Can I look at your projector?
OK.
All right.
So we will go to intro item number one, which is Middle School Social Studies Instructional Materials Adoption.
And this is coming out of Curriculum and Instruction.
And so with that, I'll turn it over to you.
And then we'll go to the committee chair.
Good evening, I'm Kathleen Vasquez, Literacy and Social Studies Program Manager, here with a recommendation from the Social Studies Adoption Committee that was formed last year and did all of its work last year around middle school adoption for social studies.
This adoption sort of originated out of the response to the growth boundaries where monies were identified to ensure that highly capable learners had resources for social studies and English language arts and in thinking about that Michael Tully and Shauna Heath determined it was important to provide resources for all middle school students and so the adoption encompassed both highly capable learners, English social studies general ed students, English language learners, and special ed learners.
So this is an adoption that is, we see, meeting the needs of all learners.
The committee met over the course of last year.
We, after much prodding, ended up with a very diverse group from middle schools across our district.
We had parents on the committee and community members on the committee.
I just want to remind the board that the last adoption was 19 years ago and as a result the materials are obsolete.
They no longer meet the new demands that teaching has placed on students so we had a committee that was very motivated.
The committee did follow to the letter the process identified by the adoption policy.
The committee did reach consensus.
I want to point out that not one of our committee members objected to any of the selections made.
In fact, our online community surveys for parents and staff indicated appreciation of all three texts that were selected.
I want to talk about why I believe we got to consensus.
We did a lot of work on the front end, gathering information from our families and staff to determine what their priorities were and what their needs were before launching into the adoption.
With that information, we were able to develop criteria that reflected the needs of the staff and the needs of our community.
Our criteria focuses very heavily on the need for diversity, diverse voices, diverse perspectives in the social studies text that we reviewed.
So that was the number one priority as identified by staff and community members.
The second largest priority fell in the area of texts that provided the resources to push our students to college and career readiness.
So the committee looked very heavily at the resources, at the text complexity, at the types of questions that were asked, at primary source documents that enriched the history being told.
at the work around synthesis and evaluation so that we made sure that it not only met college and career readiness but also met the needs of our highly capable learners.
We carefully reviewed those texts and at one point I will admit that our committee was, let's see, very critical of the diverse perspectives being told in through the social studies text that we reviewed and they were not as satisfied.
And so we had a really critical discussion around whether to move forward and in the end the committee determined that they selected the books that best met the needs of our learners and did the best job telling the stories of marginalized people of all the texts that were offered to us.
And I will stop there and say that we do believe we did select the best texts.
We do have work to do around ensuring that more voices from marginalized groups are heard and we believe we can do that with additional committee work.
from community members and our teachers and providing more resources to tell a story that is more encompassing of the people whose stories have not been told.
So I'll stop there and open it up for questions.
Thank you for that great overview.
Let's go to our committee chair please and hear from the committee.
This item was heard by the curriculum and instruction committee on the 10th of August and moved forward to the board for approval.
We had a rich conversation about that very issue and I shared a little bit of frustration in hearing that our text, the ones that are being considered to move forward aren't as diverse, don't have as many diverse perspectives.
Is there any leverage point that we as a district have to push the publishers of textbooks on that issue?
I wish I knew the answer to that.
One of the interesting things about adoption is once you enter into adoption you can have no conversation with vendors.
So I have not explored that.
I was invited to serve on a social studies publishing committee after the August 10th board meeting I was invited to serve and kind of give voice but it was a little after the fact so I wasn't interested.
If I can follow up is there the possibility in the RFI process where we can articulate what our needs are?
Yes.
In future adoption processes where we can maybe exert some influence there to say we need a certain level of diverse perspectives embedded in the document.
And the RFI process did identify that that was a very strong need and request on our end.
So I believe we probably got the best of what's out there.
I do think that publishers are catering to a more general audience.
I think Seattle is progressive in this area and is very concerned, probably more than other districts.
So one thing we, Shawna Heath, Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction, we are a part of an instructional material review committee that's actually evaluating a tool but within that work we can ask them through student achievement partners I believe.
We can ask them to push on the publishers because they do have a link to more publishers than we do around this issue.
And Dr. Nyland wanted to jump in here.
We might also make that proposal through the Council of great city schools.
They've had marked success in regard to ELL materials and actually went through a very well-vetted process to actually I'm not quite sure how they did that, but they got to work with, I think, eight companies who actually agreed to revise their curriculum based on the research and based on the input.
Veronica was part of that process.
Go ahead, yes please.
For those who may not be tracking this particular issue, it is an ongoing challenge in education right?
The fact that textbooks are driven, are produced to feed a particular market, I won't name the state but it rhymes with excess.
many people in this particular state are not as progressive, particularly on issues of diversity, but because they control such a large share of the market, the books end up going in the direction that that they are comfortable with and I think it's important for our public as well as our educators to take every opportunity to exert whatever influence they have on this issue because the reality of the situation is our children And their parents, their progressive values are not being served when the textbooks are so skewed and in some ways conservative and not necessarily what I want my daughter to learn in school.
And I think many people in this community don't want their children to learn some of these, dare I say, backwards perspectives.
Agreed.
All right let's go to Director Martin-Morrison and I think Director McLaren someone over here had a hand up.
And I would also encourage that conversation that Dr. Nyland was talking about but also know that NSBA is another avenue to do that kind of work, because it's not the state that begins with the letter T, but there's also another state that begins with the letter C.
So it's the CT out there that is driving pretty much everything that we're seeing in all of our printed textbooks.
But there is another way, and there are companies, and I don't know if we're using them, that will customize the book production for you to give you the information that you need and the chapters that you need in the book.
So that is another option.
Thank you.
Director McLaren.
That is a very interesting idea that I hadn't heard of.
I want to go back to your process and comment on the fact that you did put in all that upfront work in soliciting input from teachers and the community and Dr. Nyland has been leading us towards becoming a listening organization and I thank you for taking that to heart.
I also want to talk about something you gave a little more detail on in committee which is I realize we are talking about volunteers here but you did say that many of the people in the adoption committee were very interested in working further to provide the supplementary material about diverse underrepresented communities.
Am I right?
Yes you're correct and we already started working out a plan to reengage committee members and community members because we did we were visited by a community member from the Chinese American community very concerned about our selection because of the lack of representation about Chinese Americans in the in the American literature text or in the American history text.
And at that time, we started brainstorming of how we can incorporate our community members to provide more information and to serve as those who could identify the resources that we need to augment the text.
So Kristen Nichols who is also the co-adoption coordinator reached out to our committee just yesterday to re-engage our committee and we will start that work as soon as we determine whether this moves forward but we will provide additional resources to augment the books and we will also go back and review, there's a couple of inaccuracies in the text relative to some marginalized people and we are going to work to provide more accurate information and get that out to our teachers and our school leaders.
Director Paisley.
Did you look at online resources not only as an alternative to a textbook, which could easily be corrected and updated and supplemented, but also in the form of supplemental materials?
At this time we did not look at online resources although we did select materials that have online companions.
At this time we didn't feel that our entire Seattle school was ready to make that leap into just online.
So all of the resources that we are putting forward for recommendation have an online companion so that students can actually read the book from their home.
They probably don't have to take that big book home.
There are a lot more resources online now and so that was one of the other reasons we felt comfortable moving forward with this adoption is that the Textbook companies provide a lot more ancillary materials and readings, videos, so there are a whole host of materials out there that are supplementing the texts that we've identified.
So I just want to clarify there is an online version of the text that students can access from home so they don't have to carry a very heavy big book around that can easily be lost or damaged.
This is great.
That's correct.
That was one of the requests in the RFI that all of the resources we were reviewing would have an online companion so we could start making that shift.
Fantastic.
All right Director Martin-Morris.
And this is one of sequence more than anything else.
I know in middle school one area is around Washington State history.
What grade level is that at?
That is now 7th grade although we did not adopt for Washington State history because probably like six years ago we ran that adoption so we did not have the need to have that within this adoption.
So then we are not going to buy 7th grade techs?
So half of the 7th grade text is world, is world history.
And the other half is Washington State history.
So we are purchasing a 6th grade world history text, a 7th grade world history text, and an 8th grade US history text.
Thank you.
Sure.
Other questions?
Director Peters.
Well on the subject of adding diverse perspectives I'm interested in what form the resources will take and I think you already started to address that.
Will the since time immemorial curriculum be a part of that and how will that be incorporated into the middle school social studies?
Sure, thank you for that question.
What we did with adoption monies is we are folding the Since Time Immemorial training into the adoption.
So those resources are online for teachers to use even now, but they haven't had the training.
And so in creating our professional development plan, it will have three components.
One, just getting to know the resources and the texts.
The second part will be since time immemorial.
And the third portion will be something we're called disciplinary reading and writing in history.
So it's sort of how do you read and write and think like a historian so that the Common Core State Standards in history are folded in very comfortably and seamlessly.
My other question has to do with, you mentioned that what originally prompted this adoption was meeting the needs of the, at then it was APP but now the HCC are advanced learners and you've chosen books that are to meet the needs of a wide array of learners.
How will a single book meet the needs of a broad spectrum of learners?
That's a great question and we spent an awful lot of time on that.
So much time that it's interesting that one of the promises we made in going forward was that we'd make sure that we reviewed the text through an HCC lens.
And so we did have people on the committee who had experience teaching HCC.
We did get a complaint from a parent who believed that wasn't sufficient.
There were only three people.
So we did have one of the advanced learning coaches meet with six HCC teachers from our district in addition to those who are on the committee to do an entirely separate review because we wanted to keep ourselves honest about the selection.
They reviewed the text and they agreed with two of the three choices.
The one choice they did not agree with was our sixth grade selection which was Hill.
They actually wanted Holt, Holt McDougal all the way up.
We chose Holt for 7th and 8th.
Later they realized that the 6th grade text and the 7th grade text covered the same time span.
So really what teachers are getting are two resources to meet the same time span in history.
So most social studies teachers teach 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.
They will have access to two different texts to create their curriculum.
And I think that was the selling point.
So in answer to that question, there are two different resources that can meet the needs of teachers.
McGraw-Hill and Holt-McDougall.
But the committee more importantly did an awful lot of work making sure that the texts were at a relatively complex level.
So we looked at text complexity.
We looked at the types of questions that we are asking students and kind of rating them to ensure that they are at higher levels of cognitive demand.
We also looked at the ancillary resources to make sure that in pulling those in, could we enrich and enhance discussions?
Oh, and then I would say the last thing we required was an awful lot of attention to primary source documents.
If you're familiar with primary source documents, they're actually very complex and difficult to read because they were written some time ago.
and navigating those are pretty challenging.
So all of the resources we chose have a lot of attention on primary source documents.
So we feel that our survey of the text in all of those different areas will meet the needs of advanced learners and our teachers were in agreement.
Thank you.
Are there any other questions?
All right, well, we will look forward to seeing you back at the next meeting.
OK, thank you.
All right, item two.
We have seven items to go.
Item two, special education MOU with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
And this one came through executive committee with the permission of our C&I chair so that it could get on the agenda tonight.
You're on.
Good evening.
Wyatt Jesse Executive Director for special education and this evening I'm going to introduce for approval a consulting services contract.
in relation to the memorandum of understanding that we have with OSPI.
We embarked in a process after the board approval in June of the MOU with OSPI, an RFP process.
We had two proposals submitted as part of that RFP and through the selection process Seneca family of agencies was awarded this particular contract.
That's why we're going to move here again to have it forward.
The work that Seneca would be primarily doing is in collaboration with the special education department around providing technical assistance and training for the IEP and evaluation processes.
And so within the MOU OSPI is going to do not only a central office review but again they're going to go out to schools within each region.
Up to eight schools are selected.
When they go out to those schools they are going to do a stratified random selection of IEPs and evaluations.
So that means that we've got to review every single IEP and evaluation for all of the selected schools.
So for example, this summer we knew the first region was going to be the Northwest.
We had to review about 750 IEPs.
That means reading each one, providing technical assistance and guidance for the case managers, the special education teachers on any corrections we would need to do to ensure that it is a compliant IEP.
Because when OSPI comes, they're going to read the same IP, and they're going to have their own process.
The state has their own process of reviewing the IPs and making sure that they're compliant.
Within the MOU, as the review goes, 75% of the selected IPs need to be compliant within each region.
On evaluations, it needs to be 90%.
Each one of these corrections, just as a reminder, requires a meeting.
So there's a tremendous amount of work.
Those corrections do need to be made even afterwards if there's anything else additional to that within a one-year period.
The scope of this work, again, as you can hear when you're doing 750 IEPs, plus the day-to-day work, we can't just put this burden on the teaching staff inside the schools.
They are working directly with the students.
So this is why we sought someone, an outside agency to assist us in doing this review process, helping with corrections in that process.
Thank you for that.
And this item as I said did come through the executive committee on September 17. The committee reviewed the motion and is moving it forward to the full board with a recommendation for approval.
And so with that I don't know if our C&I chair wanted to make any comments on this item.
All right.
And that's fine.
And so with that we will open it up to questions.
Director Peasley and then we will go to Director McLaren.
At the end of this process will we have, will we be fully compliant?
Will we have met all the requirements of the the broader sort of corrective process we're engaged in?
So the benefit of this is just a quick reminder is we did meet the standards in the comprehensive correction action plan.
This work builds off of it because a lot of that foundational work was done last year in central office.
We have now valid and reliable data.
That's really essential, especially in our reporting structures back to the state and to the feds.
moving towards compliance we would, this would be one significant step and I believe and again I don't make that determination, the state does around the high-risk grantee status in combination with consultation from the United States Department of Ed.
It would go a long way towards determining that and I think it would be, put a lot of that work behind us and that we would not be Embarking on this kind of comprehensive levels of work Solely focused on compliance.
So my answer short answer would say yes, it would be a significant step I don't make again that determination they do but I think it would be We'd be right there as part of that conversation with them.
I
All right it was in fact Director Peters not McLaren who is next.
Can you please explain again the difference between the 75% compliance requirement and the 90% and why there is a difference?
Yeah so for the IEPs you would say 75% of the ones selected they would need to meet the compliance standards set forth on evaluations.
There are fewer.
of IAPs, there's an annual review of IAP.
on the evaluations, it's tri-annual and of course there's always the initial IP and the initial evaluation.
So there's just a lot less evaluations and so the bar is going to be higher.
But when you have to make corrections to IPs, that's just, I mean the sheer number can be a lot.
If you're a case manager, you can have 22 IPs and if you had to make corrections, let's say you didn't know a few things how to write them, you'd have to make corrections likely to all 22. That means you're not only having one annual meeting, but then you're having to have another meeting to make revisions to the IEP, and you have to bring in parents.
So that's significant.
It's a lot of work.
That's why on the IEPs, that would be different.
I'm afraid you lost me a little bit in there.
So did you say that for the review of IEPs 75% is the compliance and for the evaluation it's 90?
Correct.
And I'm sorry I didn't quite understand the difference between a review of an IEP and an evaluation.
Yeah, so the evaluation is, you need an evaluation to make a determination currently by the state if a student is, if they are going to qualify for special education services and specifically what services they would qualify for.
So it's done by a school psychologist.
That process will feed the IEP process because out of that will generate where they need the services and the goals and that's done by the special education teacher.
Along with the SA staff like OT, PT, SLP.
Okay and then who sets these benchmarks or these standards?
Is it OSPI?
Yes.
Okay.
I'm always alarmed when I see numbers as low as 75 or something like this.
Is there a reason why they don't aim higher in terms of compliance?
That's a good question for them.
I didn't set the bar.
My understanding, again, is I think that the threshold, the baseline expectation for us in this process is pretty high and really extensive.
And so there's been a number of corrections that have to be made as part of this process.
That's why it's currently at 75%, I believe.
But that's a good question for OSPI of why they set that up as that number.
Do we ever surpass these thresholds?
Yes we do and I fully anticipate we do.
I'd be happy to let you know how the Northwest goes after their review as we have set up for the I believe November 6 and 7.
Okay thank you.
Sure.
Other questions?
Let's go to Director McLaren and then to Director Patu.
So I'm trying to wrap my mind around the amount of work that you're talking about this coming year.
So the 750 that you did was that sort of a dry run?
to get ready and then as OSPI reviews each of the, is it seven districts or five?
I'm confused about how many districts they're visiting.
They are visiting each region, correct, and a number of schools in each region.
Correct.
Okay.
So are you, will you be assisting with reviewing 700 or 800 IEPs for each of those regions?
That is, you got absolutely correct Board Member McLaren.
Absolutely.
We are going region by region.
It's up to eight schools.
We need to review as part of that process all of the IPs and evaluations in preparation for that because we want to make sure that we do meet the expectations set forth in the MOU around 75%, 90%.
Plus there's a bunch of other things attached to it but that's just a way of explaining off what we're talking about.
I mean they're doing site reviews, they're doing interviews, including with parent groups.
There's a lot of steps to it.
but yes ultimately we are going step by step and that's just a lot of work.
The scope is incredible.
If you are having a 15 page document and you have to make revisions to it and then you have to call a meeting for it and on top of all the other PLC work the curriculum creation, moving forward, doing the assessment.
It's one of the top reasons why people leave the profession is due to the amount of paperwork.
So I guess that would highlight why we need some technical assistance for it.
Director Patu.
On that note I know in the past we've been told by directors that there's a lot of students that aren't in special ed that they feel that should not be in there.
So the question I ask is what are we doing in terms of actually screening kids to make sure they're not put in special ed for behavior problems or other than having you know actually having learning disabilities.
Yeah, and that process really resides mostly within the school setting for the general education population.
I mean, you have to look at the tier one services.
So how are you creating structures for students to ensure they're successful?
And then what are the supports that tier two, any intervention supports for the students?
Usually what happens when there is an absence of intervention, especially that is research or evidence-based, a lot of schools will struggle and look at special education as that intervention.
And then that becomes the over-identification and placement of students, those who struggle.
We've seen the data for the district, who are those particular students, and that's why there's over-qualification.
We do work very hard in training with our school psychs on working in that process.
There's also you know there's a culture of a lot of pressure on schools to get services for students and I can get into a lot of technical things around the discrepancy model about how we do evaluate students here in the state.
Other states do it a little differently but ultimately it does reside on us.
A lot of that is about the prevention and the services that get us up to the door of evaluation for students.
All right let's go to Director McLaren.
So I want to jump in and say something here about multi-tiered systems of support which I realize is not your focus but this is a very very important initiative that I think we are starting our fourth year.
I am looking at Michael Tolley and I know that funding has limited it but multi-tiered systems of support is all about identifying students at the get-go who are struggling and who are, you know, they're all hopefully at the same level as their peers when they start in school.
And as we identify students who are struggling, the multi-tiered systems of support is designed to immediately give them the support that they need.
And we've been working as a district to provide resources to teachers.
to support that.
So that's beyond special education.
As Mr. Jesse has said, it's part of the Gen Ed responsibility.
I don't know if Michael Tolley wants to say something about that.
I might have garbled it a bit.
Thank you Michael Tolley associate superintendent for teaching and learning.
You are absolutely correct we have been focused for a number of years in the development of multi-tier systems of support primarily in the academic area but this conversation is really about addressing students behaviors that may lead to An evaluation that might over identify a student for services through special education.
As we've discussed in recent weeks the goal now is to of course focus on how we develop out the multi-tier systems and supports around the behavioral area.
As Pat Sander has pointed out we want to move to what you were just saying the prevention aspect of it rather than being reactive we want to be proactive in addressing the needs of these students.
So the resolution that was passed this evening actually sets in motion work in that area and we're very excited about that.
Alright so any other questions for tonight?
All right so we will look forward to seeing you and we consider this for action.
Thank you for your time tonight.
Thank you.
All right item 3 approval of the Washington state auditor's office contract for 2014-15 fiscal year audits and this is coming out of executive committee.
So we'll look to you to speak to it and then I'll talk to the executive committee.
Ken Gotch, assistant superintendent for business and finance.
This is the annual state audit contract with the state auditor's office.
This year's contract totals $346,000.
We've attached to the bar an explanation of the state's rate change from last year.
They were at $88.50 last year.
They've raised their rates to $93.
And this bar also covers the three audits they'll be doing.
They do the accountability audit, the financial statements audit, as well as the federal single audit.
And then finally, the BAR outlines the timeline for the audit work that begins at the beginning of October.
Thank you.
And this item as well came through the executive committee last week as part of the meeting cancellations in order to get it on the agenda we wanted to consider it and so the executive committee did that and we recommended it for approval by the full board.
So questions from directors.
I'll just make the observation like I did in the committee meeting that the price went up pretty substantially.
I think I remember it being like 293 or something last year.
And I know that they haven't had, you know, through the recession they were pretty careful about not increasing their hourly rate.
But that's a pretty substantial jump.
So I hope you all won't be offended if I, make words to that effect when we have the end briefing with them or when we sit down with them.
Just like to give them that feedback.
I think that also there's two components of that amount change.
I put a worksheet at the very back of the bar.
Part of it was our high-risk status last year added some additional audit hours to what they normally would have done.
And this year's audit plan is assuming a normal audit effort but we did leave in several hundred additional hours just in the event that our high risk status changes the nature of their audit plan for the year since we don't have the final plan just yet.
Director Peters.
Well that prompts me to ask that if we don't end up using those hours what happens to the money that we've allocated?
It's available for reuse.
Okay so we can reclaim it back into the general fund.
Okay thanks.
All right I'm not seeing any other questions so thank you for the overview and now we go into the slew of capital items.
Starting with the BEX IV resolution 2015-16-2 on Olympic Hills Elementary replacement project intent to construct from Ops.
Yes, Richard best capital projects director The intent to construct is a requirement of the Washington administrative code WAC 392 344 130 and it because the project is receiving state construction assistance We are required to submit a resolution to OSPI indicating that we will build the project as the contract documents indicate and that we will utilize the state funding that we receive in the manner in which it is intended.
And so we are asking for construction dollars for an elementary school and so we are asking that you approve the resolution to construct the elementary school.
as just a formality.
This is asked for all projects in which state construction assistance is requested from OSPI.
Thank you and if we could hear from our ops committee chair please.
This was discussed by the ops committee and it was recommended by the committee to move forward for full board approval.
All right and we will open it up to questions from directors.
Director Martin Morris.
This is kind of a rhetorical question I guess but is there any opportunity sometime in the future that they can up the amount of the reimbursements for these kinds of construction because Seattle is kind of at a slight disadvantage compared to other districts in terms of the percentages.
You are too kind.
I would not say a slight disadvantage.
I would say a significant disadvantage.
So maybe this, that is a conversation associate superintendent Herndon is having.
Flip Herndon associate superintendent for facilities and operations.
I had this question posed just a little bit earlier this evening.
We have tried to do some work along with a few of the delegation from Seattle on changing that construction formula.
Seattle is at the floor as far as matching dollars go and the range is anywhere between 20 and 100% of your construction being assisted for out of capital dollars from the state.
We fall in that 20% category.
That's one area is to increase the floor maybe instead of 20%.
It's been offered I think in a previous bill to be up to 30%.
Two other areas where Seattle is at a disadvantage, one is that being the largest district with the most number of schools, the formula for calculating that assistance is basically number of square footage divided by number of students.
We have several older buildings that are not very efficiently designed so that square footage puts us at a disadvantage because it calculates the width of walls and hallways and stairways all of which if the design of a building in the 50s or 30s has really wide hallways that's not instructional space that we can really use yet we are held accountable for that square footage.
Lastly, is the amount of square footage allocated per the grade band.
So currently I believe elementary students are allocated 90 square feet per student.
That is a very antiquated allocation.
It has been I believe at least 40 years since that formula has been looked at.
So it does increase a little bit for the middle school and high school and for special education students.
But when you take all three of those factors combined it does put Seattle at a significant disadvantage.
Another possibility that was raised during some of the legislation was to be able to have different quadrants of the school district considered for different areas because when OSPI does the calculation they look at the entire district.
Well we know that our population growth and use of buildings is a little bit uneven throughout the district.
We have the needs all over obviously but some schools in certain portions of the district are just absolutely bursting.
Part of proposed legislation in the past was to be able to divide the district into smaller portions and then apply the formula to a smaller area of the city.
Alright other questions or comments?
Alright so we will move to the next item.
My eyes are making it a little bit difficult to read it here.
So the next one's number five, which is Bax IV Olympic Hills Elementary School Replacement Project Constructability Review Report.
Oh, I'm sorry, I think on the last one we forgot to go to Ops.
Did we?
Oh, we did, okay.
Sorry, it's been a really long day.
Been a meeting since 7.30 this morning.
Okay, so with that, go ahead and cover number five, please.
Yes again, constructability review reports are cost-saving measures that we do after the construction documents are, I should say when the construction documents are nearing completion.
This is a standard procedure utilized in the design industry to reduce construction claims.
Construction change orders.
This is a process required by OSPI and if this was not required by OSPI as Capital Projects Director I'd sure be recommending the staff that we do this.
Because this is a GCCM project we're actually able to utilize the GCCM team to review the projects.
Cornerstone General Contracting did the review for Olympic Hills Elementary School.
You just cannot have the same personnel who have been working on the design phase of Olympic Hills with McGranahan Architects at Cornerstone General Contracting doing the constructability review.
They want a fresh set of eyes looking at that project seeing if It's clearly articulating how it's going to be built, making sure that subcontractors can understand this.
And I guess I would note Director Peters the advantage for Olympic Hills Elementary School over Nathan Hill.
the settlement agreement that we approved tonight.
Nathan Hill was a modernization project.
This is new construction.
So the unforeseen conditions that you run into on a modernization project you generally do not encounter on new construction except for what's under the ground.
That's the only significant risk that you have on new construction.
Other questions?
All right.
Oh yes I'm sorry.
This item also came to Ops and it was discussed and recommended by the committee to move forward for full board approval.
Thank you.
Now any other questions?
All right so let's go to item number six BTA III BEX IV Meany Middle School Renovation Project Ed Specs also coming from Ops.
Yes we are requesting board approval of the site specific ed specs for Meany middle school.
We did present this at the operations committee.
This is a middle school for 1100 kids.
It's based upon the generic ed spec and then it has been modified for Meany middle school.
Reaching out to the community and the office of teaching and learning for input.
Alright now we will go to the ops.
This also came to the committee and it was also recommended by the committee to move forward for full board approval.
Alright and are there questions on this item?
All right not seeing any questions.
We always have the opportunity to send email between now and action.
So let's move on to item number seven which is same project.
This one's about budget transfer funds from program contingency to the project budget.
So, this is for Meany Middle School.
In conversations with the City of Seattle Department of Planning and Development, they view the enhancements that we are making to Meany Middle School as extending the life of this building.
I would concur with their assessment and because we are extending the life of this building we have to implement substantial alterations.
And so substantial alterations that requirements include Washington State barrier free and Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, energy code requirements, we are needing to upgrade the windows in this existing building and provide greater thermal insulation, we are required to replace and upgrade the fire alarm or life safety systems.
Director Martin Morris you'll remember in our operations committee presentation you had some concerns about the intercom system not being included.
We've revised the amount that we presented at the operations committee, have included the intercom system, and then a change that has come from our Department of Technology systems is a Revision to the data wiring from category 6 to category 6A which allows greater byte transmission.
So we've included, we've added those two costs since it was presented to the operations committee and the intercom system was at the request of Director Martin Morris.
Director Patu.
So this was also discussed at the ops committee and it was recommended to move forward for full board consideration mainly for the fact that of what Director Morris asked for them to do which he said it actually is completed so move forward for full board approval.
So I just add to this that this money will be coming from the BEX IV program contingency.
We have set aside monies in the program contingency so we will actually be enhancing this project budget with those additional funds.
Thank you for that.
Let's go to Director Martin Morris.
Just for clarification for my colleagues, my logic was The walls are all going to be torn out anyway as we go through and do the work and it's crazy not to include the intercom system as part of that because if we didn't That means we would be, in essence, having to run Conduit all over the place to put the new intercom system in.
This way we can build it as we go.
And the move to the CAT6A allows for, in essence, we're increasing the bandwidth that can be transmitted.
So you can use the same wiring for not only your network stuff, but for your intercom stuff.
So it's kind of, you're getting, a better bang for the dollar in terms of the expenditure.
So I just wanted to let people know that.
I wasn't willy-nilly about wanting that, but there was some logic that went into that.
Other questions?
Okay so that brings us to the last item on the introduction list and that's BEX IV Cascadia Elementary School Robert Eagle Staff Middle School approval of GCCM negotiated total contract cost also coming out of ops.
So I've asked Senior Project Manager Eric Becker to speak to this item.
Good evening board members and Dr. Nyland.
Eric Becker, Senior Project Manager with Capital Projects.
I'm here to introduce this item for the Cascadia Elementary School and Robert Eagle Staff Middle School approval of the GCCM negotiated total contract cost.
and it's for action on October 7th.
Per the board policy 6220 this contract modification exceeds $250,000 so it must come forward to the board.
I should note quickly with this that this does not represent an increase to the Cascadia elementary school or the Cascadia Elementary school and Robert Eagle Staff middle school project overall project budget.
This is all within the project budget of our and it's not an increase to the BEX IV program.
I'll just go through a little bit of background on this.
Due to this complexity of this project, the large size and the scope of the two schools that are co-located on the site, the district was authorized by the state under RCW 3910 to use the GCCM method of construction.
The GCCM method allowed the district to select a general contractor early in the stages of the design and lighted construction was selected for that and they joined us early.
We established a contract with them that had a total construction cost in September of 2013 and that was $74,376,888.
and including pre-construction services.
The district, that was, that earlier price was utilized to establish a starting point.
And the district and the GCCM negotiated the full, the fixed total construction cost based on our 100% construction documents.
So where we are now with our 100% construction documents and we started construction also.
The total negotiated contract cost of $81,787,147.
This represents an increase to that contract of $7,410,267 over the preliminary agreement.
It was also, I should note again, this proposed increase to the total construction or total contract cost is within the authorized project budget and does not represent an increase to the overall BEX IV program.
And I just should note that the attachments are included in this as well as one is the the agreement or the the agreement amendment and then there's the We've also provided the Licton streams flood flood reduction project agreement because that also That was part of the increase to the contract there's also some additional information in here on some of the reasons why the why there was the increase and So may I answer any questions?
All right we will take questions in one moment.
Let's hear from our committee chair please.
This came to Ops also and it was discussed and recommended by the board to move forward for full board approval.
Thank you for that.
All right and we can open it up to questions from directors.
Looks like no questions I will just comment that I drive by.
five or six times a week.
I love the progress I'm seeing made.
It's really starting to move.
And I like that that flood reduction project's working too.
So thank you.
It's a big project and a big site.
And it's really moving along.
So thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
So that brings us to the bottom of the agenda and a wrap for us.
And I've got to get my language right here.
The meeting stands adjourned at, it looks like, 825 on the clock out there.
Thank you.