School Board Special Meeting 1112017 Part 1

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It's Wednesday January 11, 2017. Due to the nature of this meeting we have chosen to live broadcast the meeting tonight.

Therefore we ask that any comments be made directly into the microphone.

Before I hand the microphone over to assistant superintendent of business and finance JoLynn Berge the superintendent Nyland would wish to address everybody.

Okay let's all right I'll go around and announce we have here directors Geary, Burke, Blanford, Pinkham, Director Peters and also joining us Here comes Director Harris.

All right now I'll hand the microphone over to Superintendent Nyland.

All right thank you for yet another meeting on the budget.

I want to just do a few high-level comments.

Basically we're doing three things at once.

One we're working with the legislature saying this is a manufactured crisis And it's the state's responsibility to fix the levy cliff and to provide for compensation.

So I won't remember all of this I'll put it in the Friday packet for you but Director Geary, Steven Nielsen, Joe Berge, Aaron Bennett, Flip Herndon, did I miss anybody?

And myself.

We're in Olympia at 7 a.m.

this morning.

meeting with our delegation and received a warm welcome and a lot of sympathy.

I'm not sure if that will you know the stalemate continues so we'll see where that goes but we left with some concrete ideas on what we can do next.

We did ask and our colleagues in the 35 school districts in Washington agreed and we will do a press conference tomorrow drawing attention to the levee cliff.

The second thing that we're doing, actually Director Blanford and I were also with not quite the chamber but chamber related body on Monday presenting our situation.

The second thing that we're doing is trying to communicate internally again with that same message about it's the legislature's responsibility but also with nuance in terms of what do these cuts look like and what's the timing and the farther we get into the discussions the more details people want to have.

So yesterday we had all of the principals in this room and we went through that hour-long presentation with principals and we will send, we promised them, we would send them an update on what the board determines this evening.

We've met with SEA, we've met with PASS, we've met with our Seattle Council PTSA, many many many of our partners.

And then the third thing that we're doing, you've been very very very very much involved in that, is doing the hard work of.

And the last thing we've been doing is working with the board and staff to figure out how do we do 74 million which is the biggest cut in probably 40 years in Seattle and how do we do that.

It will impact about 200 staff.

So I'll turn it over to Stephen or JoLynn.

We did have as I just mentioned a very good meeting with our delegation this morning.

and they agreed to spend some time with us a few minutes this afternoon.

They are trying to do double duty, I think there's supposed to be five other places at this particular point in time.

It's the governor's inauguration today and they've got budget workup meetings and they've got a whole host of other things so we really appreciate our delegation and their willingness to dedicate some time to bring some information to you right now.

Well, thank you so much.

Just by way of introduction, first, this is Noelle Frame, representative for the 36th District, which is the northwest corner of the city of Seattle, about Belltown, South Lake Union, all the way up to Greenwood.

And then.

Hi, I'm Nicole Macri, and I'm the new representative for the 43rd District, which is kind of the central neighborhoods of Seattle, downtown, Capitol Hill, University District, and surrounding neighborhoods.

So really grateful for you.

on your agenda today.

Yeah, and we should mention we're both.

We're both fresh.

They sent in the freshman.

Everybody else is in a committee hearings right now.

I was appointed a year ago.

Nicole was just elected, but we are both people that are very passionate about fully funding our public schools and are committed to doing that this this this year.

This morning the Seattle delegation met with Superintendent Nyland and members of his senior team.

the school district's lobbyist, and board member Jill Geary.

And first and foremost, thank you to the whole team for coming down to Olympia for a 7 a.m.

meeting.

That is no small accomplishment.

And we talked about just the very, you know, massive importance of the legislature addressing the issue of the levy cliff, you know, just as soon as humanly possible.

You should know that we are both supporters of this, co-sponsors of the bill that's been introduced and is either right now or has been in the last hour.

The House is hearing this bill literally on the third day of the session and we hope we'll be moved out of the House very, very quickly.

This is a top, top priority for us to ensure no harm is done to school districts all across the state.

uh...

so if that it's a really big priority for us anything out there yeah i'll pay that uh...

this is a top priority for that you know delegation uh...

that clear on day three we were grateful for uh...

from uh...

district to come down to olympia so soon into session and i'll say as new members of the legislature we are coming with mandate uh...

from the voters to take swift action and we and tend to push the needle within the legislature, within our own caucus, and with the Senate.

And we want to talk to you specifically about that.

I'll say that both House and Senate Democrats are working swiftly on these issues.

So there have been bills dropped in both the House and the Senate to address the levy cliff issue, which we know is imperative.

We had a hearing today.

We fast-tracked it essentially to the Fiscal Committee, to the Appropriations Committee in the House, and to hear that bill quickly.

So there is opportunity to pass something out of the House with enough time for the superintendent and school board members to take action.

We have concerns, however, about the Senate and want to ask for your help in that area.

As Representative Bakker was just saying, you know, we are confident we can move something out of the House really quickly.

But at the end of the day, it's about getting this signed by the governor and put into law.

And as best we can tell, you know, for us, the real deadline we know for what meets the school district needs to avoid catastrophic consequences is February 28th.

that we need to not just move this out of the House and the Senate by February 28th.

We need this signed into law by the governor on February 28th.

I'm going to pause for a second.

It sounded like somebody might have been trying to pop in and ask a question.

Do we have a question or should we continue?

Right.

So we are pretty concerned that the Senate, which of course is not controlled by our fellow Democrats, concerned that the Senate is going to sit on this, quite frankly.

We saw the Republican members of the overall education funding task force really walk away from coming forward to the table with real solutions last week.

And we are afraid that they are going to do the same when it comes to the levy cliff, quite frankly.

And so what we need as an immediate first step, and our call to action to everybody listening to this meeting and at the meeting is calling on the Senate to, at an absolute minimum and immediately, hold a hearing on this bill.

Whereas the House is hearing it right now, the Senate hasn't scheduled a hearing on the Levee Cliff Bill.

And so there is a new chair of the Senate Education Committee, And he should hear very loudly and very clearly, not only from our folks in Seattle, but our friends in Seattle, all of our constituents need to call everybody they know across the state and ask them to call their members of the Senate and saying that this is a priority and we need a hearing on the levy cliff bill in the Senate.

I mean, like next week to move this forward.

Yeah, I'll just say, you know, this is not just a Seattle issue.

We know that to be true, which is why we are doing our work to mobilize constituents who we know in districts around the state to call on their senators.

Because as we said, the Seattle delegation, we're all on board and our Senate delegation that they are included in that.

And I'm sorry no one from the Seattle delegation in the Senate could be with us on this call.

They're all in committee meetings right now.

But they're in the minority in the Senate, and so we need to move not only Democrats, but Republicans on this.

We had a great brainstorming session this morning with Superintendent Nyland and others about potential areas in which to focus.

So I would encourage you to look particularly at members of the Education Committee, Republican members there, and have friends in those districts call on them and continue to put pressure.

Because if we can't move something out of the Senate, then we're not going to meet the deadline that we have.

And I'll just add that the chair of the Senate Education Committee is new in the Senate and new in his role as the chair of the Education Committee.

And this is an important way for him to start on the right foot.

for meeting the needs of school districts all across the state.

It is not just Seattle.

That is abundantly clear to us.

So we'd encourage people if you know people in Pierce County, Clark County, frankly any county east of the mountains to call on people you know there and ask them to call their senators.

Board Director Blanford who has a question or comment.

Hi this is school board director Blanford and this question is for representative Frame.

I'm wondering if you can give us any more specificity or prioritization of Senate members that we should call.

I understand that we should call the Ed committee members and the leadership.

I'm wondering if there's anyone else that you would prioritize us getting in touch with early because I know there aren't very many people that are willing to call every single Senate member.

Yeah, so thank you for the question, Director Blanford.

I just looking at the list, just to be clear, the members of the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee are the chair is Hans Zeiger from the 25th and other members, Republican members are Joe Fain from the 47th and Rivers from the 18th and Judy Warnick, whose district number is escaping me right now, but it is east of the mountains.

So those would be top priorities if you or others know people that are in those districts to call there.

And then, of course, there's folks on the Ways and Means Committee.

But I think the very tangible immediate next step is getting a hearing in that committee.

And it is those four people that need to hear from us and our friends and constituents.

So I would just reiterate that as the absolute top tactical priority.

If we don't get a hearing next week, our chances of having this problem solved six weeks from now is low.

So we need to move.

Thank you.

This is Stephen Nielsen.

We know you're very very busy and we deeply appreciate you taking time to do this.

It's an unusual way to communicate but we might as well use 20th century technology instead of I-5.

So thank you for that.

Well thank you again.

I mean we appreciate so much the partnership from the Seattle Public Schools in this really the biggest budget issue facing the state in 40 years.

The fully funding of our public school system is the most you know it is the paramount duty of the state and the deadline to meet that obligation has arrived and it is now and this is the first step to hold our school district harmless and every you know a lot of other school districts across the state.

So thank you for being our partners and we're happy to be fighting for you down here in Olympia.

And this is board president Sue Peters I just want to thank you both for sponsoring this bill.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for us and we will do our best to support you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Many but for now we will keep going so thank you very much.

Thank you all very much.

We appreciate their time and their willingness to do this they volunteered to get on the line today to help share their motivation to help us and while that is a policy perspective that is critical we also appreciate the fact that you're allowing us to take time to hear from our electeds and they certainly are being supportive so it's a great opportunity.

Thank you Deputy Superintendent Nielsen.

So I'm now going to hand the meeting over to assistant superintendent of business and finance JoLynn Berkey.

We're here for another budget work session.

We're going to start out.

You can look at the items on the agenda.

So we're going to review the consensus that we reached today.

It will be reviewing the same information that we've seen.

We are going to review the WSS committee recommendation and Chris Cronos the president of PASS will join me to help do that.

We will also talk about using our equity lens to use the $2 million that we have to reduce the cuts to those schools that we identify have the largest opportunity gap.

We'll talk about some other federal budget impacts to us that are coming.

We'll quickly go over programs not taking some cuts and just kind of some other information and then we'll talk about the recommendation for solving the remaining $11.1 million and Carrie Campbell will wrap us up by talking about our communication plan for the rest of engagement.

So just as a recap there are some guiding questions that we want to keep focusing on.

You've seen these before so I won't review them they are a repeat just for us to focus on how can we continue our goal to address the opportunity gaps, how do we identify schools that need the most help in funding and that's whether we have dollars or we don't have dollars but how do we keep that goal front and center.

This is a slide that we have seen a few times before, this is work from previous budget work sessions so we know that we are planning on using 50% of our economic reserve or our rainy day fund that we are planning on having a fund balance under our worst-case scenario budget of about 1.6% at the end of 17-18.

And then there are some other items on this list I will not repeat them at this time unless there are questions or concerns.

board members.

Next list.

This list was longer but there were some items that board members did not have a comfort level with so they were taken off.

These are the ones after reviewing the minutes that I believe we had reached consensus on on December 3 that was using the money that we had from our audit recovery, reducing the cost of our 24 credit implementation of the new state requirement, the target for central admin, that central office admin, efficiencies of $4 million, eliminating the district contingency reserve, the fall enrollment reserves and the funding to reduce school splits.

Central office admin efficiencies.

Are we talking here about the potential rifts from central office?

Yes.

Could we say that implicitly because when we're using two different frames I think we ask for trouble?

Thank you we will do that and I really think efficiencies is a misnomer we are not creating efficiencies when we lay off staff.

I have a quick question, in my mind I'm thinking about conversations that we have about central office and I think it's important if you have that data handy to share where we are relative to other districts in the country.

Frequently we'll always look and say compared to other districts our size we are efficient or inefficient we have a larger amount of money going towards the budget for central office.

Do you have that information handy?

And the reason I ask that question is because I've heard out in the community you know it's always easy to cut central office without a recognition of what central office does and how essential it is to the running of schools and so I'm wondering if that information can be shared quickly.

Yeah I don't know that I have it nationally but we do have it in your packets from the September 10th board retreat that would be slide 17 we do compare ourselves to our peer districts both nearby and across the state and so Seattle this is based on expenditures So compared to our peers in 14-15 the percent of the total budget was at 6.4%, Highline was at seven, Kent was at six, Tacoma 6.4, Bellevue 6.2, Spokane 5.5.

So that would be in the September 10 tab.

Slide 17. So following up from that.

I appreciate Director Blanford asking also about national comparisons because one thing I found a little bit limiting is when we compare ourselves to other districts in the state because we really are an outlier in so many ways that that only takes us so far in terms of an apples to apples comparison.

So I often bring up Boston and San Francisco because I know those are similar sized districts that have been brought up by staff before for comparisons.

And my other question was I noticed on this list you have the 24 credit enhancements and it looks like we are talking about some savings there does that mean not completely fulfilling that requirement in the following year or suspending or delaying complete fulfillment of that?

Okay I see some nodding and then I'll just jump to my question that was kind of my preamble.

If that's the case what else can we put on the table in terms of unfunded mandates that we are having to contend with?

Many of us have asked for a list of the unfunded mandates and even a graphic of them so we can show especially in Olympia, how many things were expected to do under these circumstances?

Yes, it was 7 million or 7 plus million in the recommendation that came forward from the task force from last year and it became apparent over the last several months that we aren't going to be able to move to a change in the schedule to either a 5 period, 7 period or 8 period day for this forthcoming year.

We will need to do that in the year after that and we will it still has 500,000 in it.

We will have to do some mitigation for our freshmen which come to school in the fall who are under the 24 credit requirements so for any of those students that don't earn their 24 or I guess six credits during the next school year we need a plan to help them mitigate that so that they aren't irreparably behind in terms of being able to graduate on time.

And the ETA please on the list in the graphic.

So we had done some preliminary work early in September where we talked about use of levy.

So those are the three by far largest areas where we have, we know we have compensation, we know we have special ed costs, we know we have ELL.

Those three components make up about 160, 70 million dollars of our levy that we would categorize as unfunded mandates.

So that is the vast majority of that.

The rest of the list we will keep working on.

I would say that we are probably at least a couple of weeks out from identifying those smaller items.

So the other items that I would think that you would have in mind that come to my mind are like healthcare reporting that we have to pay for, BECA bill reporting that we don't get funded for, the new vision requirements that we may or may not we don't get funded for.

Some of those things.

So we'll continue to work on that.

Okay so next slide.

The next slide are the final recommendations from the WSS committee and Chris will talk about the committee and the process.

My name is Chris Kronos I'm the principal at Highland Park Elementary School and I'm the president of the principals association here at Seattle Public Schools.

Thanks for having me appreciate you taking a few minutes to listen to how we went through this process.

The principals were invited into the process, the individuals involved in it.

It included a range of folks from elementary through high school and we asked for principals who had experience doing this in the past foremost because we knew this was going to be a particularly difficult year so we wanted to get some people on board who have done this and have experience with it.

We met four or five times over the course of two to three months looking at these scenarios.

One of the, the first thing we did was we were introduced to the problem.

the massive deficit we're looking at and how are we going to solve the problem.

We talked about how we're going to approach it and from what angles we would approach it and what different ways we could look at it before we started to make any decisions.

And then the budget office provided us with different scenarios and different basically menus from which we could start selecting items that we could pull off.

that were big ticket items.

The easiest ones being for lack of a better term because none of this was easy looking at rolling back class sizes that seemed to be the easiest because we could reduce the total number of teachers based on that.

Again I use that phrase in a way that's not None of this is easy.

The last thing we want to do is lose teachers but based on the way the contract's written we could push that back and reduce the overall number.

That also had an impact on the number of assistant principals that potentially would be needed.

With larger class sizes we would have fewer teachers thereby needing fewer evaluations and fewer assistant principals to oversee those evaluations.

So there was further cuts there as well.

The one thing we wanted to make sure we didn't touch was the free and reduced discretionary funding.

Free and reduced is the most flexible area where we thought that and felt strongly that our schools that really require the most support are schools that have the highest rates of poverty would be impacted the least by just leaving that one pot of money alone.

And everyone is agreeing on that so we found other parts of the budget that we could cut to ensure that that remained intact.

If you keep running your eyes down the list another reduction was around elementary school counselors.

Over the last couple of years we've done a better job at funding elementary schools and unfortunately a lot of this budget is going to hit elementary schools in particular the hardest.

And there's not a whole lot of other ways we could look at it because again the problem is just so massive.

So, in order to address some of the overall needs to reduce, that was one of the areas we looked at.

The reduction in school office staff is really limited to the largest elementary schools.

Feeling that we could lose a half-time assistant secretary at a school with, administrative staff already intact wouldn't have as big of an impact overall.

And that would also keep dollars out of away from removing more classroom teachers or other staffing that's direct support to students.

The assistant principal portion was a really really difficult thing to deal with.

Especially in schools that acquire additional staffing based on other funding sources.

For example schools that receive city levy dollars or title dollars and use those dollars to purchase more staffing have higher numbers of staff.

that need to be supervised.

So this is going to be particularly impactful to the higher needs schools again.

So looking at this list of items we're looking to reduce through a lens of equity it's kind of a tough pill to swallow but we couldn't find another way to potentially find the kinds of cost savings we're looking at there.

The core staffing I think JoLynn can speak to a little more directly.

It's been a while since I worked on that one.

And the other thing we tried to do in that $2 million reserve was leave a little bit behind to try and address some of the issues we're going to create as a result of the reductions.

And again, addressing the needs of the highest impacted schools with that resource.

Thank you, Chris.

So I want to point you to further along in your packet there's more detail that kind of walks through the versions that we went over so I'm going to go through this and then it's right here, it's this document in your packet so it's right after the last page of the slide in your handouts.

It's not very big so I will keep this up here but kind of read it to you.

The first column was the initial proposal by the budget office it says proposed with 16-17 costs then the principles and the WSS committee we went to the leadership learning day with the principals we had some initial recommendations in the second column and then we came back together again with that feedback and had our final recommendations which we are bringing forward to you today.

The WSS committee was comprised of not only principals representing all levels and all areas in the city, it also had SEA representation as well as different folks internally sitting on the committee.

So like Chris said it was a difficult task but we felt like we were able to propose something that did keep our goal in mind.

So I'll just have a couple notes, the rollback K-3 class sizes there are some The non-high poverty schools would roll back to 26 to 1 which is our contract limit but the high poverty schools would still have some staffing enhancements and that would be kindergarten at 22, first grade at 23, second grade at 24. The second line is a technical correction, the third line was the free and reduced lunch discretionary dollars we had originally proposed a million dollars you heard Chris talk about the reasons that they asked us to reconsider that was compelling that number is now zero.

However, the compromise that was reached was that the education directors would be preparing a menu and that we would be asking schools to make sure that how they chose to use their free and reduced lunch discretionary dollars was towards that goal of closing the opportunity gap and that they had to be able to demonstrate or show that the use of those dollars was for that purpose.

The grades 9 through 12 and grades 4 and 5 again we had provided some additional funding and that would be rolled back.

The same with elementary school counselors we had made progress to more adequately fund school counselors and assistant principals are in the same bucket.

We had made progress we would have to roll those things back.

Reducing school office staff I think Chris spoke to that's not only at the elementary there are some other schools that we would be impacted.

The discretionary core staffing for schools if you're a school that has a large if you're a large elementary or K8 or middle school you receive additional staff and you get to choose what you hire with that those would be rolled back.

nurses a little bit of a reduction we had recently provided a 1.0 nurse to a high school we would be rolling that back to a .8 and librarians we would be reducing those for some elementaries and K8s from a 1.0 to a .5.

Now within these cuts we created $2.4 million of capacity, $2 million to reserve for high need schools.

We'll talk about the equity lens and the equity tier methodology in a moment.

As well as since we were going to be at the contract limits we needed to make sure that we had enough money to pay the required collective bargaining agreement of overages for those teachers if that happened.

Kids don't come in neat packages sometimes you're not right at 26 to 1 if you go slightly over then we're contractually obligated to compensate a teacher for that.

I have a quick question about the nurses.

In thinking about going from 1.0 FTE to .8 what frequently happens is teachers are allocated for multiple schools they have to go to multiple schools and we've gotten lots of feedback that that is not workable.

It's difficult to actually pull that off for a nurse.

And so is this the idea that they would be reduced in their, would they be reduced from a 1.0 to a .8 or would we be splitting the cost of 1.0 across multiple schools?

So the FT the person in the position would still be a 1.0 the allocation to the school would only be a .8 so let me say that that's really an important point.

When we, the weighted staffing standards are an allocation, so because we cut in these areas does not mean that the schools actually take the reductions in those areas.

That's something that the principals and the building leadership teams will actually determine to some degree, right?

So they'll work through their budget, they'll figure out exactly what that looks like for them in the best way possible and then that information would be communicated to HR because that's how we would start the displacement process.

So it would be in their core staffing a .8 position and if they wanted to drive it up to a 1.0 that would be a determination that would be made out of their discretionary dollars and in consultation with their BLTs probably.

Correct.

Those are the free and reduced lunch discretionary dollars I mean there's 100 uses for the same pot of money.

I think that's what they would clearly say to us.

And for the record we are not eliminating third grade because you didn't list third grade class size.

Third grade class size for everyone would be 26 to 1. We are not eliminating third graders though we are keeping them we like them.

I just want to confirm top level looking at the existing budget 2015-16 it looks like there's about 377.2 million dollars allocated to waiting staffing standards as a pool.

And so as this 16.6 million dollar reduction represents a 4.4 percent reduction in the pool, is that correct?

The budget amount I believe was just over $400 million, are you looking at 16-17?

Yeah, 16-17 so what we had this year that's what the percentage was based off of and it had grown to over $400 million that was being allocated through the WSS.

Okay.

Yep.

So it's a little over 4%.

We believe we're at 4%.

At 4%.

We're trying to hold firm.

The bottom left talks about the positions then I just want to talk about that that there's a net impact and it kind of outlines based on the WSS allocations that it would be 178 positions.

I want to back up to something you said a few paragraphs ago about how When an individual school decides to use their discretionary funds that they will work with the ed directors and work off of a menu and talk about the basis for those allocations.

Is that correct?

So I'll say it in budget speak and then Chris should say it in education speak.

So in budget speak the idea was we want to make sure that we are using our discretionary dollars to go towards our goal.

We are budgeting towards our goal we want our resources allocated towards that goal.

If our goal is reducing the opportunity gap how they use those free and reduced lunch discretionary dollars should be able to be pointed towards that and to a strategy that's listed on a menu of options or they would be able to provide other rationale and I think Chris can describe his that talks about how what I'm doing with those dollars gets me to that end goal of closing the opportunity gap for the kids in my school.

And it's a collaborative process so foremost the initial proposals generated by the BLT which is analyzing their own schools data to determine where they want to move those discretionary dollars.

The BLT then proposes their plan to the staff which votes on it.

So yes it goes to a director for sure, the director needs to take a look and agree with it.

If the director says they don't agree with the plan then they can decide to involve themselves.

But because of the site-based decision-making that is part of the culture here in Seattle then the school drives that decision and the BLT is comprised of community and staff.

Okay so then I guess my follow-up questions would be these.

We've recently been spending a fair amount of effort and discussion about CSIPs and about how schools are reporting what they're doing.

And we've also talked a lot about analysis of data and accountability.

So where is that accountability, feedback, analysis, reporting out?

Did these strategies that we put together with the discretionary funds, did they work?

When do we check in on them?

Who supervises those?

Who owns them?

I appreciate that the principles in our culture of site-based management believe me I do and it's as confusing as mud most of the time.

But where is the rest of that equation?

It does depend on the school but ultimately it all falls within the directors, the executive directors oversee that.

However, schools like Highland Park for example we are a levy school and we also receive support from OSPI and as such we are obligated to provide three different plans.

We have a plan for the school district that the board has already looked at, the continuing school improvement plan.

We have a plan for the city which is regularly analyzed and data on it is generated and provided to the city with feedback, there's a feedback loop built into that.

And we have a plan for OSPI called Indistar that's also regularly updated, regularly checked in on and I often have to meet with people regarding that.

That's just one small example among 100 schools but all schools have that feedback loop built into it in one way or another.

And I want to say this is new, this is something that we're developing based on this budget so this is new ground for us and some of that has to be worked out with the free and reduced lunch discretionary dollars how that's going to roll into the other reporting that's already happening.

An observation and a question and I'll try and keep it quick since I know we have a lot Regarding the eliminating counselors it always pains me to see that on the chopping block it seems like they are the yo-yos of our district and I've heard from teachers that counselors help them with their job.

So and the other question the other point I'd like to make is the threshold here I know we had to draw the line somewhere but 60% poverty still does leave a lot of kids in poverty who won't have these counselors as we know we have pockets of poverty in different schools throughout the district so that was a pretty high threshold.

We went back and forth on that in the committee, I'm going to give you the mic.

You'll note that there are four, it's four districtwide so we tried to limit it to the best of our ability knowing that each of these provides precious important services to kids.

I can speak on behalf of the entire principal core, we completely agree.

It's not a good choice.

Even the gold book is written in a way that doesn't give us much of a choice.

The way the gold book is outlined you have an opportunity to select either a head teacher, a counselor, or a social worker provided you meet one of the three criteria listed.

Some schools meet two of those criteria, some schools meet all three.

But it's, we have a counselor at our school and I know a bunch of elementary schools have had the benefits of a counselor and it does have a huge impact.

to speak to the direction we're going in education thankfully around more of a focus on social emotional learning and providing kids more opportunities to talk about their feelings using the ruler curriculum and heavier emphasis on positive behavior intervention support systems.

There's a lot of very compelling reasons to ensure that counselors do remain in our schools.

We're still stuck with the $74 million deficit though and we're trying to figure out another way to do it.

is good about the way you're looking at this problem is the fact that there are as few as JoLynn just referenced being cut overall.

Then my other question is having to do with the free and reduced lunch discretionary funding.

I'm glad that that is being protected.

I would like to know more about what sort of accountability and reporting is around that in terms of you say the executive directors are the ones who decide how that Those funds are going to be used.

New, new, new.

That will be new.

This is going to be new, we've not done this before.

So this is really something about how we work together in the WSS committee to talk about it's important to keep free and reduced lunch discretionary dollars but how do we make sure that those dollars are going towards that goal.

That is something new that we are still developing.

It will be new for 17-18 not currently in place.

Oh dear.

And I think I think that the one thing that will happen about those dollars is there will be deep and meaningful discussions with the BLT's and leadership in those schools.

Just for the record I just want to emphasize that's a million dollars we're talking about so we want to be sure we're funneling that in the right direction and have the right kind of oversight.

Thank you.

Okay.

How's everyone feeling?

How's everyone feeling as far as how good we can feel about some of these things?

Okay so the other things that are included in your packet is we actually have the redlined WSS the allocation instructions are included in here as well and that was something that we provided to principals yesterday during the LLD budget discussion.

So that would be the one that looks like this.

You have this in the very back of your packets, very back of your packets.

You'll have this information, this is also posted online.

And this just articulates in words then how these formulas roll through.

Alright so we had initially identified $16.5 million, we've identified 16.6, 16,632,000.

The remainder that we would then have is 11,090,991.

We've talked about the handouts for the WSS recommendation, are there any other board comments?

I would just make a comment to Chris and thank you for leading an effort with your principals.

It sounds like many of the types of cuts that we are talking about here are not necessarily favorable to many of your principals and despite that fact they were able to come to consensus and make recommendations.

That helps to spread the pain and I think they, I was in the room yesterday with many principals and they were talking about We know pain is coming and the fact that they are willing to not just try to protect their own but recognize that this is a districtwide problem that we have to solve is an honorable, shows leadership which I really appreciate.

I just want to shout out to Erica from Sanislo she was on the committee, Mia from Aki, am I missing anyone else if you were on the WSS committee and you're here?

Clover and Michael Tolley some of our other staff so just a lot of really good collaborative work it was really impressive to see.

And while I appreciate that this is a team effort it wasn't about me it's a pretty amazing group of people working here.

Thank you all.

So, we won't spend a lot of time on this today because we don't think we're done.

But we have the $2 million in mitigation, we have that equity tier calculation methodology, again that's in the back of your packets, we'll go there in a moment.

The WSS talked about this, the committee talked about this as well, so Eric Anderson in our research department looked at 12 different factors about African-American males, students of color and poverty and how those kids do testing, how many of those kids do you have, those sorts of things.

So I'm going We have that methodology in a one page word document in the back.

We also have a ranking for each school.

I think one of the things that both the WSS committee as well as executive leadership when we were talking in cabinet and we think that's a beginning point a good beginning point for us but that we need to build off of that equity tier calculation and that we would continue to work on that for the next month or so we would prepare further analysis because we want to have a total resource package often times what you all ask and what the public asks and what we ask each other are what are the total resources for school buildings, what do they get in title one dollars, in city levy dollars and other grants and self-help, what does that total package and picture look like for the school?

Then look at these equity factors and put that together to make sure that we deploy and come up with a plan for the two million that really fills in those holes based on that total picture.

So more to come on that.

Still confused by that.

So you're talking about adding additional columns with lap or title one dollars or foundation dollars etc.

Now are you thinking in terms of ranking them or weighting that with some kind of a percentage then?

Yes we're thinking about all those things.

Okay other things that you're thinking about including would be some anecdotal examples perhaps?

As well as that associate superintendent Michael Tolley also said all the best data in the world we still may miss someone and we need to bring our own knowledge about what those schools needs are or where we may be missing something as well to the table and Michael is nodding his head up and down so that's also factored in.

We do want to keep it We need to be able to defend our methodology but we want to try to be as complete as possible.

So this is difficult work and we want to make sure that we deploy the $2 million that we do have in the right way, the best way that we can and so we're going to continue to work on that with our WSS committee and internally as a leadership team.

I definitely appreciate the effort here.

Is this going to stand up to anybody that might challenge it legally if we are considering historically underrepresented minorities as one of the criteria?

I don't believe so.

I believe that we have been using something similar when we sent out mitigations last year, for this year, right?

Earlier.

And Michael Tolley, I'm still getting the nod, I'm getting nods all around.

So this is that document that actually ranks the schools and it's two pages.

We won't, let me say this, two million dollars is not going to go nearly as far as we want it to go and one of the discussions that we have is spreading like peanut butter too thinly won't make an impact and so how do we carefully consider that.

Those are all things that we're going to have discussions, debates and potentially arm wrestling matches over I'm not sure we'll see.

And then this is the equity tier calculation methodology that kind of outlines the beginning steps of how this was brought together by Dr. Anderson.

So more to come on that.

So I want to talk about some other things to make sure we keep these in our mind.

We had one time $11 million funding for strategic initiatives those areas are listed there.

Some other things that we know or that we think are coming so some known some unknown.

We have notification from OSPI that were because of the ESSA formula change for the title II federal grant that our grant allocation in 17-18 will be $1 million less.

We've heard rumors about Title I and IDEA so still unknown but we're preparing for some type of reduction.

Just keeping that in mind.

Services not currently slated to take cuts special ed and ELL we're hoping that costs don't expand but those services need to be provided.

Native American, athletics, levy funded capital not a complete list but some questions that we've been asked in particular made it to this list.

So to that first point about special ed historically have we seen costs continue to go up on special ed?

Significantly.

So why are we expecting that next year that they won't?

Or counting on next year that they won't?

We're not.

We are trying to work towards efficiencies where we can and we're trying to be, Wyeth Jesse the chief and I are trying to look and plan for that program what efficiencies are there so I think there's more work to be done we could not identify areas where we could actually save dollars but if we could try to limit continual expansion of the costs in the same escalation pattern as it has been on track that will be helpful to our budget.

So it's a net zero you're hoping for a net zero.

So when you say expansion do you mean hires?

Is that what you're talking about?

Hiring staff?

Expenditures.

Oh just expenditures in general?

Expenditures.

Okay.

No expansion of expenditures would be another way to phrase it.

Okay because with our English language learner programs we necessarily had to.

That's right our population is increasing.

And you're saying that there will be some sort of efficiencies put in place.

We will be working hard towards that, that's our goal.

Okay and then it's been asked by some members of the community why athletics is on this list.

Could you elaborate on that please?

Athletics is limited, it's about a million and a million and a half dollars total.

There was in fact some debate yesterday at the principal's leadership day I think that there are some different schools of thought, some think that we should focus only on academics and there's a lot of folks who would say they think athletics has an effect on kids that is positive as well and so we've left it as it is.

Can I add something to that?

I believe athletic is very important for a lot of kids of color.

A lot of our kids play better and it motivates them to do well in school and that's been a known fact so I think that you know we only have a million dollars in athletics and I think that it's an area that we need to keep where it is.

I would hate to see us cut that program because it's very important to a lot of our kids.

And then the last item the levy funded capital activities.

So you're talking about.

items that are already covered by our capital budget.

We're not really looking at the capital budget.

We're not.

So why is that on there?

I just want to know that capital is not impacted by this operating cuts right?

It's not impacted in the same way.

We have a general fund issue for our operating fund but the capital dollars are still funding those activities those dollars are still flowing there's not the same budget issue in capital that there is in the operating side.

Right I understand but it's a whole other source of funds.

That's right.

And the main reason we put this on here is often people say well can you use capital to fund the general fund so the answer is no.

That said there will be some things that when we're looking at the $4 million in central office we've looked at every rock and said what can we find that is in the general fund now that could be funded through capital and there are a few things like that that will show up.

Can I ask a clarifying question?

I notice here on the other reduction occurring you got 750 K for IB does that mean that you're actually looking at cutting IB at 750?

750 was out of the one-time funding the one-time funding means it's not available next year.

Well we kind of knew that.

Yep I just want to reiterate it.

You were skipping ahead so we're going to get there in a minute right?

And then JoLynn on the athletics we were saying there's no cuts is the transportation for athletics included in that or is that going to be separate?

Yeah it's included and it's a pretty small amount it was $67,000 so we have a grant that we're matching that we're committed to match but it's a pretty small amount it grows slightly over the next few years.

So again, trying to be clear, trying to keep all of these gazillion pieces in our minds about where we're at, items that could add to the deficit but that are not currently in the $74 million plan, right now transportation increases to going to two tiers, not in our $74 million.

The southeast dual language pathway, not in the $74 million.

Any amendments to the student assignment plan that had cost.

The same thing, I just want to call out, I mean, Those IB dollars have been important we know that.

And recap, yes.

So the dual language pathway are you talking about extending it to Chief Sealth something that's in the student assignment plan that we're going to be discussing next?

Dr. Nyland this was on your list of Southeast.

If that's not going to be funded we sort of need to know about that before we look at the student assignment plan.

I will need to get back to you on that one.

Oh Michael.

That was the point that I had made before about there being a promise of a southeast high school and we're saying that we're not doing that and so folks would be going to Chief Sealth.

That is correct.

Of course, as has been shared with the board, we have had a task force working on a number of questions as it relates to international schools and dual language, language immersion pathways.

And the recommendation that came from that task force was considering our current budget considerations as well as what would take gear up for to be able to implement a dual language immersion program at the high school level for next year and the cost involved in that.

The recommendation was to have the students feed into an existing program that would not cost additional funding.

So what this is indicating is if we were to try to implement a dual language immersion pathway in the southeast region that would be an additional cost.

The recommendation as it currently stands is if families would like their children to continue in a dual language pathway into high school from the southeast they can go to Chief Sealth.

Right, if they can get there.

The majority of the students we're talking about typically would continue on to Franklin coming out of Mercer.

We have plans of course to expand the language opportunities, higher level language course offerings at Franklin.

But the dual language immersion is actually specifically teaching a core content area in a target language, say social studies and Spanish.

We do not have those resources right now to implement that.

Thank you for that clarification and then my other question has to do with the transportation increases for two tiers.

Just for the record those are costs, that was how much for the two tiers is it like 2 million?

I think it was, I think it was closer to three it was around 3 million it would be a one-time cost up front and yes that would be a one-time cost for only next year and then the state formula would catch us up.

Okay I just wanted to clarify that thank you.

So recap of the major cuts so far we are reducing schools through the WSS by 4% central admin so this is central office by 5.3 we are using half of our economic stabilization fund we are still $11.1 million short and that gets us to our final recommendation coming up.

So other reductions that we could use to solve the remaining deficit, we could suspend all curriculum adoption through 17-18 that's worth $11.5 million that's three components, the $5 million that we set aside each year for curriculum adoption, the remainder of those dollars that we have not spent yet in 16-17, 4.5 million that would be for the K5 ELA adoption as well as the $2 million that was earmarked for middle school math.

The Cedar Park had a planning year for 17-18 as we continue to work through what the option school would be there and that's $1.5 million.

There's some other items on there as well.

I will cut to the Chase the staff recommendation and go back.

I just want to make one point this is not a conclusive list or a complete list but they are large items and when we're in the position that we are which is highly unfortunate and very uncomfortable we just want to make sure you're aware of various options.

And to that point I'm wondering if I can ask a question, summer school at .25 that seems like a reduction or is that the elimination of summer school next?

Meaning a decrease in the activities that are taken?

Or the team will come to support the team up here.

Linda Sebring budget director.

The 250,000 is the basic education general fund dollars not Title I lap on grant funds.

It would create a significant problem in running the program because there are certain costs such as nurses and other activities that cannot be funded on grants.

So it would if not stop the program significantly create challenges with running the program we have right now because again we wouldn't be able to have these resources available during the summer.

And then the next one is just the bullet below that the creative advantage is that a reduction or elimination?

That is actually a mix of several things that's creative advantage that's the arts program that we provide centrally to schools and the music program so that would be a rather significant reduction in those offerings.

So that is saying we've made promises to the community which I happen to represent, one of the communities that I represent or that is served by it.

We are saying this was important now we're going to take it away in essence.

I think we're saying that these are a whole lot of not good choices and the next slide will get to what staff is recommending which is not, that's not on it.

Okay thank you.

So staff recommendation is suspend all the curriculum adoption and the planning year for Cedar Park.

Based on what we've been seeing and hearing we think that we need the 11.1 to solve as well as a little bit more because we think that we may need some more mitigation resources or additional budget reserve.

Okay, quickly, creative advantage, I have the same concern about that.

I mean you could make the same argument about the arts and music that we make about athletics.

These are the sorts of things that keep kids in school.

And creative advantage, isn't that partially funded by the city?

So, could someone clarify why would we be cutting funds from the city?

Yes, we just got a grant for other parts of this.

So, the arts piece is if I can get this pretty close to right.

I suppose it's like many of the programs that we try to launch like dual languages we talked about for bringing Mandarin in for the southeast is that we have promises that we would say that we would help fund the initiation.

For the arts program yes the city contributes and the Seattle Foundation contributes but I want to say $600,000 is in district dollars for schools that had a Spanish or a science PCP teacher.

So if they were going to come in and we wanted everybody to come in on a pathway they would have to give up a teacher, a body, a person, somebody that's an integral part of their community.

they'd have to give up that science or that Spanish in order to get arts.

So we say that in the beginning we'll help you with that and then if that teacher if and when that teacher goes away then we would take the teacher away.

So our goal is to provide a pathway program ideally within the existing resources but we do recognize that there needs to be a I don't know about how short term but a short term investment so what we would be saying at this point in time is we'll still support the arts pathway but the Spanish teacher or the science teacher who is giving you extra planning time would become part of the displacements and they would have a job but the school would no longer get quote unquote that extra staffing.

And then I would just comment it's been a long time since I put my $80 million out here and talked about all the promises that we've made.

But there are many.

So dual language costs us pretty much one extra teacher per building.

That's part of mitigation and it's gone.

Many of our option schools cost us one extra teachers and it's gone.

So yes these are promises that we've made that we will no longer fulfill.

And there are many of them not just this area of arts and so that's unfortunate I feel badly about that but I've also been saying for years that our budget is unsustainable because the state is not paying for compensation.

So that's $100 million that we could quibble about whether the state owes us $90 million or whether they owe us $100 million I would say that they owe us $100 million.

But that means every year in order to meet that obligation to pay our teachers fairly, we have to tighten every portion of our budget.

And then when they also take away.

I'm interested in what it actually means and what the opportunity costs are that are associated with it.

It is not the defense of creative advantage or summer school.

It might be a little bit of the defense of the dual language program but that's because I have an eighth grader at home that's been enrolled in that program for nine years.

and can't imagine the promises that were made being taken away but I understand completely what you're saying it's just we need as much clarity and I think we owe to those who are watching and listening and will be affected by these cuts to know as much as we can possibly know before we go forward.

I'll just complete my thoughts and I know Director Harris and Director Burke are also waiting.

Regarding Cedar Park delaying it for a year with projected savings of 1.5 million I'd also like to know, not right this minute, what the costs are of delaying it for a year.

Because if we're playing a planning principal and we've got somebody on salary for a year who's actually not in a building acting as a principal, how much does that cost?

And what are the costs associated with maintaining a vacant building, keeping it free from vandalism?

So I think there's some costs to keeping it vacant as well.

And then curriculum, I'm always going to push back on that.

You know, if we do not provide curriculum for our students as a district it seems like we're dropping the ball on one of the most fundamental duties of a school district.

And we've kicked the can down the road many times on middle school math.

Apparently we haven't adopted language arts for K5 since 1997. So to see this on the chopping block I find disturbing and it's a cumulative backlog of us not doing curriculum adoptions.

So I'll pass the mic over to Director Harris and then Director Burke.

So thanks to Director Peters for the lead in.

I want to start by expressing my appreciation for the hard work that's being done.

I want to contrast that with with concerns about the optics of what we've put up on the potential remaining reductions of curriculum adoption Cedar Park summer school arts music and TV station.

And then the other question mark.

And since from my perspective the recommendation to suspend all curriculum adoptions and to defer the planning of Cedar Park are both non-starters I'm going to ask to take a hard look at the other question mark category to see what we can do there.

Recognizing the way this is presented it's a binary choice it's we either do this or we don't do this and I don't believe that all of the $11.5 million for curriculum adoptions is a 2017-18 expense.

The English language arts adoption potentially would be if it were done in its entirety.

The two million that was allocated for a middle school math adoption would not even be an expense that occurs in 2017-18 it would be occurring in the actual capital outlay or funding outlay would be in 2018-19 so I don't believe we need to suspend that process I believe that we could earmark that money for the following year and have that be a budget leveling thing.

Cedar Park the 1.5 million dollars I would like to have a better understanding of what comprises that because when I look at that I see 15 educators just round numbers and by not opening the school We don't save 15 educators in my mind because we still have those students they're just in other buildings.

So and we potentially create impacts in those other buildings that are related to that unless I misunderstand.

Yeah it's not teachers.

The 1.5 million for Cedar Park is actually the additional cost for adding the additional staff so I know that there's some netting of the planning principal but when you have a building that opens up there's more core staff that comes in that allocation for the WSS so that this 1.5 is no teachers it's the principal, the office staff, the custodial staff those kinds of costs and then to open it up and run it utilities that sort of thing was what is comprised within the 1.5.

It is not any teachers because you're exactly right those teachers are somewhere else.

And if I can clarify your point for the curriculum adoption Those dollars I think what we are proposing is that those dollars would not be held in reserve in 17-18 understanding that the expenditure could be in a different year but that we wouldn't hold those dollars in reserve in 17-18 under our worst case scenario budget that we may need to spend those on something else.

I agree there is going, our budget for 18-19 will initially include another $5 million for curriculum adoption.

And just to confirm, that $11.1 million is made up of what?

There's three components?

it's the rest of what's left in the 74 million dollars to solve.

Everything else that we've.

Oh the 11.5 the 11.5 is four and a half million in 16-17 curriculum adoption funding unspent to date.

Five million that we budget every year for curriculum adoption so it's the 17-18 allocation as well as the two million for middle school math.

I'm confused.

So we passed a board resolution turning Cedar Park into an option school November 16 I believe.

and then we took four weeks to have a community engagement meeting and at this point I'm wondering what are those next steps because there's the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you say you can't do it and then you don't put the steps in place to do it then in fact you can't do it.

Are we at a dead stop here until we give you consensus on the budget cuts?

Can you clarify what dead stop might mean?

I mean what are we doing with respect to Cedar Park and the option schools presently?

I would need assistance.

Michael Tolley is coming.

This does not answer your question Director Harris but it comes back to the gravity of the problem.

What it does is it tells us and again your timing matters the timing matters a lot.

We didn't know what the total deficit would look like next year until we closed the books out for this year which ends the end of October about the second week of November.

So that's an important date.

in terms of context and what the level of problem that we faced.

I will say that if we have to do this worst-case budget which we certainly hope we don't nevertheless we have to plan on it as we all know and we appreciate patience that everybody's going through as noted here.

In retrospect we would have been smart to stop spending money last September because anything that we're spending just adds to the problem.

So as we are looking at Cedar Park and I will speak strictly for myself, we didn't have the knowledge then that we know now.

And if you go back to slide three, one of the key things that we are basing our recommendations on is point one.

Are people more essential than other non-staff items in our work right now?

Both in the opportunity gap work and in how do we balance the budget?

And my personal belief is that Our people matter and if there's anything that we can do to alleviate laying off more people and there's cash laying around, the first place that I'm going to look for is cash and it's in those two areas.

So it isn't that we disvalue those things or the timing of such and so it's a long answer not to your question but it is to the philosophy of how do we get to where we are today and then hopefully how do we get out of that.

Now we can go to your question.

And to answer your question I guess the short answer is, oh sorry, Dede Font LaRoy planning principal for Cedar Park.

The short answer is yes.

Right now we are stopped because I don't want to engage communities without full information.

I don't want to confuse families when we're having discussions about yes it might happen and no it might not happen.

So Yes we've had a community meeting we've had a couple scheduled in partnership with Seattle Housing Authority that they have asked they have asked to postpone until we have more information that is definitive for their community so that we don't confuse everybody so yes we are waiting for decisions to be made absolutely.

Thank you.

I have another question if I might and this one would be to Superintendent Nyland.

We've heard from the community that they've picked up on your quote unsustainability of option schools and K-8's.

Is there some unwritten plan or punch list out here that says we're going to start doing away with these?

However, you will hear it in the fall if we go through with, so we do this almost every year since I've been here and I believe before I came, is that every year we try to balance the budget, every year we say we are going to be firm this year and we are going to spend less money on mitigation.

And then our option schools and our dual language schools come to the fore and we finally reluctantly say oh, you're right.

No, there's no grand plan to do away with them.

It's simply that the budget is getting tighter and tighter and tighter.

I just want to come back to the point that Director Harris made on Cedar Park and that when we talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy there was a board majority that voted in support of opening Cedar Park as a diverse option school and by implementing a one-year delay we're highly likely to lose a large portion of that diversity.

So that's a very big concern to me and I haven't heard any of my colleagues coming forward with amended language to add a postponement in and so my preference would be that we stay the course until otherwise corrected.

I'm hoping that we can come up with some sort of guidance for the community of Cedar Park and the leadership and potential leadership of Cedar Park coming out of this meeting to help steer that.

And I would definitely agree with that Director Burke on that because again if we stop fully then trying to pick it back up again once we get the green light to go or not it's going to be way too late for us to really have a good start to Cedar Park.

And another question is we're looking at yes delaying the opening of Cedar Park are there other schools that we can delay the opening for for next year that may also save us some money?

I'm experiencing a little bit of cognitive dissonance that I hope you can help me with.

I'm looking at $11.1 million I'm looking at your recommendations and I'm wondering if there are a whole list of other cuts that are smaller but that would be a really long list in order for us to get to $11 million.

It seems to me that what you've proposed to us are some big ticket items that can help us get to that $11.1 million and in the absence of some long list of smaller items that we can tick off one by one there is no way we can get to 11.1 right?

So in some ways this is not a unless there is a long list somewhere that you know that we don't know.

of this is an exercise that no matter where you go you are going to end up at the same outcome.

We've got to look at the big ticket items and cut those first and then we can play around with the smaller numbers.

Is that what I am understanding this correctly?

Well I don't know that I can.

answer your question about how you're understanding it correctly so I won't pretend to do that.

What I will say is having gone through this before and explored your first question which is where is the long list I can see it in my head and in fact we shared an abbreviated version of the long list with the audit and finance committee some time ago and I don't remember exactly what that is but we can resurrect it.

It's possible to find $11.5 million in other places that is absolutely true.

But back to the key point it's going to be in staff it will be in cuts to program services long list of things and this is what I know having gone through this before and others in the room as well.

when we made those cuts we didn't necessarily do ourselves any favors and in some cases we created more problems than we solved.

So you are absolutely right you know back to my summary point from a minute ago.

This is cash and it is easier and there's no doubt about that.

No one would say that we don't want a curriculum adoption.

I'm not suggesting that it's cash and the difference is it's cash and it doesn't help us in a lot of ways around curriculum.

But then I would also offer this as perspective for whatever reason that I can't pretend to understand or portray we have chosen for as you have noted Director Harris many times correctly so for decades not to update our curriculum.

Now is that a good thing?

Absolutely not.

Have we managed yes or no depending upon how you look at it and I'm not saying we have or we haven't but it's still cash so it becomes a different perspective than it is to put more people out of work where we know that that might hurt us.

We can delay this decision tonight but I'm worried about that because without planning on worst case we are in a position where we are doing exactly what the legislature has done to us.

We are kicking the can down the road and we run out of time on all of that.

I'm not pretending these are easy but they are easier than it is to go back and comb and look for 12, 15 whatever million that we want.

I have a couple things I have a quiet mic so I have to yell a little bit.

I think a way that is interesting to look at this is let's say we do plan this worst case scenario budget and let's say we are looking at some of these things that are dear to us in the 11 million and that money comes back to us and then we have to roll it back somewhere.

We all have to ask ourselves would we roll it back into those pots or would we roll it back into the counselors, the people?

And so that's, that isn't so far as what I've heard we're not even talking about that like this is worst case scenario but there are going to be decisions coming that are going to totally shake this up all again.

So I feel like the long-term plan is still very much not very secure and I don't know what assurances we can give to anybody because when the money comes back what we are going to hear from our public is give us our counselor back, give us this back.

They are not necessarily going to be coming back as this unified group saying please give us our English language adoption back.

So these are hard decisions that we have to make and I'm still feeling very uncertain about how that all is going to work out.

As to the Cedar Park we're also opening to cater and so I assume that's a 1.5 million dollar cost with that school if what I'm hearing is right and so I wonder I'm being made having made it very clear that I'm not really interested in opening a self-contained school at this point that addresses one population I do wonder do we get some bang for our buck in the opening of two schools that are similarly defined would that cause us some savings, provide some relief in terms of overcrowding, allow an equity lens of giving advanced learning options to everybody rather than just tested in folks?

I don't know if this is the conversation but since we're talking about Cedar Park I raise that now and may raise it again later but I throw that out there just because we have the cost of Decatur that we're opening that isn't on this list and has some controversy for at least me.

And then I also wonder of the costs of opening Robert Eagle Staff Middle School if we actually vote for amendment one and are not properly staffing that school up.

And so do we just not open Robert Eagle Staff just put Licton Springs in there?

What's that cost savings if we're not going to open it properly?

If we put through an amendment that's very expensive and actually leaves a school that is somewhat hobbled.

So there are a lot of other big dollar items that I'm not seeing on this list that sort of tie in directly with the student assignment planning and I'm just going to say that And it's not to any great benefit.

I don't mean to just blow my horn or say it, but this isn't a way to plan.

And the whole process is just leaving me with a real uncertain vision of how this all works together, how all these pieces work together, and what we ultimately want to do with the least for the most of our kids as we move forward.

And we're supposed to be the folks with the inside knowledge.

How do you think our public and our taxpayers feel?

To Jill's comment.

One of the things that Jill brought up that we've talked about and it's coming up on slide 16 is the restoration plan.

To brainstorm out loud is there a way to vote on some of these not vote but come to consensus on some of these cuts in conjunction with a restoration plan.

Because then in fact we are planning as opposed to reacting.

And one of the things that I find so extraordinarily frustrating and I admit that my trust level is pretty low.

But if you packaged up some of these cuts with a prioritization of a restoration first dollar in goes to X.

we get X amount and built some of those scenarios frankly I'd be more inclined to go along with you.

Until then though I've got to tell you I'm pretty cynical about this.

We just found out that we're at a dead stop to a board resolution on November 16 and I understand why, believe me I get it.

But that's a pretty important statement that was made in terms of the statutory responsibility of the school board and whether or not we've made the progress or whether or not we've set up a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Your comments.

Thank you.

I completely agree.

We don't have a restoration plan in place but we recognize we have to tonight.

We recognize we have to do that quickly.

And to the point of Cedar Park I will speak for just my own perspective.

I think it's a great example of where I could have done and we all could have done a better job of vetting it before we said let's approve it.

and this is what worries me between now and anything we do between now and when we find out what the legislature is doing we don't know and we don't know how much we will get back so we are in a very difficult position to be able to say well let's take a risk so I'm going to jump ahead.

jumping at the discussion for later tonight and I know you know this anything that we pass and say this could have added cost just adds to this list so we need to think that same process I think your idea is a very good one otherwise we just put ourselves in a deeper box.

And I realize that there's a lot going on and that you all have a very limited amount of time and I deeply appreciate how difficult that is for everyone.

It's a big organization there's a lot going on.

And this is a very good example of we have to be careful about the scope of decisions and where they all fit.

So whatever we can do as staff to work with you I think this is a good opportunity to do so.

I just want to interject a time observation.

We have gone over our time.

It's not your fault JoLynn.

It's a very rich topic and there's lots of good questions here and good answers.

So it's a little after 6. What do you think you need in terms of going through the rest of this presentation, time-wise?

Right so staff strongly strongly believes that we need consensus tonight to be able to move forward to not get the train derailed for start of school and all the decisions that come after.

Because we have enrollment numbers then they get put, there's a timeline that starts once we know the WSS allocations and obviously Cedar Park factors into that as well.

We are a month out, we are a month behind where we usually are now so staff have tried to compress the timeline as best as we can but if there is any more delay I think what we are talking about then is delaying when we put allocations out to principals, when we get decisions and the final kind of as we tip those dominoes over are we going to be able to meet our collective bargaining requirements of notification of staff and all of that ticks back to when we know what we are filling and what we are staffing.

So that's our, I mean WSS we have to know to start that clock or we are stuck.

Okay so you are asking for consensus tonight on the plan you are bringing to us tonight.

I just want to point out that this is the first time we have discussed the whole thing and you know I would be interested to hear from the rest of the board if they feel they are in a position to make an assessment of what we are looking at tonight.

May I just say one thing I'm sorry.

Sure.

We have discussed many of not the full recommendation but there have been similar things that we've discussed in the last couple of work sessions and I can point you to those documents if you'd like.

Absolutely and I recognize that you've done an excellent job you know keeping us moving along on this.

It's big hard and ugly.

I appreciate the work you're doing I just have noticed that there are some new items and there have been a number of questions from directors tonight so I just putting it out there that I don't know if anyone knew we were expected to come to some consensus tonight and whether we are at that point.

But perhaps we are I don't know.

But Director Burke and Director Harris both are waiting to ask something.

I will share a perspective and then some feedback.

My initial perspective we are looking at $74 million on round numbers and $800 million budget.

So a little bit less than 10%.

and the WSS reduction is nominally 4%.

Staffing WSS makes up a large part of that not quite half but I would feel comfortable recognizing that we are asking our educators and education support staff and administration in our buildings that are serving our students to take a large cut but a cut that is significantly less than other aspects of our budget.

If we say we're doing a 9% across the board cut but we're only putting 4% of it into WSS I'm comfortable moving forward out of this meeting with WSS and then taking what's left and figuring out how to make it up.

You've shown here two things that I disagree with as a way to close the gap without going back into WSS.

I'd like to still discuss those but I am absolutely comfortable locking down WSS at this time.

Moreover I'd like to second what you had to say about WSS and I'd also like to express my appreciation.

A few years ago I had to write public disclosure requests to figure out how the WSS worked.

And then when we sent the public disclosure request then they stopped taking minutes.

So we've come a very very long way and I think that really needs to be noted by the committee members and the leadership of JoLynn and that's hugely appreciated.

Because we are talking people's jobs we're talking about Monday through Friday how our schools work or in fact don't work.

for the most impacted folks.

WSS I'm fine with.

Some of these other things I'm truly not fine with.

And we still have to address the really difficult topic in this room that right now Cedar Park is a dead stop.

And enrollment is fast approaching.

and I don't know how we get ourselves out of this box.

I would like to continue to argue that perhaps a compilation of smaller cuts does make sense and to spread the pain as opposed to curriculum.

20 years, no curriculum adoptions.

I'm embarrassed by that.

I think we should all be embarrassed by that.

I hope that that's one of our leading topics when we talk to our good friends in Olympia and in Washington DC.

And we should take down our oldest and nastiest textbooks and hold them up and wave them a lot.

Graphics and framing are terribly important.

Well, you know, this is insanity.

No question about it and I know you all know it and you guys work at 24, 7, 365 but this is no way to run a railroad let alone a school district with 53,000 kids lives at stake and 8,000 employees lives at stake.

This is not what I want to be doing a year from now let me put it that way.

So if we don't

reach a consensus on the 11 million and I think what you're hearing is people are going to come around the WSS because you've done a really good job of trying to keep it as small as possible but if we don't come to consensus on the 11 million then obviously that may trickle into our staff, our school staff.

So what is the consequence?

So let's say we go forward and we meet all the deadlines as outlined for the proposed cuts.

What is the consequence then if we end up adding on to that based upon our inability to find the dollars elsewhere while maintaining some of the things that we want to maintain?

I don't know if we bump that number up or do additional things what the consequences are.

Yeah I think that we are looking at like Steven talked about earlier we are talking about are we more okay than finding programs or staff that we are willing to eliminate and that's going to be the choice as far as if we.

No, what are the on the ground consequences?

We don't send out the pink slip on time and determine later on to increase that pool.

What is the consequence to us as a district if we don't meet our contractual obligations in that regard?

I just want to narrow that question.

So if we don't meet I mean I'm assuming that we would have a violation of our contract if we don't send out the notices in time and if we don't send the notices out in time and the contracts roll over we have an unsustainable budget potentially for next year and we would go into binding conditions with the state.

So I would agree with that.

So we can keep everybody on staff but we don't have the money to pay for them so if we don't get the layoff notices the RIF notices out to educators on time according to the collective bargaining agreement they are ours they have a contract next year and we have to pay for that whether we have the money or not.

And to give you a perspective so all but about 300 employees are represented in some fashion and the collective bargaining agreements in a large part matter with the teachers so there are other staff that the timing is a little bit different but not a lot.

And I want to circle back to something that Director Blanford asked earlier about the 11 million or whatever it is.

Can we do that incrementally and I'm sitting here thinking out loud so please take it for that and I really like Director Harris's idea of trying to build the back and forth so what's our reinstatement and how do we do all of that.

I don't know how much time we have to do that and our great CFO would probably want to take me out to the woodshed afterwards but we may be able to squeeze a week or two out of this but we don't have a lot of time.

Did you see that look?

So, and she's right, I might add, having sat in that chair.

And it puts us in a very tight timeline.

What I'm worried about is that I am not convinced, and it may come back to what you were saying Director Burke, that we can find 11, I'll make up a number because I'm guessing so please take it for that, maybe we can find 5 that's not just something really dumb to be blunt.

Then what do we do?

So we've got a very tight time frame to come up with that.

And the last thing and I've said this many times that's important to note We've not staffed ourselves in any particular area starting at the schools and with our teachers all the way through to people in our food service and custodial services at a level where when we make these cuts if we're looking for the 11 million out of incremental they're not going to hurt us somewhere else and that's what my worry is.

I know from experience that on a piece of paper we'll say okay we'll save a million here and it will turn out that it will cost us two.

and because I've seen that happen.

And that's my worry and that's why I come back to cash because it's cash.

And that hurts us badly for all the reasons that Director Harris and others have articulated which I completely agree with.

It's still cash.

So it's my job to counsel you as best we can on this based on what I know and I'm worried about that.

Also wanting to respect your direction and what you think is best.

Something Michelle Toner mentioned to me yesterday was potentially looking at the curriculum adoption just through a different lens and the metaphor of kicking a can has come up a couple of times and I realize that this might sound the same but just to put it out there potentially the board could adopt the curriculum but postpone the purchase or begin purchasing incrementally.

Start with the K2 purchase, wait a year, purchase a little more, build it out over the course of three or four years potentially.

that would alleviate some of the strain on the overall but then commit to the value because that's the problem it's a values decision that's what I'm hearing from you Director Harris.

So if you can go that direction maybe that might help ease or make the decision more palatable.

I'll just briefly highlight that that particular topic was discussed in the curriculum adoption committee relating to the English language arts adoption and I know the staff is working on that.

So when we look at a large number that reflects the lump sum of curriculum adoptions in process in consideration and potentially to be planned for next year.

Some of that is certainly on the table.

My hope is that not all of that is on the table.

So the suggestions earlier were if we had a way to roll back the cuts, if we had a plan to roll back the cuts that would feel better.

So that's next on our list of work to be done.

And this is very interesting times.

So the governor's budget gives us $20 million back.

The levy, the levy cliff.

is 30 million dollars and it's in several different pockets so it's possible that the legislature could say fine we'll give you your 4% levy back and that's 12 million or something like that.

So and then I suspect that since they're under court order from the Supreme Court to do something with salaries that they're going to at least give us a COLA.

Pick a number between all of those, you know it could be 30 plus the 20 from the governor, it could be $50 million that we get back.

That's probably over, well I guess I hope it's not overly optimistic but it could be.

It could be, I'm pretty sure that we're going to get the 4% levy back if they can't figure out how to solve it, that's 12 million.

And then the governor's budget is somewhere in the 20. No guarantees, no promises but it feels like, I mean this is under the court order for McCleary when you're supposed to be putting billions of dollars more into schools so I remain hopeful that they're not going to leave us, ideally they don't leave us with a deficit at all but at least the deficit is not going to be our worst case.

So 30 million.

would be 16 million for WSS which is a good share of the staff.

It's not administrative and support staff but it's staff in schools.

And kind of the last page up here that we're having difficulty over the curriculum is 11. So that's a total of 27 million.

So I guess we could handicap that and try to figure out how much money do we think and then what order would we bring it back in.

So I mean we could, we don't have time tonight, but we could have an interesting conversation.

Would we bring curriculum back before we bring back WSS?

Would we bring WSS back first and then curriculum second?

We probably, all of those are probably overly simplistic and we would want to go through the list and vet it fairly intentionally to figure out well maybe we wouldn't bring back 100% of WSS, maybe we would bring back 95% of WSS.

So I'm not quite sure where that takes us but I think there's a germ of an idea in there somewhere is kind of could we get to the point where we've got an approved list that has a rollback structure to it that gives a little bit more assurances that we do recognize that we're making tough, hard, challenging decisions and we certainly do want to roll them back if there's any way possible to do that.

So I'm going to make one last attempt to ask.

Not any of these are good choices.

Is there a way that we can get to the last 11.1 million knowing that we are working on the restoration plan all the things Dr. Nyland said we don't want to have to do the curriculum we don't want to do the school staffing cuts any of those things but can we get to the last 11.1 or at least most of it?

I have a question.

We've been having conversations about the curriculum adoption for a while now I remember a particular conversation during the summer where we were talking about allocating funds that we had back when we had a surplus towards this purpose and I asked the question then which I believe is relevant now about given the fact that we have kick the can down the road around curriculum adoption for many years.

What is the urgency of this moment?

And I think when I asked that question then it was less relevant than it is now because at the point then we weren't talking a $74 million budget deficit.

It appears to me that we are still operating as though we don't have a budget deficit and we are saying that a curriculum adoption is critically important in spite of the fact that we now have this huge budget deficit.

And that to me seems inappropriate.

I believe in my heart of hearts that we should have updated materials for our students absolutely there is no dissension about that issue but I'm thinking of all of the negative impacts that we are seeing as a result of WSS and the other cuts that are here and I'm not understanding why there is such urgency around curriculum adoption.

And this is not a question I think for the staff I think this is a question for my colleagues who have been pushing this issue as hard as they have.

Director Geary.

I think that we are lumping curriculum adoption it contains a lot of different things and the conversation that we had last summer had to do with the middle school math adoption and to talk about the conversation around the middle school math adoption and also lump in the English language arts adoption ignores all of the sunk cost that we have put into that work so far.

We've invested an incredible amount of time and money to date in coming up with something and we're now able to move forward and pull the trigger on that.

And that I think for me is the hardest part to the extent that a lot of work hasn't been done on something and we're not we haven't invested time in field testing and our families and community to come forward and review and look at something.

We've been presented an option that sounds great that is really going to dovetail very nicely with our social emotional learning work that we've been doing and we'll be getting that through a language arts curriculum and so we'll get bang for our buck in that and that it will reinforce back and forth some other things that we've found to be incredibly important.

So I think that is where the heart heartache heartburn lies and getting back to Mr. Cronus' suggestion that we roll it out we were looking at and I think it would be very interesting to hear somebody's perspective in terms of doing a grade rollout versus an equity analysis rollout because that was what we talked about in curriculum and instruction looking at the schools that would most benefit by an infusion of that type of curriculum and what then that does for eliminating the achievement gap.

So it's so complex to say that why is it a difficult decision when you sit in our position and you have to synthesize all this information with all of these priorities and see some really good work that's been done that will really advance us and something that we've said we want to prioritize for our dollars.

now and in the future and even through this crisis.

So I just wanted to highlight that it isn't that easy.

So I'm going to say one thing and then see if I can help move this forward and one of them you know to Director Blanford's question about middle school math I think the reason why that keeps coming up is we have inequities right now we have some middle schools that have a very powerful they've come up with some powerful materials that are having great results.

They are doing it without having waivers.

And then there's other schools that don't have the same materials.

So we were trying to think of a cost-effective way to learn from these other schools and replicate that with $2 million you know maximum or to start with.

And so it was to use the ideas we've been talking about all along which is take a look at our outlier schools that are doing good things and replicate what they're doing.

But let's bring it back to the bigger issue here.

It looks like we have some kind of consensus around WSS but I want to make sure everybody around the table has had a chance to weigh in we haven't heard from everybody.

It sounds like we are not totally in a comfort zone for the remaining 11.1 and it sounds like Steven you are saying that maybe we could have another week to consider this?

Okay well again I'm going to say that even though we did discuss a lot of these things some of these things are new before us today and we're being asked to make some decisions.

Oh my last point is I really feel we need to understand your methodology because the public is going to say how come these things were on the table and other things were not.

We're going to get a bunch of emails with other suggestions.

We need to understand what rationale you use because ultimately we're going to have to approve something and we need to be able to stand behind.

these choices and have a logic behind it.

Yes we can do that and I think we've done that in prior work sessions but let me just do that at the big picture to answer your question.

So first of all we have to meet our legal requirements to operate a school district so we don't want to make cuts that inhibit that requirement.

Two we have to meet our CBA's our collective bargaining agreements.

Three we have IEP's and we have other obligations that are associated with those requirements we have to do all of those.

So we don't want to make cuts that go too deep and that was my point that we on paper looks like we might make a savings and we really cannot do that.

Jumping so that's the big picture and then we'll give you more detail.

On back to the curriculum and again speaking for our staff we're not disagreeing with the need it's a matter of timing and all and a reminder that we've got three buckets of curriculum dollars so there's the 2.2 plus or 2 point thereabouts from the 2 million in the one part we've got the current years and then we have next year's that could be parsed.

So at the risk of having my CFO take me to the woodshed again one of the things that we could do is say well let's parse it and we'll do part of it but not all and let us explore that for a couple of days and see what we can come up with.

I don't pretend to answer that right now because I'm not smart enough to know the answer but it's a possibility on the other side of the equation what else is in there that we could go look for.

I think that would keep us busy for a day or two.

Yeah I think that's Steven's point you know you've talked definitely about the K5 ELA adoption and the 2 million for middle school math that still leaves the 5 million for next year do you feel differently about that?

I guess I'm trying to understand exactly what it's sort of a level of granularity because that five million for next year again is unlikely to be as associate superintendent Nielsen indicated it's unlikely to be cash.

It's unlikely to actually be an expense.

I'm willing to let that one comfortably willing to let that one go if we can Flip our procedure around such that we can actually start a process without committed funding, recognizing that it's typically an 18-month to 24-month process.

We shouldn't have to have allocated funding in place to be able to initiate an adoption, recognizing the actual expense will be subsequent budget.

I want to make sure we hear from all directors on any of this.

Is there anybody who hasn't spoken up yet who would like to speak up?

Director Pinkham.

Yeah because for me just looking at some of this when we look at curriculum adoption that's meaning more money that we just won't spend not necessarily we're saving money we're just planning we won't spend it versus when we're doing the staff reduction yes we're saving money we're not hiring as much staff as they had before so to me sometimes it sounds like it's kind of Director Burke was saying but we can still do the planning process for curriculum adoption but you know so we're Again we are just not spending money right now.

The other portion for me is that I right now would not support not opening Cedar Park.

The money that we had for the one time spend, has that surplus money already been built into what is being proposed to us?

It seems like every year we come up with a surplus.

Yeah that is on the first slide with the checkmarks and it's the $7 million of staff underspend.

That's where we are estimating that amount.

Okay.

Director Blanford.

I have a question for Chris, I'm wondering Chris if you have any sense I assume you didn't poll your people but do you have any sense as to what the principal core would advise us on this?

I think frequently we get caught up in adult issues and you lose sight of the kids.

Foremost it's equity.

Without question and one of the things that's coming out of the conversation that I keep hearing specifically around the idea that we wouldn't, we'd postpone again the curriculum adoption if that $11 million can't be found elsewhere and I know they've done the metrics so I trust that JoLynn has come out the best she can on that.

Yes it's inequitable for of our students not to have had access to excellent materials.

The greater inequity though is going to land on the highest need schools.

The highest need schools have on average the earliest career teachers who have the least amount of seniority so when these 180 people that potentially could be affected by this budget crisis they're going to be affected in the schools that need the most.

They're going to be affected, what I mean by that is that the teachers who are least senior are more likely to be teaching at schools with the highest rates of poverty.

So the principal core is most concerned without question, anything else, that kids have their teachers, that teachers are available to them and the same people are there next year who are there this year because relationships matter.

So let me follow that because I think that's a very interesting and relevant piece of information.

You as a principal of one of those high need schools, it seems pretty clear to me, would you rather have a new textbook or would you rather have a teacher?

I need a teacher to teach.

Thank you.

JoLynn I want to return to your suggestion a couple of comments ago about the $5 million for next year.

That hasn't been earmarked for anything in particular correct?

So I would like to know how my colleagues feel about that item, that is $5 million for curriculum adoption, it's like a line item for curriculum adoption.

Is anyone comfortable keeping that in the $11.1 million and just sort of splitting it in half there meaning that the adoptions we've already committed to or started we could do incrementally and the 5 million that we haven't really designated we would be willing to include in the cuts.

Is that some sort of option Jill?

I am comfortable with setting aside I mean including in the 11 million the 5 million have set aside.

I'm comfortable including the math what monies we've spent on the math school the middle school math adoption whatever is left on that for now.

And I would like to know the cost because the cost of rolling up the English language arts adoption perhaps in our equity factor analysis our tier 1 and tier 2 schools Because it seems to me that putting new teachers in schools with poor materials doesn't help them at all.

And so if we're going to put money towards the adoption of materials we should look to do it there.

And I'd like to know the cost of that because that would be then if we're going to roll out the language arts adoption I'd like us to do it in that way to support those teachers the best we can.

Director Harris.

I am uncomfortable with determining how we do these spends at this table with the clock running.

I would much prefer to see a menu of alternatives with real backup.

I also would respond to the would you rather have an experienced teacher or a new textbook I think that's a hugely simplistic analysis and oh it would be that easy to make choices and to do our jobs in a responsible fashion.

I wish.

Alright Director Patu.

I guess I would just like us to really look at when we are taking away from the most needy schools and when we're talking about eliminating opportunity gaps I take pause when I'm really thinking about what are we going to do when we're actually taking and as he has said most of the teachers that are in the needy schools are new teachers and I have a big concern with that.

When we remove those teachers out of there you know what are we going to do about eliminating our opportunity gaps?

Does that mean that we're going to continue on to build our gap and not being able to meet those needs nor for our kids to actually be successful.

So that's something that I would really be thinking about you know in terms of us trying to be able to meet the needs of our most neediest kids.

It's something that we've been working on for years and the more we take away the more we go backward.

You know we're really trying to move forward and hopefully that we can do something more positive.

Thank you Director Patu.

So JoLynn how do you feel about us talking about consensus over WSS and then.

I feel like I've got a checkmark there.

Okay is everybody, is everyone okay with plan for WSS?

I feel like I had some checkmarks for the 5 million, some thumbs.

Any thumbs for the 5 million?

That is money that has not been earmarked specifically beyond being a line item for curriculum TBD.

Is anyone okay with that?

The 5 million?

Okay.

Alright.

Can I ask a timing question since I recognize that a lot of these decisions are time sensitive.

Is WSS the most time sensitive with the most trickle down and by locking that it enables you to not create disruption stream to disruption and this remaining 11 million part of our decision process is recognizing time sensitivity of that?

Somewhat, I mean the WSS and the Cedar Park discussion I think that we are clear on what we are supposed to do in moving forward with those, those are two big things.

Having some remainder that could potentially result in staffing or program reductions in lieu of other options is a concern still for us timing wise.

I don't know what those are coming up with the rest of that list when we talk about how we came to this methodology part of it I mean Stephen walked you through the big highlights but it was those big dollars the time and the analysis to try to chase down $100,000 is not possible in this timeline so we will continue to keep working.

Well then it does sound like we have consensus on WSS but not necessarily on the 11.1.

So we'll add to our next steps where we have central office and we will central office admin and we'll keep working on our plan for that.

We've been meeting with you in two by twos and we will work on the restoration plan for restoring cuts as well as try to come up with some alternatives for the for the remainder.

Thank you.

Thank you and thanks to those that are listening we appreciate that this is a very difficult place nobody likes it and we have an option to go get something good in Olympia.

Thank you for your time.

Okay well that concludes the first part of our agenda we are going to move on to the next part I'm going to allow the board to have a five-minute break does five minutes seem okay and then we'll come back to discuss the student assignment transition plan for 2017-18.

Thank you.