School Board Meeting Date 462016 Part 1

Step on it.

Who are you representing?

Thank you.

Okay, I already have one.

Everybody's mic is off.

Yeah it's working.

Testing.

It's on.

Testing.

Testing.

Testing.

Oh great.

Okay we're good to go.

Okay welcome to April 6th.

Oh okay.

Okay are we good?

Oh Anya is not there either.

Are we good?

Okay.

Welcome to the April 6 regular board meeting.

I will note that Director Pinkham and Superintendent Nyland are both unable to attend this evening's board meeting.

Deputy Superintendent Nielsen will be sitting at the dais as acting superintendent.

I would like to welcome our student representative for this evening Leslie Morris from Southlake High School.

Ms. Morris will have an opportunity to provide comments on behalf of the student body later in this meeting.

Ms. Ritchie the roll call please.

Director Blanford.

Here.

Director Burke.

Here.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Harris.

Here.

Director Peters.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

If anyone would please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

We do not have a recognition item for this evening meeting.

Tonight we have the John Rogers elementary school choir but they are not here yet they are still on their way.

They are having problems with their bus.

So I would like to actually turn the meeting over to I will now turn it over to Deputy Superintendent Nielsen for his comments.

Good evening members of the board and members of the audience.

It is a pleasure to be here among you.

It's usually my case to be on the opposite side of the dais and I from this perspective I want to personally thank all of you for your work for your volunteerism for the dedication to the city and the students of Seattle.

So it's an honor to be here.

I spoke with Superintendent Nyland today and have gone through notes that he would share with you so I will do that and please assume that I am speaking on his behalf and I'm honored to do so.

Some of these things that we're talking about are current and others as you know in the superintendent report and I'd like to start with speaking to the legislative session that it just ended.

And unfortunately for K-12 school districts in the state of Washington there was no real action on behalf of added funding for the constitutional requirements of the legislature to fully fund the Paramount Duty Clause.

And in addition to that we actually lost money due to a formulaic change that the legislature put into the budget.

So the way that works is we are allowed to collect a certain amount from our voters of the levy and when you approve the levy amount that goes out for the future years and that collectible amount is then subject to a given formula so that we can fully collect what voters approved or not and for the first time In many, many, many years, the legislature changed that formula down, thus disabling our ability to already access and use just over $6 million of voter approved levy resources.

I don't find that to be good news and it means a lot to our schools and to our programs and it's not a good sign that we have to use fewer levy resources that our very generous voters have already approved.

Another thing that the legislature did is they gave themselves a bit of an out on what's called the levy cliff that comes up in 2018 and what they did is they put a provision in the budget allowing districts to change its riff noticing laying off people and staff if the legislature does not provide a resolution to McCleary funding by the 30th of April next year.

And so then they would allow us to continue with the current levy amount even though it's been decreased into the 2018 school year.

So they gave themselves an out, and these are my words, so make sure that you're hearing it from me, not from the legislature, that what will happen if that takes place, and hopefully it will not, is they buy themselves one more year of not funding McCleary and leaving the levy language as it is, thus violating their own legislation that put that 2018 timeline in place.

The next thing is what's going on with our lowered class size and the good news is the legislature did recognize in this biennial budget that they want to lower class size and they did so and in so doing we now have lower ratios for the coming fall in the K-3 class sizes than we've had before.

That's good news we're happy about that.

That said as we all know The legislature underfunds us for basic education so for every dollar that we receive on the class size reduction we spend $1.25 and it should not go unnoticed that they've decreased our levy resources and we will have to use that $1.25 the 25 cents of our levy resources to backfill behind their dollar thus putting more strain on our ability to add new programs or do anything different.

The other part about this requirement that's new is it's use it or lose it resource.

And as board directors I am sure that you will be hearing from constituents saying that the use it or lose it methodology requires us to change the way we staff schools because we sometimes have space problems we sometimes have students that don't come in neat little bundles and so they don't make the exact ratios in every building if you just think about it that way and to that end you have to either move staff around or you preplan and you hope that the staffing comes out as best possible and it will also probably create and I say probably because it's an early predictor more split classrooms in those elementary grades.

And in few cases people are very excited about split classrooms.

So we want to be able to address those as best possible.

And it is a use it or lose it action by the legislature.

So as we look at our staffing and we look at the resources, we have to be very careful not to just say, sorry, we don't want the money.

We do not want to send a message to Olympia that we don't want your added resource.

At the same time, we do want to send a message to Olympia, you have put us into a very difficult position in terms of how we balance class size loads, what this means in terms of space, and you're only funding a dollar when it costs us a dollar and a quarter.

We're working on some solutions to lessen the impact at the schools.

Our HR directors and our principals and our teaching and learning leaders have been working together with the building leadership teams to try to address the best methodologies to address this in a way that does improve the ratio in the classrooms at the same time meeting the legislative requirements.

So stay tuned there will be more going on and I think closer to the fall people will be realizing what this looks like and it is a change and it's not easy.

So we'll do more about that.

As you know we have a special education MOU with SPI and let me just say what that means.

We are working with some additional scheduled visits to Rainier Beach High School, Aki Kurose Middle School, Orca K-8, Wing Luke Elementary, and Van Asselt to work on the last part of the review.

And I'm being told that I'm not talking loud enough.

Thank you, Chris.

All right.

We'll put it right there.

Bifocals and moving with the microphone don't work very well.

So we're working on that and we're delighted with the improvements and the learnings from all of the visits are being applied district wide.

We're recruiting people earlier so there's very good news in this and again credit to many many staff and to that end we have added 55 contingency contracts for special education teachers.

We recognize the problem of hiring there is a teacher shortage and in order to meet that challenge we are hiring people earlier and wanting them to be on board and ready to go for placement later this summer.

We've been involved in nine in-state recruitment events.

We'll also attend out-of-state recruitment events during the month of April.

We're also hiring additional educational staff associates.

We've hired three new psychologists over the last couple of weeks and we're currently interviewing speech language pathologists and OTPTs which are occupational therapists and physical therapists.

So again we're trying to get ahead of what could be a problem for us in the fall.

And it is a fiscal risk to do that based on our enrollment projections.

But we think our enrollment projections are conservative enough that we can take this action and stay away from any disruption that takes place or at least minimize it as best we can in the fall.

We're working on a change to a continuum of services for special needs students.

So we have a new approach where we're shifting to provide a continuum of services to special education students in the elementary and K-8 schools and we're starting that right after spring break.

The plan has been vetted by the special education task force.

We're collaborating with our star mentor teachers and we see that as a very positive again to address the individual learning needs of all of our special needs students.

Our parent partnerships are moving at a good pace we're expanding our customer service through a new thing called parents partners and we know that parents want to be involved that makes us very happy and to that end we have been creating and recruiting excuse me recruiting parents this month and we're having an information session for those recruited parents to be more involved in their schools in the district in May.

And I don't know much about that.

So if you have a question about that, I will defer to one of my colleagues over there.

Thank you.

Our transportation department has been collaborating with the University of Washington to improve our routing efficiencies for both our general and our special needs students.

The idea is to improve service, to reduce ride time for students, to reduce left-hand turns, which are always unsafe and they take up time.

Reduce miles driven.

You may recall that Larry, excuse me, Superintendent Nyland spoke about our transportation department.

We travel 25,000 miles a day in the city and we'd like to reduce that for many obvious reasons.

And that is going on districtwide starting in the 2016-17 rerouting plan.

April is sexual assault and prevention information month.

So we're communicating with families and students about that very important topic and how parents and families can be aware of the issues.

Students are aware and help them so that we are addressing those very real needs.

We've included into nine languages translated documents to help families and students with those issues.

Our free Orca card plan.

is wonderful and it's moving and we have our students to thank for that.

So thank you folks from your neighborhood.

The good news is we've got some openings.

We want more people to apply and so we are advertising for that and we have more slots that are available.

We want students to take advantage of it.

It's a marvelous opportunity.

So we are using social media to advertise and encourage more students to utilize it.

We have another pilot program starting right after spring break.

Breakfast after the bell.

I think you know about that and we have our partners local 609 along with United Way and our nutrition services staff to thank for that.

And the purpose of breakfast after the bell is to encourage more students to eat well before they begin school except that in this case school will start and they will be able to eat and will be able to meet the time requirements for student contact time.

The four schools that have agreed to pilot it are Seattle world school and the West Seattle Dunlap and Roxhill elementary schools.

So listening opportunities that are coming up.

The Seattle channel is hosting a town hall discussion on Tuesday April the 19th where board president Patu and I will be on a panel with Eden Mack from Seattle PTSA.

And we'll be also speaking on panel with representative Sharon Tomiko Santos and talking about the direction of legislative funding and what that means in our city.

The mayor's education summit is coming up on April 30th we hope that all of you have plans to attend that.

We've been working very cooperatively and successfully with the mayor's office as recently as yesterday afternoon going through the specific agenda, the planning, thinking how do we get engaged, how do we leverage this to help us as partners with the city.

I am pleased to say that the city is very eager to see us as partners.

full peer partners and wanting to get feedback from you and to make sure that we're hearing from all of our citizens.

We're still working on that.

We have some engagement opportunities including the opportunity gap initiative for African-American scholars.

Those are scheduled in April on April 27th and May 3rd.

And we have the international school dual language immersion task force meeting coming up on May the 2nd.

We are encouraging people to take our bell time survey.

You heard about that recently in the work session.

We want to make sure that parents and students are filling that out and there are some questions about nutrition etc.

We have boundary changes coming up as planned and it's a part of our regular plan.

Boundary changes are always a challenge for families and so There will be some changes in 18 attendance areas and we will have meetings later this month and in the fall to address that.

And then we have the state seal of biliteracy which what that means is that people who have proficiency in two languages, biliteracy or more, and show language proficiency they can become a a student of recognition.

We awarded 195 students that recognition last year and we'll be doing that again this year and it's a wonderful way to help those students understand how important that biliteracy is.

I was reading something the other day coming from the University of Washington about how biliterate babies have a thinking advantage over those that do not have that exposure in their household.

So it's a wonderful thing and we want to encourage that.

Finally at the June 1st board meeting you will be able to recognize those students.

Lastly we had the governor attend Aki Kurose Middle School for a bill signing on the opportunity gap.

Very well attended and we were able to also recognize he was Thank you.

Tonight we have the John Rogers Elementary School Ota Choir led by music teacher Stephanie Trenier.

The John Rogers Otter Choir is a choir made up of 35 Rogers 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students who meet after school once a week to sing and learn other music skills.

They will be performing three different folk songs from around the world.

I would like to invite all the directors to please take a seat in the front.

Thank you and thanks for your patience.

We had a late bus today and we appreciate that you let us come in at a different time than we were scheduled.

Thank you so much.

This is the John Rogers Otters Choir and we are going to perform some songs from around the world for you and we'd like to start with Aram Samsam from Morocco.

Cooley, cooley, cooley red sun.

Thank you.

Our trumpeter comes to us from Jams, Jane Addams Middle School.

He is our choir helper and he volunteers every week to come and help.

He is a former choir member so thank you for that great trumpet playing.

Our next song is in Chinese and Mandarin.

It's called Jiao and it's about a bamboo flute.

So you hear some really cool instruments in our recording.

Yidam zhi jing, zhi ying, yao yao, ying wei wang, wang zhang, wang zhang.

Shower the drinker, power the drinker, shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker, power the drinker, Shower the drinker

She don't choo-choo, she meow-meow.

Talking about the tower tower.

Shower doesn't come.

Flower doesn't show.

She don't choo-choo, she ching-chow.

Chow-bow-bow.

E.T. E.T.

show we love.

Bow, bow, bow.

E.T.

E.T.

show we love.

Thank you.

We have one more for you today.

It's called De Colores in Espanol and this is from Mexico.

I'm going to get my guitar here and we will start in just a moment.

¿Qué colores, qué colores en mis dedos concocen la primavera?

¿Qué colores, qué colores en los pajaritos que envenenan la nuela?

De colores, de colores, entre el arco iris que llenos los ciel.

Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí.

Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores, existen los campos en la de colores en el arcoiris que menos lucir.

Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí.

Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí.

I just want to thank you.

Give another hand for John Rogers Elementary School's Otter Choir.

You guys did an amazing job.

So I'm going to have you say your first name and grade.

I'll explain Johnson.

Luca and I'm in grade 3, 3rd grade.

I'm Anaya.

I'm Chloe and I'm in 3rd grade.

I'm Maria.

I'm Olivia.

I'm Anaya.

I'm Lauren.

I'm Avery.

I'm Jenevra.

I'm Alice.

I'm Ben.

I'm Faith.

I'm Tammy.

I'm Anna.

I'm Georgia.

I'm Andalus.

I'm Zoe Feliciano I'm in third grade.

I'm Joshua.

I'm Ollie.

I'm Jordan.

I'm Maya.

I'm Harper.

I'm Quinton and I'm also in third grade.

My name's Finnegan and I'm in fifth grade.

My name's Trigg and I'm in fifth grade.

I am Angelica and I'm in fifth grade.

I'm Phoebe and I'm in third grade.

My name's Adriana and I'm in third grade.

My name's Akira.

My name's Alina and I'm in fourth grade.

My name is Aiden and I'm in sixth grade.

Thank you so much.

You guys did a wonderful job and just being able to sing in a foreign language that's amazing.

I also want to thank our choir director Ms. Trenere for bringing students along here with us.

You guys have a wonderful day.

All right.

That was a wonderful performance.

Again we want to welcome to Leslie Morris from South Lake High School.

Ms. Morris is an 11th grade student who will graduate early this June.

Her assistant principal says she is a very pleasant person who makes friends easily and is very academically motivated.

Further she says that Ms. Morris is a born leader and works every day to make the best life possible for her and her family.

Ms. Morris plans to attend college but has not decided yet on a field of study.

Ms. Morris if you have comments you can now provide them.

Thank you for being here with us.

I just want to say thank you for you guys having me come here and I really appreciate it and yeah thank you.

Thank you.

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

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Do directors have any items?

Second the motion.

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

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

Aye.

Opposed?

The consent agenda has passed.

Okay it's not what time is it?

Okay since it's not time yet for our comments I would like to ask if any board directors would like to have anything to say right now, comments?

So we'll do our board comments.

Okay.

Okay, so we are actually going to do board comments right now and afterwards if you wanted to say it more we can allow you to do that afterwards.

Director Harris.

Thank you I would like to reserve a little time because often times the public testimony brings up something to address.

Yeah you can do that.

A few things.

The legislative follies.

Extraordinarily disappointed that we made no progress on McCleary and would encourage any and all listening at home and in the audience and your friends your neighbors and your family to get registered to vote and to make sure that the people that we elect to represent us in Olympia are the people that support children and public education and the McCleary decision of the state Supreme Court.

It's never been more critical.

What happened down there is a travesty and it's very sad and it's going to mean the closure of programs.

It's going to mean squeezing the nickels even tighter.

it's going to mean that our weighted staffing standards are aspirational.

And we're talking about young people who we ought to be giving a good start in life.

I want to thank Ms. Morris from South Shore.

I want to thank the John Rogers choir that was awesome.

The pushback on that is there's a lot of schools that don't have choirs because they have to make the choices between whether they're having a music program or whether they're having a nurse on site and that is immoral to my way of thinking.

Again McCleary see how many sentences I can work McCleary into.

There was an article yesterday in the Seattle Times regarding the international baccalaureate program.

I encourage you to read it.

I encourage you to be very tied in to programs that we start at the Seattle Public Schools that do not have sustainable funding.

Again McCleary might well assist on that.

But these are programs that help all children and Rainier Beach High School has shown that.

Chief Sealth International High School has shown that.

Ingram High School has shown that.

And we've got to do better.

There's just there's just no way to say that any plainer.

We have got to do better.

I do not have Saturday meetings.

scheduled presently I'm working with some time constraints in the libraries but my hope is to have a library third Saturday meeting from 3 to 5 in the next two months.

The board page will announce those so I would go there.

I'm exceptionally excited about the EEU agreements we heard about this week.

I'm exceptionally excited that there will be a third contract hopefully approved by this board that will allow for pilot programs in three additional schools to have inclusion.

This is what replication is about.

It's very exciting and it was a very heavy lift by a lot of people and I'd like to particularly Wyeth Jesse and his team the team at the EEU and the governor's ombudsperson.

I'm especially excited about the upcoming task force for the Seattle pre-K partnership to talk about inclusion and you'll be hearing more about that shortly.

Last I'm excited about the education summit and the workshops.

Director Burke and I had an opportunity to attend out in the U district last Saturday.

Hope to attend a few more.

Encourage everyone to get out there.

Also encourage folks to ask tough questions about what does the city and the mayor see their role as and ask it straight up because there's lots of rumors flying about governance and I think that those are questions that should in fact be asked.

Thank you.

Dr. Blanford.

I'll endeavor to be brief in my comments.

I do want to thank the John Rogers Otters for that fabulous performance and particularly how they hit the high notes on several of the songs.

I know that as someone that tried to sing at that age those high notes they better enjoy it because it's not going to last for very long.

I also want to thank Leslie Morris for being here today.

You grace us with your presence and we are thrilled to have student representation.

My community meeting is set for the 23rd of April from 10 to 1130 at the Douglas Truth Library at 23rd and Yesler.

Hopefully we will have a stirring conversation like we always do.

And then finally I want to give a shout out to the West Seattle high school students who were responsible for putting on a fabulous equity day about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago.

And particularly Rebecca McKinney who was the staff organizer for that event.

There were a number of community leaders who came and gave presentations about equity particularly around educational equity and they gave me space to share some of my thoughts on that.

And more than anything it was just very inspiring to see the engagement of the students on that subject.

and the tough questions that they ask a school board director that I didn't have all the answers for but I was thrilled to have the opportunity to engage with them and I hope it is one of many events that we have both at West Seattle and throughout the city as we start our conversations about equity in the city.

Thank you.

Director Peters.

I'll also try to be brief because I am hoping to allow time to respond to anything that is said in public testimony.

I too appreciated, really enjoyed the charming performance from the John Rogers Choir and it's great to have a student with us, Leslie Morris from the Southlake High School.

It's always good to have the students here to remind us of why we're all here.

Sometimes we get a little bit too removed from the schools.

My next community meeting will be May 1st at the Magnolia library from 1 to 3. And then I wanted to comment also on the recent session in Olympia and McCleary, McCleary, McCleary.

It is pretty sad to realize that a lot of time was spent and even a second session was spent and there was still no effort, no move made towards meeting the paramount duty to fully fund our students.

That puts us all in a very very difficult position.

And so while a million students needs were not tended to instead some legislators found the energy and resources to find a way to fund less than 1,000 students who are in charter schools.

And they did so with a law which by all appearances is going to be deemed unconstitutional as well.

So it's rather sad focus that we saw in Olympia.

But what that means is that we here in Seattle have to do the best with what we have in terms of resources.

And that means looking very closely at our budget and whenever a proposal comes to us I think we as a board need to ask how does this benefit our students?

How does this benefit our schools?

And if it doesn't then we have to take a serious look at that.

And we need to do everything we can to direct our resources to our classrooms.

And I don't know that we are doing that as well as we can.

And that is the challenge I put before us in this year and beyond.

Because we will be lamenting McCleary for a while and in the meantime we have to be smart stewards of what we've got.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

I would like to also thank the John Rogers Elementary otters for the entertainment that they provided us and the serenity that came with it.

And I love the fact that they hit three different languages with three different pieces.

I want to thank my deus partner we get to have little side conversations about what happens up on the board.

what things mean on the agenda so thank you for joining us.

I'll start by following up Director Harris.

We had a really really interesting time at the community conversations as part of the mayor's education summit hosted by Councilmember Rob Johnson and Superteachers so thanks to them for sponsoring.

It was a really interesting discussion about the roles of the district and the roles of the city and some really interesting and innovative ideas from the community.

So if you haven't been to one I highly recommend that you go there.

There are they are listed on the engagement opportunities.

There's a website there and there are I believe six remaining meetings in the month of April concluding with the education summit on Saturday April 30th.

After that you're welcome to come to my director meeting which is April 30th from 4 p.m.

to 530 p.m.

On the website it's currently shown at Cafe Appassionato we've moved that location to Fremont Public Library.

That'll be updated on the website shortly.

So please come visit then.

I'd like to also reserve a few comments for after public testimony but I would like to make a follow-up comment to Steven Nielsen's financial report about the funding work that's going on and I know that buildings are working hard, the principals and teachers and the BLTs are working hard to meet the letter of the law around class size reductions.

And I find myself really concerned about the disruption that's caused by that work and the potential short-term nature of you know if we have to create a lot of splits so I'm really looking forward to understanding how we can optimize that work.

How we can minimize disruption in the classrooms and really work towards stability for the teachers for the students.

And I want to thank Hamilton International Middle School PTSA for inviting me to join their PTA meeting recently.

It was a lively and Really informative discussion for me sort of a two-way dialogue as a new board director.

Many of the people in the meeting knew more about the things that I came to talk to them about than I did.

So it was really informative learning about the challenging problems they have with building capacity and program stability in their general education and their highly capable and international schools programs.

And I'll defer to after board comments for the rest.

Thank you.

Director Geary.

Thank you Ms. Morris for coming and joining us.

It's nice to look across there's such a pretty smile.

And thank you to the John Rogers Auditor Choir.

Always lovely to start our meeting with such lovely art performances and for all we hear about the arts disappearing at least at our meetings we get a reminder that it is still here and it's still something that is very important to Seattle Public Schools.

I had a chance to meet with Melissa Gray at Montlake Elementary and she took me on a tour of their very small but lovely bright school full of things going on.

The one program that they had very similar to another school in my district McGilvra is a garden.

This is a garden with a greenhouse and in that greenhouse it is actually accommodating a little classroom and so the kids get to rotate in maybe on a split library schedule and at least once a week every single child in that school gets to go into the greenhouse and have a lesson on growing.

And I just want to give a shout out to that program because it's such a great way, it's a small class.

assisting the teachers to do small class work, allowing the librarian to do small class work and then in the spring they have a big festival where they celebrate the bounty of what they've made and I believe she even said they have free salad Friday or Wednesday where every Wednesday the kids get to go in and have a salad that they grew in their own garden.

So I just love to share that information so other schools that want to try something like that contact go to Montlake take a look at what they're doing and it's really a neat program.

I also want to thank the Lowell PTA for inviting me to their auction.

Another very spirited supportive group of parents.

We always have to recognize what they do to support our schools.

Going back to McCleary going back to the capacity issues that we see every school is under a great amount of stress and we rely on our parents to bring their resources their goodwill and their willingness to make it the best environment they can for the kids that attend there.

I may or may not make comments after but I did want to acknowledge that I am hearing from the special education community on the enrollment process and how difficult it has been for them.

And I think it is something we have to continue to work on because it is just, it is hard for a parent who knows that their child will be spending a majority of time in the regular education classroom to understand why they can't go to their neighborhood school.

and I know that we are going to have all of the same capacity issues and all of the same weighted staffing issues but these are the issues that we are also dealing with with the general education students and they get a community They get their neighborhood community and they get to rise with the group of kids within that community.

And we have to look for ways not to differentiate between our special ed community to the extent that they are really participating in the general education community most of the time and should be considered first general education students.

I'd also like to let everybody know that I am hearing a great deal about the testing including my own child who attends Roosevelt high school that the delays in the testing are pervasive and they are continuing to be disruptive and I wanted to acknowledge the work that directors Peters and Burke are working to present something for us all to get behind to send a message to Olympia that the testing needs to be changed seriously we need to all not just go along with what we are told at some level but we need to look at it we need to find a way to make it meaningful to our students, meaningful to our district and then advocate that to the superintendent of public instruction, the state Board of Education and our legislators.

They need to know what is going to work on the ground and not put these excessive non-educationally valued burdens on our district.

We can't afford it either in time or money and so we will continue to work on that and I did want to give a shout out particularly to the directors who are heading up that.

And then finally I want to thank all the people who are working, all the schools that are working around Magnuson Park to support the ever-growing low-income populations that are being moved into there and that would be Sandpoint Elementary and now Thornton Creek Elementary who are working to make sure that those students are given the same types of choices and opportunities that the other students in our district are being given.

Thank you.

Oh and I have a meeting on April 30. Montlake library branch from 11 to 1. I would check bridge things because lately the bridges have been very difficult with my meetings.

I want to thank you, say thank you to John Rogers Elementary Otter Choir.

I think it's amazing when young kids can actually sing in foreign language and the very three languages that they actually sang in.

It's probably one of the hardest languages actually to be able to study but they did a marvelous job so thank you Ms. Chenier for doing such a great job.

Also I would like to thank Ms. Leslie Morris for joining us here on the board.

You're welcome and hopefully you know this will encourage you someday to be on the board.

It's an amazing job to do.

So I also would like to say I'm quite disappointed also in the fact that the legislative did not support giving the Seattle Public Schools or the schools in general funding for our education.

It's really hard to believe that they're willing to set rules and push them on down to all of us to follow but there's no funds to go behind it.

You know we are already short-funded and by giving us more things to actually to do and not being able to support the things they want us to do it don't make any sense.

We are already very short-funded it's really for me it's hard for us to actually think about every year we have to look around to figure out what do we need to do to replace the various staff that is needed in each school, the various programs that are needed so our schools can fully be able to maneuver in the fact that our job is to fully educate our children in an equitable way.

But if we don't have the funding that we need in order for us to do that it's really hard to be able to provide that kind of education for our kids and it's also appalling that when you think about a lot of our foreign countries they spent more money on education than the United States and the United States has more money than any foreign countries and it's appalling that we do not get the full fund that we need in order for us to provide our children the education that they deserve.

So hopefully that things will look better in the future.

We don't know but as Ms. Peter have said we as a district have to look at what we have and how do we actually are able to be able to resource this in a way that we can still be able to provide education that we need for our kids.

So that's something that we as a board have to look at and figure out together with our staff what do we need to do in order for us to be able to look at our budget and how do we able to soar out in every way that we still be able to provide education, the well education that we need for our children.

And my meeting is also on April 30, it's the last Saturday of the month and it's always at the Cafe Vida in Seward Park and hopefully we'll be able to see people there since that's the same day as the education summit so thank you.

Okay we are now going to take a recess.

Sure.

We always have time for our guests.

I just want to say by what I've been hearing that some things may not be considerate to some people but by this board I feel like they're trying the hardest.

But I may not make such of an impact on other people's decisions but I do know that our teachers do try to make us learn really well.

They're in the classroom trying to do our best and it's hard sometimes to teach a lot of kids at once.

There may be 30 people in like a normal school.

I go to an alternative school and every teacher tries to put their best in teaching us.

And when they were talking about special needs like I kind of can relate to it because I have a son and he has, he has leisure in his brain and like I feel like They need help, they need to be able to have the rights to be able to teach well and teach them to their best ability.

So I just want to say that we all have hope and one day I know for sure that we will have what we need.

Thank you.

We are now going to take a break and return at 530.

Hopefully.

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