School Board Work Session - September 30, 2020

order at 330 p.m.

For the record I'll call the roll.

Director Harris.

Director Hersey will not be joining us today is my understanding.

Director Mack.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Director Rivera-Smith Director Rankin.

I'm here.

And Director DeWolf will be joining us later.

The superintendent is also present as well as staff will be presenting as we move through the agenda.

This meeting is being held remotely consistent with the governor's proclamation prohibiting meetings such as this one from being held in person.

The public is being provided remote access today by phone and through SPS-TV by broadcast and streaming on YouTube.

To facilitate this remote meeting I will ask all participants to ensure you are muted when you are not speaking.

There will not be a public comment opportunity.

Staff will be working to administer the meeting and may be muting participants to address feedback and ensure we can hear from directors and staff.

We have two work sessions today.

The first will be a reopening update on the remote learning playbook and technology distribution.

This will be followed by a budget work session.

I will hand it over now to Director Rankin to chair our quote unquote reopening update work session.

Thank you Director Hampson.

The first topic for today's reopening update is the Remote Learning Playbook.

And we will be hearing from Chief Academic Officer Dr. Diane DeBacker Chief of Schools and Continuous Improvement Wyeth Jessee and Chief Financial Officer JoLynn Berge.

I will now hand it over to Dr. DeBacker to begin the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Rankin and welcome to this work session around the Remote Learning Playbook and Technology Distribution.

As we get started I'd like to give thanks to some people who have been very involved with putting this together.

I'll begin with Carrie Hansen.

Carrie is the one who helped us organize this and get our thoughts around it and gather some information and data.

So thank you Carrie.

Thank you to Sharon Miata who was able to put this all together and do the ADA compliant work.

And then driving the slide deck today is Maria Gonzalez-Milsap.

So thank you to all of you for doing that.

And with that we'll go to our next slide.

As we thought about how to present the update on the remote learning playbook there's a lot of things that we could talk about because this is a topic that is really driving everything that we've been doing in remote learning and will continue to do until we get back into face-to-face learning.

So we decided to organize our our talking points today around these five principles of remote learning.

You have seen this slide or a variation of this slide in nearly every conversation about remote learning.

Sometimes you've seen this slide with just the icons around these five principles.

Today we are going to tailor all of our talking points around these and so we wanted to give you the full picture not just the icons but the words that go with it.

And just a reminder that our remote learning vision is that we are focused on racially equitable and culturally relevant remote learning systems and strategies digital and otherwise that support educators to meet individual learner needs interests goals and are responsive to family and community priorities interests concerns knowledge and resources.

Again this vision was written by Seattle Public School educators and staff.

The playbook was also written by our educators and our staff.

And as we look at these five principles you'll recall racially equitable where we focus unapologetically on our African-American boys and teens this aligns directly with Seattle Excellence Our Strap Plan.

We talk about health and wellness and you will recall and you'll hear some information about how we started the school year in Strong Start with concentrating on the wellness of our students.

Community responsive.

We know here in Seattle we have to be responsive to our community.

Our community is very involved and our community is also very honest with us in how we are doing our job in educating their students.

actionable.

We know that this playbook and what we put together over several months during the summer had to be able to be to be implemented in the classroom and in our schools.

But most importantly it had to be able to be adaptable.

And that gets you to this last principle.

So you're going to see the presentation today around these 5 principles.

Racially equitable is through every single thing that we do.

But you'll see us and hear us talk about several of the different areas as we move on.

Next slide.

And here we begin with the with one of the actionable items.

This is a screenshot from the playbook that is found at the MySPS website.

And if you recall several months ago in August when we revealed the playbook it was about 53 slides and we knew that having those slides there that that wasn't enough information for our educators as they wanted to dig deep into this.

So we took that playbook and we broke it down into three different sections.

A section around curriculum assessment and instruction and everything that's in that section you would expect from the grading from the curriculum we're using from the technology.

We then added a section around special services.

How do we work with our English language learners.

Our social emotional learning support special education.

And then also we added this section around school school-based operations because how we take attendance and how we do transportation when it's necessary is all very important.

So these are just a couple screenshots.

If you've been to the MySPS playbook or website you've seen this.

And I also want to draw your attention to that number up there 7,700 plus.

That is how many views had been made to this particular to the playbook as of last Friday.

That number keeps going up and what we know is happening with our educators.

Is there they are going to a section they're saying gosh I know I heard about this or read about in the playbook and I want to look at it again.

So it is being used.

Just earlier last week it was at 7,100.

So that number keeps going up.

Next slide please.

Another principle of our guiding principles health and wellness first.

You heard a few weeks ago when we did the work session around I can't even remember what the title of the work session was now but we did the work session we talked about the universal screener and about how we were doing strong start at the beginning of the year and concentrating on the wellness of our students.

Not so much about the academic where they were at but just their readiness to learn in terms of socially and emotionally.

And so we have done several things around this and I want to give thanks and acknowledgement to Pat Sander and her team because they have done the work and leaded the work in Seattle Public Schools in this area.

So all around our signature practices for social emotional learning the lessons and the videos that we have our guidance for family connection how we're working with our housing partners As you know we took the student's rights and responsibility handbook and we made a remote learning companion for that.

And then as we're promoting health as you know we have the COVID-19 site supervisor toolkit.

We have the online attestation process that you've heard about with the QR code.

And then we know with Seattle Public Schools and SCA they have a health and safety work group and they analyze this public health data on a on a weekly basis sometimes on a daily basis and that informs our guidance.

Marie if you could go.

There you go.

You got it.

There you go.

As you saw as I was talking some different screenshots have popped up.

Again this is taken straight from that SPS playbook website or web page MySPS and and this is what our teachers see.

Maria if you don't mind going back a couple slides just see there we go.

Thank you.

So that's that's that cover sheet for that companion guide for the for the students rights and responsibility.

Then you come in next.

You can see another example.

These this is all around the social-emotional page including a link to the lessons that our teachers can use.

That's okay.

Go ahead Maria.

And then these are examples of approaches as we're doing SEL in Seattle Public Schools.

And then you'll get down to our signature practices not only for students but also for adults.

Next slide.

All right.

As we look at the our our guiding principle around community responsive.

We know that our teaching and our learning plans are informed by and responsive to our ongoing feedback from and outreach to our students families caregivers and educators.

And with the intentional prioritization for supporting our African-American boys and teens.

Man you know you know what the saying is.

You can't communicate early enough or often enough.

And you as a board have reminded us of this.

So again giving giving gratitude and praise to our communications team under the direction of Carrie Campbell how they have really switched to a different level of communication as we're working in these times.

We have our home language pages that house our key information.

You will recall after we did the survey in May we posted all of those results and emailed those results to families.

We've made sure that everything we do is translated in our top six languages.

You've seen Superintendent Juneau everywhere in terms of feature stories.

Facebook Live.

You may have listened in on the town hall last night around technology and devices.

We do our robocalls.

They're translated.

All of this stuff you know but I think what I really want to highlight here and again we've shown some screenshots is School Beat.

So we redesigned that family letter to be a more engaging both engaging in terms of how you access the information and also just visually into something called School Beat.

That has been very well received and I hope that you've enjoyed that.

Next slide.

Actionable.

Again this is another one of our principles and you'll see actionable several times.

In fact in these slides in case you're keeping count four of these are all around actionable.

Because what we did in the playbook was was you know we explained what it was but then it's how do you actually take what's in that playbook and make it actionable.

So this is all around professional development and our professional development has been has been deep.

It had to switch this year to accommodate remote learning.

Our PD at the beginning of the year was not the same as it has been in years past.

Our tri-days were all around how you the social-emotional learning of students.

How we do remote learning from how you log on to school or GNC saw on to teams and everything else.

So this is just a listing of some of the things that we've done.

The Remote Learning Institute was on the September 2nd and 3rd.

As you know those had to become waiver days for us.

You approved a waiver last week to send the OSPI so that we could use those days.

It was organized all from Dr. Clover Codd and her team with the professional development.

Again another Herculean lift by that group.

We continue to do professional development throughout the year.

Our professional development all year long is around remote learning and even within our content professional development is how do you deliver that content remotely.

And as long as we're in remote learning that needs to be our focus.

I want to just make a distinction here.

We have the Seattle Public Schools Remote Learning Playbook but then we also have another document or another book that we've been using and that is the Distance Learning Playbook.

Ironically the titles are very very similar.

The Distance Learning Playbook though is a book that was written by Fisher Frye and Hattie.

And as I've heard Dr. Clover and her or Dr. Codd and her team explain it this book is really the what of remote learning and what we developed in Seattle Public Schools is the how.

And it's been a great a great companion for us as we've gone through this.

Next slide please.

And this is going to be handed over to Wyeth Jessee to talk about our tiered support.

Thank you Chief DeBacker.

So following adult learning principles and maximizing the tools guides and professional development that Chief DeBacker had mentioned and gone over we really want to follow the next step which is taking those and thinking about implementation.

To do that you would want to have ongoing sustained support and coaching on on the job site.

And so since we're in a virtual position and we have restructured our central office teams we're implementing those things as we take off in the 2021 school year around the remote learning plan and the requirements that are contained in them.

We have 8 specific teams.

professionals.

They are led and coordinated by the A Director of School and those teams are comprised of central office personnel from various departments with different degrees of experiences and skills.

And so coming together we have five of those teams at the elementary and K-8 level and then we have three with our middle and high schools.

Those teams go out and they view the lessons that are being taught virtually.

They have been going in and teaming with principals and other staff viewing modeling through the virtual classrooms for synchronous and then some of the asynchronous lessons going on and seeing class or course pages on Schoology.

They're going in and giving feedback and seeing those things uphold.

and relate to just those things that we're trying to teach around practices the tools and the guides and the remote learning playbook.

Next slide please.

So following the implementation we know that we continue to reference those particular guides for us.

And we've been spending a lot of schools been spending a lot of time around building community.

Developing a supportive environment for our students.

And so as they're taking off these last couple of weeks and providing instruction both synchronous and asynchronous.

We're managing what it is that's rolling out and we're making adjustments.

We're needing to again adapt is one of our principles that we're upholding to meet the needs of our students and our families.

And then also just the context within each of the classrooms and our schools.

I think that's one of the things here in Seattle we pride ourselves across our 104 schools is just our own sense of communities.

And so these learning support teams the directors of schools go into each of these schools and really think about where are they at in their own development.

What are the various skills and strengths they have.

And then how can we build on those and making sure that we're implementing the various again requirements under the remote learning playbook.

So right here are some of the things that we have put out.

And then pretty soon in a couple of slides I'll show you some specific schools.

Next slide please.

So really having the teams school-based teams and along the learning support teams teaming together to think about where are they at with their data.

They've been looking through again virtual classrooms the observations using as well as our attendance data formative assessments around the priority standards and just the adaption of tools and curricula.

We have internally we've been using project management to make sure that we've been looking at each of the work streams underneath the remote learning playbook.

Again as Chief DeBacker demonstrated on my SPS we have all the sections of the remote learning playbook that contains those tools and guides but we also have exemplars.

And so as we do the project management we're tracking the progress across our 104 schools.

We're getting feedback from school leaders teacher leaders and of course our learning support teams.

We need to adapt.

We provide additional guidance.

update the guidance.

And then we also have been shifting some of our exemplars and so that will be continuous for the rest of the 20-21 school year.

We are in a form of action research as I was just explaining.

So we know that we also have to get to professional development.

We have a scope and sequence developed for the course of the year.

Building on the remote learning playbook.

Recognizing again where different schools and staff are at.

So we do have to adapt and.

change the structures and outcomes for some of those items for professional learning may need to go slower.

We can always speed some things up.

And then we're also pivoting in for central office.

I think a lot of times we talk about professional development and coaching out the schools but we also need it in central office so that again we can understand each of these practices and principles that we're really trying to support in the remote learning playbook.

And then a tiered support so we have weekly communications.

We're putting out updates getting that updated information.

We do copy the school board on for example on the principal FAQ.

We have live and recorded PD sessions that we've been putting out.

Those are going to be developed and continue to build on.

And then virtual in-person like I've mentioned before going literally right into live lessons that are on Teams.

And then also again the posted classes and courses that we have out there and giving feedback for how we're structured.

And really essentially the thing that I would want to highlight is for what would that look like.

Why why would parents care.

And that really starts to look like well do I see it you know if I was a parent do I see that they built a sense of community.

Is the SEL standards are those things integrated into some of the lessons.

Are they accentuating student voice.

Is my is my student had an opportunity to participate.

Are they teaming.

On the breakout sessions is there some balance and structure for discourse between students that build them up and then focus on assets.

And then we also think about is there a tie directly between the synchronous learning the live lesson and then the asynchronous things that you would see and experience through the maybe the form of homework or assignments or group projects.

that we really want to make sure that our students have a tie-in.

They should be able to work fairly independently in those asynchronous lessons.

If not that would be good feedback as part of our partnership with our families and our students.

Next slide please.

So internally for the central office you know we want to make sure that we do have monitoring and a level of accountability.

Again the the.

visual that's on the left with the CSIP in the middle.

It is a part of our ongoing plans.

These teams review the data the school and these teams develop their goals.

Then they get into action planning.

They put the plan together.

We have a remote learning plan here to guide that.

Coordinating our supports.

Looking at the data which is some of the diagrams on the right and below.

The one on the right is something I've showed the school board.

at previous work sessions around just attendance period attendance what's going on in our homeroom platform and then the one below is one around progress report at the elementary level on the priority standards.

So how are students doing again on priority standards and their acquisition and mastery of those standards in a variety of situations or platforms.

Next slide please.

So for us I get an opportunity to show you two schools as example of them lifting off their remote learning playbook.

Here we have Beacon Hill International School.

They have been lifting off a number of high leverage practices that are aligned to the remote learning playbook.

And you know they're really focused again on the student populations that we have called out in our strategic plan.

The remote learning playbook is nested underneath our strategic plan.

It does support the students that we want.

It does support the processes and principles of partnership authentic relationships Most certainly a safe and welcoming environment.

And so right here for example in communication they're having two-way communication.

They recognize they need to have family connections.

They need to also make sure that we have translation and interpretation.

They have classroom meetings.

They're setting up ways to elevate or tier supports for different things like mental health or basic needs.

They also have a COVID-19 team that's thinking about health and safety as we lift our protocols.

in partnership with local public health.

The content the priority standards the lifting of the different curriculum the adaption of it.

And then again the various variety of assessment pieces.

Again anywhere from formative listening to our students every day.

How are they interacting with the content.

And then how do teachers need to adjust their instruction to meet those needs.

To our progress monitoring maybe it could be attendance or patterns of.

engagement and then also thinking further about just overall mastery of those priority standards and development of social emotional learning skills over the course of time.

So the team here at Beacon Hill have been lifting those pieces and so we've got an opportunity to see that.

So the next slide please is Aki Kurose Middle School.

Here we have an opportunity to see that they too have been lifting off the remote learning playbook.

monthly content-specific robo-calls or getting out information to our families.

What is our focus and our communication.

Weekly grade-level newsletters and an advisory phone calls.

Those relationships are really something well-established over time at Aki Kurose because those are just not practices that were built up this year but they're building over years of work.

They've had an advisory of self-supports.

Many mindful moments really again very much lifting up their students and you can see that it's asset-based and very positive in its approach thinking about how we lift up our students in thinking of their own cultural needs student voice if you allow me and identity safety.

Last one is just a book distribution something that seems very simple but is actually something that's really not only something logistical that we want to lift but is also getting the right books in the right hands.

We want to build student interest around literacy.

Again a long standing practice really thinking about what our students needs in literacy and so we have here some pictures around distribution of books at Aki Kurose.

Next slide please.

So at this point I would hand it back to Director Rankin.

I don't know if you wanted to pause here for questions or if you wanted us to move forward around the tech distribution.

Yeah let's pause here.

Thank you.

And so so this is for questions for remote learning playbook.

And I will just oh I want to note that right after roll call we were joined by Director Rivera-Smith and so I want to make sure that her presence is noted in the minutes that she has been here.

And so yeah I'll just go alphabetically.

And a reminder that we want to be done with this this work session and at 5 so let's try to keep our question and answers right now to about let's aim for 415 to be done.

So I don't think Director DeWolf is on so I'll start with Director Hampson.

Thank you.

Lovely slides.

Can we go back to the data page or is that for the next the last slide or was that the next slide of the next presentation.

Oh that's the.

Okay.

Okay.

Well that's fine.

Go back there.

So I'm really really was hoping to see some data.

My the sense that I get when listening to this is it sounds great theoretically and but it stops there.

Even with these specific examples because again it kind of remains at this level of scientific observation of you know adult behavior and you know what's intended to happen or how the experiment was set up or it doesn't really tell me anything about how this is landing in our school communities with our kids in the different environments in which they're trying to do remote learning.

So I don't know how I feel like we need to to that all that needs to be just like shoved into some sort of translator out of which come the you know questions that we that I feel really need the answers to which is that is this working.

Because what you know we hear from families and from schools from buildings that there's just such remains such a massive gap between these ideals and the reality in in our school communities.

And so and without any data or even either qualitative or quantitative you know you have some examples of kind of high-level what these two schools have a few ways in which they've applied things from the playbook but I just I can't put that together what's happening with what's happening in buildings.

Director Hampson is there do you want to follow up for more specific information offline or do you have a question.

Would you like to talk to that right now.

I mean we have one you gave one data point.

It's just one number.

It's not even a percentage.

So I don't have any proportionality.

I'm just wondering is there any other data you can give us about the extent to which this is effective.

So we're.

Go ahead.

Yes.

So we're to.

So since we've enacted the full schedule it's been two and a half weeks.

I would I would offer up a question back to say what what kind of information would you like and I'm happy to put it together.

You know right now I have the notion of student outcome and attendance.

That's that's where we're at.

Attendance and.

Also just the usage of online platforms are now.

Well what do you think is relevant.

That's one of them.

I'm actually very interested in what.

So this is what has been put together.

But what are the KPIs.

Key performance indicators.

What are the data points.

What do you all think is relevant.

Yeah.

So those those for us.

Right now is around specifically just right up front on attendance and then also levels of participation online platforms and then also the acquisition of the priority standards that we have set out for students.

Those are the 3 major KPIs that relate underneath the strategic plan.

And then we also have obviously feedback and engagement around family participation.

So we do have some Pulse surveys coming up here in October for different stakeholder groups students staff and families as well that relates to the remote learning playbook.

So I'm pretty sure I mean I know I've asked for that data and very recently and I'm particularly interested in having that and seeing that data and seeing it broken down for example by demographics and services.

to see where the gaps are because it's starting to appear like we have some pretty major gaps out there that we're not aware of.

So yeah I I would like to see that that data by school and by demographics.

So we'll have something out on the Friday number.

That was our plan.

We were going to couple that also with the request around device the technology and device distribution.

Okay.

Go ahead Director Rankin.

Okay.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

I would echo the comments made by my colleague Director Hampson.

This is all very elegant.

It's all very broad and it's not meshing with what we're hearing from a number of our families.

More data would be ever ever so useful.

Thank you.

Back.

All right.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

Yeah.

Hi.

Can you hear me okay.

Hello.

Yes we can hear you.

Okay.

Okay great.

Thank you.

Can you flip back to the attendance slide.

Because Director Hampson and Director Harris's comments resonate with me but I think I want to comment and question in a slightly different way.

The question about what KPIs we're using and if attendance and engagement on the online platforms is the main KPI right now.

I'm not sure.

Actually I'm I'm pretty sure that that's not going to get us good information about whether or not our students are engaging successfully in this environment and whether or not their social-emotional health is doing okay.

We set up a system and schedules in which they're online for a good portion of the day and then instructed to be doing asynchronous work when they're not directly in front of the screen.

But it is a lot a lot of screen time.

And What we are hearing from families and what I'm experiencing is that the immense stress of managing the day of multiple transitions and clicking online to this class and clicking to that class and that that experience how complicated and challenging it is. is really really impactful and it doesn't it doesn't sound like we have any current metrics to kind of get it student experience or student and family experience of what's happening here.

Director Mack I'm just going to I'm going to pop in for a second and just remind us that this this presentation was was meant to inform us about what the remote learning playbook is. and how it is used and some of it seems like we're getting into the greater scope of like what is remote what is remote learning right now as opposed to this tool which is what we've asked to hear about.

So I hear your questions.

I don't know that they are directly related to the playbook.

And Maria if you could go to that slide that shows the honeycomb.

of the attendance is that the one that we are there was something on attendance.

I think it's a homeroom slide that you were referring to Director Mack.

Yes there we go.

Thank you.

Yeah I'm not seeing it quite yet but yes so homeroom this is where so the playbook directs how attendance is being taken right.

Am I understanding that correctly.

That is correct.

In addition to the in accordance with the emergency changes to by OSPI to attendance policy and procedure yeah.

Okay so with what fidelity do we know that teachers are also accounting for the asynchronous time and not just whether or not they show up on their Teams call.

Because we can see where those those activities are on the different online platforms.

We can also see how they're recording attendance.

And then we're providing a different additional guidance and then we go in on the asynchronous lessons as well.

I mean the how are kids interacting with them.

But the feedback you know those are also right down to the practitioner level.

Those are very formative based elements.

I mean you're you're mentioning two things.

Director Mack that you know not only around the social-emotional learning that we know that staff has observable behaviors.

How's the affect.

How's the conversation with their family.

And then the professionals work in their professional learning teams.

We have school psychologists those folks come together and they make action plans on the on the moment.

What's what's going on.

Where are they at.

How are they engaging in those lessons.

And so we keep working directly with the staff.

Just for clarity.

Yeah for clarity that's actually kind of one of my concerns is that there is information presented in the playbook and kind of a plan around how to assess and engage students around the social-emotional aspect like you said that there's there's kind of a checklist somewhere in the playbook to check in on their affect how much they're engaging.

Is that.

Is there actually like.

Yes there is.

That's a pretty one of our one of those doc one of those many documents that are on this slide deck.

I would happy to be I can I can show you some of those things.

It's not so much.

I just would one thing I just I don't want to make it seem like it's a checklist.

These are a lot of new skills for some of the folks.

Asynchronous instruction is one of those for our staff.

And so the thing is that we we guide them.

That's why we're giving a 48-hour time window how how has the student interacted.

Was it a phone call maybe with the family to help and assist them because that's how best that student can learn or the family plan that they have.

Or is it something where they've engaged on the lesson later on you know that it wasn't even that day it was the next day.

So we do get that we change the status of attendance based on that.

Okay.

And are we are we going to get full attendance data.

That's what you said earlier.

Was that the data that Director Hampson was requesting or was it a different data set.

That that is the data set that we'll be putting in this Friday's memo for you the board.

Yes.

Okay.

Broken up by — Okay.

Those are my questions for now.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Mack.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Hi.

Director Hersey is not here.

He's not.

Okay.

I didn't I missed roll call so sorry about that.

Wanted to make sure I wasn't being skipped.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I I am I will definitely reiterate the call that I am hoping for more data.

It sounds like some will be coming in the Friday memo so I hope that I look forward to seeing that.

I have a question that I might get accused of it not being remote learning but I believe it is because One of the five design principles is actionable and I'm concerned about how actionable this can be when I understand and correct me if I'm wrong that preschool does not have iPads.

They were still waiting on those.

So and that of course doesn't make it actionable as remote learning because we're relying on parents having a home device.

So do we have any update.

I don't know if anybody can speak to that.

They're arriving this week.

This is JoLynn.

So the pre-K was a little bit behind but they're arriving this week and going out.

Awesome.

And will they be already I don't know what the word is when they're already set up for our system because I have reports of that some families receive their iPads with instructions of how to set it up but and of course the instructions were in English.

So that puts some families at a disadvantage alone even on top of not being tech savvy.

Will those all be whatever it's called they're set you know set up ready to use.

Director Rivera-Smith you're right.

I'm going to cut you off because our next presentation or well our next Presentation is technology distribution.

Oh okay yeah.

So if you could hold.

I will.

That would be great.

Okay.

Thank you.

Unless I mean of course if you have any questions about the presentation that we just saw please please go ahead.

Nothing more than the directors have mentioned.

So thank you.

Okay.

And then I think unless I missed anybody that just leaves me.

I really appreciate understanding more what the remote what the playbook is because it's a word that we've had tossed around a lot and it was sort of like what does that actually mean.

So for me I really appreciate seeing some screenshots and understanding a little bit better about what we're talking about when we're talking about the playbook.

My concern is always going to be implementation.

So in seeing the the usage and the logins That actually seems low to me.

And I know there have been questions that have come up about you know grading practices and attendance practices.

The remote policies not being not being implemented and people kind of doing different things by building.

So but it sounds like all of that information would be available to educators in the plate book.

So how are we ensuring and and getting communication out to everybody that this resource is there and should kind of be the first stop if there is a question.

Because it seems like it's looks relatively user-friendly and like a lot of questions could be answered but but people just aren't going here maybe.

Director Campbell is your hand up.

It is.

Thank you.

Hi.

Carrie Campbell Chief of Public Affairs.

So Diane DeBacker introduced the School Beat earlier in the slide deck and we actually are sending that to staff prior to families and there's a staff section.

So as new guidance or updates are created in the playbook there is a section called out in School Beat that directs folks to that new information or just as reminders as we're hearing things come from school leaders or staff where they need additional clarity we're pointing them directly to the playbook.

And my understanding is also the playbook was rolled out during our Tri-Day trainings and also to school leaders.

That's great.

Thank you.

Can I throw on a question regarding school — Thank you Chief Campbell.

I was wondering and this is maybe in the weeds but I couldn't find a clear path on our website for school beads.

If you go into the search bar and type it in there you find like how to subscribe and then there's an archive too.

But I was wondering if we could get those on the front page or somewhere just just more accessible because.

Some families you know they're not going to their email they're going to the website looking for that information and it's great information.

I love the redesign and I think it's super helpful.

I just want to find more ways people can access it.

Yeah that's a great suggestion.

I'll talk to the web team to see if we can make it more visible on the homepage.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Related to that I can we go back actually to the communication slide.

That was up because there was a lot of things there that I just wanted to sort of highlight as being really great.

We've had I know as a board and some individual board directors have conversations about you know how we communicate to families and and where the things are that we need to find and the new School Beat redesign is great.

I find it as a parent super helpful.

that I can sort of skim it and see like oh yeah I had a question about school meals or whatever and find it right right there instead of having to wade through a whole bunch of text.

So just really really appreciate the work that the communication folks have done to make that stuff easy to find and understand.

I'm wondering the playbook so MySPS just to confirm for anybody who may be listening is an internal tool internal website for educators.

Is that that's that right.

That's correct.

Okay.

So I'm I'm wondering actually this format of the playbook at least in the screenshots that we saw seemed really easily broken down by topics and pretty user-friendly.

And I see that there's an FAQ for families from the playbook but I wonder and I know this is like another big task but if there's any thought in creating a family remote learning playbook or some version Of that even as or even just a landing page for remote learning that's broken down in a way that kind of looks similar to the way that screenshot that we saw looked to make it so that families can you know if there is a question about you know cameras on cameras off what's the deal for them to just you know know that they can go to the remote learning But like I guess is an FAQ enough or is that just going to be a wall of information or do you think is there a possibility of kind of breaking it down into more of a handbook playbook.

Why do you want to talk about the family guide or would you like me to do that.

Why don't I do a brief and then I'll let you take over.

Okay.

So yeah.

So following up on.

our conversation Director Rankin with Director Hampson and Director Rivera-Smith.

Look for an invite next week.

We are we took action based off that conversation.

Just what you just mentioned.

There's some —.

Hey what a great idea.

You have a fabulous idea and we need your fabulous feedback.

And so yeah we've been working to put that together.

Lots going on as you can see.

But getting that out is is a high priority.

And I think Carrie could tell you about some of the pieces to it.

Yeah.

So Carrie Campbell Chief Public Affairs Officer again.

So we are developing a family-facing guide.

And so while the remote internal remote learning playbook is very educator jargon heavy and it's really intended to be an instructional guide.

This will be in family-friendly language translated printable and so that we can distribute it multiple ways.

So we're in the process of doing that work right now.

That's awesome.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

I want to move us on to the next the next section but just say that I see you know if we can figure out how to bridge some of the disconnect between As Director Hampson was mentioning between you know what's great in theory and has a lot of thought into it and then actual experience and implementation in the buildings.

That obviously we are always always working on.

But I am wondering if just going into the future if this isn't a really good model for us to have just in general even not in remote learning to have sort of the SPS educator playbook and family playbook that are updated every year.

Just to make it really easy across our 104 buildings to find you know consistent information without having to be a policy wonk and know to dig into meeting minutes or whatever.

Just throwing that out there because it seems like this is a potentially really useful way of us to organize information and and consistency.

So if there are no other questions related to the remote learning handbook.

I got one.

I got one.

Really quickly.

You mentioned I think Diane or somebody mentioned the Remote Learning Companion for the Student Rights Responsibilities Handbook.

Is that for student consumption or is that like an internal.

It's for student consumption.

Okay.

So has that been sent out to students somehow or is it available or how how was it given to them.

Yeah.

So it's distributed out to the schools.

So that's how we give it.

It's part of the handbook that schools have and students get it as part of the opening package.

We did have to update it.

And so then we also post it up on the website so that it's also available there as well.

Outward-facing.

In addition to just like I said distribution to students.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay.

Let's move on to the second topic.

of this session which is Technology Distribution.

Chief Financial Officer JoLynn Berge and Executive Director of Department of Technology Service Services Carlos DeValle will be presenting.

Chief Berge go ahead please.

Thank you Director Rankin.

So we're going to Carlos will cover 3 slides today.

Basically we're going to talk about how we've rolled out tens of thousands of devices.

We have stood up a student family tech line.

That's taken thousands of calls.

We've stood up 10 tech resource centers and sorry and we have completely reworked our network and our infrastructure.

So needless to say Department of Technology has been pretty busy since COVID started.

And just a big shout out to the entire team.

So with that Carlos take it away.

Hi I'm Carlos Zavalle I'm the Executive Director of Technology.

I appreciate having me here.

I'm just going to go through the slides.

We have if you guys can remember back in last year we started the rollout in high school by March 1st we had 3,866 students that have picked up the laptops under that planned rollout that we had.

Then you know COVID hit and we we decided okay we've got to go one-to-one for all students.

By the end of June we had about sixty nine twenty nine more students had picked up their laptops.

September 24 doing the distributing the distribution accelerating it we got about thirty one thousand nine hundred and seventy more students had already their laptops.

As of right now we have a total of about 42,765.

That is about 79 percent of the students have picked up their laptop.

And what we've seen on our system is that roughly about 92 percent of the students have logged in into our remote systems.

Next.

And the internet and hotspot assistance front we we were we were very diligent about ensuring that the kids had what they needed.

And we find out the internet was a major issue when it came to remote access.

We had about 10 pop-up events over the summer.

And as of right now we have about 3,253 hotspots and internet close that we have provided out there.

We held internet sign-ups of 5 schools in collaboration with the city and Comcast and WAVE.

We also participated in 5 more back-to-school events with the Seattle Housing Authority and the CBO's.

And there's still some people some some students out there that require a little bit of assistance with the internet and we continue in that distribution.

at the tech centers as we speak.

Next.

Another area that there has been a concern is the tech line.

We we you know the increase of devices on the network you know obviously there is increase on issues and tickets.

From the staff from the staff side of the house we had about 19,322.

Same period last year was about 16,400.

That's about roughly 3,000 more tickets that are different than the 3,000 more tickets.

It's about 80 80 more tickets per day.

The student requests that's the student tech line.

We have had about 15,500 and the logs you know I'm just glad to to report those logs are going down quite a bit.

We we put some resources behind it and it's been going down.

At the end on September 14 we opened the A technology resource center to provide you know laptop support internet support in addition to helping the kids get familiar with the software.

You know Schoology Teams Seaside.

And we did it as well.

We listened to the community.

We got their feedback and they wanted to make sure that there was language support attached to that and we provided that and it's been going very well.

We have served since the past two weeks we have served about 2,346 families and teachers that we're providing this support.

Now of note some of the teachers visiting the center might have a request for 10 hotspots or or fixing two or three different computers.

Families might come with one issue or it might come two issues.

So this number 2346 is just the visit.

It's not indicative of how many actual work and tickets have come in through that.

With that I'll pass it back to Jillian.

So Carlos can you talk about the timeline we usually use when planning a one-to-one rollout.

Can you talk about that a little bit.

I mentioned this last night during the town hall meeting.

Industry standards of a project like this will probably take about a year.

We're talking about multiple projects if you look at this.

I mean the distribution the hotspots the fixing the network installing a platform.

Those are just you know projects by itself.

And industry standard probably let's take for example the distribution.

That's easy a year planning to ensure that we have the resources in place and that we have the milestones we have you know we fill the gaps we understand what the gaps are during that planning and then we can move forward to the implementation.

And then to have a well thought out and a smooth implementation of this magnitude it probably takes about 2 to 3 years.

That's just basic industry standards.

We have done it.

in less than 6-7 months.

Yes there have been gaps here and there but you know it's a it's a evolving process as we try to move this massive amount of devices out to the students.

We're going to have gaps here and there but we're being we've been identifying those and then we've been filling and putting mitigation strategies behind it or addressing it right on the spot.

Thank you.

So a couple more items to note.

On the technology resource centers we will be expanding to evening hours to accommodate parent requests and family requests so that will be coming soon.

We do have a 6-week check-in on activity level.

The activity level at the resource centers is going down which we did expect to happen.

So we'll be monitoring that week by week about which sites are getting how much traffic what that looks like.

I want to say that the student support line They have been incredible.

So a specific call out to Ryan Yeh.

We have had our call backlog decreasing significantly.

When your network goes down the first day you end up having a backlog that's pretty significant.

And so trying to get ahead of that really caused us some consternation at the beginning but we have like Carlos said address that with additional resources.

And a lot of people on this call helped out so thank you.

And we've been getting really great feedback at both the resource centers and on the tech line even though people have had to wait to be called back.

Everyone occasionally we get someone who's not happy but I have to say overwhelmingly we've been getting excellent feedback.

I know Leah can speak to that in particular.

And then if we could go back to slide 13 I just want to add some context because I know we're going to get this question and I'll just preempt it.

So we think we probably have somewhere between 10 11 percent on slide 13 10 or 11 percent of our students doing bring your own device.

So while 80 79 percent of our students have picked up a laptop we know that we have 10 or 11 percent that actually are using their own.

And then the data that we had been working with and Wyeth will talk more about this in a moment 92 percent of our students have logged in on one or more of our remote learning platforms.

What we don't track is the use of Zoom.

We know that some schools are still using Zoom and that isn't being tracked right now.

We don't have a way into that because we don't have a login.

And we are working to stabilize an average daily rate.

Let's see.

We know that we have about 5 percent of our students absent every day and under normal circumstances.

And then we probably have another couple percent that have individual tech issues on a daily basis.

And then Wyeth and I have been using the data both from attendance and from logins and trying to match that up.

And we've been digging down into schools that have low participation.

So you all have heard some from Concord.

looking at some of those schools about what's actually been going on and Wyeth do you want to maybe say more about what your team's been doing with that data.

Yeah so we there's a lot going on but the you know DOTS built a dashboard it's something that we've been they've been working on or we've been working on together for these probably four straight months.

And then integrating the data is a little bit more technical than people realize.

I think that's something I mentioned at the previous work session we were talking about attendance.

But just like you just like JoLynn said it's really having our teams the directors of schools they have access to the dashboard.

Rolled that out literally this week because it was comprehensive not only having the attendance but also the online data because then you can see which platform is being used and when it's being used for different populations.

And so then we're doing inquiries I mentioned that at work session to find out there's a variety of reasons why there is what's going on anywhere from low connectivity An illness for the student or the family or the schedule for the family.

So we've been drilling in on that.

Just that first blush just on low overall participation online platforms was 3 out of the 104 schools.

Concord being one and we got that finally figured out what was going on.

Collection of things going on just around connectivity and devices and waiting for students to get them so they can move together as a community.

And then Zoom at one another school and then we're digging in on attendance at the last school.

So those are just you can see three different issues that would look like just a data point does require the directors of schools and these learning support teams to go out and find out what exactly is going on so that we can resolve all those issues.

And we know that that'll continue to move on and it gets down to every single student because every student counts for us and we want to make sure they're connected.

So the other question was about iPads for pre-K.

They're rolling out this week and next week.

Those devices come where you need to actually enter in your students information.

We do have translated videos and instructions.

There's a packet that goes with that iPad when it is distributed.

So with that I'll turn it back over to you Director Rankin.

Okay.

Thank you.

I will just go alphabetically again starting with you Director Hampson.

Thank you.

So the just to follow on to the data that is provided in terms of the 8 percent that we know we're not reaching as of yet if we assume that it's 8 percent based on on that information that we have.

What are the demographics both geographically and student makeup and service makeup.

So I so I think what we've been able to see in the data that we started looking at last Friday Director Hampson is that it's not 8 percent.

It's about what's going on at that school.

And so some of it's about.

certain kids are not there that day.

That's a certain percentage.

We know that.

And then it was about some Zoom use or are they doing asynchronous activities at certain grade levels.

And we we do have data that we'll be sending you out by students furthest from educational justice low income that sort of thing.

Isn't that correct Wyeth for both attendance and.

Yep we'll package that get that out to them.

And so around 4 to 5 percent of students are usually typically ill on any given day.

So that's that's right there a chunk of it.

But then we do have to drill down.

I think as you're requesting Director Hampson is what's the other ones.

And so there's a variety of things that go on that low connectivity is the theme also right now to be honest with you too.

That's something.

Yeah I mean and no huge patterns though that we know about yet.

I mean well you obviously whole schools.

Oh my goodness.

I just have to say it never fails that every time we're on a work session or a board meeting my phone my e-mails and my all five phones and three e-mails go off with Seattle Public Schools communications.

Thanks Carrie.

Mine's going too.

Very distracting.

So.

Yeah I mean there's going to be it's not going to tell the full picture which is what you're saying Chief Berge and I get that.

But you know we still want to be able to see on a given day who are we missing.

What where are they and and what student populations do they represent.

And then you know we'll want to know how that trends over time.

And then for different reasons obviously.

But.

And we want to tell principals by student right.

So that's that's part of the data that we've been working on collecting and putting together because it has to be quick right.

We need it to be like why I said a dashboard where people can quickly get to where is my problem and how do I go about solving it.

Because when we ask them questions we're asking about specific grades specific student populations and specific students when we follow up.

And we're not just relying on the schools to do that.

So we do hand the data we have it but we also have in central office dedicated a repurposed some folks on our team to just look at this data and inquiry and follow up and make sure plans are being made and what's going on.

I feel like I have a pretty good sense of what I assume to be the responsibility centrally and what the responsibility is the building.

But I'm wondering if that has been as clearly communicated even reiteratively.

And yes I do read your emails to principals and I so I know what's in there.

I also know there's lots of other communication that we don't see because you're at one level and then there's a whole lot of communication that goes on in between.

And so it's you know I would just ask that we we confirm that in fact there's real clarity about what for example our DOTS team can do versus what we have to depend on on building staff to do.

And it's all hands on deck obviously but it might need re-re-emphasizing based on just some some of the recent examples that we've seen.

So I look forward to getting more data and and start being able to see that starting to trend so that we can make sure that we're targeting resources appropriately.

Thank you.

That's all for me.

Thank you Director Hampson.

Director Harris.

I appreciate all the hard work immensely.

My hope is that we do a lessons learned as far as what happened out at Concord.

And take a look in that data that central staff is looking at to see if there are any more hidden concords out there without hotspots etc.

So we're not waiting three weeks to find out that folks aren't having school or having a connection.

Again appreciate the hard work appreciate the as Former Superintendent Nyland used to say slide to the ball.

But my hope is that we take this as a learning moment.

Other than that I will stand down.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Director Hersey I think is still not not here so we'll go to Director Mack.

Yeah hi.

I have two kind of lines of questions.

A question two questions maybe I'm not sure.

One is around the data analysis that you've been talking about to determine where some problems might be and that you you mentioned that there's three different schools that seem to have higher numbers of attendance missing.

I was curious to know about that third one and how large that school is.

Is it a large school we're dealing with or are we talking about a relatively small elementary school.

The most small non-comprehensive high school.

Okay.

So I I'm I'm grateful that you're you're taking the time to do the analysis of the data to figure out where gaps may lie.

I'm wondering if that analysis also includes looking at individual students and repeat absences as opposed to just like overall like one-day snapshot.

Are you doing any kind of look at individual students as you're doing that analysis.

The dashboard itself has down to individual student level tracking.

You can again segregate the data based on different populations with different.

Sorry that was my turn.

Sorry about that.

That was my robo-call.

It's coming eventually.

Sorry.

So I Yeah so that it does absolutely Director Mack it's down to student level and again that's we're looking at all of that and like how are they grouping and how are you following up and is there any patterns and what's going on without labeling the students too.

And so we really want to think about patterns of behavior as opposed to students who have problematic attendance.

And so we're just monitoring them what's going on.

And then really doing again that inquiry of whatever it may be.

And then the team stand by to really support and monitor their success and make sure whatever we have to do to adjust the system or our practices to support the student we do that.

Yeah I appreciate that on a building by building level.

The other line of questioning that I have is around the connection between the playbook presentation that we just had and technology and Kind of going back to that KPI question of are we actually what what is the student experience.

And one of the things that is just kind of missing from the conversation is and I think it's all over the map because different schools are doing things differently.

And there's a lot of complexity in some places.

and other places simplicity and in my own personal experience I've got three kiddos two different schools and one school actually did a great job of having relative consistency of where things were posted and you know consistency of what platforms and that there was not six million links to to jump through.

But the other school it's still A little more chaotic.

And so my question is that the high-level playbook talks a lot about the pedagogy and so forth but the the best practices around user interface and scheduling are those are those being worked on in some way.

Are we trying.

I don't think it's part of the playbook as it exists now.

I know it's there's conversations at ITAC about is it better to put things in Outlook versus Schoology but are we working on that piece of helping to have best practices and reduce the chaos with the interaction with the technology.

So that's that you're you're you're spot on.

That was a couple of very lengthy conversations last week.

with some folks across on DOTS some folks on Chief DeBacker's team some folks on on my team just about that thing.

And so we said because it does relate to the remote learning plan but but.

accessibility to the lessons in an easy accessible way.

That is a requirement.

And so we agreed that we would uphold basic practices of organizing information.

It may not be in the exact same format like using like you said the calendar function.

It may be a little bit different across some of the staff.

We agreed to try to get it on the same page for a school.

So each school may have their layout differently.

Our observations is there's usually 3 or 4 staff that really need additional more intensive assistance in organizing their information.

So that's that's where we're at.

We also recognize not we couldn't require everyone to get exactly on the exact same page given the oversaturation of newness because we're getting a lot of pushback on on folks and on all things being new.

That was.

But it's design of the user interface and I and I appreciate that there's work being done to try to reduce that because I think a massive amount of the stress is how ridiculously chaotic and I you know I was personally in tears multiple times trying to navigate how to put three different kids schedules together and where do I find this thing and what's you know it's just I mean I I was in tears.

And so my last thing was that that robocall that's going out right now it was interesting getting it during this work session because it glitched on mine three times and then finally told me that if today's the last day for the data of our students and I myself have not filled out that form that I think it takes about I don't know it'll take me about an hour and a half two hours to get all that stuff input.

So I'm kind of.

That data form and the user interface and technology this is all a lot of expectation of our families and not having them notice until today that today is the last day.

We may not have them all filled out.

So I'm wondering if it's possible to give some grace on that and maybe another reminder to families because I'm sorry I'm not going to be able to get mine completed tonight.

Director Mack we're veering pretty far off topic.

It's related to technology though and the interfaces so and the communication of that and the impact on the student learning.

But that's that's all I wanted to talk about and thank you for your information.

Yeah it's you just have to update the form so if nothing's changed there won't be anything different for you to put in but we can hold the data form open for another week.

So expanding the deadline is something that's possible for us.

And I know that we wanted to particularly try to follow up with our EL families too.

So we've identified this.

I worked with Carrie earlier on this issue.

This could definitely be a barrier for our EL families so we need to rethink this and we need to think about how we can help them update this form because they could completely be missing calls if we don't have the right number.

And while the school may have a number if they don't have it in the central system it could be missing families.

And that could be part of the disconnect that everyone talks about.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thanks for that.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Hi.

Thank you.

And I appreciate that last topic as far as giving an extension because like I mentioned preschool families a lot of them don't have devices yet and how they would be doing that online data card is is questionable.

So would just correct me.

Do preschoolers receive that data card too.

Maybe I'm wrong about that.

I don't know.

I'll have to check.

Maybe Carrie might know.

If Carrie knows she can chime in otherwise I'll check.

Thank you.

Okay so anyways I have other questions trying to decide which ones are more important because I know we're probably already crunched for time here but I'm I'm going to go to Comcast because we're getting lots of concerns about the essentials package and the sign-ups and I know we don't control this but I'm wondering how much influence we can have because they ask for a Social Security number and or a photo ID which is which you know some of our immigrant families are not comfortable either don't have or are not comfortable sharing because of the fear of you know ICE raids and what Do we have another way around that for them because even even though they don't have to give social security number necessarily I understand that is asked for first and if they don't have that they're told they can do a photo ID even that much you know they're uncomfortable sharing.

So I'm wondering what the options are for them as far as getting connectivity.

Do we have we address that or anything.

Yeah.

Carlos jump in too.

As far as I know if they have any if they have any concerns we'll just give them a hotspot.

You know there was the whole debt issue with Comcast.

Comcast has now told us that they're clearing old debt and there's a debt forgiveness program that's coming online.

But the timing of these things is too slow.

Right.

So a lot of our families were just hooking up with a hotspot.

Carlos I don't know if you have more.

Yeah you're correct.

We can provide them with the hotspots.

That would be the mitigation.

We also we're working with the state K-20 for for the I'm sorry with OSPI and the program as well to to make sure that kids that they require Internet access they're paid for.

Yeah and Director Rivera-Smith we have worked with Comcast to try to get priority coupons so that they don't ask those questions.

We think they're still asking them but we have specifically tried to work with Comcast on that issue as well.

And it's still a work in progress.

Yeah no I know as of recently today they were asked that a family was asked that so it's definitely still being still being asked and thank you.

I'm good to hear that there are some negation and you are adjusting it working with OSPI for that.

Thank you for that information.

Next question is about the related to the pre-K iPads.

I was wondering I've heard how K-2 teachers I'm sure as well as pre-K they're going to spend a lot of time doing and they are spending time doing tech support in classes and it's hard for the teachers when they don't have an iPad themselves.

Are we going to be giving those pre-K and K-2 teachers iPads as well so that they can understand the functions as they try to explain it to their students.

Yes.

And that has happened for Tier 1 and 2 schools already for their teachers.

We still need to deploy for Tiers 3 and 4. So I think some of the inventory that we understood to be available in the schools we didn't have as many iPads as we thought we did in the school so we need to order a few more to pick up all the teachers.

all the rest of the teachers and that.

They have been ordered for all of them.

Pre-K also then preschool teachers.

Yes yes yes.

Okay.

And then do we have a count of how many students still do not have devices or connection.

I know that every school it's been school by school to do that.

Do we have that data.

You know I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but one of the things that Wyeth and I worked on was asking schools to fill out a form and send it in to us that said here's who doesn't here who still here's a by-student count of who doesn't have connectivity and what their issue is.

So Y's had a little bit of chance to look at it I know.

And the takeaway so far is it's not a device issue.

People have devices.

It's more of a connectivity issue where they may still have you know not enough hotspots to cover all enough kids in the family.

Right.

It's only one hotspot for two kids.

If they have more than that or if they're on Comcast and have more than a couple of students on the basic program it's bogging down and they need a hot spot as a supplement.

And then Wyeth do you want to jump in and talk about just some other first take takeaways that we've been that you that you saw.

Yeah so stuff's coming in.

We're just it's just been an iterative process you know.

So this started before school started.

We're doing during Strong Start doing checks.

You know you can see that you saw the how many families just even went to the tech resource centers.

You know people are getting things and then are going to their own Internet provider.

So and then you know just people are pivoting you know and needs change.

You just don't know until you know you all of a sudden have the right hotspot it works or your connectivity works.

You know devices have gone extremely well.

The connectivity we're noticing a number of schools of you know have everybody's got a hotspot or a good interconnect internet connection.

We do with some of our larger schools or in particular sections I know that's not a mystery or that's something we've discussed before in previous work sessions that there are some low connectivity issues in some areas and for some families.

And so we're working we've got other student IDs we're working on each one of those in partnership with DOTS.

So are there numbers you can share with us either right now or on the Friday memo.

It's Friday memo coming coming to you on the Friday memo.

It's.

I don't even have the number yet myself.

I haven't even seen it yet.

There's just a lot of data to try to come in and we're trying to keep up with it.

So an update iPads to teachers have happened in tiers 1 through 3 now.

We're still working.

We have some tier 4's remaining but we're making progress every week.

And preschools aren't tiered right.

Are they are they tiered too or no.

No.

No okay.

But you said that those for they are coming for pre-K teachers too.

Okay awesome.

Last quick question regarding and maybe this is Carlos can explain this better to me.

I'd heard concerns concern that the laptops we'd ordered for the elementary students were not of the gigabytes that made them functional for our platforms that something about they should have been A but we ordered 4. Has is that an issue.

Has that been a problem.

I'm only hearing secondhand about it clearly but.

Wanted to find out.

I have I haven't have notice of that.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Yeah that I'm I'll try to see if I can get more information.

Yeah no I'm sure we will look into it and we'll get back to you but this is the first I hear.

Okay yeah and if I find more I'll send that your way because I know that wasn't the best description but this was a concern I heard.

So thank you very much.

No other questions.

All right.

I am going to wrap us up.

I don't I don't have any questions some questions I have already were were asked.

I am really interested in seeing kind of a cross-analysis of of school-based data and district-level data and how those all line up.

I think we've already talked about that.

But mainly I just wanted to say what a incredible effort has been made by DOTS and team and I also wanted to you know kind of shout out to the call center.

I know and you know some people have said like oh oh it took them so long to get back to me or oh this and that and those times are getting shortened.

But I also wanted to note that staff from outside of DOTS volunteered their time to answer some of those calls on the weekends and pitch in to help families and help clear some of the the backlog so I just wanted to make sure that we're talking about the incredible amount of effort that has gone into doing all of this in as Carlos said a very condensed amount of time.

So not to not to overlook issues that still need to be solved but this has been a huge huge huge transition for our district that is really impressive and appreciated.

And in terms of the the internet I Also people may or may not notice that the school district is now taking on the responsibility of connecting families to the internet which in my opinion is a pretty these days a basic utility and that that the efforts to connect families to that have come from the school district and not other levels of government that may be more appropriate to do so.

So anyway just saying.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

And thanks for these presentations and I know we will look forward to getting some more data and information.

And before we move into the budget budget session I would suggest that maybe people would like a 5-minute break.

I don't know Dr. Hampson.

I'd love it.

Let's take a 5-minute bio break so we'll reconvene at 502.

Can I ask a technical question.

Is it the same link or a different link for the next meeting.

Same link.

Yeah don't hang up.

Just want to make sure.

JoLynn I'm not a presenter.

I'm back.

Director Rivera-Smith.

I'm here.

Director Mack.

Still here yes.

Director Harris.

Director DeWolf.

Present.

Director Harris.

Okay hopefully she'll join us shortly.

Let's go ahead and get started.

And with that let's see if I missed anything.

Okay we'll now move into the budget work session.

Chief Financial Officer JoLynn Berge and Budget Director Linda Sebring will be presenting.

I will now hand it over to Chief Berge to begin the presentation.

Take it away.

Thank you Director Hampson.

So on the first slide it lists our outcomes.

We'll be looking at 19-20 where we think we'll be ending the year.

And while we've just started 20-21 we'll be looking at a projection for ending that financial position because it definitely is the precursor to how we go forward with the 21-22 budget.

We'll look at an enrollment update.

We'll have some information regarding our 21-22 projections and the timeline for that.

We'll talk about participatory budgeting process and hopefully we'll be getting directions on community participation in our budgeting process.

So on the next slide this is where we're estimating ending our fund balance.

So I'll point out a couple of numbers of note.

For 19-20 on the first line You can see that we have the same amount committed committed to economic stabilization in both years.

Now because our budget is increasing it represents a smaller and smaller percentage of our budget.

So in 19-20 it's at 5 percent and then we tick down to 4.5 percent.

If this amount continued to 21-22 it would tick down even further.

So just a kind of an idea about how the Economic Stabilization Fund amount and percentage kind of play out over time.

The next numbers I want to point out are really the savings amount in the middle.

Leah can you circle those numbers.

I'm circling them on my screen but it's not very helpful for everybody else.

So the 14 and the 16 million in the middle that's really money that we had saved up and we knew that we were going to carry it forward to the 19-20 school year and we had planned for that.

So in the last two or three years we've had money that we've been saving on top of underspend to kind of fill the hole.

So one of the things we'll talk about in a in a few minutes is that the Seattle budget for I don't know Linda can probably say for how long maybe maybe forever we have more expenditures than revenue on a regular basis.

So we always are relying on underspend and other things to kind of help us out and make it through.

One of the other estimated savings that we had in 19-20 we had salary savings and then the school benefit the school employee benefit change.

They did not bill us for one month in 19-20 because of a timing change.

So at the bottom you can see that we're projecting right now to end 19-20 at 146 million dollars.

And that number is dropping to an estimated 97.6 million dollars for 2021. And the reason for the differences would be the things in the middle.

So it would be the 14 and the 16 million dollars of savings that we don't have to we won't have applicable were to apply to the 2021 school year.

We do have some savings.

So the 20.4 million dollars becomes a 20 million dollar estimate.

So we do have underspend and vacancy savings that sort of thing that we do estimate to receive.

And then we have a couple of unique situations really due to COVID.

So the enrollment change right now is just over a thousand students off our projection.

As you recall from the budget work sessions in the spring we had 6 million dollars set aside for fall enrollment and we've used all of that.

But the estimated total impact is 15 million.

So that leaves a 9 million dollar additional reduction in 2021 that we had not anticipated when we were planning the budget.

And then we also have a transportation funding deficit of right now it's estimated at 11.6 million dollars.

That $11.6 million is the estimate right now to transport 2,000 not 2,000 not 2,000 50 to 200 special education children throughout this year.

So if we transport that many kids I believe that's the current estimate.

Linda is that right or am I am I missing the pre-K or the K-1.

No you're correct.

That's the estimate.

And if and if we do serve kindergarten first grade in a hybrid model we believe that that deficit would climb.

So those are 2 things that are specifically related to COVID that we will have to deal with.

You'll notice that we don't have any initial numbers for 21-22.

We wait until we close 19-20.

So the 19-20 school year ended August 31st.

We're in the midst of closing that year.

By the October work session we believe we'll have initial numbers for the 21-22 budget just as an initial projection of a maintenance level rollover in budget and where we might end up.

Next slide please.

So this is the chart related to enrollment.

This is headcount not FTE.

You can see that in 19-20 we had about 53 5,000 students.

We projected to have about 500 more kids.

We our projection was just over 54,000 students and right now we have 53,000.

Next slide please.

What we've done here is we've analyzed by grade level and shown by grade level really where we're under-enrolled or where that enrollment sits compared to the February projection.

So you can see that most of it.

Quite a bit of it is in kindergarten followed by the earlier grades.

So that probably lines up with what you've been hearing in your own districts.

Next slide please.

So the 21-22 draft budget development calendar.

This is when we start working on 21-22.

This is what we know so far.

We know that there is interest in adding we're interested in adding some additional community meetings.

Those have not been put on here yet.

So this is the timeline that we think that we know today.

You'll notice that there's not a date for a November work session.

I'm not sure whether the board would like to have one or not but right now we don't have a specific date for that.

You can see that we would be working to roll out staffing to The schools that are central budgets have to be developed by the end of January and then those budget allocations go out to schools February 23rd.

And then we would wait for the legislative session to end in at the end of April.

And we would work through the spring with a board adoption of the budget slated right now for July 7th.

Next slide please.

So I want to talk a little bit about early forecast for 21-22.

The maintenance level if we just have a maintenance level budget that's kind of what we're anticipating as a starting point.

We don't have savings identified like we had in the past years.

That's the 14 million and the 16 million that you saw booked in the middle of the spreadsheet for 19-20.

We do have a known deficit where we do budget on a regular basis to spend more than we actually have in revenue and then rely on savings.

If you recall when we were talking about the contract when we settled with SEA last summer not not this August but August of 19 we knew that we were going to have a spend-down and fund balance.

So it's not unknown.

It's something that we've known and talked about over the course of the last 3 years and we can see that trend line happening.

It just now happens to also coincide with the pandemic which we didn't know and we haven't we didn't plan for.

Next slide please.

So I'll talk a little bit about legislative landscape and then Director Hampson I don't know if you want to take a round of questions now before we go into some of the detail or not it's kind of up to you.

But part of the legislative landscape is what's happening with transportation revenue.

So the transportation funding formula continues to be a major concern for school districts across the state.

When the formula uses prior year expenditures And you don't have any prior year expenditures.

It means that we would basically start with no revenue next year in 21-22 without a legislative change.

So let me say that one more time.

They use a look back to the prior year.

And so when you have zero or close to no expenditures maybe very low compared to what we've had before we would not be at all close to the amount of money that we would need and we would probably have a larger issue in transportation.

Now we think that this would be addressed during the legislative session.

We've started working with a number of other districts about what this would look like.

We've been working with OSPI.

They have expanded what your transportation dollars can be used for this year so we can claim costs that where we're using a yellow bus or our transportation staff to deliver meals to deliver instructional packets any deliver a hotspot anything that's a delivery to a school or to a student can be counted for transportation funding.

Now enrollment is the other big issue that you saw.

Many districts around us are are down.

I think that the higher poverty that you have maybe the less your enrollment is impacted.

There seems to be some correlation to that.

We are definitely not the most impacted district.

We're not the least impacted district.

We kind of seem to be in the middle.

We're sitting at about 1.9 percent right now of an enrollment decline.

I've heard of districts where they're at 4 percent.

I've heard of districts where they're right at their projection.

So we're in the middle of that pack.

But definitely the enrollment hit to our budget and to other districts budgets is is a concern and we would like the legislature to somehow at least help us partially either fully or partially with that enrollment holding us harmless to some degree.

And then I'm sure all of you know that we have had have an economic crisis related to the pandemic.

We have been anticipating cuts as part of the 2021 or the 21 legislative session.

Legislators have told us over and over again that that's something that we should expect.

I will say that the revenue forecast that just came out cut the deficit from about eight and a half nine billion down to four and a half billion.

So we are in a much better position as a state.

I don't know what that means for school districts.

I think the best that we can hope for is that we don't have any cuts.

And the worst I have no idea what the worst might be.

It really depends on where they can find other solutions to the budget.

I don't know that we'll know that until the end of the legislative session.

So with that I'm going to pause.

That's a whole bunch of information.

Yeah I'm guessing we'll have some questions so why don't we start at the top of the order with Director DeWolf.

Can you come back to me actually I need to Sure.

It's a lot to process I know.

We'll we'll go we'll stop at the we'll start at the bottom of the order then.

Director Rankin or Director Rivera-Smith.

Can you hear me.

We can now.

Thank you.

Yeah.

No thank you for all the information.

I'm trying to go back to my notes too because I must accept an electrodem so quickly.

Yeah.

Why don't you just come back to me too.

I'm sorry I was not at all ready.

Director Rankin.

Thank you.

I the my understanding correctly that the 1.6 million dollar estimate is to transport 50 to 200 special education students this year.

Yes.

So the problem with the formula is that the formula is based on ridership and so basically you have the same cost for a full bus.

Right.

So your costs are the same as if you're still routing 200 routes but your ridership which your formula that's what counts and gives you revenue out of the formula will be one kid.

Right.

So a driver and a bus cost the same no matter how many people are on it.

Yep.

That's exactly it.

And so that's a it's a huge disconnect in the current formula.

And I'm not sure exactly what that outcome will be but.

Related to that you were talking about transportation for next year is is interesting since it's based on a look back and we are going to have so much lower ridership this year.

But if it's a look back then there are how is it that we are not being funded this year for our ridership last year which then seems like we didn't have a shortfall because we would have actually you know we would have a transportation budget as if we had as many riders as last year.

Yeah they use kind of a they use kind of a two-part formula.

And Linda help me because I haven't done a lot with this.

So.

Sure.

This is Linda Sebring budget director.

So what they do is they have a formula as JoLynn was mentioning where we discuss how many students on the bus how many destinations the bus goes to.

And then there's also the look back of how much you spent the prior year.

And what they fund us on is the lower of the two.

Gotcha.

So they're essentially playing it both ways.

Yes.

It's kind of a it's kind of a double whammy right.

You get hit this year because you don't have riders and you get hit next year because you didn't have riders the year before.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

I guess the solution is that what just advocacy with our legislators to

That's right.

That's right.

I do think that we have a really good chance of getting next year corrected where they don't use 20 2021 as the look back.

Maybe they'll use 19-20.

So I think that they can address that.

I think that there is a lot of momentum around that.

But we just have to make sure that it happens and we have to continue to say it's a big issue for us.

Because while it could be an $11 million issue this year If we don't get it fixed it's going to be a 20 plus million dollar for us problem for us next year.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Those are really the only specific questions I wrote down for now actually so I'll just pass it on to the next person.

Okay.

Director Mack.

Yeah.

Thank you for talking a little bit about the need for us to advocate for Hold Harmless on enrollment drop.

Because like you said it's not consistent across the entire state that everyone is losing students but there is a pretty major impact from many districts.

And to be to take this hit this year of 9 million for us is a lot.

I'm wondering too though can you speak to the impact of the enrollment drop on our levy dollars because it also impacts there as well correct.

That's correct.

That's part of the other and that's part of what we need to speak with the legislature about.

Thank you for bringing that up Director Mack.

The same thing we need to hold harmless on the levy calculation.

So the levy calculation has changed so that you receive Seattle receives thirty five hundred dollars per student.

When we have a significant drop.

Not just our state revenues drop but our local levy revenues will drop as well and they're connected.

So you're all tied up around one measure which is enrollment.

And when if enrollment goes down you are hit at the state revenue.

You're hit on the local levy revenue.

So that is another part of when we talk about enrollment it's also levy impact.

Exactly right.

And just to share that WSSDA does have a position on hold harmless and it it mentions the levy part it doesn't mention the apportionment part as strongly but it does there is a hold harmless position statement that WSSDA has has adopted.

So I'm happy to support advocating that you know maybe this needs to be top of top of our legislative platform as well as a number of other things.

including the transportation calculation.

And my I guess my other question is about the enrollment and actual the numbers that were reported.

Do you the I think we talked about this in a previous work session and I had made the request to actually get the data.

Is that was that sent to us or is that going to be available sometime soon.

Yeah I'll I'll just say Ashley's team in enrollment planning and myself and Wyeth are all working on the enrollment numbers and staffing and how all that rolled out.

As you know we did elementary adjustments.

We haven't done anything with secondary.

We still think that there's probably some students that haven't been dropped out of our enrollment counts yet at the secondary level Director Mack.

So we could send numbers.

I don't know that they're going to hold until we You know this week is the count week right.

This week is October 1. We've been kind of waiting to see that drop or whether that's going to happen.

So I you know we weren't sure when that was going to happen.

It hasn't happened yet.

I think next week's probably going to be a better measure and maybe a settle out of the final numbers at this point.

I'm certainly happy to send what we have now.

It'll just change.

It may change.

Information's good.

Thank you.

Appreciate all the work and drop in enrollment is distressing.

I mean you said earlier when you talked about there's just more choices that people in Seattle can make.

There's not a lot of private schools around the rest of the state.

We have most of them in our surrounding area.

So there's other choices that people can make during this time.

And so that does I think impact us a little bit harder than some other areas.

Yeah and this is Superintendent Juneau.

I was actually on a call of the Great City Schools Superintendents last week and this is a similar challenge all across the country.

There are very few larger districts that aren't seeing a decline in enrollment and in fact we're sort of middle of the pack.

Okay.

Director Mack anything else.

Sorry having a hard time with my mute button.

Not at this time.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

Director Harris.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Watching the news accounts of participatory budgeting with the City of Seattle I am very interested in how we intend to do participatory budgeting.

Director Hampson do you want to maybe talk about that.

Well can we I think that can we talk about that in the next isn't that a better topic for the next set of slides.

Okay yeah.

Okay can we just table that and we but we will certainly talk about that and we hope that you'll have that you'll be part of that decision making process as well in terms of how we do that.

Thank you.

Then my next question would be one of the ways one could count what our enrollment is is to do exit surveys or to gather information from people leaving our district.

And we've talked about this oh I'm thinking probably the last 12 years about that concept.

And I'm wondering whether we are going to embrace that.

I can speak for that.

Hi Director Harris.

This is Chief Concie Pedroza.

Actually they do do some preliminary they do do some check-ins with staff but it's optional.

But we don't have a full systemic process.

So I'm actually asking FAO right now to gather that information.

And then we're going to look into next steps especially for this year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes families aren't obligated you can give them a survey but they are not required to take it.

But we we do have some information on our website but we can I'll talk to the team and see if we can propose some type of plan around that.

Appreciate.

I'll pass.

Okay Director DeWolf.

Yep.

My question is just on the last slide around the early forecast.

Can you talk about what maintenance level means to you and then can you just describe the the next two ciphers which is I imagine is pretty straightforward that we don't have any savings like former years so we're not gonna be able to bring savings forward.

And we're also going to be carrying a deficit forward.

So how can you just try to reconcile the maintenance level budget because it sounds like it's it's not necessarily maintenance but a new budget.

Yeah.

Sure.

So a maintenance level budget would just be a rollover from the prior year.

So you don't roll over the one-time things that we had done but you basically roll over things that are standard from year to year.

So it's basically the historical budget the historical amount would roll over.

And then if we have things they would have to be identified as one time.

Those would not roll over.

It's it's one way to start there.

It's it's probably the most common way to start with here's what the budget is.

You'll see that in a moment when we talk about the flex view you'll get some more you'll get some really detailed information about what that would look like for us.

And then the other two the next bullets are just kind of you know We don't have savings at the same level as we've had in the past years.

We talked about that as we were bargaining over the last three summers.

So we've known that that's been going to go away and it does coincide with the pandemic so that's not great timing.

And then we still are you know our expenditures we budget to spend more than we bring in on a on a regular basis so that'll be something that the board will need to consider what they what they want to do.

If if I might we could if there Director Hampson are there other questions because I guess my other part of the answer is the next slide.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well let's go up to Director Rivera-Smith and then I had a question or two and then.

Okay.

Got it.

Yeah.

But Director DeWolf we'll talk more about that when we get to slide 9. Thank you.

Thanks.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Hi thank you.

Yeah I saw going back through to the beginning of your presentation you were going through the timeline for the budget process and you we see that there's no date for a November work session.

You said you were wanting to know if we wanted one.

Is there any reason we wouldn't want one or they would.

Just wondering.

Well not that I know of.

I mean it's kind of it's up to you guys how many times that you want to meet.

And so probably after we talk about the participatory budgeting We want to circle back.

Okay.

And then I'm wondering about enrollment.

So as I understand it OSPI had had decided that they would give us funding for every student who logged in or attended at least once in September.

And so that's the numbers we'll be used giving them I understand.

I mean is that I'm assuming that's how we're going to be counting every student who came in at least once.

Do we know if October will be similar to that or if it will be back to actual Day 1 or first of the month numbers.

Yeah it'll be it'll be back to the regular way.

So if we go back to slide 5 what I'll what I'll say here is that our enrollment this number probably would have been closer to 5,000.

If they had not allowed that was the 4th day count.

We were 4,400 students different than this number.

So they moved the count date from the 4th day of school to the 21st.

We counted the 21st of September and we were able to count any participation.

That increased our count by 4,400 students.

So it was a dramatic increase in what we could count in September.

So that's our September count.

This is what we estimate for October.

And that count date for October is just how many kids are enrolled in your district on October 1 if that's a school day or the first day in October that is a school day.

Thank you.

No other questions.

Thank you.

Yeah it's it's been a pretty dramatic.

I mean they've they've basically amended every major policy fiscal and otherwise coming out from SPI.

whether it's how to count attendance how the transportation formula rolls what's happening with the counts.

There's been a lot of changes that we've been a part of in trying to get favorable changes for the district.

So that's been somewhat successful.

Director Hampson.

Yeah.

So just a couple of items.

One could we get that great explanation on the transportation funding and the impact on the addition the additional impact on the levy funding so that we can be better advocates with our state legislators.

Yeah.

Like a one-pager that kind of is a briefing.

Yep.

Yep.

Absolutely.

Great.

I you can put it in a Friday Memo or email it whatever is easiest.

So that would be helpful.

And then in terms of enrollment Mike that it's good to see those numbers because that's what I had was thinking and anticipated.

And having a lot of the parents I talked to this week were parents of kindergartners and first graders.

Apologies for the background noise.

And I'm worried about potential additional attrition.

What is the what additional counts are going to happen that like if if students disenroll this fall when and if would that hit us.

Well enrollment is a monthly count.

So enrollment over the year you know we focus a lot on October 1 which is a point in time that they use kind of for lap funding and for some things like that smaller pots of money.

But enrollment is a 10-month annual average.

So they actually you count every month and then it's an and then you divide it by 10. So that's actually how the enrollment count works over the year.

So generally we gain enrollment in certain places and then we start to decline in May.

That's a normal pattern for us.

We don't have any idea what's going to happen.

Right.

But we count every month and it matters.

Every month matters.

So with that I think that we do one of the things I would just like to emphasize is that we really need to pay attention to those those numbers and particularly in cases where we know that either they're receiving services through a pre-K program that also is a pre-K through K or pre-K I should say and they've been able to stay enrolled there because they can go in-person.

The things we consider in terms of what in-person we might be trying to return to as well as any the extent to which any barriers that that are created by not having a physical presence and therefore families not being able to come and enroll their student for the first time and having depended on that historically that we may be missing students that just for language barriers and other reasons.

haven't been enrolled and that we might be able to actually still enroll some some students.

So those are things that and I sent one email about that and I hope we'll we'll follow up with that and other ways and hear back about how we can retain and or capture those families that that otherwise might be seeking other options or just are not connected to the to the district as of yet.

And then with that if no one has any other questions on this part let's go ahead and move to this the next slide in the next section.

Yeah so just really one more slide for me and then Linda's going to take it away.

So a couple different ways to start.

This is just to start thinking about 21-22.

I think legislative cuts could still happen.

We just don't know.

I think we're going to need a lot of advocacy to try to protect funding.

for K-12 that's definitely going to be top of mind.

We have a couple different options.

So we're not going to know what what the legislature does or doesn't do.

So as we're developing the 21-22 budget we can go with what we know now and we can make those adjustments after the legislative session.

So just you know we we don't know what any cuts would might be.

We'll budget for what we know adjust after legislative session which would likely be in May.

Or we can identify additional reductions now that we would be putting in place if needed.

So just a couple different thoughts.

Or we can do something different.

So just trying to generate ideas for the board to consider.

Next slide please.

I'm going to have Director Hampson kind of explain the participatory budgeting activities but right now I've just listed what we know.

This is the engagement that we know we're going to be doing.

with the board with the public.

And it's really those other community meetings that we would need to run between October and December to inform 21-22 that we're looking for feedback on.

We want to understand what the expectation is what that looks like and how to move that forward.

So Director Hampson do you want to kind of talk a little bit about participatory budget and you brought the idea forward.

Yeah sure.

Linda if you want to chime in as well because you've had some done research about this or know have known about this for a longer period of time than I have.

But the the notion of participatory budgeting and to your question Director Harris the city has a version of participatory budgeting in which community members have the opportunity to set priorities around how our tax dollars are spent in the context of the city budgeting process.

In the context of a school district where we have only certain funds that are in fact flexible.

Most of our our funds are not flexible.

And we we go through the the budgeting process each year and we have meetings where there's an opportunity to give input.

But it's very historically has been very generalized and kind of explaining and allowing people to ask questions and give general input.

But in terms of a process that actually allows citizens to actually have a say in a particular set of of flexible budget dollars that is where the participatory budgeting process comes into play.

And the the benefits of it are that it it better informs that the district about priorities that community has gives them and then at the same time gives community a more active role in establishing specific priorities for the use of flexible dollars.

So it's a and and in the process learning more about what dollars are flexible what dollars aren't flexible.

You know for example the extent to which we use local levy dollars to pay for basic education and that you know with advocacy in various sectors we can increase the flexible dollars that we have to say spend more money on counseling.

And so so that's kind of the general notion of it.

The way the city does it tends to be pretty It's there's a big neighborhood push right.

And then it's it's kind of more project-based.

And I think they've pulled back a lot this year.

We thought — I'm sorry.

I would have said Hunger Games.

Hunger Games.

Okay.

Budgeting with the city.

Well I mean I guess I think for the average citizen it probably is the communication might not you know but in terms of the way that I've participated it's it's been electronically.

So this would be our first attempt at doing it and so we would look at doing it on a pretty limited basis but hopefully as a way to generate more participation in the overall budgeting process from both board and community.

So that's the that's the general notion.

Do you want to add anything Linda.

I think you said that quite well as to you know I'll talk a little bit more as we get into the next slide and then into the flex view but I do believe you've summarized it well.

Thank you.

Yeah and let's get let's let Linda speak for a minute about that because the flex view in particular I think people will I hope will be interested in.

Let's take a look at that and then we can come back and delve into a few more questions.

Is that okay Director Harris.

Works for me.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Go ahead Linda.

Okay.

So Linda Sebring budget director.

If we can go to the next slide and I'm just going to take you through a couple of slides and then I will dive into the actual document that we've been discussing which is called the flex view.

So this is what we're proposing as a participatory budgeting process for the 21-22 budget and a little background.

The district has used the particular tool I'm going to show you one previous time very successfully back in 2005 when we really wanted to get the district or communities input on some conversations we were having about closing schools or not.

And the district was in a very difficult financial position And we asked for a lot of feedback from the community about areas that we might look at other than closing schools to make adjustments to our expenditures.

So I have also Director Hampson sent me some information about some California school districts.

So I did some outreach recently in the last couple of weeks and talked with the Executive Budget Director former Executive Budget Director for San Francisco School District who's moved on to be a consultant now.

And also a consulting team who worked with the Sacramento School District for their participatory budgeting processes.

Those are both great conversations and a little disappointing in that they like our tools.

So I was hoping to get more tools from them.

But with that said What we're proposing for a participatory budgeting process is having the school board take a look at this document I'm going to show you called the flex view.

So we put together information on the district's budget in a variety of different ways because one of our main goals is to try to communicate with our community and public a very complex system.

So our operating budget is got a lot of restrictions on it and strings if you will.

So within the budget book which you've seen and we made an adjustment this last year.

We went and rebuilt the central budget section for it but we show the budget from state-level activities such as teaching and then we also show it from how we break it out within the district which is divisions of responsibility and like-type activities.

So student support services operations and the flex view is just another way of looking at things which is how much flexibility is there really within these different areas of the budget.

Because in the past when we've had people very ambitious about let's change a lot of things in the budget we've run into some misunderstandings about there's lack of flexibility in some of the areas.

So the flex view is broken down into the 5 categories listed here.

What is mandated by state or federal law.

Sorry is it did it go ahead.

I know.

Would you like me to go into the document first.

Oh okay.

I wasn't sure I thought you were talking as I saw the hand hovering.

I wasn't sure if you had meant to push it or not.

I'm sorry.

No that's not my hand.

That's Vanna is helping me.

So.

I mean I can I can go to the FlexView.

Let me just go through this quickly and maybe I'll I'll come back to this if you.

No that's okay.

There's five different categories of how we look at the budget on the FlexView.

Mandated.

Contractual.

Revenue.

Flexible grants.

Flexible programs.

And the next slide I'll get into you know what do those different things mean.

So what we were anticipating or hoping was the school board would help us come up with which focus areas in that document would make sense to do deeper dives.

So the FlexView is at a higher level and then what has happened in San Francisco and Sacramento you don't take on the whole budget.

It's too much for a community or a group to just look at a whole billion dollar area.

So you look at specific areas and you do a deep dive and get a deeper understanding of that area and have some conversations about areas or things that you might want to do differently with those resources.

if that's the direction we go.

So once we have a selection of focus areas we would set up a process for the community review and discussions.

Need to do this very quickly.

As we've mentioned and I don't know how much we've emphasized it but our timeline is very filled for the budget process and it all goes to the April timeline when we start making commitments to staff as to They have a job the following year.

How many more staff do we need to start recruiting.

People move around within positions.

So in order to get that lined up and ready to go by April we start our process in the middle of January of aligning the dollars with the positions so that the central department is set up the way we think we want it to run for the following school year.

And then we switch to helping support the schools do their processes.

basically mid-February through the end of March.

So we have time in October November and December for the 21-22 budget.

That doesn't mean we can't have a rolling process if that's a desire to start working on the 22-23 budget and have a longer process.

That's what some of these other districts as well they have start having a rolling process or a 3-year process for conversations if people want to go deeper.

So.

We would be gathering community input October November and December.

That would leave time for the school board to make some review of that input in December and the beginning of January.

One of the reasons we struggle a little bit with this timeline is it's the holidays.

But that is the timeline that's granted to us and hopefully make recommendations so we can inform the central budgeting process to start in mid-January.

questions on this before I dive into the document.

Why don't you go ahead and go into the document and then we can flip back here if we need to.

Okay.

This on schedule.

Thanks.

Can we get a full screen on this.

No no no the little square.

Sorry.

Doesn't go bigger the screen.

No this is it.

Okay.

Well I apologize then.

We can either use this small print or we can you know scroll across the page.

What is people's preference.

Director Hampson do you have a preference.

I think if you.

Yeah there you go.

And is it possible to hit that.

Yeah.

There you go.

That was the one I was looking for.

Thank you very much.

All right so what you're seeing here can you scroll to the bottom is there's basically three pages and then back up to the top after we scroll through.

So it's a very short sweet document.

It takes our billion eighty million dollar budget and puts it into three pages.

And what you're seeing is on the left you have the school board is what we call our Org 01. So internally we track.

departments organization structures for the Central Department and then at the end of this list is the schools not by individual schools but at a school level.

So if I can take the school board and work my way across to the right looking at the columns it tells me that there is $689,643.03 FTE and it's in the column we call flexible.

The column next to it flexible grants.

is our Title 1 and Learning Assistance Program funds.

The one next to it we say is revenue and what revenue means is we can stop doing these activities.

We won't have the money to redirect to something else.

So those revenues are for specific purposes.

The K-3 ratio for our lower class sizes at schools is an example.

The majority of our grants are also in that revenue category.

Category over to the right of that contractual.

This is our agreements with our labor partners.

So there is some flexibility in changing this but it's very challenging.

We'd have to open up contracts and renegotiate activities in order to make significant changes in that area.

And in the far right is what is mandated by the state or federal rules.

So we've tried to tie to RCW's it gets a little Challenging sometimes because there may be a mandated function but we may be able to do it in a variety of different ways.

So on this example the school board has one mandated activity and that is the cost of elections.

So over to the far right the school board's budget is $902,011 and it has 3 FTE total.

So this is the way this whole document works.

You work your way down.

There's internal audit and ethics.

Actually talk about that one for a second.

Can you go back up please.

So this is also the operating budget.

So where you see internal audit and ethics and I know you guys know there's three people in that department but one is funded on the capital fund.

So you're not seeing any capital funded positions showing up in this document.

Questions.

Yeah let's as we're going through this if anybody has any questions on this particular document and then we can go to broader questions.

After.

Go ahead Director DeWolf.

Thank you.

So in this for example in the school board budget I notice you have the number 212 as mandated.

That just is for elections which I understand but one I'm not seeing here and so I'm trying to figure out where it fit is.

WSSDA requires us to pay into into their membership based on our students so we pay a fee per student.

I don't see those dollars here or noted that they have a specific that we're required to pay for that membership.

So I'm trying to figure out where that would fit.

That's an example of one I'm not seeing.

Oh okay.

You want to know whether it would be like in a flexible category versus mandated is that what your question is.

Yeah I'm just saying I don't I don't get here but I know it's a requirement that we pay for that membership.

I don't know that it's an RCW.

I don't know that it's a requirement that we pay for WSSDA.

Linda I don't think it's a requirement Linda.

It is not a requirement because I know there was legislative discussion maybe 4 or 5 years ago that WSSDA wanted to make it a requirement that WSSDA membership was required by school districts and the legislature did not because there was conversation that that would be an unfunded mandate.

So that fee would be in the flexible column.

And that's different than information received from former Superintendent Nyland and Deputy Superintendent Nielsen.

Correct.

Well I can double-check it but I know there was like I said there was a lot of chatter about it about 4 or 5 years ago.

The due structure actually was voted on by the membership last year and changed and actually the — I can't remember where that landed so it is something it it may be newer information than what you've got.

I do feel as if we actually do have a required membership.

Any other questions about the actual sheet.

I wasn't trying to be too in the weeds.

I was just thinking how granular did this document go because I didn't see it.

So not necessarily specific about WSSDA but just.

No not at all.

This is very general.

No and that's a very good question.

I mean this was a heavy lift to get this done so quickly and by quickly this took about a month and a half for my team to pivot on a project to get it to this level.

I and this is why we're having this conversation.

So thank you for the lead.

We do not have the capacity nor do I think the community has the capacity to go down on every line in this budget.

So historically what we've done is we've had a conversation of let me just throw one out there of maybe we want to look at oh gosh I wouldn't be the one picking these but yeah one of the academic organizations and you want to have a conversation about it and then we get into maybe like 4-H Learning and Teaching Health and P.E.

And we get into conversation about you know maybe we should do P.E.

in a different fashion.

Well then we'd gather a lot more details about what's going on in 4-H but we'd also have a conversation that well almost half of that department is funded off of a grant.

And so if we don't do that activity it does not free up money to do something else the community might want.

So this is the purpose of this tool is to go down the left-hand column and if you'd like to have the school board be one of the conversations then we would drill into it a lot deeper.

And if there is a weakness in the column it is would be the mandated section of you know is this a mandated function.

I know I've had conversations with people in the past which say like if you scroll can you scroll down please and get to the operations section.

Right right there that's good.

Okay.

So like payroll.

Payroll is about partway down and it says it's 1.7 million 14.9 FTE.

Well there's nothing over in any of the other columns other than flexible.

I happen to know there are some laws and there are some things that payroll has to do as far as filing certain reports that are mandated but we just did not have the capacity in this time frame to go and dig out how much of certain FTE in the payroll department are mandated.

So we had to default to putting it in flexible.

Can I. This is Director Rankin.

I just back to the conversation about the WSSDA fees.

I think that a distinction to be made is You know yes if we want to be WSSDA members we are required to pay a membership fee.

But in terms of the funds that goes towards that there is not a required there's not a requirement from the state that we spend certain money on the WSSDA fees.

Well actually Ellie just found an RCW.

Does that make sense or is that oh.

So we'll pass that.

So it looks like it is required.

No we're getting granular.

I can take this offline too.

I apologize.

It's a good example.

Between you know required as a function of the the the benefit that we're getting and required as a function of the state requires us to spend this money this way.

Does that make sense.

Right.

So are you asking a question or just looking for confirmation.

I was looking for confirmation.

Trying to clarify that in my own mind.

Thanks.

Director Rivera-Smith you have your hand up.

I do thank you.

I was wondering thank you Linda for all the information here.

I'm wondering is there some sort of like one-pager of whatever that you just kind of said in here because I didn't catch all I guess like for example I'm looking I can't see the name of it but I think one of those columns here is the contractual and I didn't catch exactly what that meant but I hate to have you repeat it all so I'm wondering is there some sort of one-pager or.

Can we go back to the PowerPoint for a second.

It's the slide I skipped.

Next slide please.

Right here.

Slide 12 puts down you know what the categories and how they're defined.

So flexible grants is just limited to those two grants Title 1 and Learning Assistance Program.

And the reason it is broken out from other grants other revenue is that they have specific target areas of service for Title 1 and the Learning Assistance Program but there are different ways you can provide those resources.

And that might be of interest to the community.

I'm not advocating one way or another.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions specifically on how that particular flux view.

I mean as just to reiterate that whole notion that this is a relatively high level and then we as a board I think would be helpful.

The suggestion is that that we would provide some initial kind of funneling to say these are some high-priority areas that we are hearing about from our community.

And this actually we had a specific request from King County Equity Coalition from that Brandon and I fielded around this and we talked about the notion of participatory budgeting.

And and so you know that's a scenario in which they're giving us their priorities and we're able to bring that back and say okay here's how we can further focus this and then engage community.

But again happening on a pretty quick time frame and I want to just point out and say thank you to Linda and and JoLynn for being very very brave to take this on at a time when we're likely to have so much when we have so much uncertainty.

Not because it's so certain other years but Director Mack you had a question.

Yeah I do.

And it is related to that flex view because I think that just using the example of WASDA membership and what's required and what's mandated and what's not in here.

It leaves a lot like the universe is really huge of what we could it looks like it's really huge of what we could debate over what categories or what dollars or buckets of dollars exist to be to go through this process.

And it leaves me concerned because that universe is so large and there are so many things that actually are necessary and important that we it just makes me really nervous about how we're going to go about potentially narrowing down what dollars exist because it it doesn't feel like there it doesn't really feel like there are extra dollars anywhere.

And we're always talking about how to how are we going to cut.

What are we going to cut.

And it's been curriculum for years on end.

So that's just my my biggest question is is of concern about opening up a process of debating over dollars that are they actually available for debate or are we would we be cutting something in order to do that.

So that's a broad question as we go into this process of narrowing it down.

So I don't know how to answer that but it leaves me really concerned.

Well Director Mack if I can.

This is why we have this tool.

If we can go back to the FlexView is agree it's a very complex lot of money a lot of people in play here.

The idea would be the board would go through this not trying to go into deep dives unless unless that's an area that we want to have a conversation with the school or the community about.

So you'd probably skip over the school board and maybe dive into one of the others and then we can do more deep investigating of do we have everything in the right categories and what area do we want the community to focus on.

Because yeah giving this all to the community is extremely overwhelming.

San Francisco I believe said that they break basically broke their budget into five different programs is what they brought to their community and they found even taking five programs to the community they had to walk back really fast because they couldn't couldn't handle effectively working with the community on five and they they moved it back to three and then finally ended up with one major program is what they partnered with the community on input.

And I guess that's my input if we're going to continue going to move forward that if we want to be successful both from actually really engaging community appropriately and effectively but also not creating a whole bunch of unintended consequences that I think it's going to be really really important that we get appropriately focused on what what program or dollars we're talking about.

And just keep in mind that this isn't just for community this is for the board as well.

We had our last budget only had 4 yes votes.

And we need this is part of how we want to get to a budget next year with all the complexities that might come at us that everyone is comfortable with and that everyone feels like they've had the ability to participate in developing.

I appreciate the shift in in in process to try to to get to that goal.

And yeah it's a complex you know 1.4.

However big our budget is which is millions of dollars.

Yeah.

So I appreciate the effort and I'm supportive of The construct I'm just nervous about setting up some really bad unattended consequences and just to be wary of that and that we need to be mindful as we move forward.

So thank you.

Hi this is Director Rankin.

I feel like it's a really good opportunity as Director Hampson said not just for the board to really understand but also for members of the public I think it's it's It's easy for people to say well Seattle Public Schools has over a billion dollars what are they doing with all of it.

Like that's such an easy thing to say when you when you don't have to think about all of the different places it has to go.

So in terms of what Director Mack is talking about I think you know it's important in this not to not to publicize it as you know you have a say in the budget we're going to totally change how we spend.

But but as an educational opportunity to say like here's where this money actually goes.

Here's what it's spent on.

Here's how the requirements are.

But then here is where things are flexible.

I mean if you know if it turned out that a whole bunch of money was going into and this isn't happening so I'm just going to make something up going into you know 8-track 8-track audio production.

And you know we would see as as a priority that you know producing audio on 8-tracks is not super relevant anymore or not applicable then we would have the discussion about you know moving priorities.

But and in this and in the you know the conversation about police in schools and people you know demanding that we shift money from school officers to something else.

Well that money didn't come from us to begin with.

So I think it's it's valuable and just you know being upfront about this doesn't mean that everybody gets a gets a gets a say in every dollar and that we're going to immediately make those changes.

But just in being transparent about here's where this money goes and here's what it takes to run a school district and here's where things are not flexible and here's where they are I feel is really valuable.

Well and for a historical viewpoint let's just go back to librarians and books and push back from four different directions.

If we don't have the information at our fingertips and we don't ask if we do this X then we have to do Y and budget line item is.

This this is huge for me because I'm Needless to say it's our fiduciary duty and we get pasted no matter what we do but at least we will have information at our fingertips.

Now Lord knows it's been available in the Gold Book and the Purple Book but this is far easier to use.

And huge appreciation and thanks to JoLynn and to your entire team and I I think this is breathtaking and I appreciate it immensely.

Thank you.

Okay so I just want to do a time check.

How many more slides do we have left Linda.

Well after the flex view it is to the outcomes as to is this does this align with.

There's just one slide left.

No we've we've went over this one.

It's just the outcomes is the only thing left after the flex view.

Okay.

So let me just say well I guess go ahead let's see go ahead and go through your outcomes and then it looks like you've got that on the yeah we'll come back around to that.

I can make a couple more comments on next steps from the board's side in terms of responsibilities and then we'll see what other questions we have.

So we've kind of given data around items number 1 through 3. Linda walked through just an overview of what the participatory budgeting process might look like.

The next step really is for board feedback.

We need direction on what community participation looks like.

What what are our next steps.

What how do we want to pick the areas that we want to do the deeper dive on.

That sort of thing.

We're just we're we're now have given you information and we just need to know what you need at the next meeting or what our next steps in the process are.

I also will say that we did just attach the big sheets both in dollars and in FTE just and we're mailing that to everyone per Director Hampson's request.

It's just information that I know a lot of you like to have and we've gone over in the past.

We're happy to go over it.

Now we're in a different setting if you wish but we weren't planning on going over that tonight.

Back to you Director Hampson.

Okay so let's I'm just going to go through starting with Director Rivera-Smith and get your thoughts on if you could go through kind of what next steps would look like for you and any remaining questions you have.

So both a comment feedback.

And then also any remaining questions.

Because we're and we're looking sorry correct me if I'm wrong JoLynn you're looking for feedback about how we proceed.

Do we just go based on what we currently know.

You're looking for some some feedback on that and then feedback on how we move forward in the participatory budgeting process.

Right.

Those two things are what you're asking.

Yeah I mean one of the things that we really want to know we've heard a lot of feedback from the board about concerns with engagement in the community and how we've talked you know what we've talked to people about and how we've gotten feedback.

So we really want to have a set plan that the board has agreed to that we understand and that is defined.

And picking those areas for next steps.

Okay.

Agreed.

Thank you.

Go ahead Director Rivera-Smith is that clear in terms of what we'd like to hear from you.

I believe so.

Yeah.

No.

Thank you.

Okay.

I am very excited about this.

I think that yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah I'm really excited about this.

I think that maybe this is what Director Mack might have been trying to say and maybe not but I feel like what this does is it opens a lot of doors for a lot of people who you know to finally understand and take part in this process.

And then it just is incumbent upon us to listen to them and to use that information and to be ready to do that.

You know I think this is a perfect opportunity to do exactly what we were given this job to do was to take this back to our community and give them a seat at this table.

So I I appreciate that we're moving in this direction.

I.

I wonder if it's something that we should take to our districts and hold district meetings that are just for district people in our districts because I know often there's people who go to every director's meeting and we hear from them several times.

And I don't know if we're even allowed to just restrict who's at our meetings but I could see it being a good opportunity that we do get to speak directly with our school communities to get the input and then as directors use that to come back and and put it all together and make the best decisions we can.

I appreciate again like Linda and JoLynn all the support that they're going to be giving us through this because it's definitely going to take a lot of a lot of hand-holding in this first go-around and figuring out how we can best use this information.

And but but I think that's great.

I'm really excited about this.

So thank you.

Okay.

Director Rankin.

I know I other I feel like I kind of made my comment already inadvertently and I don't really have anything else to add at this point.

Well what about.

Sorry and I should have asked Director Rivera-Smith to opine on this as well but moving forward budgetarily.

There was a specific question about you know approach right moving forward.

Oh you mean if we want to determine some priorities as a board.

JoLynn do you want to just restate the question.

That was.

Yeah I think what we're looking for is.

What does community participation in this budgeting process look like.

Let's define it.

Let's write it down.

Let's commit to it so that we know and we're all we all feel good about it that the board feels like it's what they what they need and what they've directed us to do.

And then I trying to refine maybe my suggestion from last time.

Maybe there's 5 line items on here that each board director wants to identify as an initial way to say hey what if you know what about more information on this.

Some way to say how do we want to start narrowing down these choices so that we can take out to the community.

2 3 4 areas that we want their input on.

I think Linda we've had good experience with other districts where they've said you know a lot too much is overwhelming so how do we narrow that.

Maybe it's Audit and Finance does that work.

That's another idea.

Just trying to throw out ideas.

I think a good way to start might be Audit and Finance to take a look but also for maybe each of us as directors to like you're just suggesting JoLynn to kind of scan the list and And and see if any jump out as things that we've heard a lot from our communities and then look and see where there are you know similar items that come up across everyone's lists.

And that would be great.

One thing about this is we need to know ahead of time what your questions are going to be because it will take research right.

It takes research.

Right.

Linda and her team.

I mean I think that that could happen you know on on offline or just over email if we kind of each Look at the list kind of the way we did with the different policies and committees just sort of.

I mean as a starting point because if they're all over the place and it doesn't seem to kind of hold to what we've heard from communities then maybe there needs to be a different tactic.

But I would imagine that starting with Audit and Finance and then each board director just sort of for a starting point.

coming up with some places to look into.

I would assume that we'd come up with some commonalities that would sort of appear and then if we didn't that would also tell us something.

Okay so then let's move to Director Mack.

Yeah hi.

I I really appreciate the question because I'm thinking about operationalizing the question and how complex our budget is how many line items there are and what's embedded there and how they get played out.

And we have already school-based BLT budgeting that goes on every year.

So I wonder whether or not that process is a is a place to start.

Like at the school-based budgeting process to have community engagement around their process of identifying you know which additional services or where the flexibility is on a school-based level may be one place to start the conversation.

I mean it already somewhat exists people think in a very site-based manner.

The other side is you know do we want to open up the conversation around central office and how we are structured and what activities are going on.

Or is that too large of a question mark for the budgeting process.

And third I think is actually really really top of mind for me is the place where we underfund critical services for students and critical needs like counselors at all buildings and nurses at all buildings and we're restricted by funds.

Yes yes I know I know the limitations we have.

And I think if we could somehow ask the question of In the limitations that we've got how do we ensure we are providing the needed services and supports at each building so that all students each and every is getting what they need from an equity basis as well.

Some students need more.

I don't.

I I'm having a hard time personally.

It's a it's a really complicated map.

And so to identify just a few line items I'm worried about kind of pitting things against each other which we end up doing.

You know we have a choice.

You get to cut your curriculum budget or you get to cut librarians.

And I wonder if we need to bake into this process some way that we're not creating Sophie's choices that we're not creating false choices and we're not asking people to conceive of it in that way but we are talking about the opportunities for ensuring that we meet the goals of serving our students needs.

And I don't know if that gets any closer to JoLynn's question.

I feel like I would I would offer that I think the plan needs to be really specific in what we mean by community and how we go about engaging them and that it it does need to be pretty clear as to what you know where the decisions still lie and the conversations still happen I guess.

So that plan that you're talking about JoLynn I think is really it it really needs to be pretty well defined and we do need to get a narrow definition of what budget areas are going to be in discussion and I would suggest that we need to schedule that November budget work sessions to be able to maybe review that plan.

So I think we have we have our budget work sessions scheduled I believe already.

I'm pretty sure those are all in calendar so we'll definitely I'm just going to I'm going to move us along to for the in the interest of making sure we get through of everybody through everyone.

So let's go now to Director Harris.

I could not be more pleased and I have to bail to go meet a client.

And I appreciate your hard work Linda JoLynn and company and to Director Hampson.

Thanks so very much.

I'm out.

Thanks Director Harris.

Director DeWolf.

Yes.

As far as the direction on community participation I I would imagine this is not lost on Director Hampson or anybody else but really I think TESTA Center students in some fashion I don't know how their involvement but I really don't want it to be a bunch of adults either at community meetings or otherwise giving input and feedback in the participatory budget that will impact ultimately our students.

And so I want to be thoughtful and I think they should be at the center of this work in some regard.

I don't know how to look obviously but that would be my suggestion on direction is just that really trying to elevate their leadership capacities and and opportunities for them to grow their their own leadership in the district and I only suggest on that.

But but if I could just say one other thing which is Linda and JoLynn thank you for this document.

Thank you for this work and thank you Director Hampson for this.

I am so excited for us to kind of take this this new opportunity.

I'm really really pleased and proud and grateful to be part of this board.

Okay well so I'm glad that there's some excitement because it's rare that people are excited about budgeting.

So I hope that gives a boost to Linda and to JoLynn because that was definitely what we're headed for is engagement and excitement about participating.

And we want to make sure that we set an appropriate level of expectation which I think was was brought up.

And then I think we have a couple of other details to work out in terms of Getting some initial priority sets that we want to work on from board because we do want to make it really manageable and you know relatively small for this first round this year.

And then also getting a concrete sense of how we're going to engage with community what who community is.

We have a number of strong existing kind of units that span community parent slash guardian community community-based organization students of course at the forefront.

And so maybe it's about getting some written feedback as Director Rankin said as we did with the committee process.

It'll have to come through someone besides myself Director Hersey's not here but he's very enthusiastic about participating in this and I know is willing to do some some work around it as he's able.

So maybe what he and I can do with one other board member is circle back with JoLynn and Linda and make sure that we get the feedback so that we're ready to go for our next work session.

Does that work for a summary.

We've got six minutes left.

So and we I'm sure would like to start the next session early if possible.

Anything else.

Does that do we do we get what we need.

Chief Berge and.

Yeah.

Director Rankin your hand is still up and.

I did just put my hand up.

Yeah.

And then I heard a big clunk above my head and got distracted.

Oh I just wanted to say I guess in communicating this out I think it might just add again it might be helpful thinking about you know and also to Director Mack's concerns that being careful about That we're not we're not saying hey everybody we have 1.4 billion dollars.

How should we spend it.

We're not saying that.

But that it's sort of a it's an opportunity.

It's participatory.

It's an opportunity to participate in the budgeting process.

It's not an opportunity.

It's not a free-for-all.

Everybody decide how you know this should work.

But what I think is what I am excited about is as we You know we as a board and more recent boards have you know and community have expressed some pretty clear priorities and a shift of some values and and how I guess I would recommend we communicate about communicate about this to the broader community is is asking for their their support in in looking at our budget and really challenging ourselves about whether or not the budget reflects those values that we have.

So it's not so much you know should we pay for this or that or this or you know and and and whatever but but also that when there's a budget that is about making choices.

So I guess I would just say how how we sort of present that in the beginning I think will will help a lot with some of the concerns that Director Mack is bringing up about pitting people against each other and whatnot.

That it's really just kind of a self a community assessment of you know the things that are really important to us.

Is that where we're putting resources or are there some things that resources are going to that are actually not where you know not things that we want to prioritize.

So just throwing that out there.

And actually you just brought up a whole other piece of potential work that that Linda and I have talked about with respect to how you look at certain how you evaluate certain programs and that's kind of a whole other project that we won't get into.

But thank you for that.

That brings us all into data that we love is like how do we how do we know if something's working.

Right.

So Director Mack you still had your hand up.

We just have three more minutes and then we got to move on to our closed session.

I apologize I didn't mean to leave it up.

I had to put it up earlier.

So I'm I'm good for now.

Thank you.

And thank you Director Rankin for helping illustrate that point as well.

So thank you.

Okay.

Zach Director DeWolf do you if Chief Berge doesn't have any final comments.

or questions.

You want to take us into the next.

Do we have to call back in.

Can I just really quick add add add my thanks to JoLynn and Linda for for putting this together and being willing to flex and move in this way.

It's really appreciated.

It's really helpful.

Agreed 100 percent.

Thank you.

I think if if you directors want to adjourn this one I don't believe let me just make sure I can't get out of my screen here.

We do.

We are just going to stay in this meeting.

Actually I lied.

There's a 630 to 7 closed labor closed session labor negotiation.

So if you want to adjourn this meeting Director Hampson we can move into our closed session.

Okay.

As there is no further business this meeting is adjourned at 629 p.m.

Directors we'll see you on the other line.

Thank you staff.