First we'll be starting with the land acknowledgement.
We would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.
And next slide.
And I'll start with the introductions.
My name is Kaylee.
I go by she her pronouns and I go to Meadowdale High School and I'm a member and Secretary of the Washington NAACP Youth Council.
And I'll pass it over to Mia.
Hi my name is Mia Dabney.
I use she her pronouns and I am a senior at Cleveland High School.
And Vice President Hampson.
This is Chandra Hampson.
I am Vice President of the School Board a chair of the Audit and Finance Committee.
I represent District 3 in Northeast Seattle as well as all the rest of Seattle.
And I have three children in Seattle Public Schools.
A 6th 7th and 8th grader at Eckstein Middle School.
Thank you.
Rivka.
Hi everyone.
I'm Rivka Burstein-Stern.
I use she her pronouns.
I'm the Director of the Partnerships Department at Seattle Public Schools.
Garfield High School grad.
and mother to an incoming kindergartner at Hawthorne.
And excited to be with you all.
I'm excited you all are interested in this opportunity.
So looking forward to hearing your questions.
Karama?
Hey, Apakarisa.
Beautiful evening, everyone.
My name is Karama Blackhorn.
She, her, and they, them.
And I'm the Community Engagement Manager.
Nice to see you all.
Great.
And I am Julia Worth.
I'm the director of board relations and strategic initiatives.
And so I've been supporting the board and the implementation of policy 1250 and really excited to bring students on board.
So Mia and Kaylee, I think back to you.
So this policy honestly came to be just because I honestly it started with students just like saying we want our voices to be heard.
We want to be listened to.
And like speaking at school board meetings or talking to school board members.
Hey.
Or other stuff like that.
So that's just one of the ways like the policy came to be.
And then again like youth reaching out to like adults and saying like we want this change.
We want this to happen.
And then I'll pass it on to Kayleigh to like explain more of kind of how we're hearing now.
Yeah, so, um, if so, like Mia said, it was, like, first started with just, like, basically, even just, like, an idea that popped up and students started fighting for it.
And as we start fighting for it, we got more outreach from it.
We got more resources and we got together and there was, like, I remember there was, like, countless nights of just, like, meeting to get our proposal ready and, like, meeting to, like, um.
Just like make sure like we like went through like different like decision making meetings and things where where we'd be on like Zoom for like what like three to four hours just deciding different things and also like working with Zachary DeWolf and other people involved.
And it also ended up we also ended up meeting individually with just like the current school board members.
I think during like 2020 or 2021 And as and then now policy 1250 passed and now we're still meeting to work on and ensure that once the student reps get on the school board that they will be heard and that it will be a welcoming community and it will and it will be really successful.
And I'll pass it back to Mia for this one.
And then one of the quotes that we added into the policy is walls turned sideways are bridges.
And this quote is by Angela Davis.
And we're currently using this quote as like a way to explain what's kind of happening with the youth and the adults in SPS.
There are current current walls built between the youth and adults.
And we want to make those make them bridges.
We want to make it so we can talk and we can communicate and we can make changes in our community.
And this policy is a way to do that.
So using this quote, walls turn sideways, our bridges is a way to like, uplift youth voice, but also make sure like, change and action is taken.
And for our goals for this policy, the first kind of like bullet points are just some of the goals that we had since the beginning and that we still have which is uplift and increase the voices of students within Seattle Public Schools specifically BIPOC students.
Work towards an educational system that is the best for students.
Make active changes that students want and need and help students understand the system around them and see their role in it.
And school board members gain more of a grasp on student perspective and some of these goals really really helped drive us to where we are now.
And now that the policy has been passed and it's in action here are just some some examples of some goals that some of the many goals that we have like using this as a stepping stone to get youth voice in other places such as like if another school district sees how successful this policy is they might make their own policy or they might also have students get on their school board as well.
And building a stronger community and relationship between the school board and students and just the school board in general as well.
And one of our last like examples of the goals is that during this process youth voice is heard and action is taken within it.
We want to make sure that youth voice isn't just heard but we also want to see the action happen.
after youth increase their voice.
And I'll pass it to Mia if she has anything to add on.
Mia, anything to add before we pass to Vice President Hampson?
Sorry, I was just like, I got distracted for a second, but that was amazing what Kaylee said, maybe in deep detail, so I'll pass it on to Director Hampton.
But that was amazing what Kaylee said.
All right, over to you, Vice President Hampson.
Thank you.
So, so many important goals for this policy.
And one thing I want to mention from the board perspective is and I think it was alluded to by the students as well in terms of not just having student input so that you can check a box and say that you did that right.
We can I get tremendous value out of listening what students have to say on various topics, particularly those that impact them directly in terms of the school system.
But it's really important that we figure out in the context of that relationship a way that students actually get something out of that who were, I mean, like this group here, the NAACP Youth Coalition has given of themselves for years now in so many respects and in so many ways.
And we have at least until the development of this policy.
And I don't even think that this will go far enough.
And we didn't do it quickly enough for them, many of them to even be able to, you know, apply, right, to be part of it.
But this policy gives us the opportunity to help build our future leaders, to have them participate.
Because, I mean, the board governance role is very much a leadership role.
And so it's a way of giving them it's unfortunately by state law we can't have them as voting members although they can apparently I guess at the State Board of Education level but at least trying to give them a somewhat equal seat at the table right as opposed to not really being part of kind of the the really formative and critical discussions and so that's one of the the most important roles.
We saw Seattle Public Schools is way behind in terms of doing this policy.
We should have done this years ago.
And so for that this board apologizes and is really excited to see this moving forward.
And I also want to apologize that it's it has taken as long as it has to get this moving forward.
And I know we're all really nervous about this launch and wanting to make sure it goes well and that there's equitable access to students.
And part of the work that we've been doing in this past year in particular is preparing ourselves to be prepared to welcome students.
And so I just want to know if you've heard about this concept of student outcomes focused governance, student participation is very much a part of student outcomes focused governance.
It's a really critical component.
The folks who do student outcomes focused governance are really huge proponents of student presence on boards.
And so It's a best practice and we're trying to get caught up with best practices.
And students have been asking for it for a really long time.
And we instead have been giving lip service by having you know we have definitely enjoyed having students come and participate at the start of board meetings.
But but we want to give them the full seat at the at the table.
And so we know that these voices are going to help us be much better leaders and in turn help create the next set of leaders through the with the students that that are part of the board and and our decision making will be enriched because it's really our policy making more so than our decision making right because day-to-day decisions are made by the superintendent.
But how we format and determine what policies we make or don't make and how we lead and how we behave so that we're creating a system or recreating a system that works best for students.
So hope we're not we're not going to be.
This is one thing that parents can all align with.
You there's never like the right time to have kids and I feel like there's never going to be a right time to bring students onto the board.
We just have to get it done.
But we did want to spend a little more time getting ourselves in in a more functional space and getting on a more positive trajectory in terms of our governance system.
And I feel like that's been the really hard work that we've done.
And so Director DeWolf in particular when we all sat down and he's like you know we need to do this and he wanted to make sure it got done before he was off the board and and and we were like yeah let's let's we got to do it.
You're right.
Let's just get this done.
And we completely freaked out the board staff because of what that would entail on their part.
And so my sincere gratitude to them for making this happen and themselves building relationships with the students on that staff side of making sure that this happens.
And while we do the work on the governance side to get us into really a much stronger more welcoming space I think if you think about it from the standpoint of We know students need a welcoming environment and a supportive environment when they walk into schools and we could see pretty clearly that our board environment wasn't a welcoming environment.
And so we've done a lot of work to try to change that over this past year so that we can be that welcoming environment at the board level with students as part of our team.
And then as a group we will then be creating those environments for the superintendent and staff to ultimately make sure that environment is present in the classroom.
I couldn't be more excited and nervous and hopeful and so so much gratitude to Director DeWolf and Director Hersey from from their standpoint on the you know quote unquote adult side.
And and then but particularly to the students for just their all of your tireless support and participation in making sure that that we got to this point because we absolutely could not have done this without you and can't wait to see what comes next.
All right, and Mia and Kaylee, back to you to discuss the role of a student member.
Sorry about the background noise.
I'm at school, but So some of the roles of a student member is to serve as student voice build relationship with peers and attend regular school board meetings and attend committee meetings.
And these are just roles that they should follow so they can like know what's going on in the school know how to help students and connect to them and also connect with an adult.
Sorry again about the background noise.
But yeah so this is like a way these like roles as a student member is to help build the bridges that we were talking about back with the coach.
So everything that the student member does will connect somewhat back to the quote of building those bridges instead of walls.
And then I'll pass it on to Kaylee if she wants to add on.
Yeah I just wanted to just add on the importance of applying and even if you're just here like just curious about it I do suggest like even just try applying and even encourage your friends to apply for this because this is really like a history changing thing and being a student board member has such a big impact on the school community and it has such a big impact on the school history and it can change so many futures in the future generation.
And I know Mia said like all the rules perfectly so.
And then I'll pass it on to the next slide.
Alright, so for the application, so how to apply to be a student board member.
Applications are due on April 20th.
The application has three parts.
There is a written form, which is a Microsoft form, a video statement, and the video statement should be no more than three minutes and can be uploaded into the same Microsoft form as the short answer questions, and then two references.
And the references can be from anyone who can speak to your leadership ability.
And so it doesn't have to be a teacher in your school, or a manager at work.
It can be a peer, it can be a counselor, it can be a community mentor, anyone who can speak to your skills and what assets you would bring to being a student board member.
And here are the four short answer questions.
And I just wanted to highlight here that these should be, you know, four to six sentences, just a paragraph or so.
It doesn't need to be a full essay for each one.
And the Microsoft form that you will submit these through can't be saved.
And so please start the answers to your short answer questions in a Word document that then you can, you know, do drafts of and copy and paste into the final Microsoft form that you fill out, because we would hate to see you lose any work because the form itself can't be saved.
And then in terms of the selection process, so after applications are submitted on April 20th, there is a student-led selection committee and that committee will review the applications, select students that will go forward for an interview, with the selection committee.
And then the committee will also make the final selection of the three students to put forward to the school board as the student recommendation for the school board student members.
And then the board itself will take a vote in June to officially approve the student members.
And then the members will have their first meeting, their first official meeting as the student board members at the first meeting in September of 2022. And I think with that, we are ready to open up for questions.
So as I said previously, please use the raise hand function in Teams and I'll call on you, or if you are more comfortable dropping your question in the chat, we will keep an eye on the chat and answer those there as well.
Can I see a hand?
Ah, Ruben.
Hello, sorry if there's any background noise.
I'm in a public place right now, but I was wondering about that six or four to six sentence cap.
Is that very strict cap on having difficulty formulating sentences?
I think I have a sentence that might run over that just a little bit, and I want to make sure that doesn't disqualify me.
No, we won't be counting the sentences specifically.
So if you have a seven or eight sentence answer, that's fine.
We just wanted to provide some parameters so you weren't writing a full essay, you know, five paragraphs for each of the questions.
They are intended to be brief answers.
All right, no, thank you so much.
And Jasmine, in the chat, I see your question.
How fast will you get an answer back?
And so the selection committee will be making selections by the middle of May for the final selection going forward for the board.
Let's see, I use I see your hand.
Yeah, hi my name is I use I use he him pronouns and my question is regarding the time commitment I saw on the email.
It said about 10 to 20 hours a month.
Do you have any more specifics about that time commitment?
Would it be primarily on the weekends, weekdays and would I have any control about where I'm putting the time or when I'm putting the time in?
Yeah, so the The regular board meetings, which each student member will attend roughly one a month, there will be a rotation between the three members.
So those regular board meetings happen on Wednesday evenings from 4.30 to 8.30.
Sometimes the meetings are shorter, but they're scheduled for a four hour block.
And then each student member will be on one of the board's committees.
And those committee meetings also happen on weekdays.
Some of the committee meetings are in the afternoon, so 4.30 to 6.30, some are in the morning.
I think right now we have two committees that meet at 8 a.m.
But those times and dates shift every year with the board, but they will always be on weekdays.
And then the other activities that you would engage in as a student board member, so liaising with your peers, building relationships, getting feedback from your peers, those can happen at, you know, whatever days or times work for you.
And Vice President Hampson, I see you have your hand up as well.
Yeah I just wanted to in response to the question about the time commitment.
The committees do right now represent an additional commitment in addition to the regular board meetings right.
But we as a board are trying to limit and reduce some of that committee obligation so that more of what we do is actually happening at regular board meetings.
And one of the really important reasons for that is that the role of a board director or student board representative needs to be accessible in order to be equitable in terms of time commitment.
And so it's a little bit heavier than we want it to be right now.
But we hope by the time students come on in the fall my hope is that we will actually have a lighter calendar and some of that is just offloading some of the administrative stuff that we have held on to but that we don't it's not necessarily appropriate for us as a board to be doing because it's really falls under the superintendent's purview.
In some cases we're approving things that we don't even have aren't by policy required to approve.
And so we're going to work really hard between now and the fall to get things nice and tight and clean.
to make sure that it's a reasonable time commitment for students.
Thank you.
I was on mute.
I am dropping the link to the web page in the chat that has the links to all of the Microsoft forms for submitting your application.
and also some more detailed information about the role and the application questions themselves.
And let's see.
Looks like Joaquin had a question in the chat.
What is being done to make sure this opportunity is being offered to everyone in the school district other than hitting send all on the email?
That is a great question.
And Karama, I see you've dropped an answer into the chat.
Would you like to speak to that?
Yeah, sure.
And like I said, I put it in the chat, but it was a great question, Joaquin.
And they said that advocacy too, they add into it.
There's a number of groups like student groups that we're trying to really make sure we reach.
We also got like some flyers in hands for folks that aren't always you know, email isn't the best form for everyone.
And there's just been a lot of different trying to reach.
We just, today we're talking about how can we reach out to the school counselors a little bit more?
How can we make sure that we're reaching ELL students as well?
So there's lots of little efforts in different directions.
And if you have ideas on how to reach your peers that you know might not be reached on those major ways, like please share them, throw them in the chat.
Like we will try to make time and we, We can't reach everyone, but it's definitely worth an effort and would love to know more thoughts you have.
This is our first time doing it, so it's going to be a hard push this first time.
But I'm grateful that you asked that question too.
And Vice President Hampson, I don't know if you want to add, board directors will also be visiting schools to speak with students, hand out flyers, I don't know if you'd like to add anything there, Vice President Hampson, and then Kaylee and Mia, if you want to talk a little bit about what NYC's outreach efforts have been to.
Yeah, so we're each visiting high schools in our district to try to spread the word, you know, in person.
You know, I know my I haven't done my district yet, but the have the flyers in hand and.
I imagine I will have some success with that but not a whole lot of high schoolers are going to necessarily want to engage with an adult that they don't know in the midst of their busy lives.
So I think the other thing that that I know other directors and myself are willing to do is if you know of student groups that want to have us come talk to them we're happy to do that as well.
I'm always happy to do that.
I don't get invited to anywhere near the number of things like that that that I would like to to do things like talk about this stuff and promote it.
And I know it's because everybody's always got a lot of business to attend to.
So yeah, just help us spread the word and we're going to try to be out there making sure folks know about it.
I don't know.
Do we have anything on TikTok, Julia?
I feel like somebody needs to make a fun TikTok.
We were actually just talking about doing a TikTok dance.
We have Instagram and Facebook postings from the district social media and that's where Mia and Kaylee, I know you all were working on getting out on the NAACP Youth Council social media, which I don't know if that includes TikTok.
Somebody just said they want to do a TikTok.
Excellent.
Let's take them up on it.
All right.
My kids are always doing weird things with my face in TikToks.
I don't know what they're doing, but I'm happy to be fodder for as long as it's all copacetic, you know.
Yeah.
But I have middle schoolers, so I am also not at the right age.
I don't know.
But yeah, that's it.
Yeah, what you guys are saying.
I like that I can see what you're saying in the chat now on the screen.
That's super helpful.
Is that new?
Could be.
Here's an old person marveling at technology.
Yeah, you guys have the ideas.
I would not know the first thing about how to get that out TikTok or even Snapchat or whatever and there's a new thing called real something real.
Who's young here that knows really.
You take a picture of yourself and then the what you're doing at the same time.
It's kind of like Snapchat.
Well anyway.
Yeah I would love to take some of these folks up on their offers to do that.
Director Hersey.
Director Hersey has a great what's it called What's the cartoon version of yourself?
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, I could read your lips.
Got him.
We could use that.
I don't know.
Put something out there.
Yeah, let's let's come.
Come join us.
We want to get this out there so that would be great to get that kind of help.
Awesome, alright, excellent Jasmine.
I think we have your district email so reach out to you and anyone else interested in getting involved.
Please drop it into the chat.
There was also a question here from Joaquin about the time commitment and increasing or decreasing the time commitment.
In terms of increasing, we are limited in how many hours the student members will be able to work because it is a compensated position.
So I forgot to mention this in the description of the role, but the student board members will be hourly employees of the district.
And so you will receive an hourly wage for the work that you do for the board and for the district.
But that means that we are also limited in how many hours you can work by the labor laws in Washington state.
So we'll have to get back to you on what above 20 hours it could be, but I don't think it's much more than 20 hours in the month.
And then in terms of decreasing, We estimate that it is about six hours of meetings.
As Vice President Hampson mentioned, we are trying to reduce the number of hours of meetings the board engages in, but it is at this time about six hours a month of meetings, and so then an additional four hours for liaising with your peers.
So, you know, however much time you think that you need to spend doing that, that would kind of dictate that 10 hour, but at the very minimum, it would be six hours of meeting.
And let's see, other questions in the chat that I missed, or please raise your hand if you want to ask it out loud.
All right.
SPS staff, is there anything else that I missed since I missed the students get paid piece, which was a pretty big piece?
Anything else that may have fallen out of my head this evening?
I don't think so.
I think the biggest thing is if anyone wants support in going through the application or has any questions, please reach out.
We're happy to support with that.
We know it's a little bit overwhelming, And we're here to support you and your peers in making sure it's accessible to you.
So please don't hesitate to reach out.
We're happy to help.
And you can, the same goes for contacting board directors.
One thing that board directors do when we're running for office is we talk to the existing board directors first to see like who are we going to be working with, right?
And, but also to just get a sense of, better understanding of their job and what the expectations are, and then to help frame your, you know, talking points as well.
I know that I'm happy to talk to anybody.
I'm sure other directors are as well.
And you can text me.
My phone number is on the website, and please text.
All the adults like to email, and text is best.
There is also a Let's Talk link, or not link, a Let's Talk button.
And student board member is one of the topics you can ask a question about.
And so that will come straight to the staff that you see on this call if you have additional questions, or I will also drop my email into the chat here.
So if you have a question, please feel free to reach out via email.
And I see another question here from Joaquin about the lawyerees.
If you can choose whether to be compensated or to earn community service hours, if you are not being compensated monetarily, you would be eligible to use this for community service hours.
And so I can follow up with you, Joaquin, with some more details about that.
Also, just to add, if you are wanting to apply but also feel like you're needing service hours and just want some support, there is a ton of different opportunities to get service hours in the community too.
So, and you know, a lot of the community organizations, we're going to try to, I think Rivka mentioned that we'll be trying to reach out to reach more youth.
Like a lot of them are looking for folks and we have a lot of connections there as well.
If it's one of those like I need to do both, that you might be able to do both, but slightly adjoined work there too.
All right, well, if there are no other questions, I think we can close out.
Just so, so grateful for you all taking the time this afternoon to learn more about this opportunity and really looking forward to working with some of you in the future.
Just really grateful that we had such good turnout here.
And like I said, please use Let's Talk, text Vice President Hampson, email me if you have any other questions or need any support in navigating the application.
and just the whole process.
And I will be reaching out to Jasmine about TikTok and Joaquin to follow up on some of your questions as well.
All right, well, I hope everyone has a great evening and thank you so much.
Thank you all.
Thank you.