School Board Meeting June 28, 2017 Part 1

2017 and the Seattle school board is officially in session.

Ms. Shek the roll call please.

Director Burke.

Here.

Director Geary.

Here.

Director Patu.

Here.

Director Pinkham.

Present.

Director Harris.

Here.

We have a quorum.

President Director Peters is out of the country presently and I as vice president will be standing in her stead and wish me luck.

Because it's full tilt boogie tonight we have a packed agenda.

And I hope that directors will keep that in mind when making their reports and asking questions.

Director Blanford has called in and he will be late but he will be here.

Everyone could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

I will now turn the meeting over to Superintendent Nyland to begin the discussion on the budget waitlist and capacity.

All right thank you.

Due to the fact that we are running out of time at the end of the school year we have a departure from our normal process.

Normally at this point in time we would have student comments but they are gone.

We would have superintendent comments, I will dispense with those.

I do have them printed and they are at the back of the room I don't see them up here but we will get copies for the board members.

And I would announce that the only comment that I would make is that Magnolia Elementary construction which we were in the process of teeing up for board action.

Those bids came in with very few responsive bids and much higher than expected and so we will be postponing that process and probably will mean that Magnolia will open a year later in 2019 rather than 2018. So with that we have set aside this next hour or almost hour, I guess it's an hour, for a work session on budget and waitlist.

So I guess we will find out what new news we have.

So we are told that there is a budget but we don't know what is in it.

So I will turn it over to Assistant Superintendent JoLynn Berge.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

So the, one moment please.

We are going to bring up the PowerPoint.

So in your packet there is a PowerPoint presentation as well as some additional information.

A PowerPoint as well as additional information that outlines the options that we will be referring to, along with some other materials that we will refer to throughout the presentation.

So the agenda for this work session is broken down into two areas, budget and waitlist.

Those are listed up on the board on the slide.

The budget presentation part we are going to try to hold to about 10 minutes.

Most of it is a repeat with a little bit of new.

So that is the plan, and then Flip will take it from there.

So the outcome that we are looking for on the budget is consensus on a final piece of a restoration plan for 1718. Legislative session update, I actually have something to report.

So the legislative delay still is leaving us with a $50 million deficit for school year 17-18.

The third special session is still in progress, but they did announce a budget deal this morning Details have not been shared with us yet, we haven't seen paper, we haven't seen the models, those are forthcoming, we understand tomorrow at noon and we do believe that we will be seeing something tomorrow at noon.

So I would suspect that at the July 5 when we introduce our budget that we've already had to start rolling forward.

I will have more information to share at that point in time.

So the restoration summary to date, we had received $24.4 million from the levy cliff, and we had gone ahead and said yes, there was consensus reached from the board about another 3.4 million that we are anticipating receiving for the per pupil inflator as part of the 1718 revenue from the state.

So that is a total of 27.8 million that has been restored and consensus has been reached to date.

This chart outlines exactly what those restorations have gone towards.

So what to do with any last-minute new revenue that we receive?

So when the budget is passed, and we are hoping that it is passed by Friday June 30 by midnight, and if we receive more revenue than anticipated what should we be done with that?

We have several areas that we know we still need funding for next year.

Smart goal funding, if we would like to fund our goals beyond basic, more funding for equity high needs schools, we also need to identify some dollars for fall enrollment, split classroom adjustments, middle school math is still something that is a board priority that is still not funded, central admin still has $3.5 million of restoration that is out there, and then there may be other things.

So what staff is recommending as part of this work session is a total of another $7.8 million if the revenue comes to us we would propose spending $2 million for equity mitigations, $2 million for fall enrollment adjustments, $1 million to restore some additional reductions that are still outstanding for central office, $1.8 million to finish middle school math, and then another million dollars for smart goals.

We won't know right away whether or not we have this funding, we may know by July 5, and so what we have done in the budget that you will see that is teed up, we do have a community budget information session tomorrow afternoon at 430. What you will see in that presentation is that we have built in capacity to be able to spend up to this many dollars if they are received.

So it is a question of, they are not funded yet, but we have built in expenditure capacity authority that the board would approve as part of the 17-18 budget.

The Y's are outlined there, I think you are familiar with those Y's from previous work that we have done.

This is really adding on to restoration amounts that we had identified during our last rounds of restoration.

So those are detailed out.

you can see on this slide the first column is the 1718 cuts and we identified what those were, the items that were reduced, and you'll just note that it doesn't add up to $74 million which we originally started with, because we identified over $40 million of revenue that instead of putting towards new programs, or instead of increasing other funding, we said okay we will take all of our leftover dollars that we were going to use for program expansion, staffing expansion, and we will buy down some of that deficit.

So this list is just those things that took a cut that would be, that we would want to consider for restoration.

I can't tell if it is blue or not, but the second column from the right is called proposed recommendations for any remaining funds, that is what we are discussing tonight, that equals $7.8 million, and those dollars again I just want to reiterate is not revenue that we have received yet, we don't know that yet, but that is how we would propose spending another $7.8 million.

If there is additional revenue beyond that for 1718, it is likely too late to deploy that.

If there are certain things like increases in lap or highly capable programs, those sorts of things, we will have to come back around and look at what those are and what needs to be implemented to take that revenue and have a check back in with the board as we work through that.

But this would have to be revenue that we would receive that would not be encumbered in some way or required to be spent on a certain thing.

So the last column then totals the amount that we would be restoring.

So just to reiterate, kind of teeing it up a different way and looking at it a little bit different, Levee Cliff we received $24.4 million, we are still anticipating about $6 million from the per pupil inflator factor.

And from the previous slide, the total amount of recommended restorations is $35.6 million.

Which means we have a gap of about 5.2 million that we either, the per-pupil inflator will have to be higher, or some of our other estimates could be slightly lower and higher for revenue than we had anticipated, and we would have to do that line item analysis.

So at this point in time I take questions?

Director Blanford and let the record show that Director Blanford joined us at 420.

Blanford Thank you for that I got caught in traffic.

I apologize for being late and that the last sentence that you made where you were talking about the per-pupil inflator, that's not under our control is it?

Bergen It's not.

It's a percentage that the legislature puts in each budget.

And so while we have a good guess, we are never right exactly on.

Blanford Right.

And we are hoping that that number is higher than we expect it to be.

Yes and all indications at this point are that it is going in our way.

In our favor.

Blanford So based on that I should assume that the amount of the gap might be slightly smaller but not significantly smaller than it is on the screen right now?

it's possible that the entire gap could be eliminated, or that it would be reduced.

So I think that any of those scenarios are possible for us.

When we talk about a $5 million differential in our estimates, and we receive revenues of over $500 million a year from the state… there is room there for high and low estimates.

Both what we anticipated that we had to spend for COLA, per pupil inflator, I mean there is just a lot of different factors.

So the budget is tight, we are going to talk about that a little bit later as we talk about what resources that we have to deploy.

I think that we, when we talked about this as cabinet, as leadership, it was recognizing, and this is something I felt comfortable with moving forward, I just want to say that.

Knowing what happens in that our fall enrollment adjustments have been such a pivotal issue for us, and have been very deeply concerning to our families, we feel like we want to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

This doesn't tee up enough money, or as much money as we put out to schools and additional above-model staffing this year.

we put about $8 million out this year.

But it doesn't leave us at zero either.

We have to have something because there's always certain spots that don't hit right on that we have to relook at.

So we felt like this plan balanced those two things.

Harris other directors comments concerns and questions on this topic?

Director Burke.

Can you speak to some of the timing around these restorations?

The thing that I am struggling with is that we are making sort of a projection, and based on that projection we are looking at options for restorations.

And I am wondering what would the timing look like if we wait and see what it actually is, and then make our recommendations for restoration.

So basically deferring on this conversation until we see what the actual amount we are working with, so that we can better prioritize and allocate.

Bergen I think that that is possible to do, however this leaves work kind of in limbo.

This gives us a way to move forward on work that is time sensitive.

So if in fact notifying central office staff, there are still central office staff that have lost their jobs in the reductions, as well as the smart goal work.

Working on those contracts for next year, what that scope of work looks like, the sooner that we get that work in the pipeline, that was part of our problem this year is that we were delayed out of the gate a little bit and so wanting to make sure that that work continues.

So it's possible, it's not what is recommended.

Harris other director comments concerns or questions?

Director Pinkham Pinkham on the staff recommendations for additional restorations, the 1 million per central office Just curious, how would you define or what would be the critical work?

Because using that term, if someone doesn't come back does that mean they are not critical?

And how are you going to determine where that is going to go to?

So we still have staff and I will outline a few, not all, that we had security staff that were reduced that provide services to our schools.

The audit resolution oversight position was eliminated.

There was title IX positions that were reclassified and one was eliminated.

It would buy those things back or we would look at buying those things back.

Those would be what we would be considering as far as positions.

Other directors comments concerns or questions?

Well I have one.

Can you give us a few sentences about what the fall enrollment adjustments means please?

Can I go back to the budget before we move on?

I'm asking about the staff recommendations for the additional restorations here.

You are next.

Thank you.

Bergen So fall enrollment adjustments, Seattle Public Schools has typically put out staffing and adjustments to the future staffing for the subsequent year three times.

So we put out initial staffing allocations at the end of February.

We do a June 15 update to our staffing enrollment projections.

and then in the fall we wait until kids show up, and then we have to figure out where are we over and under staffed, and we have to deploy staff that one, meets our formula, meets the contractual obligations, and two, is fiscally responsible.

When we can identify a pot of money, it can lessen the instances where schools, and this wouldn't cover all the schools, this would not cover all fall adjustments that would need to be backfilled potentially, but if you have a school where not all the kids show up, they've already started with that teacher, and we end up having to change their class assignment and their teacher actually is displaced and goes to a different school.

And that's very disruptive for our families.

We have worked very hard to try to find ways to minimize that, and having this buffer enables us to do some of that.

Did I hear you say earlier that last year we spent $8 million in fall mitigation adjustments?

Bergen I said that we spent $8 million for above model staffing in classroom split, so mitigating classroom split, just deploying other staffing that was requested.

We did some additional staffing for our high-needs schools and then we also did backfill so that teachers were schools, excuse me, where enrollment was lower than projected got to keep all the staff.

Harris and how much of that was the one-time underspend funds?

2.3 million.

Thank you.

Superintendent Nyland?

I was going to sum up after everybody's had their questions with regard to the budget.

any other comments questions or concerns about the budget and we are already over time.

Best So my understanding I'm just going to say back what we've already heard is that we need about $12 million in new money from the legislature.

Part of that is to cover our promises for the K-5 curriculum adoption and the rest of it is the 7.8 million.

So, I guess what we are proposing here is that if we get the 12 million, and we think that is within sight, 6 million or so, maybe more from the per pupil inflator, and maybe other good news in the budget which we will see tomorrow at noon, we would move forward with your consensus on this list.

If we get less than that amount of money, We will need to be back in conversations with you to figure out what the priority is.

I think that is in connection with what Director Burke was saying.

So just checking that that is where we are.

We are doing what we continue to do throughout this process is make the best out of a bad hand that we have been dealt by the legislature to try to figure out how to plan when we really get not much help.

Assistant Superintendent Berge how do you propose that we come to consensus?

Berge I propose that we come to consensus that unless board directors have concerns we would have consensus and move forward.

Director Blanford

I'm just noting the fact that not all of us are here, and this seems to be an issue that is important enough that we want to ensure that all members of the board have the opportunity to understand, one, understand the complexity of the issue, and then two, to the extent that we can vote, cast an actual vote.

In my mind I don't know given your constraints around needing to know and not knowing what Director Peters plans are this evening.

Director Peters is out of the country.

So that said I would still hope that we can somehow get the opinions of everybody that is an elected board member because this is critically important for our path forward for the district.

Do I hear a motion then for a vote?

And do I hear a second?

Blanford I wasn't proposing a motion because one I didn't know what Director Peters plans were, and two I didn't hear the presentation or the part of the presentation on how urgent it was that we make a decision this evening.

I think we are hoping that a decision can be made this evening so that we can either notify staff or move forward with contractual RFPs and things like that for the smart goals as well as be able to start to plan whether or not how tightly we are going to need to constrain or get to budget to actual adjustments for fall enrollment.

and if you were unable to get that sense of consensus this evening, what would be the opportunity cost associated with that?

Bergen It would be difficult to measure exactly what the opportunity costs were.

I think mostly we have staff who are leaving every day to find other jobs and take other work.

So that being said, I will, being as I didn't actually make a motion, then it's easy for me to withdraw said motion or not to make it in the first place.

Because it seems, whereas it is important for all of us to have input, the prospect of staff leaving because we have not made a decision is more distasteful than having the input of every board member.

Forgive me for thinking out loud but in my mind that's a critical element.

Director Burke.

I appreciate the feedback on sort of timing.

What I'm hearing is that this is timing that is a matter of days not necessarily weeks or months of what we anticipate seeing from the state.

And it's a fairly high confidence that it's a matter of days?

Yes.

and so this feels like a cart before the horse situation for me and I'm uncomfortable participating in a consensus process around an amount of money that we have not yet identified for a set of needs that may or may not align with that amount of money, recognizing how tight our finances are, and I would like to figure out how to defer until we have more certainty.

Director Burke excuse me Director Geary did you have a comment concern or question?

Director Burke did you wish to make a motion?

Director Blanford

so that we don't go too far into this.

Given what Director Burke just said, I wonder about the feasibility of a session like this once we have more information.

Bergen So what I would propose, I don't think we need a motion, what I would propose is maybe coming back as part of the July 5 introduction of the budget, bringing this back as an item for a thumbs up thumbs down consensus?

Director Harris so would you propose that to be identified as a meeting of the board as a work session on July 5 prior to the vote on the budget?

General counsel does that work for you?

Good evening Noel Treat, General Counsel.

I don't think you'd need to agenda that as a work session.

You've got the budget as an agenda item so I think you could just wrap it into that item.

Well then given the fact that we are eight minutes over schedule on a packed agenda already it would seem that we would move to the waitlist issues but I do want to say something very publicly and I want to say that this budget process has been painful as heck.

but that this budget process at least in my 15 years of advocacy at the Seattle public schools has been without question the most transparent process.

We have held over 15 public meetings, the information has been uploaded to the web, and the good folks in this building have extended themselves well beyond to get that information out.

And it's clear as mud on a regular basis.

and the alacrity with which you respond and learning us up so that we can do our fiduciary duty is much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Bergen Thank you.

I'm going to pass those comments on to my staff who do all the hard work.

Harris Assistant, excuse me, associate superintendent Herndon take it away.

All right good evening.

So on the second half of the work session we are going to go through some of the impacts and information about waitlist as they stand.

And ultimately what we are looking for from the board tonight is some direction on one of the two options that are presented to you in the waitlist, in the presentation.

So if we start with a couple of the policies and practices, I'm not going to read line by line every slide, but essentially we have both policies and practices that we have been following over the years.

You can see that Seattle Public Schools has an attendance area set up for our schools.

We also have option schools.

And we have an open enrollment period that happens in February where families then apply to go to schools other than their attendance area schools.

We also have For considerations, the way in which a waitlist is developed is if in the open enrollment process there are more students who are applying than will be able to be assigned to the school, and we realize that there are differences in the interpretation of that language, which we will eventually need to clarify in the student assignment plan.

So hopefully it moves from a student assignment transition plan to a student assignment plan.

So we know that work is coming up.

So wait lists are then generated after the open enrollment process happens and these are students waiting to get into a particular school.

Sometimes it is based on the literal space available, sometimes there is not space available and we don't have staff that we are able to assign to a school.

Other times we have staff that have been assigned to the school and then within the staffing allocation there is not additional room or seats able to be assigned for students.

So when that happens then a waitlist is created, there is a prioritization that happens, in the past there used to be more considerations for how the prioritization of the list happened, but currently there are basically two.

There is a sibling priority and then a lottery.

And the sibling priority is the top of the priority.

So in a little bit more of the background, we have this issue every year.

Every year we end up with more students who want to move to a different school other than their attendance area school.

and we definitely have families and staff and principals who advocate to have additional students move into their school.

Sometimes because they are really concerned about the loss of staff and we certainly understand that.

And, as a staff in general, we also understand what the impact is to our families.

We know that families and students are looking for schools and want to be in places where they feel very supported.

So we try and do that to the greatest extent possible.

And I think we have some information about the number of students that's coming up in a couple of slides.

But to the crux of some of the issues here, we understand that the word capacity can lead to some disconnects that we've had.

So as a staff, and in the conversations that we've had with board members, and with community members, we understand that that clarity is not there.

And that staff is using that word capacity, we use that in many different ways.

Physical capacity as well as within the staffing capacity.

So we know we have to work on that.

and we need better clarity around that.

So in this you can see that on the operational side, on the practice, for capacity as far as the student assignment plan goes, we have used both.

Physical capacity and the staffing capacity.

You can also see on here another slide just about background.

So the, well I actually just talked about those so I don't need to go line by line on that.

A little bit on some numbers, this year there have been a little over 6000 students that have been on waitlist.

And we have assigned over 3200 of those, so a little more than 50%.

Leaving about 3000 on waitlist.

And most of those are for attendance area schools.

There is also a question about portables previously that we talked about, and the way in which this impacts waitlist obviously is if there is additional capacity that is created, portables allow for that temporary capacity.

Additionally if we have an attendance area school that is increasing in its enrollment and additional staffing is allocated, we have to add a portable, then that allows for additional staffing capacity as well.

So it allows more students off of waitlist to be able to move.

So the question about portables in the past, so just very quickly about portables, we have some restrictions or additional requirements that we would have to go through if we are adding a certain number of portables to one particular site.

So the maximum number of portables or classrooms that we are able to add to one building is four at one time.

Anything beyond four classrooms requires us to go through what is called a SEPA process, which is an environmental review basically.

That is a requirement that the city has, and it takes a significantly amount of time longer It also has the ability, there is a public hearing process, an appeals process that can go through on SEPA issues as well.

So in the past we have limited our portable deployments to no more than four, and in many cases we don't even like to get up to four, unless absolutely necessary.

Usually it is one by one that we are looking at.

When it comes to elementary schools as well, we are very mindful as we have received a lot of feedback about adding portables additionally because we know that it takes away from exterior play space.

And portables cannot be just placed anywhere within the campus.

We also have to connect them, most are not what we call wet portables, which means they just have electricity out to them.

They have no other utilities, no bathrooms, no running water.

So as far as Ingram goes, because that one was specifically called out in the past, a couple of issues with Ingram, one they are already receiving for portables.

So they are already slated for four portables.

The other is that Ingram is getting ready for a capital improvement and an expansion or extension.

and construction equipment is going to be starting to be staged on site.

So really adding additional portables there would do two things.

One, it would require us to go through the super process, and two, it would require us to find an additional space to either stage the construction equipment, or we would be taking out additional parking on that campus, which we often hear from neighbors about parking in schools anyway.

So this also goes through and talks about the portables in some of the high schools.

The other high schools when we are talking about portables are all being implemented because of their projected enrollment growth period.

So we have concerns at clearly at Garfield and at Ballard and Nathan Hale and Roosevelt, all the schools that are very very tight and really don't have room to add portables but we need to find a way because we have converted all the additional space already within the rooms.

So we have been going through an analysis on enrollment updates, and then trying to figure out as we normally do, how waitlist will start to move given any additional staffing adjustments.

So we went through a June enrollment staffing update.

And, we were looking at the regular methodology that we've been following for several years, which is, are any of the changes as far as moves go, waitlist moves, triggering any implications for staffing?

Meaning, are they adding any staff to a particular school?

Are they subtracting staff because a school would be losing students?

And, when we look at this, at the elementary level, those units are really in 1.0 FTE, just because of the way elementary schools are structured.

At the high schools and middle schools, however, we do look at units at .2s, which is basically one instructional period.

So by doing this we looked at, we are getting into the options now, of moving approximately 258 students, that is what we are referring to as option one in this particular case.

And in option two, we were looking at what would happen if we moved pretty much all of the students that were out there on waitlist, that is what option two is.

So you can see that if we were to look at option two, and make all the waitlist moves, that would be approximately 550 students.

And there are pros and cons to both options.

Director Geary For just middle and high schools, that number includes just middle and high schools?

Director Blanford For option two, yes.

So what the staff is recommending, again we went through the pros and cons, so staff are recommending that we remain with option one, which continues the practice that we have followed throughout the years.

The conclusion is that option two would result in a significant amount of disruptions for not a dramatically more number of students.

We realize that any student that gets to move on a waitlist obviously would appreciate being able to have that happen.

But there is a cost to that.

There is both a financial cost and there is an impact to the organization as far as number of schools that would have to shift staff.

Both gaining staff and losing staff.

So on option two, on the pros.

Again, it could be cost neutral, but there would be no backfill for staff or program impacts.

You would move more students.

We are seeing that there are some additional waitlist moves because we are opening new schools, which is good.

I mean we are actually increasing some capacity, physical capacity, which allows for some more movement.

And there is some greater equity and access to choice seats again because there is some additional physical capacity open.

The cons on option two, it does negatively impact some of the sending schools, not all of the sending schools but some of the sending schools.

There are a significant number of staffing displacements, it doesn't matter, some of the staff have to go through, there is an HR process that we need to go through for identifying staff.

There is also the expectation that all waitlists are going to move, and I don't think we can sustain that.

So that is what we were looking at for number three.

If we were to move all students we would also, one of the schools most significantly impacted would be Rainier Beach, which we have been working on making sure that we can continue to grow that particular school.

We are trying to adhere to our attendance area policy as much as possible.

Again, a lot of these conversations are one that have to deal with the student assignment plan as a much bigger topic.

But we are just trying to point out a couple of the options as they relate to the waitlist moves in particular.

And then so just a quick summary on the option one versus option two and the staffing impacts.

You can see there the number of students that are moving.

We didn't outline the total net changes in staffing but option two has more staffing.

Jolena do you remember what that is?

Jolena Peters No.

I'm afraid I don't.

And lastly, we know that we clearly have additional opportunities for improvement.

What schools should have wait lists, refine lists of schools and grades, clarify exactly what capacity means, clarify our timeline for decisions, as JoLynn has mentioned earlier, every time we do some adjustments, it is a challenge for staff to go through the process.

It is a significant amount of work.

We obviously want to have, our goal is to strive for as much consistency as possible.

And we realize that there is a disconnect on that too.

I'm not trying to be tone deaf to any of that.

I realize that.

I'm not blind or deaf to the churn that is out there in the community without a doubt.

But we really are trying to do, look at the big picture and trying to balance the best that we can amongst all of our schools.

So I know that what we are looking for for tonight is really just some consensus from the board on where you want to go with this.

Option one, option two, realizing that we know we have significant conversations coming up in the fall about the student assignment plan which will lead to hopefully better outcomes about not only waitlist but what we are looking at for attendance area schools, option schools, and that would be combined with the budget that we would know about at that point as well.

Bergen So I have a response.

In both option one and option two, we kept it staffing neutral looking at option two.

So they both affect 53 schools.

So there's 53 schools with staffing changes.

But what you'll notice, and these are the handouts in the back of your packet, option two creates So when we move waitlist and we do staffing adjustments, we are trying to run on a smooth road, but staffing enrollment projection updates cause a little bit of bump in the road.

When you get to option two, those become bigger hills and valleys.

And that is much harder for our schools and our families to react to.

In option two there is more schools who end up losing staff.

Let's hear from directors.

Directors comments concerns and questions.

Director Blanford.

Director Blanford I'll be happy to start.

I appreciate your points about particularly the churn pieces of this.

And I reflect on two years ago, I think it was two years ago when the old board, the board that I started with.

was here and we were hearing lots of testimony from educators and parents who were really frustrated by the amount of churn that was happening with waitlists.

And one of my colleagues at that time proposed a resolution or amendment that would cap the time by which we have these waitlists so that we would have some predictability.

And so we are in this interesting time now where that conversation and this conversation in my mind come together.

I don't know if they come together in anybody else's mind.

But that is a variable that I think is very important.

What is in the best educational interests of the students who are impacted by the waitlist?

And I know that there are a number of parents and a number of educators who would say let's make a decision on this so that I know where my kid is going to school next year even if it is not my preferred option.

At least I will know where it is.

And educators saying we want to know so that we can do the planning that is necessary to deliver an excellent education to the students who are coming to our door willingly or unwillingly.

So I think that is a variable to consider.

Secondly, I had a community meeting this weekend and many of the folks wearing orange today were in that meeting and speaking very passionately about a sense of they are not being treated fairly, and I respectfully heard that and said we are in a difficult situation where finances don't allow us to accommodate all the waitlist moves that would be made because we are paying attention to some measure of stability in schools, as well as trying to balance.

And I think that part has not been emphasized enough.

How critical it is for us to balance the needs of all the schools that we are serving.

There was an email that came today and I think some board members may have actually seen it from parents of a school that would be detrimentally impacted by the moves that are desired by some people in the community.

And I represent both schools.

And so what I am struggling with is how to strike a balance that keeps both programs viable.

and tries to accommodate the needs of numerous parents out in the community who want their child to go to a particular school.

And tries to strike some balance that will allow us in a long enough time to survive until we have sufficient funding to mitigate some of these problems across the system.

So I just wanted to share that because it is front of mind for me at something that is, it would be easy for us to just decide with the group that is yelling the loudest, but I think that sets us up for a really bad situation where we don't pay attention to our equity goals.

And I will just ask one question, I'll get off my soapbox and just ask one question.

Dr. Herndon you talked at one point about equity, I'm trying to find the exact slide, it was on slide 25, and you said greater equity and access to choice seats.

And I'm wondering how you are defining equity in that because that sounds like equal rather than equitable.

Herndon Yeah.

You know it's always a challenge when we are talking about equity and you are right I mean equality and equity often get commingled sometimes in the interpretation.

So in option two, if you are moving more of the waitlist, I think many people will feel that that is equitable because more people might have access to their choices that are available to them.

And I think they would feel that that is more equitable for them.

Not that it is just I have the equal spot, but because you are allowing more pieces to happen, more moves to happen, it may create more equity.

We did do a brief analysis of the folks on waitlist, and right now they pretty much mirror our student demographics of the school district.

So I think if people are thinking that there are more options available, maybe it's creating more equity for them.

Bergen And I would just add to Flip's statement, on the counterbalance side of that, in one way it adds more equity to the people on the waitlist, and in others when we talk to staff it creates inequity for those that may have their programs or their schools impacted that lose staff.

So there were issues on both sides.

Harris Other directors comments concerns and questions?

Director Burke and Director Geary.

Director Geary.

Director Geary It's so hard from our perspective of course to balance all the comments that we are hearing and try to make our families have faith that this process is being implemented with fidelity and fairly.

And I do have this sense that we have conflicting policies and so I appreciate your bringing up the idea that once again we need to look, we need to sit down and look at the student assignment plan.

I've said that several times.

Just as we have gone through this budget process that Director Harris has said has been such a great process in terms of its transparency.

I am very very fearful that once again we are going to come into the fall and not have done the work necessary.

to get the real public involvement in on talking about the student assignment plan.

And making sure that the language does address as much as we can address.

And anticipate this concept that we may have schools now that we have built that are bigger with the money that we've gotten in on the capital side, but that doesn't mean that we've gotten the money in for the human beings that we have to pay fairly to staff them.

And that we did go through a strike, and that we did agree to give our staff you know, a more reasonable living wage.

I'm not even going to say it's a living wage in the city, but a more reasonable wage.

And that over time we need to pay them in order to be here and staff our classrooms.

And sometimes that goes into the idea of capacity equaling both staff.

Because now We have this concept that we have schools and we have rooms potentially, but we don't have the money.

And as I think we are also anticipating come fall, once again we won't have 8 million.

And we will be back where we were two years ago where we have room, we have half the room occupied by an elementary school.

that is very upset that they've lost a beloved teacher, and that it's destroying some program that they've worked very hard to maintain.

But we avoided that last year through money, and the money that we don't have this year.

So I appreciate this work, and I do believe that we have to continue Fundamentally to think of the way that each and every one of our schools is going to move forward and be able to serve with the best education we can provide them, the students that show up.

But I'm not comfortable in this situation and I can't parse out where all the tensions lie.

Is it just money?

Is it a bad student assignment plan?

Is it that we have conflicting policies?

And I just really want to say I hope that we start keying up a process like we did with the budget so that we can work through it even if it feels tedious and incremental.

Because we're going to need to hear from the special education families, from the option families, from the attendance areas families, and give them time to see that.

The real fallout of any decision that is made, and the potential of the decisions on the table.

But that's, you know, it's all still, these are just my comments.

Harris Director Burke

I think uncomfortable and challenging are really good words to describe this.

We have a perfect storm of budget constraints, capacity constraints, cross signals in our policy documents, a lot of really good intentions, and on top of that you overlay families passions for getting a good education for their students.

And any of these things in isolation is a workable problem.

Or in some cases a real asset.

But you put them all together and I think that is what we are facing right now.

And what it is creating is a reactive environment.

And with only a year and a half on the board I've seen too many reactive environments.

And so I want to build on what Director Geary had said, that this does relate to having a good policy in place, but it also relates to having a really consistent, transparent, and understandable methodology about how we look at long-term capacity, and how we are managing that.

I had a wanted to go back into the history books and so I contacted former directors K Smith Blum and said well you were part of this dance before and she said well you know if Madrona had been an international school that wouldn't be a problem.

And of course that has a different choice that has a financial implication.

But when we can enroll our schools at a healthy level we can have healthy schools, and when we struggle with enrollment, we have to fix it with dollars.

And so we are in an area where those dollars just aren't there.

The other thing that I struggle with is there is a fundamental disconnect between a lot of, I believe extremely well intentioned, and smart, and institutionally knowledgeable community folks that are trying to help the district.

And then I think there's also a lot of really well-intentioned folks in the district that are trying to put together the pieces and present to the board a justifiable position that we can take as an organization.

and it breaks my heart that we can't get all the spreadsheets in the same room because if it's well-intentioned people starting with the same information and figuring out what are the common processes they should reach the same conclusions.

but that's not happening right now.

I'm hearing different information from the community that sounds extremely justifiable.

I'm hearing different information from district leadership that has worked really hard on this and done really great work, but it's also justifiable.

And so from a board perspective we are put in a position where in a polarized environment we are not able to unite the experts in the community with the experts in the district.

And that breaks my heart a little bit.

So that's my soapbox.

My question, my first question around option one, this sounds like this is our regular methodology.

Is there a reason we haven't already done option one?

Yeah I think we have started moving through most of option one.

So we have started most of that but we wanted to make sure that we had clarity as much as we could from the board to see anything going beyond that.

So that is what we are looking at.

Mainly because of the impact on shifts of staff I mean that process we needed to get started before the end of the school year because there are conversations that need to happen with staff who are being displaced.

So anything beyond that, I mean it can still happen, it's just going to be a challenge because of the conversations that need to happen.

so would it be appropriate to say that the discussion we are having right now is what does the board want to do beyond option one because option one will already happen?

Best I believe that is accurate.

Okay thank you.

I will defer further comments until later.

Director Patu and then Superintendent Nyland.

As I sit here and also listen to my colleagues in terms of this waitlist, it's really very hard to actually to even comment or figure out exactly what is the right thing to do when you have a lot of parents that actually are, have been coming and talking about we want our kids to be together, we want to make sure that there is room for our siblings to be together when the waitlist is moved.

It is such a difficult decision to make as a board director, mainly for the fact because who do you pick and who do you choose in terms of making sure that every family actually has the opportunity to have their kids all together in one school.

And as you know we sit here and think about it, it's a process that actually is ongoing and listening to Dr. Herndon talk about how the waitlist is moving.

and I think I heard you said you already did the first moment, the first options one?

Best there's been movement on waitlist already correct?

And we are not done.

Is this all the way across the board?

Elementary for sure, and I think we have done some at the other levels but not too many at the secondary levels yet.

So we are waiting on the second option and moving so you are moving still moving the list right now?

Correct.

So hopefully that most of the list will be moved as we continue on to see that happening?

I wouldn't say most of the list.

There is still some of the list that will move, and that happens every year.

That is why the wait lists are open until the end of the summertime before school starts.

It gives us the option to continue to move wait lists.

Now when you move those waitlists, is it according to who is from the top of the list to the bottom of the list?

Herndon Prioritization has been set so usually when we start to move then we call, what happens is they get a notification if there is a space available.

They have a certain amount of time to respond.

They will either respond or say no we no longer want that option because we decided on a different school or we are staying at a tenant area school and then we move to the next person on the list.

So when you finish moving these waitlists, what is the possibility that students that are on the waitlist actually has the opportunity to hopefully go to that particular school?

Depends on the school and depends on how big the waitlist is.

All right thank you.

Superintendent Nyland.

On the previous question, what we did was we sent both option one and option two to the principals for secondary, and we said look at your staff impact on both sheets, and if you have a negative staff impact on either sheet, please do what the collective bargaining agreement requires, which is to seek volunteers from staff.

So that is how… I forget the number.

two dozen of our schools ended the school year by saying we are down a staff member or two depending on which option we go forward with.

So in response to the earlier question we tried to go as far as we could with the waitlist without jerking schools around and saying yes, yes, no, no, no, no, stop.

So we tried to cover both bases and give notice to the schools so that they could give notice to staff, get volunteers and be prepared to move forward with the staffing when we give them a final determination on how we are going to move forward with the waitlist.

I would also comment that as of this date we have 144 open positions.

So, far more than we had a year ago, partly because of the legislature's delay, and partly because of our desire to try to get as accurate information as we possibly can.

But that's also becoming a growing concern as we face the summer months and compete with other school districts to fill up those open positions.

Director Blanford Director Patu's comments raised a question for me which was raised in my community meeting this week, weekend.

What is the, what happens with sibling preference in schools, in attendance area schools versus option schools?

The sibling priority is the same for both attendance area schools and option schools.

So if you were there the prioritization even for an option school just like an attendance area school is still the sibling is the higher priority than the lottery.

But if a family enrolls sibling one into an attendance area school where they would not normally have gotten into that attendance area school because they don't live in the attendance area, then does the sibling automatically have sibling preference to enroll in that school?

Herndon Yeah once a student is enrolled in the school, then if they have a sibling they would still have the sibling preference because they have a sibling in the school.

There is not a difference between whether or not you are an attendance area person with a sibling or a choice student with a sibling.

It just says sibling.

Blanford Okay.

That is an issue that has popped up on numerous occasions so it is good to have that clarity around that issue.

Director Pinkham.

Pinkham I do have a number of questions that come to mind.

One on the slide 22 where it says no staffing changes generated for either sending or receiving schools.

How Is this compared to when there is a new school opening that in a sense doesn't have a set staffing yet versus a current school that has been in existence?

How do you say I'm going to hurt this new school if I take away a staff when that school hasn't really opened yet?

Best So new schools are definitely a challenge that we haven't… Opening of new schools is a challenge that is much more new to us recently than in the past.

However, early in the process, after a principal has been hired as a planning principal, when the year before they are getting ready to open up that school, in the spring they are starting the regular staffing process.

So even though there are, the community hasn't, the school hasn't been in operation, the staffing is already assigned to that particular school.

Because they are ready to start the school year, so they have the principals already gone through the process, hired whatever staff they have, so they actually do have the staffing already in there.

It's not negatively impacting any students because there aren't any students yet assigned, but the staffing is already assigned to that particular school.

and then based upon the said capacity now of this new school could that then negatively impact another existing school because the new neighborhood or attendance area is taking students away from their current school?

Best So there is possibly some negative impact still built into the system?

Best On an existing school, correct.

Pinkham.

And that brings me to another question as far as how we grow current schools, for instance Licton Springs.

I've been hearing about yes we need to get them up to 250 but then if we are based on their capacity, based on the current staffing, how do we grow that school?

you know I think the board had passed that we want to see that place grow but we keep getting feedback that while they are only at 130 they got enough rooms to meet that current number of students… So that's kind of an issue for me.

How do we grow current schools if we are based upon their current enrollment and their staffing capacity?

Herndon Yeah I mean that's also a challenge and I think it gets to several of the questions that I've heard from community and board members around any school, whether it be an option school or an attendance area school that has a low enrollment.

So how do you grow that enrollment?

And there are several different ways.

You can either look at a different program that might attract additional students or you modify a boundary.

For an option school clearly that's going to focus on the programming that's available for students as that option.

an option school wouldn't have an attendance area with default assignment.

Pinkham Okay and then a few more.

In option two one of the cons you said number four would draw a significant number of students from Rainier Beach when the district has been working to grow that enrollment.

Do we know, have you ever surveyed those that are asking to leave, why they are asking to leave, why they are not staying at Rainier Beach?

Because again this is all the comments that come before us is a lot of students coming up you know fix our school fix our school.

And I wonder is that why they're leaving?

We're not fixing their school.

They're looking for a better facilities and stuff to send their children to.

Yeah I mean there are a variety of reasons why families and students might want to choose to be in a different location.

Clearly the physical condition of a school could be there.

For some, what I've heard from, and this is just anecdotally, I haven't done a survey of all the students or parents, but some have some apprehension about the school because of whatever the reputation may be.

It's not isolated to Rainier Beach, there are other schools that may have that.

And then once they are there for a short amount of time they realize that the reputation is unjustified.

And that they find that it's a great school and they really enjoy the fact that they are there and they seem to be maximizing it.

For other folks it could just be an experience that they had at that particular school for that year and then they are just like this is a bad experience for me I need to look for something different.

So it kind of runs the gamut.

Pinkham.

Pinkham Yeah so I think maybe what we can do here is do a better job of helping our schools making sure they keep as many students as they can.

That hey yeah we will work to make sure your school has everything that you need to make sure they have a quality education versus them looking at another school to move.

Because that is what I feel if our attendance area schools, hey I'm not going to leave, I want to go to my attendance area school, but if they see something better off in the distance and may want to go, and that kind of then ties into the skill centers where, oh I want to go to a skill center where I'm going to learn how to cook, oh but that isn't at my attendance area school, I need to go someplace else.

How can we as a district do a better job to provide those services to all students?

And my last point for option two, number three, you say it creates expectations for future waitlist moves that are not sustainable.

I think we can address that once we go from the student transition assignment plan to a student assignment plan.

I think we are learning now that what we are doing now we need to make sure is a little bit clearer in the assignment plan.

So we don't appreciate the people that are here that they will understand okay, that's a lot clearer for me now.

So as far as creating expectations I think we can hopefully have that spelled out clearer and once we get a good assignment plan addressed.

my questions and comments to wrap it up because we are rapidly approaching 530 public testimony.

How many folks slide 26 number four from Rainier Beach would be displaced if you used option two?

Can you give us some clarity on those numbers please?

or how many students?

So in the back of your materials there is an option to packet, and I would say that on that for Rainier Beach, let me look it up, there are 62 students who are on the waitlist to leave Rainier Beach, and that equates to 2.6 staff.

it.

Is it also correct that we do not have enhanced funding for the international baccalaureate program at Rainier Beach high school that has made such a big difference out there?

Bergen Not at this time.

If the mitigation amount that we talked about a moment ago in the restoration plan, that is potentially a source of funding for some of those kinds of things.

Harris Thank you.

How many folks in high school and middle school might we lose to private schools if we don't move them off the waitlist?

Do we have any estimates about that?

Because then we lose all of the state funding that comes with them is that correct?

Bergen That's correct.

In the time that I've been working with it, only one year, that's not something that we've heard necessarily from middle and high schools.

A lot of times we'll hear more anecdotal information in that regard from elementary schools.

and parents but I have not heard it from middle and high schools.

Herndon No I haven't heard, I mean again anecdotally we hear that information but I do know just through visiting some of the high schools through athletic events, many of the private schools are pretty close to their physical capacity also.

Harris And there are new ones opening every day correct?

Herndon I mean charters maybe but not private schools that I know about.

Harris Lakeside, Lower Queen Anne?

Director Harris do we have any idea how running start bleeding out might affect this because the master schedules are so tight and our schools are so full that students will choose to go to running start and we lose the money?

Well we don't lose the money from running start students.

The money follows the student and we pay for that so it's kind of a net wash to us.

I don't know that our running start participation isn't particularly high though for our district.

I wouldn't be able to say that our running start participation is disproportionate from other schools districts in the state.

Running start participation is slightly increasing but it is as a statewide trend.

Okay it's been brought to my attention we did not use the race and equity tool or the community engagement tools on this issue.

Well I think definitely as we are looking at the both of those clearly on our larger issue of the student assignment plan absolutely we will have to use those tools.

For the waitlist pieces I think we did try and apply the race and equity toolkit to look at the impacts of the waitlist moves but as far as the other pieces on budget I mean I can't speak for the whole presentation.

Okay and master schedules drive high schools.

Is that a fair statement?

Yes.

And is it a fair statement that master schedules in order to be really effective for our students who we hope to be career, college, Seattle ready, whatever we are calling it, should be done in the spring so they know what to expect and we know what kinds of teachers we need and how many?

Ideally yes.

I want to clarify that I did misspeak.

We did talk about the race and equity tool as we looked at both of these options, and as we discussed any of the restoration plans, and you know any of the budget scenarios, that is something that we discussed quite a bit.

Director Harris Okay one last comment and I will turn it back over to Superintendent Nyland.

Something Director Blanford said which resonates highly with me and I believe the rest of our colleagues, he represents both schools who aims are somewhat pitted against each other but every one of us up here represents all schools.

And it's really darn difficult and I am beyond disappointed with where we are at and I hope that we can have as rich and thoughtful and strategic rebuild of the student assignment transition plan and I'm hoping that the new fancy mapping tool will help us greatly as well as the community outreach tool and as robust community engagement as we possibly can have this next year.

Because we can and must do better.

Superintendent Nyland?

It's kind of a follow-on to some of the questions responses.

The engagement issue was challenging for us and the staff put in endless amounts of time trying to figure out what option, how option two would play out, and so that transpired whatever.

It happened right near the end of the school year.

And quite frankly we didn't know where the board was on this issue.

And so for example we did not go to the Rainier Beach parent community to say how do you feel about losing two staff members, changing your schedule, impacting the quality of the instructional program.

Ideally we would have done that.

So for me this is, yeah, you've explained it well.

We are in a, somebody said a perfect storm in terms of trying to balance the needs of everyone districtwide.

with very limited resources and arguably questions about what capacity means and how we have implemented that in the past.

So I acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do, I acknowledge that we certainly need more clarity going forward at the same time as I go through it I look at What is the impact going to be to the students that are in our schools that have the highest needs and the difference between option one and option two is that we negatively impact more of our higher need schools.

We disrupt their staffing and we disrupt their instructional programming very very very late in the school year when it is difficult to recover from that.

Thank you.

It is 532 it is time for public testimony.

Can we take a couple of minutes to stretch please while we move the furniture?

And we will do the consent agenda after the end of public testimony.

Are we supposed to come here to sit on that?

We don't have time to now.

We need to do a public testimony.

Is it cold up here or is it me?

It's kind of chilly.

Yeah, it's chilly.

Go get me some hot tea or something.

It's cold up here.

Do I have time to go get me some tea?

Do I have time to run and get me some tea?

What, what do you think is the most important thing in your training?

Um, I think studying and writing is so important.

I mean, I never said that I'm not a good writer.

I mean, I'm not a good writer.

I mean, I'm not a good writer.

That a fork I can stick in my eye?

It's gonna have to be that.

Okay if y'all can take your seats.

Or we say quiet down.

We're ready to begin.

We need quiet in the room please so we can continue.

Thank you.

As we have now reached 530 PM we will go next to public testimony.

The rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers are respectful of these rules.

I would note that the board does not take public comments on items related to personnel or individually named staff.

I would also like to note that each speaker has a two-minute speaking time.

When the two minutes have ended please conclude your remark.

Ms. Shek will read off the testimony speakers and let's begin Ms.

Shek.

Shek First up we have Lucia Santos followed by Isabel McMurchie and Chris Jackins.

Santos My name is Lucia Santos and I hope to attend Franklin high school as a ninth grader this coming fall.

I'm currently on the waitlist.

As a Seattle Public Schools student I believe that I should be able to choose and attend the school that best fits my personal goals and needs for learning environment and community.

However the Franklin waitlist has not moved which leaves me discouraged for both myself and other potential Franklin students.

I believe that if there is space in a school people deserve the opportunity to attend it if they feel that it is the best place for them.

Franklin is a school with a diverse academically integrated student body and engaging learning options and each of these qualities are exciting to me.

I know that there are many reasons that must be weighed before the system changes allowing students who are not assigned to Franklin to attend.

But I hope the district will recognize me and every other kid that knows that Franklin is the right place for them by moving the waitlist and allowing us to attend Franklin high school.

Thank you.

My name is Isabel McMurchie, I am 15 years old and I am a sophomore at Ballard High School.

At Ballard we have wonderful history classes but I think there is something missing.

We don't learn any history that is from a perspective that is different from my own.

We learn about other places and other times but always looking out from the same Western Eurocentric perspective.

Perspective is the direction in which you choose to face.

If you are in a fixed place looking out of a window, You will only see what that position in that direction can show you.

In our history classes the window looks out on people, events and places leading to the Western world.

An ethnic studies course would give me and each of my peers the time and reason to learn about the differences among us and around the world from different windows looking in directions not visible from the West.

We will soon be working, living, learning and voting in a highly diverse society.

Yet our education and our media does not facilitate our understanding of different perspectives.

I want to learn to understand and embrace different perspectives and I believe this could bring about a new wave of understanding among myself and my peers going forward.

If we have understanding it stands to reason that fear would be less of a factor in how we treat one another.

And ultimately in how we make important decisions.

The Seattle Public Schools have always fought for a cohesive learning environment.

And the ethnic studies course is simply the next step in achieving cohesiveness through mutual understanding.

Looking out of each other's windows will enable us to find a better cohesive and more productive future.

Thank you for this opportunity to address this important issue.

After Chris Jackins will be Ricky Malone, Emily Lieberman and Jules Cohen.

My name is Chris Jackins, Box 84063, Seattle 98124. On the $7.9 million budget increase for Lincoln, how many projects done by this architect have increased their guaranteed maximum price?

Please vote now.

On Maple Elementary, two points, number one the state is providing $1.1 million to build a floor classroom addition from cross laminated timber.

A project apparently designed to promote the timber industry.

Number two, $350,000 to cover a cost overrun would come from the BEX IV levy.

So school district taxes would be used to promote the timber industry.

Please vote no.

On the portables contract approved on June 7, five points.

Number one, the numbers cited in the staff report do not match up with other numbers.

Number two, for example the portables report stated quote district enrollment has increased two to 3% annually over the past several years.

Unquote.

Number three, the April 2017 monthly financial report indicates that from 2014 to 2015 growth is 1.35% which is not between 2 and 3%.

Number four, annual growth of 2 to 3% from 2013 to 2016 would mean growth of 6% to 9% during this period.

The district data profile states the figure as 5%.

Number five, for next year on average a school of 500 students would add four more students.

This does not sound like an immediate crisis at every school.

Please slow down and sort out the numbers.

Thank you.

I gave her the number of the evaluation I was speaking on.

Two young African-American males were asked recruited to come to Seattle from Beaumont Texas to play football and basketball at Seattle Public High School.

They were promised a safe place to live, food, clothing and education with a pathway to college.

Why else would they come here?

Whatever happened at this high school led by an African-American male and an African-American coaching team after football season Whatever it was they decided to dump these two at another high school and say this is now your school.

All of it is fake news and changes daily.

Put out by adult African-American adults who had one thing in mind and that was to save their own butts.

The fact is that they were locked out of their schools these students were.

Black lives matter and we know that if we don't educate these black lives they won't have much of a life.

This African-American male principal and coaches decided to slander the white female principal at the school they dumped these boys at as a racist.

Because she spent all day and night getting a place for these boys to be housed.

She was rewarded with threatening calls, broken windows and stalking.

And eventually had to move her partner and most importantly her two young daughters out of their homes so at least her girls felt safe.

One African-American male stepped up and said I will not be part of putting two African-American young males out on the streets of Seattle.

They will have a safe home with me while we get this mess straightened out.

I will feed them and my mom will cook for them.

The reward he got was threats of all kinds including death threats.

his great reputation as a supportive African-American male of African-American youth could have been ruled and still can.

He has spent his own money and time making sure the boys were fed and safe and most of all we all know how much it costs to feed young adult athletes because few came forward to help him out even when they feared for their lives.

Because blackballed by, they felt blackballed by some of the community including the NAACP.

People who don't know the whole story don't know the truth.

Superintendent under your evaluation part ethical leadership and social political content says you are responsible for the educational outcome of all students whether they are recruited or not.

you are obligated to see that this never happens again.

And that these two young African-American students are taken care of now.

Anything less is unethical.

I'm Emily Lieberman.

I want it to be known that there are Stevens families also in the lobby who aren't allowed in, presumably for space reasons.

And I yield my time to Stevens teacher, Susan Coubert.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Susan Goubert a physical education teacher at Stevens.

This is my eighth year as a teacher and I have the opportunity to teach every child in the school and appreciate the diversity in each classroom.

Because SPS didn't allow siblings off of the 2016-17 waitlist our community has experienced negative impacts.

We have families given no other choice but to not attend Stevens, a school that they were invested in.

Several families had their children at two different Seattle public schools.

These families need to be two places at the same time.

One of these students that was dismissed from my class at the end of the day came from a single parent, low-income family.

And the additional stress worrying about how she was getting home from school, she was being picked up, she was taking the bus would limit her ability to function and learn during the day.

You can imagine this plan wasn't always workable and the student would be left waiting in the office many days.

This would have been alleviated had her sibling been at the same school.

Students take pride in the school and have a sense of belonging.

There are students that have attended several years at Stevens that look forward to the traditions, especially in fifth grade.

There is camp in choir five, a staff versus fifth grade kickball game, and graduation.

Now these students entering the upper grades are being told they cannot partake because SPS has told them to leave.

But mostly in this situation, worry about the news that is coming out of Olympia.

being high, exhaustion and emotions are high and the trust between Seattle Public Schools and our community has been fractured.

The district stated value about the paramount importance of relationships should drive this decision.

If relationships are truly valued by SPS, the siblings should stay together and stay with the community that knows them.

Please allow siblings off of the Stevens waitlist.

My name is Jules Cohen, I'm a Stevens parent.

A system that separates siblings and says to first-graders and fourth-graders like mine, you've moved a very short distance so you need to leave your school, even though there is space available, which is the language from the SAP.

That system can't be operating as designed.

A system that shrinks a school from 400 kids to 263 in four years, and whose own projections put it at 202 in 2020, must have a wrench in the works.

A system that last year refused to admit any kids from our waitlist, including 13 siblings and current students, and then per the district's FOIA response turned around and filled the obviously available staffing allocation with other out-of-area kids after the waitlist was dissolved, that system can't be working as designed.

A system limiting choice assignments to Stevens based on what other school a kid is assigned to is not contemplated in the board policy.

All kids should have access to the same choice assignments.

The system needs a tune-up.

So at Stevens, we kind of just said, hold on, something's broken.

The SAP clearly provides paths for siblings and current students to stay in their communities.

The district is not following its own policy, and it can't be intentional for a school to shrink like this.

This will be simple, we thought.

The system will correct this.

But the district, while acknowledging that its practices don't align with board policy as written, refuses to correct the problem.

So it falls to the board.

Please don't wait another year.

Fix at least this part of the system now.

We've already lost five teachers, and the school is shrinking.

This week's meager waitlist moves are cold comfort without letting the school retain a teacher, keeping our community intact, and letting the rest of the waitlist, including siblings and kids who've been at Stevens their whole lives, stay.

Your policy said it should happen.

So here's the simple ask.

Please direct enrollment to move the entire Stevens waitlist today, make any staffing changes required, and then spend the money needed to make sure that no other school is harmed.

We don't want schools pitted against each other.

Sure, there is a cost to that, but SPS spends lots of money.

Tonight you are voting on $2 million in solar panels.

Those are great investments, but what about the kids?

I also challenge you to go through the budget and ask are all of our expenditures aligned with the strategic plans commitment to put the interests of students first?

I bet you can fund moving our waitlist without harming other schools.

Please do it today.

Next up we have Melissa Westbrook followed by Rogelio Rigor and Jessica Smith.

Good evening I support the ethnic studies resolution and please enact it.

About the waitlist I believe this district should move all the waitlist for siblings and when possible for other students who wish to attend a school that is under enrolled.

What has been clearly stated over and over for decades is that the district's biggest commitment to families during enrollment is to keep siblings together.

I believe it makes more sense to run more full schools than to have more under enrolled ones by artificial means.

For something as key as waitlist how they are cleared should be explicitly stated in the procedure that follows the policy, currently it is not.

and you will hurt one school over the other no matter what you do.

And I believe that gentleman is correct.

Do not pit schools against each other.

I believe by not moving the waitlist the district hurts its relationships with families.

And I would ask the district to decide on how you are going to use these different Race and equity, family engagement tools, you can't use it as a weapon sometimes and use it as a smokescreen another.

Regarding capital projects, six schools are going to get solar panels at a cost to the district of $1.6 million.

The money is coming from BEX II and BEX BTA 2 and BEX 3, boy those old BEX's and BTA's are just an endless source of funding for capital projects.

I believe the district has not completed all the projects named on those levies and has been squirreling money away for other projects.

Something akin to a slush fund.

There is way too much need for too many buildings for staff to be holding money back for pet projects like solar panels.

Voters and parents need a clear full transparent accounting of every single BEX and BTA dollars spent.

Thank you.

Good evening.

The board resolution to incorporate districtwide ethnic studies curriculum engagement is an important learning teaching approach that will enrich all students and prepare them for days to come.

It is also a sign of leadership and ethical principle.

Putting democratic and anti-racist policies into auction.

My concern is that it has been two years now since we began the effort to reclaim middle college.

At high point in the original Ida B. Wells school at the University of Washington as learning and teaching models.

These models were grounded in ethnic studies, vigorous teaching and learning, and college preparation.

One of these alternative high school options designed for underserved students and students of color was abruptly closed.

The other at the UW had its former curriculum model replaced with a corporate model based on traditional textbooks and online teaching scripts for basic credit retrieval.

A learning option for students grounded in ethnic studies and college preparation, the district abandoned.

Veteran teachers of color were displaced.

During our efforts to restore this former model it was learned that the district did not use the equity tool in taking action to close and disrupt these two alternative high school options.

The SEA rep assembly has supported our efforts to have the district revisit its position using the equity tool and reconsider its actions against models that were already fusing and grounding ethnic studies into the curriculum.

With the broad support that the board has to establish ethnic studies in our schools we hope that the district leadership that failed to nurture, understand and support these former models of ethnic studies in practice will work to reestablish this alternative high school options.

Many former students had the opportunity to study these alternative options, graduated, went on to college and have made amazing lives for themselves, families and communities.

There are students in our high schools today that now urgently need this opportunity.

Ethnic study is about education materials yet it must be overall a culture of praxis in our schools and in the district as a whole.

If it to be meaningful.

Thank you.

After Jessica Smith we will have Valerie Cooper, Erin Fairley, and John Greenberg.

Hi thanks for the opportunity to speak with you.

I am the mother of an incoming second grader at Catherine Blaine in Magnolia.

Last Monday June 19 I attended the boundaries meeting about the new Magnolia school.

We learned that that project is most likely delayed because bids came in significantly higher than expected.

Meanwhile at the same time across the neighborhood there was another meeting going on about developing Fort Lawton.

My first concern is that these two meetings were held at the same time when they affect the same people.

Many of whom wanted to attend both.

It worried me because it raised a red flag that the city and the school district were not communicating on projects that affect each other.

Fortunately they agreed to hold a second Fort Lawton meeting on the 21st, which I was able to attend.

I learned about the 150 to 200 units of housing that could hold families.

My first question is whether the potential children in these homes is being considered in planning for the Magnolia school and other capacity challenges.

If not, I ask the district to wait on boundary decisions for Magnolia school until we know what will happen at Fort Lawton.

My second concern is whether this area at Fort Lawton can be considered for a school too.

I see no reason why on 38 acres of land we can't do both.

Affordable housing and overcapacity are two pressing issues in our community.

And this land could be an opportunity to alleviate both.

I encourage you to be proactive, forward-thinking, and work with the city to do right by our children.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Valerie Cooper and I'm the PTA legislative chair from Lawton Elementary and a parent who is concerned about upzoning, densification of our neighborhoods and a proposed housing development at Fort Lawton in Magnolia which could house up to 160 family homes.

As we've been having boundary meetings regarding the opening of Magnolia Elementary it's become very clear that we are experiencing a boom in population within Magnolia and Queen Anne.

When Magnolia Elementary opens it will not be creating open seats.

It will be shuffling students out of classrooms taking place in hallways, computer labs, teacher break rooms, and portables.

Not only are we affected at the elementary levels, these children will grow and we are heading for major capacity issues once these students reach middle and high school.

According to SPS projected, posted projections They are, the district is expecting 150 more students only within the Magnolia and Queen Anne cluster by 2020. This projection is woefully underpowered and causes great concern for a crisis to reach our schools without further infrastructure.

This brings me to the city's proposed development of Fort Lawton.

Because of our capacity challenges the moment I heard of the city's plans for adding up to 160 homes in Fort Lawton, which all by the way would go to directly to Lawton Elementary which cannot accommodate portables, I immediately thought where is there space for these students to attend school?

I was also aghast that the city had not been included in deep discussions with the district Neither regarding the amazing footprint that the site could offer SPS, that the district can receive the land for free, nor about where the district could plan for several hundred new students to be attending school.

In light of the questions about what will happen at Fort Lawton, I alongside our clusters parent representative committee formally asked the district to pause on the drawing of boundary lines for elementary schools within this cluster.

Magnolia is not coming online until 2019. We have capital projects possibly increasing capacity at Queen Anne schools.

Now is the moment for our district to be proactive, to ensure that it is planning correctly, to minimize disruptions for our families, and to be at the table for city planning with HALA, building developments, and every potential opportunity for a new school for a much-needed infrastructure.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Erin Fairley with the Franklin PTA.

Franklin PTA is excited that the board is considering moving the high school waitlist.

Waitlist option two that is under your consideration.

This option is to move all high school waitlists where there is space available.

About a month ago you heard from five outstanding Franklin students advocating for equity and fairness in the enrollment process.

Prior to that Dr. Nyland visited our Franklin PTA and the parents strongly advocated for Franklin's enrollment not to be arbitrarily capped.

During my time as a Franklin parent the PTA continually has been mystified as to why our waitlist doesn't move when we have the capacity.

It doesn't make sense that our close neighbor school Garfield is allowed to grow and grow to the extent that now Garfield even needs costly portables to house almost 1800 students while we are held back.

Capping our enrollment unfairly disadvantages our school.

Franklin is also a high-needs school with a very diverse community, English language learners, I think at graduation perhaps almost two-thirds of the students stood up saying that they were first-generation college students.

More importantly, high school students all have different needs.

If individual students and their families believe that a different school would be a better fit for them, academically, socially, emotionally, and that school has the space, why not do what is best for the students?

Don't wait.

Don't wait another year.

Don't do any more studies.

Please pass option two in the interest of equity and excellence in education for every student.

Thank you.

After John Greenberg we will have Richard Drow and Lisa Evans.

While I understand fire codes I am confused why dozens of ethnic studies supporters are stuck outside while there is a huge swath of empty space ahead of me and I cede the rest of my time to Naj Ali.

My name is Naj Ali, a student at Rainier Beach high school.

Keep in mind the last time I stood up here and spoke I was a junior and now a senior.

I have to say I am very disappointed that we are still fighting for a better educational learning environment.

And for ethnic studies, how often is that we learn about people of color in our history?

It's 2017 for the love of God.

You know what is so insulting?

The fact that y'all managed to pull out 90 million out of your assets to renovate Lincoln high school.

It's like basically discharging a dying patient and looking for a new one.

You don't have to continue your predecessors negligence of Rainier Beach high school.

Give us a written confirmation that Rainier Beach high school will be first on the BX 5. To add this on to a very great quote by August Wilson, we don't have to play hosts to the sins of our fathers.

We can banish them with forgiveness.

It's Rainier Beach's time, it's our turn, it's time for equity.

Thank you very much.

Hi I am Richard Truax, I am the department chair of social studies at Garfield high school, I am also the parent of an SPS sophomore and also a member of the ethnic studies task force.

First I would like to thank Director Burke for joining us here a couple of weeks ago.

Some of the work we were doing on a Saturday, this is really important work and I want to, I am here primarily just to advocate that you all adopt the resolution that has been put in front of you, but particularly to stress that without providing the resources to make this happen, the resolution is just a piece of paper.

And I'll use as an example, I think it's been about six years ago, our state passed an RCW that made our time in memorial curriculum so that we are literally legally required every year to be teaching local Native American history in our schools.

They created a nice website, they rolled out some nice flyers, and provided zero resources.

I'm willing to bet you 90% of the social studies teachers in this state don't even know that law exists, let alone implementing it.

So to just simply adopt the resolution without providing particularly the professional development that we need across the staff, not just social studies in LA, but from our phys ed teachers all the way to science teachers, math teachers, because this is not just about a single ethnic studies class, this is about trying to incorporate a more diverse perspective of teaching across the board, and it needs, it can't happen without that professional development.

That takes resources, as would take resources to add an ethnic studies course, or race and ethnicity class in a high school or middle school, and so my main issue is to ask that you all find a way, I know we are not obviously a resource-rich group, to make that happen, because just passing a resolution is going to end up where we are at today, which is sad, because we have a wonderful curriculum with the time immemorial that's going nowhere.

And I don't want to see this passed as a resolution and we pat ourselves on the back.

We have to do the hard work, which has come up with the resources to support it, particularly the professional development aspect of it.

Thank you.

After Lisa Evans we will have Garcilia Gomez, Jenny Rhodes, and Kimberly Franit-Fergus.

Hello board my name is Lisa Evans and it's been a while since I was up here to talk so things must be going well.

In early April of this year Many of our community in Queen Anne Magnolia resurrected what we refer to as the successful schools in action.

Which was originally established in 2002 and brought together the six predominant schools in the Magnolia Queen Anne cluster.

We came together after the first community meeting on the boundary changes in our cluster.

it was not a successful meeting.

And we wanted to bring all of our communities together to share information and to find resolutions that would improve our communities and help those that needed it and make the successful opening of Magnolia Elementary.

We are working what we felt with the district in a collaborative and constructive fashion.

We have asked for transparency and we have been transparent with our meetings.

Since that first meeting in April there have been two subsequent meetings with the public.

in which in the latest which was held on June 19 there was an overwhelming amount of information and options presented.

None of which were truly feasible and none of which more importantly provided the information about Fort Lawton and the potential housing.

Phase one of housing with Fort Lawton is 150 units designated for families.

80 units for veterans.

If you are going to draw boundary lines for Magnolia Elementary, you need to bring true data to the table.

So with that, our committee, which is the leaders of all of our schools, is formally asking the board to direct Superintendent Nyland to halt boundary conversations as it pertains to Magnolia Elementary until true data is available.

And we know what's happening at Fort Lawton.

Hello I'm Jenny Peabody Rhodes continuing PTA president at Stevens Elementary.

When I mentioned to my daughter that I would be speaking to the school board again about waitlist and enrollment my daughter suggested I open with a joke.

She thought for a minute then offered why did the teacher cross the hallway?

I don't know why?

To go to the empty classroom and cry.

This is what my eight-year-old is taking away from the waitlist enrollment travesty the district has created.

And she is a lucky one, she gets to stay at Stevens.

However the teachers who would have been hers next year do not.

This newest round of teacher cuts also drastically reduces the diversity of our staff, the role models for our children.

We need the district to adhere to the policy as it exists now and admit the entire waitlist now to relieve a minimum of damage you inflicted last year.

Mr. Herndon says we are misinterpreting capacity in the student assignment plan to mean space.

In fact the policy actually says space available.

Don't just admit kindergarten siblings this year.

Admit incoming first-graders who were dissolved from last year's waitlist.

Otherwise we are looking at a split for that class its entire time at Stevens.

You violated even the recommendation you are making to the board today to quote, maintain our current approach of moving the waitlist unless it affects staffing.

We had room in our kindergarten classes last year.

If you had admitted those siblings, those enrollment numbers would have enabled us to maintain at least one of our teachers this year.

and you need to admit older students from the waitlist to fill the gaps you created when families were given the non-option to wrangle elementary age siblings between different schools or pull their older kids who had only ever known students, known Stevens to join their younger siblings at schools where they were welcomed.

We talk in abstracts but is this really the policy change you want to make?

Prioritizing numbers over the real lives of our students, parents and teachers?

Let your legacy be that you made sure all schools succeed.

Stevens, Franklin, Rainier Beach, enough.

Thank you.

Peters Thank you.

Ms.

Ritchie Graciela Gomez are you here?

After that we will have Kimberly Furnit-Fergus and Cameron Payne-Thaller.

Hi, do I get an extra two minutes?

My name is Kim Fergus and I am a Northeast Seattle mom living in View Ridge.

We've heard some amazing testimony tonight from students, teachers and community members from around the city about the reasons to implement a mandatory ethnic studies program in Seattle Public Schools.

But the critical need for ethnic studies in my neighborhood, Northeast Seattle, has been highlighted in this last week.

I live within blocks of Charlena Lyles apartment.

After her tragic death our communities on the hills above Magnuson were paralyzed.

As a mostly upper-class white community we didn't talk about Charlena.

There were more posts on our community social media page next door about the sirens, helicopters and noise than there were about a person.

A black neighbor that was killed in front of her children mere blocks from where we live.

In response to my frustrations about so little mention of her, a mom just like us, I wrote an article for Seattle child's magazine.

You each have a copy.

I plead for parents in Northeast Seattle to connect with Charlene's situation and I personalized it to get people like me to start talking about her.

without the additional stressors of lifelong racial oppression and domestic violence I still have a hard time with my day-to-day life and as it would turn out based on the response from hundreds of comments and thousands of shares of my article so do all of us.

All white people just like me we struggle from day-to-day without the additional stressors that Charlena faced.

Yet here we are up on the hills in View Ridge overlooking her apartments and we are saying nothing.

Our community in Northeast Seattle is ready.

We are ready for an ethics studies program in our schools.

We are ready for it earlier than even high school.

We need it to start in elementary school, go through middle school and up to high school.

I have a little bit more, sorry.

Our community is ready.

It will hurt and it will be messy and will be uncomfortable and you will continue to get emails from concerned white parents in Northeast Seattle like you did regarding Black Lives Matter in October.

However, what is worse than having parents complain because they don't understand is for school communities to not celebrate and embrace Black Lives Matter like my elementary school because we are concerned for the backlash.

bring on ethics studies and bring on the backlash because that is our opportunity for dialogue, hard conversations, learning and most importantly systematic change.

Thank you.

It's Cameron Payne-Thaler and Payne is spelled with an I and I would like to echo all of the sentiments I've heard before me.

I am many things including a center school graduate 11 years ago but today I am speaking also as a concerned white citizen.

The statistics and research are obviously overwhelming ethnic studies benefits everybody however I want the facts to speak for themselves as I'm sure you've read all of the studies Instead I want to address the concerns voiced by my fellow white neighbors about these conversations that were just mentioned by Kimberly.

Even if these folks are coming up to the podium today I'm sure they are continuing to send emails as she mentioned and I'd like to address them directly so you can adequately weigh these in your decision-making.

One email reads, quote, leave politics out of it and work diligently and quietly to close the gap.

Work quietly?

How can Seattle be a progressive inclusive sanctuary city for all of our students if we work quietly?

There is no such thing as closing the gap by being quiet.

Another email reads, it is beyond the comprehension of elementary school kids.

As Kimberly mentioned it is not beyond the comprehension of elementary school kids to bully someone who does not look like them.

It is not beyond their comprehension to observe why all heroes in books or all the teachers at their schools either look like them or don't.

And not only are students of all ages observant, these are forming biases early.

They get it.

Waiting any longer is often too late, always too late in my opinion.

Why would we wait until they are older instead of addressing these conversations before it becomes a problem?

And I would argue that in today's world this is a deadly problem.

And one last email to address.

Quote, can you please address why skin color is so important?

Well yes we can and we have.

And as a friendly but firm reminder your own mission statement does address just this to quote your own policy to end this, ensure all students regardless of race or class graduate from Seattle Public Schools ready to succeed in a racially and culturally diverse local national and global community.

We elected you to do this and we will stand with you when you make this happen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Jenelyn Edrosa, Omar Vasquez, and Jeannie Vastich.

Good evening everyone.

My name is Jenna Lenadroza and I'm a parent at Stevens Elementary.

I'm also one of the outreach co-chairs on the Stevens PTA board, a position that has given me many opportunities to meet and interact with all the families at our school.

This past year I've gotten to know and become closer with the ELL families in our community.

For those that don't know ELL stands for our English language learners.

These families face even more challenges in school and require additional support with their academics and navigating the school system.

This year our engagement with these families has increased and we've been seeing more participation from them.

They are volunteering more at school events, attending PTA meetings, and just feeling more connected to our Stevens community.

It's been a really good year.

However, all the positive inroads we've made with our EL families will be undermined with what's happening now with Stevens declining enrollment.

As my Stevens colleagues have already clearly stated, declining enrollment will lead to reduced staffing and impact other resources at our school.

One of those resources heavily impacted is our ELL program.

Next year the ELL teachers hours will be reduced from three days a week to only one day a week.

That is a 66% reduction in support and will have major impact on the academic progress of these children who rely on that support.

If the district is committed to closing the opportunity gap they shouldn't be taking necessary resources away from these children.

These children, some of the most vulnerable in our population deserve so much better.

Additionally ELL families are disproportionately represented on the waitlist and I fear it's because they are not able to effectively advocate for their children due to language and cultural barriers.

So with that said, I'm imploring the school board to release the entire Stevens waitlist to help stop Stevens enrollment from further declining so we don't lose more teachers and necessary resources like the ELL program.

Thank you for hearing me out.

Hello my name is Omar Vasquez I'd like to speak on the ethnic studies resolution.

I'd like to reserve one minute for myself and one minute for my ally Ebony from Franklin high school.

I grew up on the border in El Paso Texas speaking Spanish as my first language.

But my grandparents who raised me were concerned that if I went to school speaking Spanish I'd get placed on the slow track with the other Mexican kids.

And so I spoke English only.

And then when I went to school, my courses didn't take a critical approach to the dominant traditional narratives of history.

It wasn't until I became a teacher that I began to realize the transformative power of an ethnic studies program.

I was able to see that students who went into the class in Tucson, Arizona were invested in schools.

They became deeper in their critical thinking skills.

They got better grades.

Literacy rates improved.

They even did better in math.

Now Seattle Public Schools has the opportunity to unleash the cultural wealth that we have in our city.

I didn't have the opportunity to have an education that valued my language, my culture, my history.

But you all have the opportunity to give that to our students.

Good afternoon my name is Ebony I go to Franklin High School.

I can't tell you how much of an impact books like Just Mercy and the autobiography of Malcolm X has had on how I view myself.

Before I thought that my features were wrong, the way that my hair curled and how dark my skin was.

Unknowingly I was keeping white supremacy alive by hating myself.

Many kids don't know about this.

And to all of the white people, your kids will never have to learn to love themselves the way that we do.

And they are constantly affirmed through social media and this exalted image that schools teach about America continuously saving other countries.

We have to know that we are more than third world countries people.

We are more than people who need to be saved.

Tell us that we have things to be proud of.

Give us something that we are proud of because we have a lot to be proud of.

Thank you.

Am I supposed to press that?

Hi my name is Jeanne Bastash and I'm a physical educator in Seattle.

I've taught here for 16 years.

I'm here to speak about the breakfast and lunch program for Seattle public school students.

And I'm going to start by reading from our own adopted procedure H61.

Dot 01 states that meal times shall be long enough for students to eat and socialize.

A minimum of 10 minutes provided to eat breakfast and 20 minutes to eat lunch with additional time as appropriate for standing in line.

That is referred to as seat time, 20 minutes with their lunch and 10 minutes with their breakfast in the morning.

This problem that I'm speaking to you about today is specifically about breakfast time and I've seen it for 16 years.

It is not due to the new tier shifting.

Buses that arrive late don't allow kids enough time to eat breakfast.

Those kids then need to choose to either throw out their breakfast to be on time with their peers or skip breakfast altogether.

Our teachers do allow kids to bring their breakfast to class but that's one other way that they might be different and they might choose not to do that and get the nutrients that they need in the morning.

A new problem has arised for me with the tiers I've been more alert to what the actual scheduled arrival times are for buses and for this you might want to get out your writing implement.

The scheduled arrival time is 740. The first bell rings at 750 so at our school our kids would have to walk about 50 yards to get into the lunchroom and then eat their lunch and then the first bell at 750 for I'm sorry breakfast means that they start heading to class at 755 to be on time with their peers.

This is a district scheduled bus.

It is not okay for a kid that gets to school on time on an on-time bus to then be late or have to throw out their breakfast to be on time for class.

And this has been a problem in Seattle for many years.

The problem is not just with breakfast but also with lunch and having kids actually have time to sit and eat for 20 minutes.

And I sent you an email with a lot of research that we all know about nutrition and how it not only will help our kids live a long and healthy life which should be enough, but it impacts their academic achievement.

And I believe that we have a chance by simply changing not the buses for the whole district at this point, but the concept of when school starts could be at that first bell so that they have that time, the five minutes to get to class with their peers and still finish their breakfast.

Thank you.

Next up we have Sarah Coulter followed by Cynthia Dole and Nikki Stein.

Hi my name is Sarah Coulter, I am here to talk about the Fort Lawton school scenario.

I have two children, my oldest just finished first grade at Lawton Elementary.

First I want to thank the district for their continuing conversations and exploring a school on the site.

Our hope is that it will be included in the city's EIS study as one of the possible options that come of the site.

Seattle is growing denser and denser so we need to think about infrastructure especially schools for our children.

Thousands of new students are expected to arrive in the district in the next few years.

Many of the schools are already at capacity.

Having a school at Lawton would alleviate much of these issues.

The land can actually be transferred to the city.

for, with a no-cost conveyance, meaning that the land would actually transfer to the city for free for a school.

The district has already sold sites like Queen Anne high school and the Briarcliff school in Magnolia, now there is an increased need for land for these schools.

So I hope that this doesn't slip away as a missed opportunity.

The school could possibly have a great tie into the environmental focus or Native American culture due to its location next to a 500 acre park and also next to the Daybreak Star cultural center in Magnolia.

Also the site already has buildings that have been used by the federal government, Army Reserve.

These include classrooms, a gym, cafeteria, a library, counseling rooms and parking lots.

These could possibly be reused to cut down on capital costs.

Lastly I will mention that in Spokane this was done with the East Valley school district where they took over the former Walker Army Reserve Center.

They now offer a high school program called Intech there and they got the land completely for free with an agreement from the federal government.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Nikki Stein, Cynthia who was speaking before me is not here.

I'm a parent in Magnolia, first I wanted to thank you all for your tireless work.

I'm here to encourage you to make a forward-thinking decision about redrawing the boundaries in Magnolia and Queen Anne.

With the recent news that the Magnolia school will not open until 2019 most likely, a year later than slated, and the city's proposed plans to bring roughly 150 units of new additional housing to Fort Lawton.

I feel like the decision-making landscape has changed.

I really want to make sure that you are using all of the data that is available to make a proper decision when redefining the boundaries in our community.

It is not fair to our kids if we make a decision this summer as was initially proposed, and then have to change those lines again three years from now after things have potentially changed.

Let's use this year so that we can make a decision that can stand the test of time.

I also encourage you to take this unprecedented opportunity to look at Fort Lawton, the Fort Lawton land as a site for a new school.

We have major overcrowding issues currently in our elementary schools, which the district is looking at alleviating with the new Magnolia school, but the elementary kids get older, and soon middle schools will be overcrowded.

and eventually high schools.

We have the opportunity right now to plan ahead, to be proactive so that the kids who are being negatively impacted in elementary school right now don't have to bear the brunt for the rest of their educational career.

My son just finished kindergarten and he had a great year, but at a school of 800 there are definitely some issues that will become more apparent to him as he gets older.

There is only one person on the campus who knows his name.

The specialists have to teach 800 kids and there is no way they can do that effectively and really get to know each individual kid, their strengths and their weaknesses.

So I would like to encourage you to look at Fort Lawton and the increasing demographics to make a long-term decision about education buildings in our cluster.

Thank you.

Next up we will have Eric Blumhagen followed by Heather Robinson and Natasha Boswell.

Hello I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you again about two waitlist issues, equity and staffing capacity.

We've heard all about equity, mostly in the context that it wouldn't be equitable to move some or most waitlists without moving all the waitlists.

That it wouldn't be equitable to put some siblings together without putting all the siblings together.

I think what you are missing is that you are pushing equality and not equity.

Not moving any siblings off the waitlist is equal treatment but is it equitable?

A wealthier family will have a far easier time arranging for childcare, pickup and drop-off at two schools rather than a poor family.

The wealthier family gets their choice of schools for at least one student, the poor one gets their choice for none.

How is that equitable?

Please look at the waitlist particularly for siblings through the lens of equity and not equality.

Second, I've been hearing a lot of frustration from staff about all of the parents like me who are surprised by the concept of staffing capacity.

Staff says they've been doing this for a while now and this is what they meant all along.

So I went back to the board meeting video from last January when the latest transition plan was approved.

This is five months ago.

Quoting staff verbatim, with open enrollment a choice seat is based on space available.

Any student across the district has the opportunity to fill out a choice application.

But if they fill out an application to a school that is overcrowded and there is not a seat available, their guaranteed assignment is to their neighborhood school.

Well there is your confusion.

Back in January the only reason not to give students their choice assignment was if there wasn't a seat available.

Nothing about staffing levels except in extreme cases of new schools.

So just before you voted on the updated policy you were told exactly the opposite of what you were told earlier tonight.

I ask you to hold staff to what they told you just before the vote on the new transition plan, follow policy, and move the waitlist.

Thank you.

Also, Director Burke, I'm a community member, you know I have lots of spreadsheets, I will sit down with staff any time.

Just let me know you have my contact info.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Heather Robinson Natasha Boswell.

Boswell All right good evening.

Thank you I have a couple of things I would like to discuss.

The first one is with the Magnolia elementary school being delayed until 2019 and with Fort Lawton without the decision being made we do not have enough data or accurate data and projections to make a final decision on the Magnolia boundaries, and we absolutely cannot make that decision until there is a decision made on Fort Lawton, and we ask that you hold the boundary decisions until we have that data at a later date.

We are concerned that if this decision is not delayed, Magnolia Elementary will open at full capacity, which we already know it will be opened at full capacity, and students will need to be shuffled around again two years down the road, which we are sure will happen if you guys do not take the time to delay the boundary decisions at this time.

I live in Inner Bay and there are multifamily projects at Inner Bay, possibly 150 units earmarked for families and multifamily projects going up all around Queen Anne, Magnolia, Inner Bay.

And I cannot even imagine Magnolia's boundaries being set without that accurate data.

That is very important.

The second thing is with regards to ethnic studies I'm going to transition and then I'll be done.

I'm also a social studies United States history teacher at McClure middle school.

And I can promise you with 32 kids in my class already at capacity by the way, students, white students and nonwhite students together are absolutely starving for ethnic studies.

And by the way ethnic studies is United States history.

Yes.

My students this year their favorite unit was when we did read Frederick Douglass's narrative and all of our Howard's in chapters and I am absolutely heartbroken to hear that at Ballard they are not doing the same multi-perspective study and I cannot imagine my students going to Ballard and getting this education and only getting multi-perspectives in the eighth grade and stopping there.

Okay is that it?

Thank you very much.

Hello everyone, hello board.

I am reading this statement on behalf of my ally Lisa Rankin, who couldn't make it this afternoon.

And she says it is vital to the success of ethnic studies in closing the opportunity gaps that we have building leaders who are supportive and culturally responsive.

Which we don't have right now.

We have a handful.

And also in every school in our district, not just a handful of schools that are using the toolkit, the culturally competent toolkit.

So administrators must be able to communicate in a very positive way with each and every member of their school communities, not just a handful.

and to see the value of every student and their family.

Because students and families feel very devalued and because they are not being recognized.

They don't see themselves in the classroom, they don't see themselves in American history except for once a month on black history month for students who are of African descent and of the African diaspora and when is there, there is no such month as Irish month or Italian month so I feel very insulted being African-American and of African descent being relegated to just one month which is 28 days.

Okay, the displaced educators of color of the middle college high school engaged and empowered disenfranchised students and gave them the opportunity to graduate high school knowing their worth and ready to succeed by providing a high-quality social justice curriculum.

Computer-based credit retrieval is no substitute for a real face-to-face person that you can ask questions to and have a meaningful dialogue.

Just one more sentence.

Okay, please return these educators to the students who need them and ensure relevant ethnic studies curriculum for all of our students.

Not just a handful, I'm talking K-12.

I'm a preschool teacher and we are already teaching ethnic studies on the preschool level.

Thank you.

This concludes our list for public testimony.

Thank you.

Okay with the indulgence of my colleagues if we could take five minutes to talk about the waitlist and then move the conversation on.

Dr. Herndon and assistant superintendent Berge could you come to the podium please?

Since I have the microphone I'm going to take a point of personal privilege.

Do we know presently how many folks are on the waitlist that are sibling related?

I mean we can find that out I don't know that right now offhand.

Harris would it be possible to find those numbers out and the impact of those numbers and come up with an option three that we can talk about a week from today?

Bergen As previously stated when you asked me this, I don't know that I can turn it around in a week with the holiday and the budget coming out on top of it.

So I think flip staff might be able to do their part, but my staff has to do their part.

Honestly I'm not sure that I can do that in a week.

Harris Okay.

Board comments questions and concerns?

Director Burke.

Director Burke The option two that we are looking at I believe that was indicated as just high schools and middle schools.

So is there an option two that has an elementary school component?

Or what is elementary school landscape look like in this same conversation?

We are trying to finish that analysis up as well.

Do you expect that analysis by a week from today?

The next board meeting?

Director Blanford?

Blanford So can we make decisions in isolation where we are looking at one level elementary later than we are looking at middle and high school?

Don't they have implications one for another?

They could have budget implications about what your top priority is, or how you want to spend other money, all of that would factor in.

Harris but wouldn't the numbers roll up from elementary to middle to high school in the future?

Berge I'm not sure what you mean.

Harris if you change the elementary school waitlist then those folks are on potentially a new path which would impact middle and high schools?

No?

Herndon No.

So when you are, get your waitlist or open enrollment option, when you switch a level, so you go to the middle school, you would go, be default assigned back to your attendance area middle school.

So you would have to apply for a different middle school.

Each level you would have to apply for a different one.

The pathway does not continue just because you start at one level and carry over.

Harris but there are budgetary implications that from one level to another.

There are contingencies or what is the word?

Dependencies that one will affect another.

Yes, budgetary dependencies and the additional thing I know that HR wanted us to represent is that we have many schools who are waiting to do anything with staffing until something is decided they are worried about moving in the wrong direction.

I had one other question.

I only got a chance to look at a little bit of the email but several of our south end principals sent an email to us saying that to make a decision between one option and another without looking at it with a serious equity lens, racial equity lens, would have a detrimental impact particularly if we chose option two over option one.

I don't know how they came to that conclusion and I'm wondering if you've seen the letter and if you have a response one way or the other?

I haven't had the opportunity to review that yet.

Blanford Do you have any evidence to suggest that one option versus the other would have impact on students of color?

Berge I don't know if we've done it on students of color but generally speaking the staffing is lost at lower income schools.

in option two.

Because as you were describing it before, the peaks and valleys are higher, and as we have discussed before, particularly in low-income schools, the premium on maintaining stability is at a higher premium than it would be at other schools.

and maybe you are not the appropriate person to answer that question.

I know that there is academic research that suggests that, but I don't know if we have specific experience in Seattle Public Schools around the value of maintaining stability.

Best I don't know if we have looked at that specifically.

So I think we would, I mean at least I'm not aware of that.

And at the same time, at the same time you are asking us to make a decision.

And at least for some of us, particularly as we have listened to the conversations that have occurred today, during public testimony around what our community values, I think that is an essential element.

What the impacts of this would be on our low-income schools.

And that would be an argument I think to have that type of analysis readily available so that we are making decisions with full knowledge rather than incomplete knowledge.

Director Harris other directors comments questions concerns?

I would add that at least if we are referring to the same email it is from two principals, the principals of Denny international middle school and Aki Kurose middle school that came in at 330 this afternoon.

And it is very thoughtfully written.

One other comment that Clover Codd, the assistant superintendent for HR, she asked me to clarify we currently have 209 open positions.

And I wouldn't say that HR has reached panic mode, but I have a feeling that it is ramping up to that.

Because the shorter timeline that we have to hire the top candidates go other places.

So I just, she wanted me to make sure that we had articulated that, that that was one of the reasons that we are so worried about how the impacts will roll out.

Harris Point of personal privilege, Mr. General Counsel could we have your counsel please?

Treat Yes, Noel Treat, General Counsel.

Would it be appropriate if someone wanted to make the decision with more information a week from tonight to make a formal motion to see if it got a second from this board?

Director Blanford Yeah you could certainly tonight make a motion to set an agenda item for next week's meeting to discuss and maybe take action on this question.

That is within your authority to do.

Director Harris I so move.

Do we have a second?

Are you the chair?

I am the chair.

And a chair can make a motion sir.

Thank you so much.

Second.

Discussion on the motion on the floor.

Director Blanford?

No thank you.

Other directors?

Can you clarify the motion?

Exactly.

My pleasure.

I move that we set wait lists as an agenda item a week from this evening.

Hopefully to get some of the answers from the thoughtful questions that have been raised from the dais at that time.

Still second.

Will all speak to my motion then?

We have waited this long.

I think there are many unanswered questions and I think we owe it to the trust and transparency of our parents to give them as much thoughtful input.

This is a very very difficult decision, at least for this board member.

I will not speak for my fellow colleagues.

And some of the numbers just aren't here.

I want to know how many siblings we are talking about.

I want to know what K-5 input is.

I'm not trying to kick the can down the road but I would like to be able to have enough information that I can withstand the pushback because there will be some no matter what we do and that is why we get paid the big bucks.

and I think we need more information or at least this board director needs more information to make a decision that I can live with.

Because this impacts a whole lot of folks.

Thank you.

Director Burke.

Director Burke I will be supporting this motion obviously because I think there's been a lot of work done and a lot of thought put into it.

But what I don't see at the end is, what is the financial implication?

We talk about schools will lose staff, but I would like to see what that really means in terms of dollars.

If we want to hold schools harmless.

And I'm not capturing that from here.

And the other element is I do not believe that Seattle Public Schools should be in the business of splitting families.

And I think we should make it part of our core values to maintain siblings together, and not break up families.

And that should be part of our standard practice.

So in your budget books that you have at the May work session, I had provided a slide about backfilling for some of the moves and you can find, I will reference the slide number, but there is a cost in there.

I believe it was $1.9 million.

Director Harris other directors comments concerns questions?

Director Patu.

I too would like to hopefully that we can come to a conclusion in how do we move this waitlist.

I've been hearing about this waitlist for a couple of weeks now and I think that we owe it to our parents also to be able to look at what is it that we can do to really look at the waitlist and how do we move it so that each parent would actually be able to know exactly whether students are going to be going to school.

And then hopefully that they will not be separated that they were all the siblings will be able to be together.

So I too would like to see that move forward if it's possible.

Director Harris other directors comments questions and concerns?

Director Geary.

I'm going to, because I already know I'm not going to be here for this vote, that's why I'm going to abstain.

Because I'm not going to vote to push something up that I'm not going to have a say on, and I feel it feels a little disingenuous.

I guess with giving ourselves a week, it is an opportunity for the schools who see themselves on the losing side of this equation to weigh in.

And I think, I guess they should.

But it makes, it's hard, it's very hard to see the students coming before us and saying they want to go to Franklin, and seeing the students from Rainier Beach saying please support our school.

And I just have been listening to our Rainier Beach students, and so this is an incredibly hard decision.

you can say don't pit schools against each other, but that is what this process is doing.

And it's terrible.

I want everybody to know it is terrible.

So I will abstain, but not because I don't, because I wouldn't make a hard decision, but only because I'm not going to have the opportunity to.

Harris Director Pinkham

Pinkham.

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Pinkham.

So that when we set the enrollments back in February that it's going to stay pretty steady.

We don't have to worry about telling the school you're going to lose some staff for one reason or another that hey we got a little more solidified, people got their first choice.

help out a lot.

I know there is more to that than possible, Seattle is a big school district that definitely makes it difficult for us.

You know when we have so many high schools, so many middle schools, so many elementaries that yes one is going to look better than the other.

And I think that is good in the sense that we need that diversity in our schools.

That there is going to be different perspectives shared at each school, one school is going to have a strength and another is not.

But I definitely want to see that we move forward that we do keep our families together and you mentioned it yourself that that is the priority so if at least we can go away tonight with at least moving that forward and let's get our families together.

Director Blanford.

I heard an earlier statement about sibling preference and while I largely agree with that I'm hoping that the discussion next week will also provide some data on what the implications are of having sibling preference extended to students who enroll out of area.

because whereas we have made the option open for student A to come into a preferred school, does that then open the floodgates for all of that siblings, all of that students siblings to also enter that school?

And what are the implications of that for our efforts to maintain some sort of stability across?

So, any data that you can provide for that would be really helpful because that might be an amendment that I would have to an earlier statement that was made about sibling preference being the predominant operating theory that we have for this.

Director Patu.

I would like to say that if we had remodeled Rainier Beach like we are supposed to, we would not have this problem today.

You know when students find schools to go to they usually look at the outside of the building before they go inside.

Rainier Beach has an excellent education inside but most kids don't know that because they look at the building before they actually go in.

So we are hoping that Rainier Beach will definitely be remodeled soon and that way we won't have the problem of kids wanting to go to Rainier Beach because Rainier Beach is an excellent school.

Director Burke.

Director Burke Thank you for bringing my attention to the essentially looking at the date, May 24 slide 18 1.9 million 17.8 FTEs and so the analysis that was performed then versus the analysis that we have now is that essentially the same Nominally?

Essentially.

It's not going to be exact because… Order of magnitude.

So I just want to make sure that we are putting this in the context of the previous discussion we had where we were looking at $4 million of potential mitigation funding.

for fall enrollment, and also for equity funding.

And so this is in that same context in terms of impacting schools.

I want to make sure that as a board that we are not intentionally pitting schools against each other and that when we are making these commitments we do it with the understanding that we are trying to hold schools harmless.

And recognizing that that is difficult to do in a budget constrained environment.

I just wanted to go on record to show that this is in the same sort of magnitude as our other mitigation funds that we are talking about.

Harris Superintendent Nyland and then Dr. Codd.

So clarification, the 1.9 million, does that include the impact to elementary?

No I don't believe it does because I didn't have that analysis done.

So the 1.9 million I believe will be higher if we are looking at the pure difference between option one is being continuing with our present practice and option two being to move all waitlist… It is backfilling all schools for all staff.

I didn't make a distinction in that analysis.

I just said this is the backfill for all the schools that would lose.

Director Harris, Director of Human Resources.

Clover Codd, Director of Human Resources.

So I just feel like I need to make sure that I reiterate that the decisions that we are making about moving waitlist, not moving waitlist, timeline around that, is significantly impacting our ability to have a teacher in every classroom on the first day of school.

The longer we wait to make these decisions, the schools are sitting on 209 open positions right now and will not put hiring teams together to hire those positions because they are worried they will be taken away or moved because of these decisions.

So 209 open positions and it's only June 28. So I'm very very concerned that we've had goals around early hiring timelines to get the best quality teachers in our classrooms.

We have now pushed that out about six weeks beyond any goals that we had last year.

So I just want people to make the connection between the decisions we are making around waitlist moves and moving staff.

I know there's financial implications but my I would not I would not be able to stand here without telling you I am very very concerned about the first day of school because I want our babies to have teachers in those classrooms.

Harris and please do not misunderstand my motion I am as well concerned but given the fact that we are coming up on a holiday weekend I very much doubt that there will be hiring committees meeting over the next five days.

Associate excuse me Deputy Superintendent Nielsen did you wish to add to the conversation?

Yes I just thank you Deputy Superintendent Stephen Nielsen.

I just want to make sure that if we are looking at the waitlist costs and the added cost there is no confusion that that would extract resources out of our ability to mitigate and or adjust staffing that you saw I think it was slide 11 I'm doing that from memory in the PowerPoint earlier.

So in effect spending on a waitlist lessens our ability to make adjustments for staffing and enrollment in the fall which will recreate some of the problems that we've had in the past.

So I just want to make sure that is very clear.

Thank you.

Harris Thank you.

Ms. Shek roll call please.

Ms.

Shek Director Blanford Director Burke Director Geary Director Patu, Director Pinkham, Director Harris, this motion has passed with a vote of 5 to 1 abstain.

Director Harris Okay I would propose that we go through the consent agenda and then we take a 15 minute break.

It appears I have consensus.

We have now reached the consent portion of tonight's agenda.

May I have a motion for the consent agenda?

Pinkham I move approval of this consent agenda.

Harris I second it.

All those in favor say aye.

We are now adjourned for 15 minutes.

We will re-adjourn at 715. Excuse me we will reconvene.

Thank you for the assistance it is much appreciated.