Seattle School Board Meeting 1272016 Part 1

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, it's way past our time, huh?

Well, let's get started.

I would like to welcome everyone to our December 7 regular board meeting.

Welcome to our student representative from Garfield High School Elsie Mackley.

Ms. Mackley will have an opportunity to provide comments regarding her school later in the meeting.

Ms. Ritchie the roll call please.

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If everyone would please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

We don't have any recognition this evening.

Okay schools of the distinction we will go ahead and hand it over to our Superintendent Nyland.

Actually I'm going to start with a different recognition.

Later this evening the board will select its officers for the coming year and that means that Director Patu who served as board president for the last year will be stepping down.

And I want to publicly thank her for her service.

She's been connected to the district for decades and has helped us lead in so many ways both as board president and in support of our eliminating the opportunity gap.

And everywhere she rises to the occasion in terms of bringing her passion for connecting with and caring for and loving our students.

Over this last year she's represented the district obviously at all of these board meetings which takes a lot of work and the committee meetings.

As well as hosting community meetings and representing the district at the Council of great city schools telling about what we are doing to eliminate opportunity gaps.

This year she started the work on relationships at the summer leadership Institute telling some of her very powerful stories about how she and her husband have had such a big impact in students lives over many many years.

many years.

So I want to thank Director Patu very very publicly on behalf of Seattle Public Schools for your leadership and support of all of our students.

Thank you Dr. Nyland.

I was not expecting this but I actually wanted to, I was going to give my speech beforehand but I guess it's time to go ahead and give my farewell speech.

It's really been a privilege to serve Seattle Public Schools as president for a whole year.

Being president is actually not a very easy thing.

because when you are president you have to worry about all 54,000 kids that we serve in Seattle Public Schools.

And at the same time looking at the work that is very important to move us forward in terms of all the various goals that we have set as a board in order for us to be able to move this district forward.

I believe that All our board directors who are up here today believe in the goals that we have already voted on and goals that we want to move forward and I believe that we have actually set standards in terms of where we wanted to go.

Eliminating the opportunity gap is a very important issue for me mainly for the fact because it's been around for such a long time.

I've been in the district for over 30 some years and we talked about eliminating the opportunity gap almost on a regular basis.

Been involved in many committee meetings that actually has to do with eliminating the opportunity gap.

But I think this year has been a year that we actually are seeing things moving forward.

We voted on an initiative for supporting African-American males.

We also looking at eliminating opportunity gaps as a key or as a goal for this district to move forward this year.

Well there's a lot of work to be done but at the same time I feel that we have a board this year that actually are very supportive of the work that continues to go on and who really believe in their heart that we can make a difference in terms of the lives of 54,000 students that we serve.

We know that it's a hard job But that is what we are here for.

We are here to make a difference and we are here to actually be able to serve our children the best way that we can.

And as president I want to say thank you so much for all your support.

I want to thank all my board directors because I would not have been able to move forward if it wasn't for your support.

And I thank you to our superintendent Nyland for being a very supportive superintendent.

And I know sometime he probably gets tired of hearing from me but at the same time is that as president you want to make sure that you work together with your superintendent to make sure that we both are on the same page in terms of moving this district forward.

So I also want to say thank you to all the staff.

I would not have been able to make it if it wasn't for their support.

Erin who is always on my back reminding me what I need to do and where I need to go.

Lauren who actually stepped in when Teresa was not here who both of us blind leading the blind but at the same time we made it through.

Teresa who has always been here thank you so much for your support.

I could not have done it without you always reminding me and writing me notes and what I'm supposed to be doing in order for me not to screw it up.

I'm not a perfect Leader, leaders make mistakes but I think we learn from our mistakes.

It makes us better leaders.

I remember when I was actually, when I was growing up and thinking about what I needed to do my father always reminded me to be a good leader you have to learn how to serve.

For me serving is what is most important.

We have to know exactly what is it that we need to do in order for us to make a difference in the lives of 54,000 kids that we serve in Seattle Public Schools.

We are not here because You know we want to be here, we are here because there is a purpose for all of us to be here to make those changes that we need to make and yes we are going to screw up, we are not going to be able to do everything the way that all of you want us to do it but we are doing the best that we can and be able to hopefully successfully be able to provide opportunities for every child that we serve here in Seattle Public Schools.

So on that note I want to say thank you so much to everyone for your support.

I hope as a leader I made some difference and at the same time the next person that comes on I know she'll do a great job.

So thank you very much for that support and I actually I have another thing that I needed to read before I actually close up.

And this is actually for Teresa.

Before we get into the business of our meeting I wanted to take a moment to thank Teresa Hill our board office manager for her six years of service in the board office.

Today is Teresa's last board meeting before she moves to a new position in the human resource division.

Teresa you have provided great support to the board over these years.

Thank you so much because I know I would have been lost if you were not here.

We are happy for your new job and are glad you will keep working for Seattle Public Schools.

We wish you the best in the transition that you are actually making.

I'm going to miss you but you know life goes on and I know that you'll do great.

You know Culver is very happy to have you.

So thank you so much for all the work that you've done and I want to say right now thank you.

Alright thank you Betty.

Recognitions for 11 of our schools who have been named schools of distinction so thank you for coming tonight for our principals and thank you for all the incredibly hard work that has gone into this recognition.

Statewide, we've got, I think it's the, now I won't get the name right, CEE, whatever that stands for.

They do number crunching statewide and they figure out who are the schools that have continued to make progress consistently over a number of years.

And then they are recognized by each of the educational service districts.

Out of 36 schools across our region, our local regional education service district, 11 of those schools were from Seattle.

And as we were celebrating with cake in the lobby a couple of them were talking about however many years ago it was when they were level I schools and identified by the state as needing the added support and added oversight.

And so for many of these schools it's, well for all of them it's an accomplishment and for some of them it's been an incredible transformation.

So I'm going to read through the list alphabetically and ask the principals to come forward and I'll ask Anna Ritchie if she'll help pass out the certificates to each principal And then when I'm done I'll invite the board down front and we'll do a picture with the principal and representatives that they have here from their schools.

And I might add finally that nine of these schools are repeats from previous years and so they've continued their track record of success.

So BF Day Elementary, Principal Stanley Jaskot.

Broadview Thompson K8, principal RJ Sammons represented by assistant principal Carmen Nordhagen.

Cleveland high school principal George Greland.

Hawthorne elementary principal Sandra Scott.

Madrona K8, principal Mary McDaniel.

Olympic Hills Elementary Principal Stacy Crum.

Rainier Beach High School Principal Keith Smith.

Represented by our Dean of Students Jocelyn Alexander Shaw.

Rainier View Elementary Principal Anitra Pinchback-Jones.

Viewlands Elementary Principal Michelle Ota.

And West Seattle Elementary Principal Pamela McCowan Conyers.

I went by Hazel Wolf, I'm sorry.

Hazel Wolf K8 STEM Principal Debbie Nelson.

We're going to come down and join you in front of the dance.

Thank you again to our principals and to our incredible staff and educators and the parents that make awesome things happen for our kids.

You might as well go ahead and continue on.

We don't have a student presentation.

Superintendent comments.

We don't have any student presentations tonight.

Transportation proved to be a problem for Washington Middle School.

This evening I'll be sharing some highlights with regard to our strategic plan, some critical issues that are coming up, some of the good news and highlights and some of the community engagement opportunities throughout the district.

Starting with some of the highlights from our SMART goals which are based on our strategic plan.

One of the programs that we've mentioned a few times but I will take an opportunity to mention again is My Brother's Keeper.

My Brother's Keeper is part of the president's initiative to eliminate opportunity gaps.

Aki was one of the first pilots, first 10 pilots in the nation a year ago and Seattle is now one of 30 districts that is working on implementation of My Brother's Keeper.

They identified at Aki 60 African-American students and provided success mentors for each of those students and presented some pretty incredible results over the last semester of the last year.

As a result of that the mayor included in his budget $1.5 million for eliminating the opportunity gap, part of which will fund extending My Brother's Keeper to five elementary, or five middle schools.

So the program will be extended to McClure, Danny, Mercer, and Washington middle school.

And Sarah Pritchett executive director is the district's team captain for making this work happen.

So thank you to the city, thank you to Sarah and thank you to each of these principals for stepping up.

It seems like a very specific, very targeted program that has been demonstrated nationally and has been demonstrated here locally.

Improving community engagement is one of the key goals that the board has set for us and it's also part of goal three for our strategic plan.

The human resources department is supporting that goal by setting up problem-solving classes for district staff and for principals.

And they've also engaged the staff here at the John Stanford Center in surveying climate.

And we had 400 and some employees participate in that so it was a very good participation rate.

And there was lots of good news in there.

93% said that they were proud of the way that their work contributed to the mission of the district.

And they pointed out that there were areas for improvement especially in terms of how conflicts are resolved in a timely and effective manner.

And so as I mentioned the human resources department is part of one of the board's SMART goals will be providing a series of two-day trainings for district-level managers and principals.

The third area that I would highlight under our SMART goals has to do with our positive student teacher relationships.

As mentioned before on September 1 we had more than 4000 of our educators participating in a districtwide training on how we could create positive teacher student relationships.

And the schools committed to setting a goal for climate and teachers committed to reaching out to build relationships with several specific students.

Over 50 of our schools, a little bit more than half, committed to using the student climate survey on a regular basis throughout the school year.

In one of those schools, Viewlands Elementary, I guess all of them have gotten their data back but we've heard about one of them who has gotten their data back and they referenced several specific questions where they saw 16% and 20%.

increases in the student responses around some of those key areas that we've noted before.

When students say that I have an adult at school who cares about me, then they're more likely, not guaranteed, but more likely to be successful in the classroom and proficient.

So continue to be enthused about the work that our schools are doing and particularly in this area of climate and relationships.

Some of the hot topics coming up, certainly budget is a big part of that.

We launched the work, well we've been doing the work for a long time and we've been having community meetings but we launched it with some more public recognition of the fact that we have a huge issue to solve with regard to the budget.

And we are quick to point out that yeah I have to be careful.

So our local legislators have been very supportive of McCleary and what we can do to close gaps but it takes the 50% plus one in Olympia to get that work done and so far that hasn't happened.

As a result we have $100 million more than half of our levy that goes into salaries in order to pay competitive salaries.

And that's called out in the Supreme Court ruling of October 6, 2016 as being one of the areas that the state is responsible for under McCleary that they have not yet addressed.

Furthermore the legislature said in their wisdom many years ago.

that surely they would have solved McCleary by now and so therefore we would no longer need a portion of our school levy.

And so $30 million in our school levy that's already been approved by our local taxpayers goes away at the end of this year.

So between those two we have a $74 million shortfall.

That's essentially pretty close to what a levy failure would be.

And it's been decades since we've seen a dramatic cut such as this.

And it's unfortunate that had the legislature done their job in earlier.

sessions, this would not have to take place.

And in fact there was concerted testimony last year saying that the levee cliff was here, it was real, and that it would be too late to address it during this particular session.

So, we've shared that information with families, we've shared that information with staff, we met with principals in this room yesterday and asked them to share that information in the buildings.

And we have several more meetings scheduled throughout the community.

Our goal is that we will be bringing to the board on January 11th a list of what those cuts look like.

$74 million is 10% of our budget and so we will do our best to protect certain portions of the budget but cuts of that magnitude will probably touch on virtually every part of the district.

We have heard some testimony about well just say no, don't do it and that's not really an option for us.

We are required by law to have a balanced budget and to make a budget within the resources that we have and we don't have those resources.

So we will need to move forward and plan for the worst and hope that the legislature will take action in a timely way.

For us that means pretty much at the beginning of the session we have to notify staff by the 15th of May if they are not coming back and so legislative action that we widely expect to happen possibly not until the end of June will be I'm sure happy to take that news whenever it comes and hopefully it will be good news and the legislature will restore at least the local funding and do something toward moving forward on McCleary.

My comment as well that the mayor has, the city has been a good partner in so many ways from the families and education levy to preschool to the money that the mayor just put in his budget.

And they will be working with us in terms of their lobbyist will be working with our lobbyist in terms of making the legislature aware of the impact that will happen here.

And we do have on our website a more complete statement from the mayor about how they may be able to help.

Eliminating the opportunity gap is one of the most important parts of our work and as I say as we go through the process of cutting budget we want to do everything we can to continue that work recognizing that it will be challenging for us to balance the budget.

One of the issues that we've been working on for a number of years, kind of semi-related to the change in bell times this year, a year ago we agreed with our partner SEA that we would add 20 minutes to the length of the school day to be more comparable to what other districts around the state are doing.

And after surveying our parents we found that we had a divided set of information depending on which tier parents were in.

And so the tentative recommendation is that we would split the difference and add 10 minutes in the AM, 10 minutes in the PM.

Virtually everybody was agreed that we wanted to go with an early release rather than a late start.

And then as to the day, staff said that Wednesday would be best for professional development.

Parents tended to prefer Fridays.

We did note that in other districts Fridays have been problematic for staff and student attendance.

The operations committee as they reviewed this item asked us to do a cost analysis of what it would cost to move to two tiers which would be a revisiting of how do we do the bell times work with a shorter, how do I say that?

A shorter amount of exposure for the transportation piece and for the early and late start piece.

The transportation department doing their pencil work thinks that they have the cost down from 3.8 million to 2.8 million and we are in the process of analyzing bids now and so we will have a more precise number here very very soon.

If it is close to the $3 million that it costs to do that given the magnitude of the budget cuts that we need to make our likely recommendation is that we would need to retain the three-tier system for at least the coming year.

In addition, Pegi McEvoy, assistant superintendent for operations is working with schools to see if there are other alternatives.

I think that we had tried earlier to see if there was anybody that wanted to switch to tier 3 and if there had been then we could trade.

I think there was some of those last year.

This year we don't have any that we know of that are willing to trade into tier 3. We do have some in tier 3 that are raising some interesting suggestions about whether they could become kind of a non-bust school in order to move into tier 2. So Pegi McEvoy is looking at some of those.

So far we are dodging the snow bulletins.

But they seem to be getting more, coming closer and certainly feeling like it in terms of temperature out there although as is the case often in Seattle the temperature goes down and the clouds go away.

I think the forecast is for snow midday on Thursday, tomorrow, and possibly on Friday.

So the city has been gearing up.

They've been holding meetings with us.

We're gearing up.

We've sent out the notice to staff so we're as prepared as we can be for winter weather.

Moving on to good news.

A lot of kudos from the community.

Roxhill Elementary kindergarten teacher Michael, I'm not sure how to say that, Popelka, has been awarded a Fulbright distinguished award in teaching from the US Department of State and has the opportunity to do some research from January until May in the Amsterdam area.

Two of our schools, Roosevelt and Cleveland have been doing very well with their ultimate Frisbee teams and are working to send representatives to the national tournament.

Tyra Williams here at John Stanford Center, our McKinney-Vento liaison was called out by Roy Chang, pastor of the Seattle Chinese Alliance Church.

Saying that Tyra is hands down the most relationally connected Seattle Public Schools representative I know.

And goes on to sing her praises for helping build the church school partnerships, 45 of them now.

Ingram high school teacher Robert Van Ravensburg in the automotive program at Ingram high school received a very nice comment from one of the directors from the Shoreline Community College talking about how good his technical skills were and how well he did at making sure that the students were employable.

And kudos to Boo Falcon Foster, teacher at Chief Sealth who provides Native American support there.

One of her colleagues talked about how she's been getting buy-in from Native students and how they are noticing the difference in their classroom.

So a lot of people in the community are noticing the good work that our staff are doing.

Other good news, we had a session here in this room last week.

Keisha Scarlett, Director of Professional Growth and Educational Support worked with HR to do a session for would-be principals in our district.

So a lot of our assistant principals or people who had completed their internship programs in our district were here and had the opportunity to learn about what's important for instructional leaders in Seattle.

and had an opportunity to interact with representatives from the district administrative staff and from human resources.

The human resources department has been working on the substitute fill rate.

We started out pretty well at the start of the year and then the flu season came and so they've done quite a few things and as a result of that the fill rate is creeping back up there.

So it's always a challenge, the legislature did make some changes a year ago, we made some changes a year ago and so we do recognize that it's a real challenge for learning when you are short a teacher in a building for the day.

School board retreat, school board met here all day Saturday, thank you.

And had a great session with regard to three of our goals, looking at the budget, community engagement, and eliminating opportunity gaps.

We had a lot of good give and take and exchange of good ideas around that.

Yesterday in this room we were grateful we did not have a snow day.

Dr. Dowdy Abbe was here and shared with our principal core the history of race relations in Seattle.

So fascinating to go back.

I knew some of the history from the 60s but he went all the way back to the 1860s and talked about Very interesting, so we were one of the first states in the country in the 1860s and 70s that had African-Americans had the right to vote and as we kind of know women, white and African-American had the right to vote for I don't know about six or seven years until it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

So, there's been times in our past where we've been leaders in the work and then there's been times in our past where it's been, as it has been elsewhere, very controversial.

And unfortunately, as Director Patu noted, there is that long pattern that shows that it continues to be an issue that we need to address and do better at making progress.

There was a, oh I should mention around the leadership learning day Director Harris and Director Blanford were here for that so I appreciate their support for both coming out and meeting and greeting and working with the principals as well as being there for that session.

And then yesterday we had Saw him here earlier.

We had one of our students that was recognized at a regional meeting and the theme was around kind of core plus.

So it's how do we prepare students for college but how do we also prepare students for career and for life.

And we've got a lot of energy building around this.

The Chamber of Commerce was there, trades were there, the Port of Seattle is putting money into this.

So there's just quite a bit of impetus around what can we do to prepare our students for certainly college but also career and maybe particularly some of the technical opportunities that are available in our community.

And again thank you to Directors Harris, Geary and Burke for attending that meeting.

And then building resilience in the face of trauma is one of the areas that we have done a lot of work in.

David Lewis has been very well received.

I think about 4,000 of our, 4,000 that's too many.

I think it's about 2,000 of our teachers have been through the workshops that he has put on and he continues to give workshops not only to our staff but to some of the others in our community.

School visits, I continue to be impressed with the work that I see in schools in many ways in terms of good instruction as well as in the relationship building was this last week have been at Daniel Bagley McDonald international John Stanford International and we haven't done as well at reporting out on the visits that other staff make to schools.

We will be making that change here as we get better at coordinating our information but Michael Tolley, associate superintendent for teaching and learning has been to Stevens and World School that I know of.

I think there were others in there but we will make sure that we do a better job of getting that information in here.

And then community engagement opportunities.

Garfield high school had their report card conferences recently and they had students, I suppose many schools do the student-led conferences and this is kind of a combination of student-led conferences as well as what many schools and districts do in terms of sharing projects and trying to get community input.

And I know that Kim Whitworth here from the central office participated and had great things to say about the opportunity to interact with students and hear what student hopes dreams and aspirations were and to give some feedback to them.

I do know that the event raised some questions that we had to research so unfortunately I guess our policies make it difficult to communicate what we are trying to do.

They use the word volunteers and our policy and procedures distinguishes between volunteers and visitors.

A volunteer being somebody who is in a school on a regular basis and needs to go through the fingerprinting and all of those kinds of things.

More like somebody who is coming in to be a part of, in this case, a fairly brief activity that did not leave them alone with students for any significant amount of time.

And our policy does not require them to be fingerprinted.

So we will continue to work through that.

It did raise some other questions about how consistent we are with our volunteer, not visitor, but our volunteer screening.

And that is an area that has been a challenge for us over the years.

Probably due to past budget cuts and we will be getting that information out to principals and reminding them what the procedures are and that those need to be followed.

The early learning family engagement.

was held here in this room I guess a while back and we continue to work with Highline, Seattle, Edmonds and Everett to learn about early learning and how we work together so there was a lot of shareouts during that session about what others are doing and what we are doing and where we can steal ideas from each other.

The eliminating opportunity gaps is part of as we know the central part of our work and we've been having conversations for the last six months with the Casey family programs and the Gates foundation about some of the things that we've been trying to do.

and how they might be able to help us in that work.

At the same time we were talking with the Wallace Foundation and that unfortunately proved not to be the success that we wanted it to be.

They actually said that we were too far along in our work for them to support us and they needed something that was more of a blank slate so that they could measure the impact of their program.

But thanks to that ongoing conversation it looks like we will be moving forward with issues around chronic absenteeism and the disproportionate suspensions and may very well get support from Casey family programs and the Gates Foundation.

The Meany is getting ready to reopen so the Meany middle school had a family meeting on November 2nd.

had that opportunity for the principal who has been named to talk about what some of the programs were coming forward and specifically about creative advantage part that they would play in that.

And council for large public housing authorities.

Wow.

Webinar on intergovernmental partnerships within the housing and educational sector.

28 people attending that webinar and talking about how the Seattle Housing Authority and how Seattle Public Schools have been working in a partnership.

So we continue to be called out nationally for the partnership work that we have been doing with the Seattle Housing Authority.

Specifically this year they launched the importance of attendance and particularly the importance of attendance during the first month of school for the 6,000 students that we have that are in public housing.

Somali cultural responsiveness training at Aki Kurose was held on November 23. With 80 people including teachers and our CBO partners lots of opportunities to continue our elimination of the opportunity gap through improving our cultural awareness and partnerships.

The Seattle Council of Parent Teacher Student Association met with us recently and they wanted to know how we were following up on the family engagement work.

The Harvard seminar was actually held here in Renton this year and it allowed us to send about 60 people rather than the 20 or 25 that we've been sending the last few years.

They also had supported a lot of our work in terms of our eliminating the opportunity gap week in October by helping find some teaching materials that were helpful.

And during our breakfast meeting during the summer leadership Institute they had pitched schools of excellence which is a national PTSA program.

They told us that 15 of our schools had joined in that program which is I think about 40% of the number of schools statewide that have participated.

They also gave us some good feedback on how to communicate the 20 minutes, 24 credits and the coming budget cuts.

have held several meetings around the student assignment plan and that will be coming up on the agenda later tonight and I noticed that quite a few people want to comment on that.

And then finally upcoming community engagement meetings, the community engagement task force meeting will be on December 19 here at 6 PM.

We will be having an undocumented family informational event coming up I think it's next week.

Thank you to the City of Seattle for providing support for that.

Cedar Park community meeting will be held on December 15 at 630 to begin to get input from the community about what that option school might look like.

And we are partnering with the Seattle Council of PTSA for a series of budget meetings that will be held throughout the district to help make people aware of the coming budget gaps and what we will do to address that.

And finally as Director Patu noted Theresa Hale who has managed the board office for the last six years has recently taken another position in HR so she is not going far but she will be moving out of that very important role that she has held in the board office.

And we certainly want to thank Teresa for her many many years of service and keeping us all in line and functioning and on time and getting the job done.

So thank you Teresa.

Thank you Dr. Nyland.

And now we are going to welcome Elsie Mackley.

Ms. Mackley is a member of the class of 2017 at Garfield High School and is the ASG Senator.

I will now turn it over to Ms. Mackley for her comments.

Is this on right?

Thank you.

I am grateful to be here.

My name is Elise Mackley.

Yeah, as you said, I'm the ASG senator at my school.

I've also had the opportunity to be on the task force for sexual assault and sexual harassment that happened a couple years ago.

And we, in my ASB class, had the opportunity to to review the student rights and responsibilities handbook to provide feedback for that.

So that was cool.

I want to talk about that a little bit.

So Garfield had the opportunity to welcome Rebecca Milliman to our school for a grant.

And she's been working with us.

And as a result of the task force, there was also an office for student civil rights made here.

But I guess I don't really know what else has happened as a result of the task force besides the packets that were sent out.

you know, counselors in schools and stuff like that, the school climate survey.

So maybe you have answers to that.

But I guess some other things, if I may bring up, Garfield is a really special school because it's a neighborhood school and it also draws from all over the district because it has a lot to offer including good classes and lots of programs and so it has a lot of different types of people and that is fabulous but it also has created a little bit of a problem where there's an opportunity gap so I think it's good to hear that you guys are trying to work on that, because that's very dear to Garfield's heart.

We've been trying to work on that for a while now, I guess.

Also, Garfield has a lot of students, and so that's again really great because we get to provide opportunities to them but it also means that we're very pressured in terms of you know the space that we have and teachers that we have so pretty much every teacher shares their classroom with another teacher and lots of them are overflowing and then I guess so Garfield is really known through you know in the city for protests that we participate in or organize or you know we're very vocal and just this year like the football team taking kneeling for the national anthem and the walkout that we held or participated in a few weeks ago and so Garfield is very present in Seattle, stuff like that, but it's kind of our way of expressing our values and stuff.

But I guess there's kind of a little disconnect between The district and the schools because we don't really see every day what is going on in the district, you know, what you guys do.

And you guys work really, really hard every day and everyone in the district does.

But we don't see that.

I guess it would be nice to know what you guys are doing.

Anyway, I also am curious, before we were asked to come and sit here with you guys, I didn't really know and I guess none of the other ASB officers knew that This was a thing that, you know, a student was asked to sit on the school board.

And so I'm curious what you guys do with the comments that we make and the concerns that we express.

And so if you want to answer that.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was kind of all a little jumbled.

I guess I don't really, I haven't done this before, and so, but I trust that you guys work very hard to see that all our needs are met, and thank you for having me.

I'm glad that I get to stay for the rest of the meeting.

Well thank you very much Ms. Mackley we really appreciate your presence and this is probably the best way for you to learn what the board directors do.

This is our monthly board meetings that we have and this is where we actually communities can come and yell and scream and ask questions and it's our job to hopefully to comment and make comment that you know whether we support or if we screwed up we can admit that.

But this is the best way to be able to see the board in action.

So you are getting your chance to actually do that.

And if you want to learn more about the board you can come to every board meeting that we have.

So thank you.

Oh that's right, watch it on TV.

Or come to my community meeting.

I represent your school and would be happy to have you come to a community meeting.

I'm sure my colleagues would join in that and there's a great opportunity for richer dialogue and back and forth when you come to community meetings.

So that's an option as well.

And there are seven board directors and each one of them have community meetings.

So you can look at the schedule and decide which board meeting you want to attend.

So thank you again for your presence.

We are now into our consent portion of tonight's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

I second the motion.

Okay approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded.

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

Okay see that there is none.

All those who are in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those who oppose.

Okay the consent agenda has passed and now we will now move to the election of officers.

As the secretary of the board who presides over the election process I will now turn the gavel over to Superintendent Nyland.

Alright thank you.

This is the two or three minutes during the year when I have the opportunity to run the board meeting.

Before I open the floor for nominations I would like to review the election steps.

We have three officer positions, president, vice president, and member at large.

And I will take nominations from the board.

A second is not required for the nomination but can be made.

After all the nominations are made for a position there will be an opportunity for directors to provide comments before the voting.

And then after the comments have been concluded the board will vote for each position in the order that the nominations were made.

By law and by board policy the voting will be conducted by roll call vote.

The voting will conclude at the point when one nominee gets four or more votes.

After the president has been elected we will move on to the vice president and then to the member at large.

So in summary for each position there will be nominations then discussion and then the voting.

At the conclusion of the election process for all three positions each new officer will have an opportunity to provide their remarks.

So nominations are now in order for the office of president.

I nominate Sue Peters for President.

Sue Peters has been nominated for President.

Are there other nominations for President?

Are there other nominations for President?

If there are no more nominations I close the nominations for president.

Would any directors like to make any comments at this time?

Director Patu.

I nominate Sue because I've actually had a chance to work with Sue since she's been on the board and she makes pretty sound decisions and we both have the same interest which is moving this district forward and we don't agree on everything but I believe that Sue has a passion for the students that we serve here at the district so I'm very happy to actually nominate her as the candidate for president.

Director Harris.

I have had the privilege of working with both President Patu and Vice President Sue Peters this last year.

And frankly it's been a heavy lift.

But one of the things that we've done is we've communicated well.

We've worked well as a team.

And because of the challenges thrown our way we have been more reactive than proactive.

And I know that moving forward Sue Peters will demonstrate the kind of candid leadership that will help us all.

Ms. Ritchie please call the roll for Director Peters for president.

Director Blanford.

No.

Director Burke.

Yes.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

With six votes in favor, one opposed this motion carries.

Congratulations Director Peters on your selection as president.

Thank you.

Nominations are now in order for the Office of Vice President.

I nominate Leslie Harris.

I second.

Leslie Harris has been nominated for Vice President.

Are there any other nominations?

Are there any other nominations?

If there are no more nominations I close the nominations for vice president.

Would any directors like to make any comments at this time?

Director Geary.

I've nominated Leslie Harris for the position of Vice President because having sat on the executive for a year I think it is good for continuity and consistency that we continue and maximize her experience in that role as she was new to the board.

I think that's a great use of her, the experience she's gained this last year.

I've also nominated her because she does bring a unique sensibility in terms of her desire for transparency for our board and that her continuous reminders to all of us I think are good if at times.

They are a reminder that we are not doing our best always but it is good that she will continue to point out that we need to do that because that is a priority for our public and one that I think is important.

I think she also brings another great voice into the executive in that Leslie seems to always appreciate the work of the people within the district at every level.

From the people who we don't see often in this room who sometimes we don't even see during the day in our buildings because they are working at night.

And I think it's really important that at the very very top we have somebody who is always remembering the people who go to work in our district every day and that that sensibility needs to be brought as well to many of the decisions that we make.

So, while she, I know she cares deeply about our students as we all do, those are some of the unique aspects and the individual perspectives that I think will be valuable to our executive.

Director Peters.

I am also very happy to support Leslie Harris as Vice President.

I've had the honor of working with her closely on the executive team this last year and really got to know her very well.

And what I really appreciate from Leslie is her honesty, her tenacity, and her sense of humor.

And what is absolutely undeniable about Leslie is her commitment, absolute commitment to the students and to doing her job well.

She is one of the hardest working people I know and she is a person of integrity.

And so I am very happy to support her as Vice President.

Ms. Ritchie please call the roll for Director Harris for Vice President.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Seven votes in favor none opposed this motion carries.

Congratulations Director Harris on your election as Vice President.

Nominations are now in order for the office of member at large who serves with the president and vice president on the executive committee.

Director Burke.

I nominate Scott Pinkham for member at large.

Director Pinkham has been nominated for member at large.

Are there any other nominations?

Are there any other nominations?

If there are no more nominations I close the nominations for member at large.

Would any directors like to make any comments at this time?

Director Burke.

I'm enthusiastic about nominating Scott for the executive committee as a member at large.

I think Scott represents a constituency that has consistently, consistently been underrepresented.

He's been a tireless advocate for disadvantaged students and I think that he brings a strength and a voice to the executive committee to support that work.

I've had the pleasure of working with him on a couple of different topics to build some community engagement and work on some amendments and I'm excited for Scott to be in that role.

Director Geary.

I support this nomination as well and I hope for all the reasons Director Burke stated I know that being part of the executive is something that Scott has wanted to do so he has thought about this carefully and will bring to it the care that he brings to many of his decisions.

I also hope that in bringing Director Pinkham onto the executive that he will bring a perspective from a community that perhaps views organizations, community engagement, leadership with a fresh perspective.

And that hopefully that we as a board will benefit from that perspective and how we move forward in terms of including the voices of our community and making everybody feel welcome.

And maybe trying some culturally different ways to go about leadership and decision-making.

I would welcome that.

Director Harris.

I'm excited about this.

I'm excited about it because of several communities that Director Pinkham represents.

He also, for those of y'all that don't know.

is a long time employee and lecturer at the University of Washington so he brings a higher ed perspective to what we're doing.

He also brings a systems perspective, what has worked at the UW, what has not worked at the UW and gives us a heads up.

He also brings some balance to present companies verbosity.

And I like to tease him I say you know Scott it's like the old E.F.

Hutton ad.

When Scott Pinkham talks everybody listens.

And he brings a unique perspective and I'm excited about working with you.

Thank you.

Director Peters.

Well I have similar feelings about working with Scott and having him on the executive committee and just having him on the board.

I really appreciate Scott's thoughtfulness, his wisdom and the empathy he clearly has for our students and our various communities and his connection to these communities.

So I look forward to having him join us on the executive committee and for his continued contribution to the school district as a school board director.

Ms. Ritchie please call the roll for Director Pinkham for the office of member at large.

Director Geary.

Aye.

Director Harris.

Aye.

Director Patu.

Aye.

Director Peters.

Aye.

Director Blanford.

Aye.

Director Burke.

Aye.

Director Pinkham.

Aye.

Seven in favor, none opposed this motion carries.

Congratulations Director Pinkham on being elected as a member at large.

Madam President I would like to report that the officers for the Board of Directors for 2017 are President Director Peters, Vice President Director Harris and member at large Director Pinkham.

I would now like to invite our newly elected officers beginning with the president to offer any remarks that they would like to make.

Thank you Dr. Nyland and thank you to my colleagues for your support.

For your trust and your confidence in my leadership I greatly appreciate that and I hope to help lead the district responsibly.

It is definitely not something that any one person does on their own whether it is a superintendent or board president or even the board.

We are very much a community and a team and we need to work together.

I am also honored to serve alongside such dedicated and conscientious colleagues on the board.

We have a challenging year ahead of us in terms of figuring out a budget for the following year that may lack the resources that we need and we have some difficult decisions to make.

I am hoping that we can make decisions focusing on fundamentals and that we never forget the diversity of our students and our students needs.

I hope we can help the superintendent continue his work.

and help staff with what they need to do and give them what they need from us.

And I would also like this next year to be a focus for us on the different kinds of learners we have without our district.

I think this is something this current board has really brought to the fore and that is we have lots of different kinds of students, lots of different kinds of learners and there isn't any one way to reach them and I think we have a commitment on this board to being creative and assertive and making sure every single one of our students fulfills their potential.

So a year ago when Director Patu was elected president I had written a little speech for her and for some reason we didn't do the speeches and so I'm going to conclude with my speech about Betty which is overdue but I just feel it even more so after serving alongside her as board president.

So I've had the honor of serving with Betty Patu on the school board these past four years and I believe we are fortunate as a district to have someone of her integrity and experience as a public servant.

And we were even more fortunate to have her as our board leader.

She has been honored with a litany of awards for her many years of service in various communities of color.

Three decades, I believe it is.

To give you an idea of how long Betty has been working for the community, she and her husband were among the first recipients of Senator Patty Murray's Golden Tennis Shoe Award back in 1995. Two years ago, I had the pleasure of attending the University of Washington's MAP, which is the Multicultural Alumni Partnership Bridging the Gap Breakfast, to see Betty and her late husband, Von Paul, receive the Distinguished Community Service Award for dedicating their lives to the education and advocacy of all underrepresented students.

She never loses sight of what matters and why we are here.

What is best for our students?

How does this benefit our kids?

These are always the questions that underlie her actions.

She has proven to be a strong voice for our students and communities.

With nearly eight years of experience on the board she brings valuable oversight skills and knowledge to the position.

What is especially remarkable about Betty is that her experience is real.

She has helped kids get off the streets, encouraged them to stay in school.

I am convinced she has saved lives.

Even now former students come to her and tell her their lives took a different path because of her.

She is a woman of courage and conviction, an honest voice that speaks from the heart but with a solid sense of common sense.

She has the strength of character to be humble but is also fierce in her dedication to meet the needs of all the children of Seattle's public schools.

I knew then and I was proven right that she had the honesty and integrity to be a powerful leader of our board and our district.

She will be a very hard act to follow.

Thank you Betty.

Director Harris.

I was very humbled last year to be elected to the executive committee and I'm even more humbled now.

And it has been a steep and wondrous learning curve.

And to my colleagues on the dais, thank you for that.

And to the staff in the audience and the folks that work every day.

and every night on behalf of our kids, on behalf of our community thank you.

I might not respond to your email immediately but I will respond and I answer my phone and I am here to serve you and I am honored to do so.

Thank you.

Director Pinkham.

First of all a big Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ thank you for this honor.

Taking this step for me to be the executive on the executive committee I did also want to do it last year, toss my name in there and I was humbled by Leslie because she got the votes and I didn't.

But that's, now I'm going to be right beside her and Sue Peters to hopefully, again To work with the community and the schools and the school board to get them all working together for the students because again that is what we are here for.

And our students aren't just one size that we need to find something that fits all.

We need to make sure we're serving the needs of all our students and hopefully I can bring that voice to the executive committee and hopefully it's come across the time that I've been here because I can't believe it's been a year.

It's been a year since we've been here on the board and I look forward to this.

I know there's going to be definitely some challenges but the trials and tribulations that we all go through I think make us better people.

And the trials and tribulations that our school will go through will make it a better school.

And I think we have to let the community know yes there are times when it's going to be really tight and we have to make tough decisions that we can't take them all personally.

We just have to know hey it's a time to buckle down and tighten our belts in a few places and we'll get through this together.

Not with one group out exceeding the other but we'll get through this together hand-in-hand and again I appreciate the comments that my fellow board members made and made me feel a little bit, oh gee, humbled myself.

Again Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ, thank you.

Again congratulations to our new officers.

I would note that our new officers will take their roles immediately but for the sake of logistics directors will remain in their current seats for the remainder of tonight's meeting.

I now turn the gavel over to our new board president Director Sue Peters to take the meeting into a brief recess.

Okay I now call for when we say brief do we mean five minute recess?

How does that sound?

Okay five minute recess and after that we will have public comment so sit tight.

Thank you all very much.