academic rigor and length of day in kindergarten increase over these years.

I have also seen how children who have attended a good preschool come to me ready to succeed.

There are some wonderful private preschools in the Arbor Heights area and I get their students every year coming in with a wealth of background knowledge and educational experiences, excitement for learning and a sense of self-confidence.

Sadly there are many other students whose families cannot afford a private school.

They come to kindergarten already behind.

Lacking basic skills such as phonemic awareness, beginning math concepts, they don't even know how to do school.

The students whose primary language is not English struggle even more as do their parents who don't know the right questions to ask.

The opportunity gap or achievement gap is already present in kindergarten and it's evident every day, every year.

Repeated research emphasizes the importance of the early years in helping students build a foundation to succeed throughout their lives.

We as Seattle schools have an opportunity to benefit these students and their families Children should not be penalized just because their parents cannot afford private school.

I urge the school board to continue providing students and their families with the opportunity to have a great foundation for their educational career at the three current sites and to add the proposed new sites.

Help us give each child the best start possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jim Erser.

Sandra Rollins and Kristen Spada.

Good evening.

My name is Jim Worzer I live in Loyal Heights and I wanted to talk about the Loyal Heights school remodel.

part of building this 25,000 square foot beautiful park on the school property there.

And it was all asphalt before.

And part of the, I mean it's used all the time by the neighborhood and by the kids in the school and it has grass on it and the grass got worn and we needed to water it.

And so the school district said we want to water it.

And they said well no you can't.

I said well why not.

They said we can't afford to pay for the water.

So we said well pay for the water.

And we still couldn't get a thing watered.

So now come along is this remodel and one of the reasons they are using for getting rid 50% of the play space is that the grass is worn away.

And it sort of speaks to the whole process that the community who has supported this school for a long time and really consistently and built this beautiful park it cost like $600,000.

The school district comes along with a remodel and there is absolutely no input from the Absolutely none.

And what comes out is the design is way too big, there is a courtyard that is not needed, it is a tier 4 when it really should be a tier 3 for the size of the lot and it is 65% over budget.

And nobody seems to really care.

I mean we've talked about this before and what has struck me about this is the lack of transparency by the school district.

So I would urge you to at least revisit this and not let this happen to any of the other remodels.

Thank you.

Sandra Rollins I would like to ask you to please state your name before you speak so we know that you are on this list.

Okay well I am Sandra Rollins and I am a teacher at Van Asselt and I am going to try to read this paper this time but I have to start talking first.

Now I am not going to go through all the good information that I have already given to you plus I am sure you have already researched the preschool programs and the benefits and all this la la la stuff but you have an early learning department.

that is capable of doing many, many things I presume because you know they are under your jurisdiction, they are under us and I believe in them.

If they can handle it let them do so and hold them accountable for the preschool program.

This is something new and that is great because guess what as educators and I am going to start reading and pay attention.

As educators we are the forefront of encouraging change and exploration.

This is the primary mission we are to instill in our students.

As a district and school board you have an invaluable opportunity to show our community, state and beyond that closing the achievement gap, equity access to services and preparing students for school sometimes we have to look to We have to look at change and exploration.

Sometimes it involves risk, being different, going against the grain.

But in the long run we will be known as innovative, mission focused, brave.

The public will see us as taking steps to explore a new frontier to better theirs and all our children.

a district that is willing to try new programs that can help achieve the district missions.

The government will see us as a willing partner to encourage and support where we can so we can be ongoing collaborators of making contributing citizens to society.

Being first in line is sometimes scary because this is new but it is like jumping from the diving board the first time.

You are not sure why you are up there.

Water is looking deeper than you thought.

Legs are shaking.

The edge of the pool is getting further away but when you take that initial plunge and look up and see that you made it.

Oh what joy and a lasting memory of courage you have.

Seattle Public Schools we are on that diving board.

We have been given the lessons, a swimsuit and even a life preserver.

Please wrap up your comments.

Okay.

From the city.

We just need to make that commitment and jump.

Evaluate along the way.

Make changes as educators should.

We know we can do it.

Let's be the innovators of change like we want our children to be.

Thank you.

Good evening board members, Kristen Spada, kindergarten teacher Bailey Gatzert.

I have been a kindergarten teacher for 20 years and last summer after jumpstart was over in the middle of the summer I worked with the transitioning pre-kindergarteners and I looked at my principal Greg Emel and said they are ready for kindergarten.

Kindergarten is the new first grade.

I expect students on their first day of school to know their name, how to spell their name, how to recognize their name, know the letters of the alphabet, numbers 1-10, colors and shapes.

This is not the case for many of our students.

Without these skills I find myself spending great amount of time, often months, on these foundational skills that children needed to acquire before coming into kindergarten.

96% of the children I teach are growing up in poverty.

Academically the odds are against them because they don't have access to resources.

to be successful learners.

Poverty means families worry first about the basic necessities for survival.

It's the cruelest barrier to education.

These children need to be exposed to books, to reading, they need to be talked to, they need to have developed vocabulary, they need to interact with their peers to develop social skills and to develop self-regulating skills.

When a child enters kindergarten lacking these skills to be successful it becomes difficult to move them forward.

When I have students with limited vocabulary who could not follow directions or interact with their peers it affects my ability to teach curriculum to them.

I have to go back, I have to rebuild the foundation that should have been built.

education eradicates poverty please vote yes.

Please vote yes and help these kids.

Thank you.

Directors my name is Deborah Mobley and what a great segue to my comments.

She said the kids need to know their names.

I am here about registration and about asking the school board to change something on the registration application and that is to phonetically pronounce every name of every kid and every parent.

The first thing that a kid does when they go to school is they want to be addressed correctly.

when you call my name up here, I would hope that you say my name correctly.

I had to ask how to say Jill Geary to say it correctly.

Now why am I here?

I'm also a football announcer in Little League Sports as Miss Betty Patu might know because of her son having been coach.

Many times when I pronounce their names incorrectly, they will bang on the wall.

and say that is not how you do it.

So from everything from graduation ceremonies, sporting events, award ceremonies, if you say a person's name right it makes a wonderful experience.

Even people want Siri to say their name right and also Also it would not be any different, it's an automated piece of paper.

The school district could be a leader and not only having people pronounce names correctly in the school district, we could be a leader for the city.

Your names, one day it will be a mouse over and you can do that but one day it will be better because people in Seattle will know how to, we boast ourselves on being educated and fit.

Why don't you take the lead?

and get that right so that when kids come to school they won't be embarrassed, it shows that you are going the extra mile, it shows your interest in the kid and also for the parents when they come for parent teacher association meetings.

So that is all I have to say.

Jill Geary, God bless you.

Thank you.

Oh one more thing.

Congratulations to those parents.

I was here in the campy days.

Go preschoolers.

Eileen Sinclair and Melinda Flores.

I've worked as a lead developmental preschool teacher at Bailey Gatzert for six years.

Some of you have visited my classroom this week.

Thank you for taking the time to come and observe the work that is being done.

My team and I provide a general education preschool environment for 20 children who have IEPs who are profoundly affected by autism, physical motor delays, social emotional and global developmental delays and for four children who are typically developing I have an AM and a PM session.

I rely on those typically developing peers to model appropriate speech, play and social skills to my IEP students.

Children, I recruit children from the neighborhood, younger siblings and those students that reflect the student population at Gatzert.

I can only enroll four though.

I have always had a peer waiting list.

Right now there are eight children on my waiting list and I don't take more than that because I feel like it gives families a false hope that maybe their students will get in.

Families in the area do not have enough options for robust early childhood programs.

The Seattle public preschool program at Gatzert has increased opportunity for children and their families in our neighborhood.

Many more families can now access appropriate early learning environments that help close the opportunity and achievement gap early on.

The preschool program at Gatzert has opened opportunities of collaboration between the new pre-K teacher and I.

We are able to discuss curriculum development, i.e. they are able to observe between the two programs and enrich interactions and observe skills between the students can play together and it enriches the experience for everyone.

When the program is renewed we hope to continue and deepen the work of inclusion and collaboration between our programs.

My three-year-old peer students can go on to attend the full day pre-K.

and those students can then go on to attend the kindergarten at Gatzert all within the same building.

Next year I hope to have some of my students with IEPs go on to attend.

Please wrap up your comment please.

pre-K the full day pre-K and continue to receive special education services within the building and then receive support in kindergarten and have friends built in.

And I believe this is a beautiful model of inclusion that can continue only if Seattle preschool program continues.

Please continue to support our families and our students who are typically developing and have special needs.

Thank you for your time.

Hello my name is Melinda Flores.

This is my second time attesting to how impactful the pre-K program specifically at Bailey Gatzert has had on my son Jesse Allen.

Our family is a military family of over 20 years and we transitioned last year in December from living overseas for over a decade and was pleasantly surprised to see a newly established pre-K program being offered in our district.

My son started his educational experience in a preschool program overseas consisting of foreign teaching curriculum where English language was being taught in an extracurricular class.

He struggled tremendously but eventually adapted as best as he could.

As a direct result his emotional connection with school was negatively impacted.

As you can guess when we were permanently transitioning back here to the states and choosing Seattle and more so the public school community in our next stage of life we prepared ourselves that this may be too much for Jesse Allen.

Especially since we took him out of school midyear.

We were fearfully waiting because it would be another full, a full seven to eight months where he would have to wait for kindergarten to kick off, waiting for him to start a new schedule, waiting for him to build trust with his peers, his teachers and faculty.

And again mostly fearful that he had to adapt yet again to another culture of learning in his tender fourth year of life.

But Bailey Gatzert pre-K program was a perfect transitioning tool.

Championed by principal Emil and passionately led by Mr. Darin and Ms. Ramona and evidentially buy-ins from the parents and Squire Park community every day in pre-K started off with an I can't attitude versus never.

He used to yell never every day going to school.

I can honestly state that this early learning program has directly attributed to cultivating my confident young man who is now a kindergartner in Ms. Bottas class and he possesses a strong optimistic perspective in accomplishing everything and anything.

And it is evident in his class scores and exceptional comprehensive skills.

Therefore I encourage you wholeheartedly to continue supporting the existing pre-K program and extend this beneficial an impactful pre-K program to other schools and more so make it sustainable especially for our newest family member in the upcoming months.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Let's conclude our public testimony.

We are now going into board comments.

I would like to be first.

Director Geary.

I feel like I am always first.

Thank you for the WEAP young artists sharing their voices with us.

I think everybody who was here and heard that could see the power that they gained from using their voice and that is something that I would like for all of us to encourage in our, our young people in our schools.

Encourage them to use their voices.

There can be nothing more powerful than that.

And then thank you Dwayne Jack and Jessica Nagamatsu for your comments, well for you being here Mr. Jack and Jessica for your comments about middle college always appreciate a reminder that we need to continue to look for places for everybody.

I did two school visits within D3 this period one at Roosevelt high school so thank you to principal Vance and one to Eckstein middle school so and with principal Stark just enjoy to get to know each of the schools within my district and will continue to visit them.

Roosevelt, I was so impressed at the variety of the alternative learning opportunities there.

The kitchen where I got to talk about the cupcake wars that are going on in the school.

The runway project types of things going on in the sewing room.

And just a reminder that we are always going to be looking for those opportunities for our kids away from just the academics.

attended the Roosevelt jazz auction again what a shining star.

I believe they are off to Ellington here in a month or two and so we will keep our fingers crossed for them.

Congratulations to Mae Williams middle school principal of the year.

And then I wanted to thank, give a special thank you, have been spending a lot of time, lots of time on the Seattle preschool program.

I want to thank Monica Ling-Aguirre, again maybe I need that phonetic pronunciation, and Duane Chappell for taking us on a tour of the program, visited all three of the sites and of course they are darling.

It is lovely to see children engaged.

And we will do what we can to support that and we want to support that and we want to support it in a way that is responsible fiscally and to all of our students and I'll talk more about that when it gets to our amendment.

But those are my comments again all the good work thank you everybody for being here standing up for our kids and my next meeting is on Saturday March 26 at the Montlake branch library and I want to give a big apology To the people who because of the retreat my meeting was moved from last weekend and they showed up because we had one webpage saying one thing and another something else.

So my apologies to them.

Thank you for coming and trying to participate and I hope you will show up on the 26th.

Dr. Harris.

Thank you to all of you sitting there and for the folks that shared your profound testimony it's hugely helpful.

Thank you as well for the people that email and call and tell their stories.

Watching the young people speak this evening it doesn't get better than that and I'm hoping that communications can take the WE Act folks performances and put it on the website and on YouTube and we can celebrate that as far and wide as possible.

We have every right to be incredibly proud of that talent.

Thank you to Ken Gotch the assistant superintendent of budget and finance.

Just got an email from him that he's upstairs working at his desk not down here.

What an extraordinary man and what an extraordinary gift he gave to this district and for those of us that are learning our way around millions and tens of millions of dollars his guidance has been extraordinary and appreciated.

Thank you to Superintendent Peggy McEvoy who I was pleased to work with last week at a community meeting at Chief Sealth International High School.

regarding safety issues.

It was a good rowdy discussion complete with half dozen police officers all armed and ready.

We have safety issues in our schools.

We have concerns about whether or not we're doing an effective job of communicating with our parents when safety issues are out there.

And there are really good things underway.

And the the dialogue and collaboration that evening was a beautiful thing to watch.

And I appreciate it because you never schedule these things.

You pick them up you roll you work as a team.

The Seattle preschool partnership.

How can we be against little kids learning.

and playing.

It's like being against apple pie.

But we do in fact have a duty to make sure that we are doing the best that we can for the Seattle Public Schools and towards that end some of our colleagues and together with a great deal of assistance from staff Mr. Jesse Wyeth Mr. Steven Nielsen the deputy superintendent Ms. Cashel Toner the director of early childhood education.

Ms. Aguirre or Aguirre which one.

Aguirre.

Thank you.

I like the phonetics suggestion that we had.

And and Dwayne Chappell as well.

And we came up with this amendment so that it could in fact be inclusionary and equitable and proactive.

And it's all fine and good to say we're going to look at it, but we need to have a task force so that we meet, we get the input, we fine tune it, and we make it even better than what it is now.

And this is a good, collaborative, team-driven solution.

And I think any time you get folks of opposing viewpoints in the same room, you win.

I'm hoping that everyone is calling the governor and asking about McCleary.

I'm hoping that everyone is calling their legislators and telling them what they think about the recent gymnastics and the kick the can down the road in Olympia because this district is paying every day for the poor funding models that we get that are unconstitutional.

With respect to money we've got two issues on the agenda tonight where we are asking parents to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to make our programs work.

over $3 million of PTSA and parent funds goes into balancing our budget to offer what we offer today.

Now I read today that there will be a task force for immersion learning.

I'm thrilled to see that.

We've got to do better, we've got to do differently.

because it can't just be the folks that can raise the money.

It cannot be pay to play.

That is the very definition of inequity.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can probably talk to one of our staff person.

You have the good fortune of being able to talk to Peggy McEvoy.

But talk to Ms. McEvoy that is why she is there not to take you away but because she is the person.

No she is the person to talk to.

please do follow up with her at some point or another because this is a powerful directed woman that can help you.

We hear you and we understand what you are talking about so thank you for the comments.

I also want to thank you for the comments because that sort of information is really critical as we are trying to figure out how to provide the best services and the best safety to our students.

I wanted to share my appreciation, message of appreciation to the WEAP Young Artists Academy students.

It's really an amazing thing when the students become the teachers.

I want to thank them for sharing their passion and candor.

I also had the pleasure of visiting McDonald International and I want to put a word of thanks for Dan Gossman for his time and the tour.

I got to visit kindergarten, first grade, fourth grade classrooms.

the Japanese and the Spanish immersion.

I learned a lot about the work that they're doing to identify and support their students.

They've got a particularly great model where they're applying the MTSS strategies.

I want to put out a statement of support for the students at Chief Sealth High School who are advocating to keep their woodshop program open.

Personally I experienced the value of our in school voc tech programs.

And I know that a lot of our students will have an opportunity to have a laptop or a tablet in front of them but they won't necessarily have the opportunity to have a drill press or a wood lathe or some of the tools that we can provide in these classes.

So I really believe in that and I hope that as a board director I can help find solutions to keep that program in place.

I want to say congratulations to Ms. Nagamatsu for your pending graduation, and thanks for sharing your inspirational story about the work at Middle College.

I also wanted to say the idea of phonemic addition to the forms, this is the sort of innovation that comes from our community.

When we get into a mindset where we're looking at compliance, we're looking at checking the boxes, sometimes these sort of ideas don't come to the surface.

So I just want to really share my appreciation for for bringing that to the board because I think it's a cool idea also.

I'll discuss my Seattle preschool program comments as part of that board action report in general.

I want to say that I believe that fits really well within a comprehensive continuum of services and look forward to hearing what my colleagues have to say and I thank everyone for their thoughtful and passionate comments.

I had the ability as well to visit Bailey Gatzert and was really impressed with the program and the kids got to paint watercolors sit in a small chair.

It sort of took me back.

And then in closure I have a community meeting coming up March 26th as well at Cafe Appassionato in Inner Bay.

This is not yet posted on the website but we'll get it posted shortly in the next day or two.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

I too want to definitely give a shout out to the WEAP students.

Their talks and speech were inspirational and very moving and showing you that when students learn to speak up for themselves that they have a voice.

You know it's amazing usually when you hear people talk even at that had many years of education they'll pause and um and ahs but they spoke with passion and got their words out and thank you to them and Toya for bringing them here and hopefully we can have them back again.

They're sharing some very good words that we need to keep going.

Congratulations to everyone that's been awarded for one of our principals to get a national award is amazing and hopefully we can learn from her and what she's done for us.

I too went to Bailey Gatzert this morning and thank you for hosting me there and yes this can make some big strides.

I saw a little boy there share his story.

It wasn't one of those little kids that were sharing a story and saying you know I went to the store and that's the end but he had very much passion and even changed his voice to add drama to his story and that's just amazing to see that and I can see that carrying on as they go on to kindergarten and go through our school system so I do see definitely the value of having our preschool programs increased here in the Seattle school district and working with the city of Seattle so that we are serving the needs of our students and the needs of our community.

I want to say welcome to Anya, thank you for being here and joining us today and to Lauren for all that she's done as she's trying to take on the load but now we'll see where we can go from here.

Thank you to Ken Gosch as well for the work that he's done.

Thank you Dwayne Jack.

You know again silent but strong in the presence that we have here to know that what you have done.

As you mentioned he is part of the Clear Sky Native Youth Council with the Urban Native Education Alliance and I want to congratulate them actually they just celebrated their 8th anniversary on March 8 and they acknowledged me and I was very humbled by that.

I also want to mention that the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation actually had their 46th anniversary this month for the takeover at Fort Lawton and they celebrated you know that there yes we had a voice we made ourselves visible and the Seattle community Seattle area listened and they now have their beautiful building to Daybreak Star.

And also must acknowledge that the native community had a passing of one of our true leaders Emmett Oliver passed away actually on the anniversary of the takeover of Fort Lawn on March 7 of 102 years.

He lived 102 strong years.

He was actually the first Indian education director for the Washington state office of public instruction.

So seeing him pass on and what we've done since then is good strides but a lot more that we have to do.

In a previous board meeting I had mentioned Elizabeth Peratrovich and asked people go do your homework and see who she was.

She was a Tlingit woman who in 1945 with her husband helped pass the first comprehensive anti-discrimination law in the United States in 1945 in Alaska before Alaska was a state they helped pass the first comprehensive anti-discrimination law.

Let's see also the Clear Sky Native Youth Council will be having their fifth annual conference April 14 and 15. Their theme is interweaving generations past, present and future.

Hopefully get the words out to our students to possibly attend that.

I will be having my district one community meeting on Saturday March 26 at 330 at Northgate library and also one scheduled in April, April 23 at 2 o'clock at Lake City library.

I am looking for any invitations for a May meeting so anybody if you want me to come out please email me and I will try to definitely touch base because this is one thing where I want to go out to you as best as I can versus you coming to me.

So let me know if you need me any place or want me to come in and talk.

And also thank you to the presenters yes Seattle preschools but also that we have a transparent operations unit I think with most of us that were running this past year that was part of our platform.

We need to have transparency as we move forward.

We will support that so we don't have anything where things are going on hopefully too much behind the scenes that we are letting you know this is where it is at and we are going to engage you.

We are going to talk to the community and move forward together.

Thank you.

Director Peters.

I would also like to thank all the students who came and spoke tonight and also our guest Dwayne Jack.

Perhaps someday you can come back as a board director and then you will have lots of opportunities to speak.

And then to the students from the Young Artists Academy their performance was very real, very powerful and very compelling.

I hope those of you who may be tuning in late can go back and watch the tape and watch the beginning of tonight's meeting and you will catch their wonderful performance.

Along those lines I would like to give a shout out to the Ballard High School advanced women's choral and concert choir.

They are headed to New York to participate in the choirs of America nationals for top choirs program and they will be performing at Carnegie Hall.

So best of luck to them.

Okay I would also like to send my regards to Ken Gotch and thank him for his service with the district.

I very much appreciated his professionalism, his integrity, his willingness to find solutions and his responsiveness to the board, the superintendent and the public.

That was very much noted.

He also had a great commitment to transparency and I hope all the new protocols and the approaches he's begun we can continue and I wish him well back in Chicago with his family.

I visited a library in the last couple of weeks, I went to Sanislo Elementary and talked with some of the kids there, brought some books that some of my own children had outgrown and got a chance to talk to librarian Craig Seasholes there and talked about what it means to be a teacher librarian and how important they are becoming in our, even more so in our schools where we have a lot of technology and a lot of information being distributed through computers More importantly we talked about the issue of equity in our libraries and how we have some libraries that are very well resourced and others that don't.

And so what we need to do as a district to help fully resource all of our libraries.

So I just want to keep talking about that because I think it's something we haven't fully addressed and I don't know whether it's MSOC money we are looking at or whether this is money we would be looking at from our IT budget, I mean our BEX budget but I would really like to see us make a commitment to all our libraries.

There is also research that shows that children, underserved children who are exposed to libraries have greater academic outcomes as a result.

So there is definitely a connection there.

On some other issues there is a lot of interest and concern about advanced learning in the district right now and I would like to have some conversations with staff and the superintendent about our vision and direction for a highly capable program and also for all of our advanced learners.

There is some nervousness because we are a growing district and there is going to be some capacity issues coming up.

We have a very large elementary school on the north end.

And parents would like to know where their kids are headed.

I would like to say right now that I would like to bring as much stability as possible to our students.

Many of our families have already been moved around from many buildings as a part of the HCCAPP cohort and they've seen their children go to as many as five schools.

And so I would like to make decisions that do not interrupt these children anymore than they already have been interrupted and see what we can do in terms of grandfathering them in.

and while at the same time having realistic capacity goals addressed.

A couple of other issues.

The Cedar Park boundaries issue has come up.

It came up at one of my community meetings and I'm glad to hear that staff is looking at that.

We are hearing a lot about that.

I would appreciate an update perhaps on the next Friday memo because we certainly don't want to create schools that have great inequities in them from the start and based on some sort of zoning design.

And here I am saying all those ums.

At my recent community meeting another topic that came up was the difference between online learning and learning with an instructor in the classroom and what is gained and lost in either one and we were primarily concerned about what it means to put a student in front of a computer without any kind of interaction and how we've got to watch for that and watch for that balance and we should be careful that we are not putting only some students in front of computers and giving other students instruction with a live human because the difference is significant.

And so this is an ongoing discussion and there's some curricular materials we're using nowadays that are all online and I think this is something I would ask our curriculum and instruction committee to be looking at to make sure that these fulfill our needs for our students to have a totally interactive education and by that I mean with humans not just computers.

Another topic I wanted to cover was.

Oh the minutes, so you may have noticed at the last meeting we had to withdraw some minutes and we had to address them and put them back on the agenda and we passed and we approved them.

Here is why two of our work sessions the MTSS and the math and focus, scope and sequence did not include any input from the directors.

only included input from the staff.

So we have now coincidentally we are having a conversation about our minutes policy and we are making some changes that says that we will always include the comments from the directors as well as from staff.

Sometimes you have to really spell these things out but for the public record it is important to have this included.

So, I think that's it for my riveting list and now as the Chair of Audit and Finance I am compelled to read a paragraph that is required by board procedure 6550BP and this is from the internal audit and I need to announce the completed audits at this scheduled school board meeting.

So here is a summary of our recent audits.

At the March 15 quarterly audit and finance committee meeting the office of internal audit presented three audit reports.

The first audit was a follow-up to a previous testing integrity audit which found that all previous concerns had been corrected.

The other two audits were school audits of Franklin high school and Olympic View elementary school.

The reports included findings related to cash handling and receiving and the screening of volunteers and chaperones.

All internal audits are discussed at a public audit and finance committee meeting and the completed reports are available online at the office of internal audits public webpage.

You click on departments under the district tab and then you click on internal audit.

Thank you.

Director Blanford.

Wow after following up that audit report I don't know if I'll be able to keep everybody's attention but I'll try.

I will also try to be brief being aware of the time.

I just want to appreciate all of the folks who came out to testify in one way or another.

It is critically important that we know the perspectives of our community.

I want to thank the Young Artists Academy and their riveting performance.

It warms my heart to no end to hear people speak passionately about their challenges in life particularly our students to speak eloquently about their challenges in life.

and it makes it real for all of us.

I want to thank my dear friend Mia Williams for the fantastic award that she has gotten and it seems like she is just accumulating award after award but I know that she is doing fabulous work.

and providing strong leadership at Aki and so I am excited that she's earned some recognition.

And I want to thank the superintendent for recognizing the passage of Ernestine Anderson.

I'll tell a very quick personal story only to say that the first date that my wife and I had together we got a chance to hear Ernestine Anderson sing and as a jazz, huge jazz fan I noted her passage with a lot of reminiscence and a bit of sadness.

She was someone who was not recognized nearly enough for the beauty of her singing and particularly given the fact that she is a Garfield graduate Garfield has produced a lot of musical geniuses.

I count Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones amongst that list and she has somehow managed to get short shrifts so it saddens me that it took her passage for her to be noted in the way that she should have been while she was alive.

My next community meeting is scheduled for the 23rd of April at Douglas truth library.

It will start at 10 o'clock.

My apologies for the fact that it should have happened last week but we had a board meeting that kept that from happening.

And then finally in my professional life I spent a lot of time working with educators and one of the seminal documents that I use and that other consultants use is called 20 self-critical things I will do to become a more equitable educator.

And it lists 20 separate things that people in classrooms have done with the goal of becoming more equitable.

And the first one on the list and I'll read it because I think it attaches really well to what Deborah Mosley said.

Mobley said it is I will learn to pronounce every student's full given name correctly.

No student should feel the need to shorten or change her or his name to make it easier for me or for their classmates to pronounce.

I will practice and learn every name regardless of how difficult it feels or how time-consuming it becomes.

This is the first step in becoming inclusive.

And so the fact that Deborah Mobley brought that up to our attention and made that suggestion as a structural change that we could make is evidence that in my mind that we are acknowledging and we are trying to work to become more equitable And I would love to see her suggestion actually implemented because I think it's a sound practice that goes beyond what's happening in the classroom to have it be districtwide.

So I appreciate those types of comments.

I think they are well served and we as a school board learn a lot from our community.

And so thank you.

I want to say thank you to our special guest Dwayne Jack for your presence even though you didn't say anything but thank you for your presence and we appreciate you.

And I want to thank you to the Young Artists Academy for such an amazing performance.

Just hearing the students speak their mind and the speeches came from their hearts which I felt that It is something that is not utilized a lot with our kids and I really appreciate that and definitely we will try to bring them back.

I want to say thank you also to every speaker that came tonight to let us know about what is it that your issue is and how can we be better board directors in listening and being able to accommodate a lot of things that you actually have expressed tonight.

And I want to say congratulations to Mayor Williams for an award well-deserved.

Mia has gone above and beyond.

I remember when I first, she first moved to Aki and she came into a lot of needs at that particular school but she actually because of who she is she made sure that she was able to find ways to be able to change the outcome of that school and she has done an amazing job since she has been at Aki and that school has gone nowhere but up so congratulations Mia for a job well done.

And I also wanted to say thank you so much also to Lauren for doing a job that two people should be doing but she was able to really to keep everybody happy and balance everything from one end to the other so thank you so much Lauren for your artistic skills in terms of keeping us abroad.

And also we wanted again to welcome our new, welcome Anya for here at our first board meeting.

We are happy to have you.

So we are going to go ahead and take a 10 minute break and then we will come back and resume our meeting.

You