001Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. All right. Good afternoon. This is President Topp. I'm now calling the board special meeting to order at 4:33 p.m. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands in the traditional territories of the Puet Sound Coast Salish people. For the record, I will call the role. Vice President Briggs. I don't see her, but I know she will be joining later online. Director Lavali >> here. Director Ms. Rahi >> here. >> Director Ranken >> here. Director Smith is not here. Director Song >> here. And this is President Top. All right. We have two things on our sort of work session for this evening. First, the larger chunk I think of tonight will be on our budget study session.
002Um and then we will go into sort of a community engagement update from the superintendent. So that I will pass it over to Superintendent Shelner. >> Thank you so much, President Top. Uh good afternoon everyone and of course for those listening uh happy teacher appreciation week. Uh we've had a lot of fun uh with some teacher appreciation moments. Uh and I just want to thank of course everybody for their hard work uh in service of our children. So, um I know many people were excited about this presentation. Uh many people probably yawned. But, uh the important piece here is that I hope what people are seeing is that as we really start to get into our cadence of these quote unquote special meetings that we really want them to be study sessions, learning sessions, sharing
003sessions so that not only the board knows what's going on, but the community knows what's going on. And we do know that budget is a very very big and important uh topic for us to discuss. And so I'm really thankful to be here with Dr. Bleman uh and the two of us will try to give as thoughtful a presentation as we can. Uh we look forward to uh all the kind of great questions that I know the board's going to come uh with. And then of course this is not just a one-off. We want to make sure that we are sharing the budget uh repeatedly uh you know every probably three or four months really trying to make sure that folks know where we stand and what we've done in this presentation and we we've
004tried to be as clear and direct as transparent as possible. Uh but we also know that there's many people at home who have spent a lot of their time uh their volunteer time uh trying to really help us with this. And so for those of you who are so in kind of in tune to this, please feel free to email us, reach out to us, you know, point out any mistakes that you think we might have made or any clarifications that you think uh you would need from us. But here we are with our budget study session. Okay. So the agenda is to talk about the fund balance and our goal and how we got there. then to talk about the 26 27 preliminary uh fund uh budget then to talk about schools budgets, central
005budgets and then next steps. Uh again, I really want to thank Kurt for his uh wonderful work. We meet probably too often for him. Uh I love it. Uh we meet probably three times a week uh to go over this kind of stuff uh because it really is driving us. So this is the first and probably most important chart. uh I will defer to Kurt after I try to explain it from my standpoint. So what you see in front of you is the reality that we are facing. The orange line if you look at FY223 24 and 25 that is reality. So, in FY22, we started at I think it's 175. There you go. Um, so just so you know, these are the numbers that make that line. So, if I just toggle back and
006forth so I can get you exact numbers, it's the same thing that you're looking at geographic uh uh uh in the in the graphic. So by FY22, we had a fund balance of about 175 million, which for a district of 1.35 billion is actually okay. Not even that substantial. Uh many school districts in other states will run anywhere between a 15% fund balance to even a 20% fund balance. 10 is a nice safety valve. So 10 would be 135 billion uh million on the 135 the 1.35 billion. But again that's where we were in reality. Then you see it drop and then you see it drop again and then you see it drop again. This is the real fund balance. This is what is left in our books, left in our bank account. So you
007can see that over the last four years we have lost a significant chunk of change. We went from 175 to 134 to 121 to 97 and we are projected at 28 and change. That is where that blue line starts. So that 28 that sorry the 26 projection that is at 20 and change. But I want to be really clear here. The moment you hit zero the game is over. You are not allowed to have zero fund balance because then that means you have to borrow. And if you have to borrow the state is not very thrilled. So sometime next year somewhere we would if we did nothing would cross that zero threshold and it would be really significant. We would have to borrow. We'd probably have to go into the kind of the state's version
008of receiverhip and all of that kind of stuff. But the good news is we do think that we have a plan to not get to that zero and to continue on an upward trajectory after about a year and a half from now. We're going to go down because we have to. We can't just cut everything right now, but we're going to go down where we still have some money left in the bank and then start to build up. Now, I want to especially for those listening at home, I want to be clear. It is true that sometimes what happens is the district will project a larger um deficit than is reality. And as we discussed the last time Kurt and I did the show is that's because you have to show full funding. You have
009to show no vacancies. You have to show the way that we project using the budget. We know that the reality is sometimes when we project it's actually a little bit better. But remember that orange line, that's the real line. We really are losing 30 million one year, 20, 10 million, 20 million. It it really is going down. And if we hit zero, the game is over. So what you can see from this chart is that we are projecting around 28 million. if we do nothing. But we're already projecting, we think with the things that we're doing, and this isn't even all the things we're doing that we're going to stave off a little bit and see go from 97 to 55 to 40 and then start to go on the upward trajectory. Now, you'll see
010that again, you know, there's going to be more detail, but some of the things that we're doing to balance the books this year are oneoff and some of the things that we're doing to balance the books are kind of repeat ways to save money. So, the oneoffs will show the savings this year, but we might not be able to show savings next year. And so, that's why we're going to kind of dip a little bit more and then go on the upswing. So, Dr. Butman, is there anything specific you want to talk about with this graph? This is the one that we look at all of the time. >> No, just want to say one sort of clarifying thing. The orange line or the blue line, I'm sorry, in the chart on the next page
011where it goes to 28 million fund balance projected for the end of this year. That was a projection we did about this time last year. That's in the F195F that's out there on OSPI's website. The 55 million is what we're projecting now based on the new information we have, what's happened this year, what we're looking at. So, it's a more real number in terms of it's more informed by information that we have this year. And so, um, Super Nintender has like like you said multiple times, we talked about this a lot. And so, we're really trying to hone in on the better projections at this point in the year so we have better information as we're developing next year's budget, not relying on what we projected last year because that was last year and a
012lot has happened since last year. And so, this is a better number. It's not going to end up at 55 million with six zeros following it. It's going to be something in that range, but we're trying to work now to to hone in on what that will really look like. And again, just to be clear, the moment it hits red, that's the game, right? So, we can't hit red. We can't cross that zero line. Um, so those projections, we are projecting around a $72 million a million dollar loss by FY31, but it we want to show you because that's the math, but the moment you're at zero, uh, things change. And the math in there assumes sort of the the average reduction fund balance which is about $26 million over that period of time. And
013so we're using that as the proxy for the initial projection. The other thing I wanted to add if you will allow me is Ben said multiple times we've been talking about this a lot. We debated how best to exemplify this in terms of what the goal should be and we landed on this fund balance instead of restricted versus unrestricted or what OSBI says or what the rainy day reserve says and landed on this because it's hopefully simpler and understandable. And if you get to this, you will also on the way be replenishing your your rainy day reserve fund. You will also be in compliant with what OSBI floated in the legislature last year. So, um, Ben pushed me and I think it pushed a little bit back and we pushed each other towards what this
014looks like right now. So, >> yeah, I mean, I think people in this building throughout the district can understand we should have a hundred million fund balance. It's actually a little low. I'd like it to be at like one, you know, probably 135 because I'd like it to be at 10% of the of the budget. But if we can get to a hundred million by FY31, we that will mean we will have solved our structural problem. Uh and that is why Kurt and I kind of ended up at this number because we know that some of the money that we're making are these one-offs. We know that those one-offs aren't going to continue. That's why we were continuing to lose this like 20 to 30 million every year. But if our true projected fund balance,
015our true actual fund balance that we end up in the bank with a hundred million, it will mean that we have solved our structural issues. And let's hope we get there. >> And just a little math behind that. So if you do the spreadsheet, someone out there is probably doing that actively at home right now. So it assumes a additional $5 million reduction in next school year on top of what we're presenting tonight. It assumes something in the neighborhood of 30 to 35 in the following year. and then five in the subsequent year. And so those add up to 45. The difference between 45 and 26 or 30 is about what you're seeing in growth across the continuum there. >> Yeah. No, thank you. All right. So again, we have a structural deficit. What that
016means is we are spending more money than we are taking in. It's as simple as that. So I appreciate that people want more. I want more. It is fair. But right now, our structural deficit is such that if we just continue to do what we do, we will go insolvent. And so you can see, not that I need to read bullet points to anybody, but for multiple years, SPS has planned and actual expenditures have exceeded revenue. And that's why we have dipped over and over again if from our fund balance meaning we are spending more than we are taking in and that cannot continue. Now there are some reasons for that. One inflation increases continue to outpace revenue meaning that the state is giving us X and inflation is X plus a couple of percentage
017points. And on a b budget of $1.35 billion, those couple of, you know, uh, percentage points equal a lot of money. So again, inflation is increasing and it's outpacing our revenue. But that's really not the crux of it. The crux is that the way we are funded by the state is not how the district has structured itself. I want to be really clear here and I don't mean to be so pedantic although I guess I am pedantic here is we get money based on formulas from the state. The way we spend money in Seattle is based on different formulas and those formulas are much much more generous and because of that we are in deficit and we will go bankrupt. So for instance, SPS spends more on compensation, staffing, specialed, transportation, culinary services, multi- language
018services, legal services, facility needs, security, substitutes, school administrative staff, central office supports, and more than what we are funded for. So the state gives us X for transportation, we spend a lot more for transportation. The state gives us money for special ed, we spend a lot more on special ed. The state gives us money for culinary services, we spend a lot more on culinary services. So by definition, the structure of our district is causing us to go bankrupt. So, and I know this is sometimes a little bit difficult to talk about. That's why SPS can't just simply enroll its way out of the structural deficit. If every decision we are making is more expensive than the money we are getting, it doesn't particularly matter how many students you have because if you have more students,
019you're still going to be spending the same formula on transportation and culinary services, etc., etc., etc. So, I'm not saying that one extra child doesn't bring in extra money. Of course, it does. But the way that we have structured this district is that just increasing enrollment isn't going to solve this. We have structural issues that we have to address and we have to be honest about it. Now, as I presented to this wonderful austere group uh last time, I do want to increase enrollment. I want us to get to 525 because I think that's good and it shows that people want to be part of our district and it will help but it will not solve the structural deficit unless we do other things as well. >> Dr. Bleman, I >> think that you covered
020that one well. >> Thank you. >> I should bring him to all of my meetings. Um, so this is where I probably should talk a little bit more and then I'll I'll give it over to Kurt. Um, just as a remember as a reminder our academic priorities, you know, we have the third grade ELA. We're it looks like we're really going to lean towards the eighth grade math. We've got graduation and graduation plus, which is important, but as somebody as a principal asked me uh this week in a meeting, it's like, "But Ben, like you know what about math for third grade?" Yeah, look, we know what the the reality is. The reality is is every grade, every subject we want kids to do well, right? And so if these are our priorities, it doesn't
021mean that we're not also caring about other stuff. And so, but we do have to think about when we believe that our goals are these, are we investing the money, the limited money that we have in the right way? Because we have two things we've got to solve. One, the structural deficit. We have to stop spending the money we don't have and we have to spend the money we do have in more thoughtful ways so that we can actually reach our goals. So we are going to refocus staffing investments on direct student services. More money or moving the money to people who are in schools in front of students in classrooms in wherever wherever in the school could be in the hallway. I've seen wonderful learning happen in the hallway. But the more important thing
022is we're going to refocus staff investments onto direct student services. We're going to prioritize professional development aligned to the new curriculum implementation. We know that fidelity to curriculum is one of the sheer soonest ways to move the needle because we have an adoption. Thank you board. We now have a highquality ELA curriculum. We now need to make sure that our teachers are given the supports to teach them. That will move the needle. I promise. reorganization aligned departmental structure to improve services to schools and students. We are not a jobs program. We are here for children. We want to make sure that all of our decisions are about what's happening in schools and serving students. And then we're going to realign centrally funded programs uh and positions to again focus on school level things. Okay, I
023am going to turn this over to Kurt to talk about some of the money and of course I will chime in as well. >> Thank you. So, this is sort of a summary of what we're going to talk about the rest of the presentation within a little bit more detail. And so, um you've heard the $87 million budget deficit that was projected. So um the objective of our process this year was to do what Ben said first focus on those priority goals and just to take a little privilege in terms of the meetings and we'll get into this uh process we use for central office but one of that the the slide previous slide is kind of what guided all those conversations in the the central office discussion and boils down to is what you're
024doing required in some way and if we get rid of it will a third grader cry so that was kind of the metric we are using like are these things going to help kids graduate from high school when they get there or is it required in some way and so we'll get into more of that detail later. Um so as Ben said there's a number of things a couple of which have come to the board for consideration um at your next meeting solutions around capital fund interest this uh continued delay of the repayment of the rainy day fund. Um the third thing on the list there, um some of you may remember last year we had some energy tax credit. Although we don't pay income taxes as a public entity, there's an energy rebate rebate
025that the inflation reduction act offers for school districts and other entities like us that are building uh facilities with geothermal or solar because we have a couple buildings coming online next year. We think we can capture up to 12 million or or about 12 million in a one-time payment to help balance next year's budget from those and use it in this way. Um the inner fund loan that we took back, we had planned to use it when we took it out. We ended up not using it and so we had planned to pay it back next year. Since we didn't use it, we won't pay it back. So that $87 million, assume $16 million in repayment. We're not going to do that. So there's $16 million that's no longer a part of that deficit. And
026then we're going to um so as we refining that fund balance, so the 28 million that Ben talked about earlier, we're refining it to this 55 million. We think we'll have um of the So this is going to get a little more complicated than I wanted it to be, but we we used $49 million to you to balance this year's budget out of the fund balance. We don't think we're going to use all 49 million of it that we originally projected. We'll use um 29 to 39 of it. So that'll have 10 to 20 that we can use for next year's budget. So we didn't end up Just want to say that one more time. $49 million was used out of fund balance last year at this time to balance this year's budget. We're not
027going to use all 49. We're going to use some of it, not all of it. And we'll have 10 or 20 for next year's budget. And I I'm going to offer Ben a chance to explain that in his way as well. >> So again, as as Kurt's saying, we have these one-time solutions, the capital fund, the rainy day tax credits. Some of these are one-time, but they we can repeat sometimes, too, which is nice. Um, but some of them are really just oneoffs, like the tax credit. I'm not sure we will be able to get the tax credit next year. I I don't know. um repaying the rainy day fund. We might ask you to do that again, but eventually we're going to have to pay the piper. And that's why the original thing is
028what we are that's why it's not a huge jump up is that we're starting to think about making everything right. And that would be including repaying a lot of this stuff eventually. But you can see that these one-time solutions are going to be really helpful because remember we cannot show uh an unbalanced budget. Sorry for the double negative. We have to show a balanced budget and the way that we are going to do it for this year is all these things and we're probably going to still have to use the fund balance of 10 to20 million and then again if necessary we're going to dip into the fund balance again. what Kurt was saying, and again it gets confusing, and please don't think we're trying to offiscate. It's just when you're talking about a $
0291.35 billion budget, it can get a little a little bit dicey, is we had planned on using 39 to4 million of the fund balance. This year we've had some good savings just through some better decisionmaking that we think we might be able to not have to use all of that we had said we were going to use so we can then use it this year. That doesn't mean that we think we're going to get to full zero. That's why we still are going to have to dip into our fund balance or possibly dip into our fund balance. But please remember this is still not a true zero budget because we're dipping into our savings which mean we are still spending more than we are taking in. That's the structural deficit. If you continue down that
030road, the game is over. So that's our one-time solutions. And then the work that we have really been doing hardcore here in this building is the ongoing solutions which is savings that will continue because these are structural savings. Those one-time savings not structural. The bottom are structural and this is the this is like the better money saved. This is money that we would continue to save. So Kurt if you want to talk about the ongoing. >> Yeah. So we're going to get into detail on those but I'll just preview. You'll see the school sap staffing changes is approximately $10 million. We'll get into the detail. Um the central office changes is a similar number. Um central office and centrally funded. We'll talk a little bit about that in the rest of the presentation. We're doing
031some the two transportation providers are right now renegotiating contracts for next year. And so, not to get into negotiations at this table, but we're anticipating some savings as a result of those negotiations. And then the last bullet point there, it's got the should have the biggest tilda because we're still working on some of that um for next year's budget. There's some sort of things that we're in process right now and this we're still at the preliminary stage in terms of trying to nail it all down and I've got a chart that'll show later what that is. And you know, not to belabor the point I've made since even before I was hired is there's stuff in central office or people that are funded out of central office that we could be more efficient with. And
032my promise always is going to be cutting central before schools. And even though those numbers are similar, although I am very proud that our central office changes is 0.2 uh larger remember that the total dollar for school is 3x central. So the fact that we're actually cutting more from central even though it is only onethird the total of what the school staffing is I think really shows and I want to thank senior staff and just people in this building there was a understanding and a willingness that the harder the bigger the more deep cuts happened here to save things at schools. Now, that doesn't mean that schools don't take a little bit of a hit, but it is in essence a third of a hit proportionately than what Central did, and that's fair. >> Okay,
033so just a little bit about there's a lot of interest in the school staffing process, especially this time of year. Um, so just a a slide that kind of walks through what the process looks like. It's highly informed by the projections, obviously, in February. The one change I want to highlight to this year's process is the district did not premitigate schools. And so by that there were a certain number of schools that for whatever reason over time we decided we're going to give them an extra 2.0 or some or some other additional resource above and beyond what the the formula would have normally provided. This year we said here's what the formula provides for you. if you need more in order to meet your master schedule or to make sure that the school works, here's
034the process for requesting those. And then Ben met individually with the regional executive directors and the principles to review those um requests as they came in. And so that's the only sort of change that is substantive for this year. Other than we will be doing some revisiting of the enrollment information as it gets closer to the end of the school year and the beginning of the school year um to make sure that the enrollment projections aren't hampering schools in certain ways and make the appropriate adjustments along the way. >> Yeah. And I really appreciate Kurt highlighting that we have to use the formulas we have and then see what needs to be changed to premitigate was in essence, you know, a learned helplessness. It was, oh, we're just going to get saved even if we
035don't need it. Can't happen like that. Here's the formula. Here's the budget. And then I thank the regional executive directors. I thank the principles. the principles came to the regional executive directors and said, "Look, I think we need this. The math doesn't work out for us." We dug deep. We took a look and sometimes we said, "Oh, yeah, actually, you really do need it." And sometimes we said, "You don't really." And we were able to move and figure it out. And so, you know, there's a couple of instances that I can uh think about um where a principal said, "Here's my enrollment. Here's my schedule. Here's what I need. This is why it's important." We kind of stress test it and we said, "You know what? You're totally right. You need an extra FTE. Here
036you go." Sometimes a principal would come and say, "Well, this is our numbers. This is what we need." And we would go, "Well, actually, look at your look at your um your schedule. You could move this over here, this over here, and move this over here. You actually don't need it." And the principal goes, "Okay, thanks." And then they can move on, right? And so that's why you don't premitigate. You want to make sure that the folks that need the extra money really can articulate why. And then the other thing that Kurt highlighted, my promise to everybody is we don't just do this once and forget about it. We're going to do June adjustments. We're going to do October adjustments. We'll do again winter adjustments. We want to make sure that the money follows the
037child because we are here to serve children. And so if there's more kids somewhere, we have to make sure that the money follows the child. If there are less children somewhere, we want to be thoughtful about the impact on that school. But again, we have to be thoughtful about what is actually happening in those buildings. >> Want to take this one? >> This next one just is a a tally of the results of the changes that we made to the model for last year. We previewed a slide like this with estimates in January at your meeting. This is what actually happened when you factor in the enrollment changes is the in the thing I want to two things I want to highlight here. Um the mitigation process you'll see that number 28.9 FTE that was
038what was sort of restored to schools um as part of that process that Ben was just describing. And then the uh full the employment commitment that the superintendent made for people that would be impacted by these changes on this slide. Um, we're still res trying to resolve what that will look like in the end through the displacement processes. As people resign and retire, it'll have impacts and then we'll try to have make sure we'll reposition those people um into the right places in the schools um so they can continue to provide that education in the places where it's most needed. So, this one is still kind of a work in process, but this is the results of what the the model change and the enrollment change. Um >> and and as a reminder, the the
039model changed. So like the big one was going from 31 to 32 to1 for the kind of ratio. Again, that's a funding model. That's not a class-size model. And as you can see, you're only talking about a couple of FTE. You know, you're talking about 12.3 with the CTE change. And then of course I mean a much larger number the 377 for the increase for the K for the 612. Um but even the change from the 45 staffing to the 281 was was was a 7.2 FTE change. But remember my promise was for the teachers, for the people impacted, the certificated folks who would be the teachers that would be impacted by a change in this, we are going to, you know, take care of them. And and what has happened is I knew we
040could do it because a we have people retire, we have vacancies, and we also spend $20 million on subs. It's a lot of money. So if you have a displaced teacher who has a wonderful certification in high school, let's say I know I ran a high school for 10 years. I don't remember a day that at least one person wasn't out. So you know that we will be able to help support the needs of these schools and support you know our own our employees our teachers our certificated folks because again the formula changes we wanted to take care of those of those folks because again going from 31 to 32 is the right thing to do for the funding model but I don't want to lose a great you chemistry teacher, we'll want to make
041sure that they're they're doing something for our kids. Now, I can't speak to next year because there's structural deficits that are going to continue, but that's where this is. So, I just want to be really clear here about the certificated folks, the teachers. The model change saved us money. It saved us about $10 million, but we mitigated 28.9 FTE because we knew that a formula isn't always perfect. And we also have committed to these folks uh again the certificated folks uh that we will find a place for them be it in a subpool or wherever. Um and you know it's only May people retire between now and and and September 1st. So, I'm feeling uh pretty comfortable and I want to thank the HR department uh and the budget department working really really closely to
042make these numbers actually real rather than just mitigate everything and say, "Oh, it was too hard." So, you know, good job everybody for making this happen. Yeah. >> Just two quick things on that. The 57.1 is just a number. It's the the number of stu or FTE who are produced through this model or allocated to schools is around 2700 people that are doing basic education work and if you had ML and special education it's about 4,300 and so just for context what that number means in terms of the grand scheme and then the other sort of point of context around the the mitigation and the teachers who have been displaced and HR's work going on the budget that we'll be bringing to view on July 8th is a fairly conservative estimate in terms of what
043we will spend on that and so we've tried to mitigate any changes or things that we don't anticipate. So we're being fairly conservative on that. I think Ben is right there will be lots of opportunity there for folks but just wanted to highlight that. >> Yeah and and again this this is certificated folks. These are the teachers in the classroom. There are other changes that are happening that do mean other folks that are let's say not in the classroom or people that are um not certificated. That's different and that would that's other money other things that we're doing uh in terms of trying to really tighten our belt uh to to try to make the numbers still in deficit but le but less so. >> All right. So, you want to take this? >> Sure.
044And I'm gonna speed myself up a little bit because we got a lot to get through. Um I see the board president giving me the speed it up a little bit. Um so as we went through this process with a new um superintendent, here are some of the takeaways we had. Um one the model the current model is super complex and not very transparent or understandable to people. Um I don't there was a few weeks in March where Ben would ask me a question about the model and how it worked and the answer was hard to spit out because it's really convoluted and complicated. And so one of the objectives going forward is to simplify this model. So part of the next steps here um there's too many hard edges. So there are occasions where
045one kid leaves a school or one kid comes to a school and suddenly you have half an assistant principal and the next day you don't. And so trying to work towards softening some of those edges. Um enrollment projections are complex. Um there's aft, there's headcount, all those things. I'm working in the future to try and simplify that information, not just for school leaders and staff, but for the community who relies on their schools in that way. Um the earlier open enrollment, um we're hopeful is providing for more refined enrollment projections. And so the choice process sort of changed a little bit this year as well. So, our objective to try to not have many or any June adjustments is probably not going to be achieved because there's a couple different things going on at the
046same time, but I think we all agreed that we have better enrollment information as that choice process um was resolved in January. Um we talked about the non-traditional school funding and the for some of the archaic and antiquated formulas and they need to be revisited. Had lots of conversation around that. And then the next series of slides just shows there's this wide continuum of per pupil funding across the district and there's not really a here's what we're trying to tell you thing, but just it's moreformational and here's how the model currently works. So as we start to work on a new model going forward over the next year or two, um that information is available to you. >> Um and we talked about the building substitutes models in progress and working towards this per pupil
047funding model and including all of the costs of running a school. So right now it's confusing to everybody what's centrally funded versus central office versus the schools because custodians show up in the central budgets but they actually work in schools. And so we have a goal next year to identify all or almost all of the things that are actually happening in a school so that you and the community and everybody has a true picture of what it costs to run that school and what all the different parts of that are. So >> um that was another takeaway. a next step from this last process. >> And I just want to reiterate the thing about hard edges and a per pupil funding model because of the way that we currently do our funding. If one child
048leaves or two children leave or one teacher leaves, that creates this kind of bizarre cascading effect of well now you lose a librarian or you lose a counselor or you lose a half a half a million dollars if not more or you change the the structure of a school. that shouldn't occur because two kids left or one teacher left. And so what again revenue equaling expenditures, there's money that we get, it's based on kids. So if we could just start to say the money follows the kid, then you know how the school should be funded. And the next couple of slides are going to just show what happens when you don't do that. Now, I am all for coming up with formulas that say special ed might need more services or ML might need more
049services. Absolutely. But what we can't do is create a funding formula that says two more kids are now half a million dollars of expenditure. Two less kids are a half a million dollar less of expenditure. Doesn't work that way. And it's not right for kids and it's certainly not right for schools. So, here's where it gets really important and granular. Elementary dollars allocated per AFT. And remember, AAFT is how we are funded. So, this is without special ed, without ML. We have a school that we spend more than twice as many dollars per child than we do others. I know we love to talk about equity and I am a big proponent of equity, but we have to understand what our definition of equity is. It cannot be whatever we want it to be to
050prove what we want it to prove. If we have schools that are literally three standard deviations away from how we fund other schools, we have to be honest about what is going on. So, I can't zoom in, but you can see that there are schools that we are spending $20,000 per child and other schools that we are spending $10,000 per child. That's just not fair. And we're not talking about special ed and we're not talking about ML. We have to just be honest about what is actually going on to our schools. >> Does this include >> Yeah, it includes all the grants and levies and PTA funding as well. Yeah. >> So, here's here's some other ways to think about it. If you have an average dollar of a AFT is around 11,08 and you've
051got a school with $685 students and they're getting $9,000 a kid and a school with 116 kids, they're getting $20,000 a kid. That just doesn't feel right. And then if you look at even if you hold poverty constant, you have schools that are twice to, you know, point, you know, 8.8 more than where they are. So a school that has more than 50% poverty getting 20,000 and a school with, let's say, less than uh 10% poverty getting uh 13. Okay, I get that. But if you have two schools that are both under 10% poverty and one is at 9,000 and the other one's at 136, that's your structural deficit right there. We are again funded by the state at a certain way. When we are using that funding formula cuz the state gives it to
052us and we are running a district school that is way off of the way we are funded. This is what you get. 9,320 versus 13643. And again, these are the same or very very very similar. They're like exactly the same poverty level. >> So I just this is apples to apples. same poverty level. We're excluding ML and special ed, so we're not including that dollar figure. This is just regular funding. One school at 136, the other one at 93. The only difference is the size of the school. Poverty we get. That's equity. That makes sense. But we have to be honest about our numbers. Here's a bunch of numbers everybody at home can read. We're not going to go through them, but what you can see again that you have schools that have a poverty
053level of 50 at 71, poverty level of 50 at 69, poverty level of 44 at 33. But then you look at the allocation that's there's a lot here, folks. So again, we're happy to go deeply, but again, if you include special ed, if you include ML, that starts to get a little bit funky because again, there's extra services for that. But if you just look in terms of the regular allocation without special ed and without ML, you have some schools at 20 and almost 15 and some schools at nine. How do I say to a kid at Salmon Bay or a kid at Hazel Wolf that they're only getting 9,000 bucks a kid, but yet a school at somewhere else is getting 12 or 13 or 14. I know we have to think about equity,
054but our kids are our kids, and it just doesn't seem right in this. So, middle school, same thing. Uh, it's it's actually pretty consistent. What I really like about middle school AFTTE is that the AFTTE top and bottom are actually quite tight, which is really good. But again, look at our our middle schools. They're they're at least at a level that the state funds us at. The smallest one you got is 462, I think. Yeah. The state funds us like that. That's okay. That's why you've got between eight and 10,000 high school similar as well. It's a little bit Lincoln. Again, size really, you know, helps here. Um, but again, you know, you have a a smaller variance. You do have some variance, but you have a smaller variance, but most of it is based
055on poverty, which one could articulate actually makes some sense. Uh, but size does matter a little bit. Um but now again I want to again I'm not saying it's wrong here but please please please understand that inter agency we are spending $51,000 per child 51943. So when we hear about we're not treating our alted pro programs fairly, just remind everybody that we are spending $20,000 more per child at inner agency than at any other school in Seattle. I've never seen $51,000 per kid unless it is in a very different kind of school. So you could take a look at this. Middle college at 25,000 a kid. Sugayyama at 31,000 a kid. And then you've got Cascade at 10,000. At NOVA at 12,000. So again, this is a big reason why we are going bankrupt. Okay,
056I'm going to turn it over to Kurt. I just want to make sure because we've got to go to other things. But again, just as a heads up, we did cut 69.3 FTE from central, which is more than we cut in schools. Um, and then we do have some revenues and efficiencies that I really want to thank Kurt and the team for in terms of what we've done. And then we've also got some other dollars that we think we can save for some other things. These are smaller but important. And I want to give a big shout out to the non-rep staff for furlow days. You know, thank you. I'm sorry. Uh I hope very soon to get rid of that because that means that we are actually taking salary away from non-rep people, but
057that is another thing and thank you for being part of this. Um it's really important. Um and again, if we do go with the middle college consolidation, that'll save us actually it's probably going to be more than half a million, but we're being a little conservative there. and some preschool uh site consolidation just because we have classrooms with no kids in them uh that we're going to save about 800,000 and then some workshop substitute costs etc. So Kurt, I know we are kind of running up against time, but I want to make sure that you tell me what slides are the most important for us to go over before we I mean we we still have nine minutes, so I just I I want to be thoughtful about everybody's uh so that they could have
058questions. Um but yeah, so that's that's where we are. Let me just go through to see anything else. Oh, you want to just go through the wall? >> We did cover most of it in summary um earlier in the remarks. So, I think the the details are there if you want to look at them further. Um but I'll turn it back to the you and the board president for how you want to approach the next part. >> Oh, and just there's a lot of appendix >> and I can just let me highlight one thing on the appendix. Yeah, >> there's six schools that are italicized and bold. Those relate to the graphs that were shown that Ben showed earlier. And so if you're trying to figure out the magic code, that's the magic code. And
059then just the last thing just to walk you through the timeline, July 8th uh is the presentation of the public hearing and recommendations and then we hope on August 26th uh we would bring this for the vote. So I want to thank Kurt for all of his work and everybody who's had a hand in all of this. So thank you very much and I'm sure you have lots of questions. I'm >> getting a reputation for being really stickler on the time. We've got a little bit of flexibility >> and the community engagement presentation will be much shorter. I promise. >> Yeah. Um but giving time really for board to have questions or discussion. So I want to open it up for um questions or discussion from board directors. And do we want to just go
060around the circle? All right. Do you want Director Smith, do you want to start? >> Sure. Um I think I just have not too many questions. I just want to to a bit of clarity when we've been talking about the fund balance projections. There's the red line on the graph. That's the goal and then the status quo when we're talking about we're dipping in with the original I thought plan was 39 to 49 million dipped into the reserves. Um and now we're looking at 10 to 20. um where do those land in between the projection and the goal? >> So that 55 represents the the for the latter of the two scenarios you describe. So the fact that we won't dip into the full 49 this year. Um but rather we'll have 10 or 20
06110 somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 remaining informs that $55,000 $55 million estimate. Sorry. >> Okay. So the goal is kind of based on what we have so far. >> Yeah. It's it's updated information >> once the once the budget's you know presented and approved that will get clearer but just wanted to see that >> and then just once we update the next year's budget the one that we're talking about now the other numbers 57 27 20 2930 will also change because we'll have better information than what we had a year ago at this time. >> Um let's see sorry I have a couple notes I'm trying to flip back through. Um, one of them, um, on the staffing, um, one of the changes was rounding to the nearest 0.2 FTE, which Oh,
062good. You've got it there. Um, and so I was just wondering for the counselors, um, what that does to the staff ratios. I know that's something I've been hearing that we have counselors in schools with like much higher than recommended ratios of counselors to students. Um, so I was wondering about that. >> Yeah. So, you know, the professional organization of counselors has a ratio that um is what the professional organization thinks is best. Um the the reality is that we have a a a strong ratio when you compare to other schools, but not necessarily we don't hit the recommended one by their professional organization. the the rounding is really about not inflating or deflating what um should be happening. What we were doing was we were rounding up by like a 0.5 um now or
063a 0.2 within and we're just trying to get it to be more accurate. So I think it adjusted yeah for FTE. Um but in terms of how it impacts the number of counselors per child at a school that is a number that I'm I'm happy to for >> and there's ratios in the CBA 350 to1 and 375 to1. We're still compliant with that. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and and I and that's actually something I'd want to highlight in the union contract. They have ratios. we are still well within those ratios and that's what we're trying to make sure that we follow. Yeah. >> Okay. Um and just I don't I don't think this is something to answer on the spot but um talking about inter agency and other um alternate programs and the current cost
064per child is extremely high compared to others. Um and so I'd like to know what we can do to still support those students. Sure. >> Um while saving costs >> Yeah. And and I just highlight it because I know that sometimes we'll hear like, you know, we make one cut at inner agency and it means that we don't care about equity. No, we're spending $50,000 per child there. We care deeply about supporting that program and in fact show how much we're supporting because we're spending $20,000 more per child there. And so it's not that that 50,000 is right or wrong. I think it's just important for us to know the reality, which is that we're spending $20,000 more per child there than anywhere else in this district. Now, could we be more effective, efficient? Possibly.
065But I do know how hard their jobs are there, and I've spent a lot of time there and talking to folks. I know how difficult it is. But we also just want to make sure that we know what the reality is, which is we're spending $50,000 per kid there. Director Mizrai, >> I do have a question, but can you come back to me? >> Yeah. Uh, Vice President Briggs, >> can you hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. >> Okay. Um, I I actually don't have a question at this. I'm still thinking. So, um, you can skip me. Okay. Director Ranken. >> Um, thank you. I, uh, high level, the way this information is being presented is very clear and very helpful. >> Thank you. And um I could maybe cry out of happiness
066a little bit because some of this stuff is you know we have to operate within reality and we have had challenges understanding even what the reality actually is and end up having a lot of conversations and debate around things that are sort of theoretical or anecdotal. And this is a very clear and I would say also non-judgmental picture like nobody's we're not trying to figure out whose fault something is. Um and like you said inner agency nobody's saying those kids don't deserve more resources but we have to think about the reality and um in order for us to make any kind of um changes or assessment. And so uh to the the structural deficit page. Yeah. Yeah. So, I just wanted to say thank you. I found this very understandable. I would love to hear
067from members of the public if this feels more transparent or not. For me, it feels um very clear. Um so on that structural deficit page, uh you know, the current state funding model is not aligned with our structure and does not support does not fully support the system SPS is operating. I just want to add to that that also the system that we're operating is not giving us the results that we want. So this would be a different if if everybody was super duper happy, if everybody was graduating, if everybody had was having such a great experience and and highly successful and really really happy and we were outspending, that would be a different conversation about like, wow, we you know, where do we get more funding to continue this or um you know, where
068can we reduce, but we don't have the outcomes that we want and we don't have a system that I believe is is the best system we can have for kids and it costs more than the state is allocating. So I think that just adding that outcomes pieces is is important that this is not just uh a budget exercise and our only problem isn't we don't have enough money. We also have to look at how and and what is it we actually want to achieve for kids and are we doing that? um the the over over spend based on the allocation. Do is there anything in our budget that actually we spend what's allocated? >> I mean I defer to the man who's been here longer than me, but I would probably say probably not. Uh
069>> that's a good question. >> But even but the principles assumption they cost more. >> Yeah. So that's just a curiosity. >> No, that's a >> and it might be interesting to show to legislators as well. >> We'll bring that information to the next finance >> like is there anything that here's the allocation and we spend what we have allocated. >> Um I really appreciate the clarity on that last point. Um K and I I worry about um when we talk about other people's children as revenue for our children. Well, if we could only just bring more kids, then my kid could have X. Kids are not revenue. They're the purpose. They're why we here. We're here. We're here to spend money on children. >> That's right. >> Um and and we would like more
070and we want we want Seattle public schools to be the place that people choose. Um but I appreciate the the clarity on that that um kids are not revenue. They're they're the the why of what we're doing. Um just a quick note on this the academic priorities. It was I'm sort of surprised to hear a principal saying, "Well, what about third grade math? Do we not care about third grade math?" mainly because these are the board's summitive assessment of the kind of uh you know what we've decided to measure to see in total is the district successful is the district making progress um and so I I want to >> Oh no and I I want to defend the principle that you're saying like you know we were talking about these are the big goals
071and it was like well what about everything else and it's like of course and it was just about how we're going to think about what we're focusing ing on. But but you're right that that we as >> I fully expect you to be asked to be looking at and asking your staff about all these other things, but for that like summit of assessment for us to say how's the district doing? The district's doing great. >> That's right. >> The these are how we're going to use to describe at that high high level the district's doing great. >> Um not that we don't care about all the other things because this is only three goals. >> That's right. Um uh just one other thing I just learned is that the at the federal level um uh
072they finally did pass a budget. Um and uh despite all of the talk about different grants and different things for at least the 2627 school year um education grants like title grants are still going to come from the education from the um department of ed. their their talk of going to Department of Labor and other things um uh may or may not surprise people. They haven't figured out how to do that. Um and so hopefully we'll have not no interruption of the distribution of those funds for at least this year because they will still be coming from the Department of Ed and the other stuff. I'll just say thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> We have one superintendent and the allocation model has one superintendent in it. That's one thing that
073we don't have extra of. That's right. >> Director Lavali. >> Um, yeah, echoing the thanks in this presentation. It's very clear, easy to follow, has the data generally worth looking to see. Um, I also want to additionally call out, thank you for do looking at the June adjustment. I'd love to see potential for something in September as well when kids show up to school um to know ahead of time and kind of diffuse some of the impacts in October >> um just so that everything doesn't go a month into school and then you know have carpets ripped out from under kids. >> Yeah. um just as a past history of what we've had occurring in the district. >> Um >> and actually can I do you can mind so and I really want to highlight
074and it's a very very important piece is historically this district in October has had what has been referred to as the October shuffle. Um there's no question that we could try to start running numbers in September and we should if they're if the kids are showing up then they're showing up and we know they exist. And one of the reasons why and it's a little bit harder for principles and schools but that's one of the reasons why we don't give extra money to schools early because it's much more detrimental to children to take away a teacher than to add a teacher. And so that's why, you know, we're a little conservative around the initial allocation because if it goes up, great, we can add. But if it goes down and now you have to take
075away a teacher that kids already have relationships with and already have started their routines, that's actually that's much more detrimental. So, >> it it is much more detrimental, but there is some some stuff there when even if you get a teacher added, it does benefit the kids, but you're still transitioning kids in classrooms to a new class a month into school, which whether you're adding a teacher, which is a great thing for the school and reduces the number of students in that class, and that's fantastic and very, very needed. >> And if we could have gotten it right in the first place, that's even better. >> That's That's right. And I think that if we can if we can add earlier the better 100%. Yeah. Um, I do want to call out kind of based
076on director Smith's comment around the 0.2 to FTE and not just for counselors as well, but like I I'd love to see a little bit about how we're making sure we're getting some of these staffing numbers not just right, but when we're looking at staff as numbers, sometimes ends up being like 6 headcount of this. And it means that the person either has to try to find a point4 headcount for their position somewhere, which might not be accessible in the part of the district they're in, or displace themsel. And then the school is looking for point six of a counselor or point four of a counselor, you know, what whatever it is, which can be a very difficult position to fill because these are at the end of the day humans that don't want to
077spend every day in a different school driving across the city. Yep. And thank you for doing that as you've driven to almost every school at this point in time in the morning. >> Um, but it turns out not everyone wants to do that. >> No. and and and I want to highlight that the one of the concerns of course with just the funding model in general is when you have uh FTE by the point 2s you end up making sometimes decisions that are not great for the people that we want to support our kids. So I'm glad that you highlighted that and it's certainly the hope is that we're able to make up the difference within the school so that the individual could be a full FTE there rather than split their time. Mhm. Um
078the next concern and I really appreciate when you're looking at the elementary dollar enrollment allocation per AAF FTE um slide. I I really appreciate you breaking down this data and discussing it. I do want to call out and similarly to before when there was discussion of inter agency as well that some of these have variable needs. So, you know, I yes, we absolutely need to make this so that it's not quite as skewed, but I also want to recognize that there are different needs in each of these different schools, and some of them do cost more money to get kids to similar levels. Not that the other kids don't deserve it either. They absolutely do, and they should be getting more. Um, and and these things should be better overall. Um, but I do want
079to call out that when we are, you know, evening this out to a certain extent that we don't lose perspective on that equity and paying attention to the impacts for students that need that. >> Yeah. And I really want to highlight that and that's why we need to do it by child is it's the need of the kid, not the need of the school or the adults in the school. It's the need of the child. And so you are right. There are some programs like let's say, you know, a firefighting program might cost real money and then it wouldn't be fair. But if there is a child that needs more services because they're ML or because they're special ed, absolutely. But if you have a child and it's the same poverty level, it's the same
080clo classes, it's the same programs, and one child is having the district spend $20,000 and the other one is$10,000, that seems pretty unfair to the children. So my request to the to the um to the board and to the community is when we start to think about the actual formulas that should fund it, what are the things we want to take into consideration? That's really important. But it can't be by, you know, just Yeah. Right. It can't be by vibes. That's certainly true. But it can't just be by history. Like, well, we've always spent that here. That's what they get. Well, why? Right. That's all. Mhm. >> So, >> thank you. >> Yeah, >> director Song. >> Um, not to pick on Gina, but I sent a lot of questions in advance because I knew
081she wasn't going to let me ask all my questions. So, thank you very much. That's right. We tried. We tried. >> We didn't really cover it. Um, so, um, I'm looking at the structural deficit slide and where you're talking about this current state funding model is not aligned with our structure. um when you know the finance and audit committee made a recommendation on what the the kind of cadence of budget work sessions will look like going forward um perhaps at the one where we're getting a legislative update it would be helpful for us to know um like I'll pick an example culinary services like what does actually get funded by the state and what additional so um we can have some we can not only communicate to our legislators where um we're not getting enough
082money, but it can also do the work of helping us understand the trade-offs. So, in our committee, we made we had this conversation of like say transportation, we're running at a $25 million deficit. Um because we are funding transportation as we have always been um spending. Um is that really where we want to spend the 25 million or do we think it would have greater impact on student outcomes elsewhere? So, I think getting to that level of understanding of our budget, the board is going to have a lot more confidence in approving a budget that really meets the needs of our students. Um, I have a a question around the the K345 splits. think Ben and I have had this conversation before where um we're I think it's we're we're trying to get the money
083from the state for the K3 ratio, but it seems to be coming at the expense of four or five because so many of our schools have four five splits. Like at what point do we feel like it's not worth chasing the K3 because the impact of four or five is significant? >> Yeah. No, I appreciate the question and just for those listening at home, the there's this kind of bonus money that you get for having small class sizes K3, but that of course then means that you're not getting the bonus money for other district for other stuff. And the amount of money that we're actually getting might not even be worth it in terms of how we do that. I think that we have to take a much deeper look into really figuring out how
084much money we're getting because of it and then how that's impacting us. Now, look, the research is interesting around class size. I mean, it tends to be that smaller class size is better, but there's actually ratios that whatever. I mean, we can go deep into that, but I think that, you know, I'll defer to Kurt in terms of the dollars. I think we just have to look at schools and say, "Whoa, if there's a huge jump between third grade and now fourth grade, what are we doing?" And so, are there ways that we could be thoughtful around their schedule, around the way that they're doing it? The other thing, too, and I deferred to Kurt on this, that 17 to1 ratio is district, not necessarily school per se, right? And so, there's ways that we
085can like think from a larger standpoint. So it is that is probably a one of the most complicated but important pieces that might change the way we do our structures of our schools. But I mean Kurt you know this better than I do. >> It is a district number that we have run some information to see where it crosses the line where it's not saving money or costing money and there is a point where it does save the district money by increasing class sizes. Back to that structural problem. Everything or most everything the district does costs more than the state provides funding for. And so yeah, it's that there there is a point where it would make financial sense to do something different than 17 to1. Does that make academic sense is the real question,
086right? Because >> we're not here to balance the budget. We're here to make sure kids are getting educated. So >> that's right. >> And and we can take a hit in some places. We just have to know we're taking a hit, right? And that's the case. Like you you made a great point. Is it worth the 25 million extra for transportation or do we think that bless you do you think that it's better to do it to spend it somewhere else that might actually lead towards more student uh student gains? I I don't know. Right. Um but that's why we have to at least start with an apples to apples of like where we are. Uh and I don't think the district was doing that previously. >> Want to look to Vice President Briggs or
087Director Ms. Rahi? Um, my questions were answered uh, basically more or less, so I'm I'm good. Thank you. >> Yeah, maybe this is just playing off uh, Director Lavali's question a little bit, but I was the thing I was looking at was the AFTTE um, graph, which is really fascinating and I think to some degree um, is like counter to some of the, you know, I don't know, thoughts that I might have going into if I were to draw this up with what I thought was the case. Um, one of the things that I'm noticing is that there are schools on here that are smaller but in the middle or toward So I mean you gave a fire program or firefighting program as an example but like what are the actual things that you're seeing
088that are because certainly you can see like size is a big factor in where you are on this graph >> but what are the other factors? >> Uh poverty so which again we we really do spend based on the equity or the idea of uh poverty. So you know you can look and see you know here the over 50% poverty you have more than the under 10% poverty and that's that's a good thing right we are putting our money there but the other place that we're seeing it is some of our schools get a ton of extra money from deal feep you know that kind of stuff and I think one of the issues and you've all heard me talk about how we need to be the arbitrator of that money is that there's there's
089these other dollars. There's grants. There's a school that gets a million dollars a year because of a grant. Awesome. But now that means that children at that school are getting an extra million dollars that other children who are down the street are not, right? And so we need to take into account all of the money, the the FEP money, you know, the the the grant money, the this and the that money. And so that's the big difference. I mean, you know, there are schools on this list that get extra dollar figures and that's impacting it greatly, especially if it's a smaller school. Um, and so again, if you know, and the city's been wonderful and they really understand this conversation is if we got the money and then we distributed it equitably, we would actually
090be able to balance some of this stuff out. But, I mean, I defer to Kurt as you've played with these numbers a lot more than me. a a million dollar grant for a school whose budget is, you know, let's say $10 million, that's a tenth of their budget. That's a big change. And if their budget's $5 million, that's 20% of their budget. So, there's a lot of schools that are changing dramatically based on outside money. And I will say, I know that the money from PTAs is a is a question that a lot of folks uh discuss. the PTA money for the schools really does not impact uh the way that some of these large grants do. But again, you can That's accurate. >> Yeah. But is there is there anything that comes to mind
091about like some of the schools that are getting many more dollars? >> I mean, the FEP levy schools, there's that outstanding question about that was five, six, seven years ago and things have changed and is that still the right model and we're trying to approach that differently going forward. That's a it's a significant dollar amount for many of these schools and how that plays out in the future I think is attempted to be more in line with what we're talking about right now at this table to >> make sure that it's going to the right places at the right times and not just status static for the period of time of the levy. If things change, things change and we should be responsive to that. >> It's that goes back to the thing I said
092about history, right? Like like just because it's happened 10 years ago, is that necessarily the right thing today? kind of building off of that, I guess, is my question. The difference for the middle school and our traditional high schools uh between sort of the low spend and the high spend is a a lot less than our elementary schools. Is that just because of grant like h what what what happens there funding? So, so if you look at the middle schools, it's because the smallest middle school isn't that small. Is that again, the way the state funds folks is this like expectation of X amount of kids? And so, because the smallest high school or sorry, the smallest middle school you have is 400, is that a six, I think, or an eight, I don't know.
093Uh, is is that you're you're not you're you're not being impacted. And then that school is at 46% poverty. So they get the poverty kicker. So they're at 92 and change. That's the big difference is that and then if you look at high schools again, nobody is below 799. So our smallest high school is 800 kids. Yeah, you're going to you can run a high school at 800 kids. There's not really a problem there. Um and so and then of course with Reneer Beach they're at a that's either I think that's a 62 so they get the poverty kicker as well. So that's why you've got that a pretty tight >> and then middle school is the same way. Now all is a whole other story but but that's the deal, right? So yeah. Yeah.
094>> Uh director Vice President Briggs and then go to director. >> Yeah. Um just a quick clarifying question. So, um, and also, yes, like I just want to echo everybody else's, um, appreciation of the clarity, um, of of the way this information's been presented. Um, I really appreciate it. Uh, but on the topic of, um, the sort of discrepancies between, um, spending on different students and how we address that while also keeping in mind um, concerns around need, need-based um, allocations. Are you suggesting that we move away from I I just I haven't been able to tell if I It seems like we keep pointing out that the waiting staffing standard is a problem and that it would make more sense to move to a per pupil funding model, but is that what we're actually
095going to do? >> Well, I mean, we have to look at the impact and we also have to look at how to do it mathematically. Uh this is a big district with some systems that are modern and some systems I think are run with the hamster wheel and string. And so we just need to make sure that we're capable of doing it. But then the second thing and this is where I think we care much more deeply is we want to make sure that the formula is right for children. Right? So I believe deeply in equity. I believe deeply in serving the children who have certain needs with the money that they that need to service those needs, but it's a child rather than a school. So, you know, one of the things that Kurt
096was talking about with the hard edges, if the model says at 20 teachers you get a principal or you get an AP and if you're now at 19, you now lose them. That seems like a little harsh. Or, you know, you have two more kids now you get an extra teacher. That seems like that's a little imbalanced. Or you lose two kids and you now lose a teacher. If you think about it in a student formula, you get two kids, the school gets an extra, let's say, $10,000. They don't lose a teacher or they don't gain a teacher, they get an extra 10,000 bucks. And so we just have to really make sure that we're being thoughtful around the the needs, the ML kid, the special ed kid, the, you know, poverty. There's there's all
097sorts of ways and a lot and and please don't think that that that I'm making this up in the sense that most other large school districts do it. Not most. Many other school districts in the country do it this way, but most school districts in America that are large have at least some sort of studentbased rather than school-based. Our formula is very different than the way that almost any other district uh works outside of Washington. >> Director Ranken, >> it's also pretty different from other districts in Washington. >> Also true. Um, uh, Gina, you brought up the, you know, that the discrepancy in K5 is larger between schools than middle school and high school. And why, why is that? One thing I wonder is I mean I think there's a lot of reasons we need
098to whatever formulas we end up with an elementary school is just run quite differently and has the the everything about it is pretty not everything but a lot about it is pretty different and um we will need to have different formulas but at the elementary level I'm guessing that a lot of the discrepancies in some of the schools um are because PCP time or specials are treated in elementary school through various I don't know if it's contract language state definitions I don't know what it is as extra and in a middle school the expectation is that a student will be taking a certain distribution of classes and so there's a kind of um deep I mean as a person with a master of fine arts um a real dismissal of the arts and and uh
099and the people that that teach them honestly in elementary school that things are very much centered around the general education classroom teacher and in I'm not not saying that this is what people want or anybody's pushing for this but in the way schedules are talked about in elementary school PCP even just calling it PCP it's centered on release time for the general education teacher it's not focused on hey this This is a time where children are getting art or where children are getting this. It's it's the contract language around it is it's planning time for the gened teacher. And so I would guess that some of the discrepancy, the range discrepancy is because of art, music, and other enrichment class or enrichment classes that are happening during the school day where if you have a
100really small school, you either don't get access to those things or you have PTA or grant or somebody else um allocating money to fund those things because they're not as intrinsic to the full day as they are in middle school where like you need a certain number of classes, a certain number of electives to kind of balance everybody's schedule. And and all classroom teachers are sort of more or less equally important in on paper. At the elementary school, it's the general education classroom teacher and everybody else is in in our language, not how we feel about these people, but in our language, special or extra or release time kind of thing. I don't know. That's a that's a wonder that I have if that's true. And then the second wonder would be how can we
101change that because we want all children to have access to those things and for it not to be seen as optional um in our funding formulas. >> Yeah. I mean I think there's no question that the way that elementary schools are built make it so that art, music, PE are seen as either extra or as in service to the you know the the kind of regular class. Whereas in a high school for instance, you're like, "Oh, there's a PE teacher, there's an art teacher, and they have the same kind of schedule as the history teacher or the social >> and you have also kids have required number of credits distributed across all of those things." That's right. >> Um, so it's kind of built built into the ethos of the thing. One other question I
102have about AFTTE, and you don't have to answer it, but I just have to say it is this is again something special that we do because of our special education models that are again made up by us. A aft includes a waiting based on assumptions of how much time students with disabilities are not going to be in the gened classroom and I would really like to see that change. >> Yeah, there's uh there's no question that uh special ed is an area that we need to address. So yes, >> other questions from directors. >> All right. So, we'll be back July 1st or 8th, depending on when that board meeting is, >> depending on what we vote on. >> Um, we'll have something like this for you to consider at your August 26th meeting uh
103for approval. So, >> thank you, Dr. Bleman. >> So, let's take a quick fiveminut break. We'll come back together at 6:02 or if you Joe likes some less structured 605 but that's >> do it in four minutes. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. I'm feeling Heat. Heat. N. All right, it's 6:05, so we will join back together. >> We're not even going to let superintendent finish his dinner. >> Bread and water. >> So, our next section is uh a community engagement work session and I will pass it over to Superintendent Schultner to begin the presentation. >> All right. Wonderful. Well, it's great to see everybody again. Um, this will be a little bit uh less complex but just as important. Um, I want to thank the board and the community for really supporting
104something that I wanted to do from the moment I started, which was to get out into the community and really listen uh to what they had to say about our schools. I can't be a mediocre, let alone a good PR uh superintendent without knowing what the experiences of the community are. And we were able to really go in and listen to literally over a thousand people um as to what they thought around the community. And I am really thankful for the two people, one to my left, one to my right, and all of the many, many people from the departments, uh, from tech, from comms, from all of the, uh, staff that came out, uh, to support. So I think you know uh both the chief of staff Bev Redmond and the deputy chief of
105staff Eric uh Gersie uh they were really the the backbone of these uh community events and I just want to thank both of them and they will chime in as we uh go on through this thing. So the agenda, appreciation to the community. We're going to talk about the objective and the format, what we learned, feedback from the meeting, and then of course next steps and board support. Okay, so some great pictures. There's Eric. It's fairly nice. But these rooms were packed. I mean, they really were. Uh it was really, really quite special uh to have uh so many community members come out. Uh really I want to just thank the community for being willing to share their voice, share their time and really really be part of what even through their survey data said
106was a really good use of time uh and and hearing their voice. So, um, I'll certainly turn it over to Bev and Eric for their kind of initial thoughts, but I just want to tell again, I was so overwhelmed by the willingness of the community to come out, to spend an evening with us uh, and really share uh, unadulterated their their voice and their time with us. It was great and we certainly look forward to doing it some more. But, Bev, Eric, your thoughts on the day? Well, thank you. Thank you. Um the the engagement tour, the conversations, very grateful for the community, very grateful to be able to offer space. What I found most interesting is yes, we had over a thousand people coming through, but remember all those a thousand people plus were
107very much so vested in public education. they want to see SPS win or succeed and they were very present. So I am incredibly grateful for the conversation, the way it was structured from our conversations that we had with Ben on how to set up. We wanted to make sure that the community could see their voice in the conversation and that we weren't necessarily forcing a direction on them. So incredible, incredible efforts. People were excited to volunteer. I couldn't ask more of our teams. They came in and said, "Hey, we want to be a part of this first effort from our superintendent and we want to see it succeed." And the sincerity and the warmth in the room really came across on both sides. >> I learned a long time ago you should never seek to
108follow uh Bev Redmond. So, I think we should keep the conversation going. Uh so >> so one thing that was really clear that I that I wanted to make clear is that the purpose of these engagements is that we convene but that we listen. Uh you know Bev and Eric were there every time uh we had these meetings. I gave the same instructions and the same directions to everybody. Listen, do not defend. If a family member wanted to say that I was the worst superintendent they ever met, you say, "Great. How do you spell that?" Right? It's okay. We wanted to hear with the voice of the community and not to defend our actions. And when the community heard that and felt that, we were able to elicit really, I think, honest and thoughtful uh
109feedback around uh what we need to do as a district. And again we had three questions. What's going well? What's not going well? And then tangible ideas for improvement. These are the I feel the right questions to ask in the initial engagement. So we can set the tone, get a sense and people can answer these questions. They don't have to go do research. They know uh what's going well, what's not going well and having tangible ideas for improvement. So, I will turn to Eric for this because he had a lot to do with uh how and why. >> Thank you, Superintendent Schner. So, the superintendent uh before he even started charged us with coming up with uh eight meetings, seven in person um in each of the board director districts uh across our great city.
110And we tried to spread out uh the events within the districts and tried to kind of create and center on schools um using a variety of criteria making sure that they were accessible to the public that there was at least some parking available or there was a significant population of walkers in the area. We tried to make it uh sort of central uh within the district and we also tried to accommodate um a lot of sort of other events that were going on across the district. So, for example, at high schools around this time of year, there's a lot of evening events, concerts, and so forth, which is why you mostly see elementary um and middle schools. And we also tried to show a variety of our schools, including schools that had been recently renovated
111thanks to the voters's generosity. Um, so those were kind of the in-person events. And our virtual event was hosted via Zoom, which was the first time that we had used that platform from the district's sponsorship lens. Um, and we had uh pretty great success as well in many aspects of the of the Zoom meeting. Um, and just to kind of reiterate, we had we tried to have food available at every event, light food available. We had interpretation in all five languages including um, American Sign Language. And we sort of had roundt conversations with many facilitators to join the participants and really just want to thank our staff as well for being there helping to facilitate um and trying to create small groupoup conversations so that everyone could be heard and we think that we were
112successful in achieving that as we'll see from some of our feedback. >> No, no, >> and I was just going to say thank you to the board directors for being at each of the seven meetings. That was really powerful to see the superintendent and the director aligned up there and listening together. >> Yeah, we really appreciate that. And you can see from February 26th to April 2nd, we were able to host eight uh separate meetings and really talked to over a thousand if not thousands o of people. And so we're really thankful for that. So what did we learn? We probably learned what we knew already, but it's really important to have data. Um and so what did we learn? The participants overwhelmingly said that you know we have strong caring educators and staff that
113most the schools almost all the schools felt positive felt warm. They were they were thankful for a lot of different enrichment programs and extracurricular opportunities. There was a lot of uh strength around dual language and multilingual programs. A lot of families spoke about that. Uh they liked the SEAL components and student supports within our district. They liked the school level communication and they certainly uh enjoyed the access to basic needs and an equity oriented supports. You know, a lot of talk uh people talked about there was like food available or clothes available at a lot of our schools and that there was academic opportunities weren't available. The people who had the academic opportunities spoke very kindly of them. Um, and again, like we're always trying to do, um, if you want to click on this,
114we have the data behind this. Um, we did not make public the physical photographs of each of the hundreds of pieces of paper, but we absolutely uh, took all of the notes down. If anybody wants to see the the the poster paper, we're happy to show it to you. Um, but I want to thank uh Eric and Bev and the team for trans uh transcribing everything that was written, writing down every single thing that was said, and then finding kind of the theme. So, Eric, if you would just want to talk about how you did all of that, that'd be great. >> Yeah. So, just there was a lot of team support and kind of making sure that at the end we had all the poster papers. Um, we took pictures of them, we transcribed
115them, and then what we did afterwards is we put together sort of a summary of each of the individual meetings, both in person and virtual. And the those summaries are online under sort of an accordion on the website that just shows, hey, the Southshore meeting, here's what we learned. And then we rolled up all of that feedback into this summary document that's in front of you. And we uh tabulated the number of mentions of each of the themes. So, I'm looking at equity and resource disparities. There were 24 group mentions of that, meaning that there were 24 posters that mentioned equity and resource disparities in some kind of way. And we've got examples um of what that means, sort of illustrative examples underneath. So, if 24 groups mentioned it and on average we had about
11610 people per group, that means that around 240 people were talking about resource and equity disparities. So we tried to um introduce some sort of a methodology in sharing back out what we heard. So it's not just what we wanted to hear, but what we actually heard. >> Yeah. And and again, we were trying to be really really clear. I heard over and over again from the community. We want our actual voice to be heard. And this is the actual voice. We're not trying to sugarcoat anything. We're not trying to hide anything. We took all of the data, ran it through so we could find the themes so that we can share so that they're palatable. so that we can we can actually digest them. But again, all of the hard data we can certainly
117make uh available as well. Um is there anything either of you want to talk about what what we learned about what was going well? what I feel about what was going well. Again, not necessarily a surprise, but that we should be very proud of what's happening in our individual schools and how they're performing and how they're moving around and take from that uh the best practices, the things that we're seeing and how can we replicate. So, not just to say, "Oh, yeah, checkbox." But use it as inspiration for and a resource for how we can make things better across the district. >> Thank you, Bev. All right. So, what's not going well? Also, none of this should be surprising to folks, uh, but that there was definitely this feeling. It wasn't just that, oh, we
118don't have enough money. It was really around a feeling of instability. uh that the budget, staffing, enrollment, there was fluctuation, instability, not knowing how to make decisions. And we heard that over and over again. Uh there was a sense of uh uh problems with communication, transparency, and trust kind of across the district. And it's not just, you know, communication per se around one thing. It was communication around different things that were happening throughout the community. I'm certainly going to defer to Bev to talk more about that. Um, and then also, you know, there were so many families who said, "Our kids want more. They want to advance. They want to do more rigorous things." And that there was even a sense that the district was actively working against that. That's something that we heard over
119and over again and certainly something we're going to have to change. That some of the specialized services and supports were not as strong. So, ML, special ed, etc., etc. And that there was a sense from uh many families that there was an overuse of technology, an overuse of screen time. And then there were some uh individual concerns around safety and school climate um and that there was also a sense of disparity around resources. And then the one that uh Eric knows is a real bugaboo of mine is a barriers for people to help us. uh here you have all these people who want to volunteer and want to engage and it is very very difficult. Uh we heard that over and over again and of course I'm not surprised because the people that are showing
120up at these meetings are the ones that are start are actively engaged and of course you know they're the ones who are saying look we would love to be in our schools uh but but we're we're unable. So that's what we uh knew were not going well but I want to defer to Bev to talk about some of the communication stuff she heard. Again, uh when we're looking at that second bullet point, uh communication, transparency, and trust, I look at it like an equation. Communication plus transparency equals the trust. And as uh Superintendent Childer was saying, it is not that it was, oh, it's this particular office. It's a collective. It's how we're making our decisions. when we start to communicate those things, we uh just not clear on where the direction of the district
121is going, how you're going about making certain choices, decisions. We want more input into that. We want to understand in very plain plain language and the desire to be in early on in a process versus at the middle or the tail end where you can kind of get lost in the sauce, so to speak. So I heard that over and over again and for many of the things that we tried as where as we could, can we get some quick wins in such as the superintendent's newsletter comes online and doing that on a weekly basis making sure that we have some insight into district into decisions going ongoing even when you get into the technology and overuse. We just came through our meeting where we talked about cell phones and how we were going to
122proceed with that. So keeping families as close as we possibly could and being responsive to the information that they're giving us is the goal. >> Yeah. I mean what was really nice when you know being a part of these conversations you know you'd hear like oh we really like that you know the the superintendent's newsletter that's helpful but boy we still have all these other communication issues right and so you know the there was definitely this acknowledgment of some kind of change but we want to be really thoughtful that the things that were not going well is that communication transparency trust and you know this instability I I really want to highlight that it the the families were very thoughtful. They knew we had a budget deficit. They knew that they that things couldn't continue
123the way they are, but what they asked for is can you just give us clarity? Can you give us stability? And I think that certainly the presentation that uh Curtain and I just gave is hoping to start that conversation around like here are the facts, here's where we are, here's how we're going to try to make decisions, and we're going to invite you in to be part of those decisions. So, and then what were areas of improvement? Again, nothing should be shock shocking, but it's increased the budget transparency, right? Nobody's nobody was like, "Well, Ben, just go find a billion dollars." Right? They understand that that's not necessarily there. But they're saying, "What's the transparency? Where's the equitable resource allocation?" And that's why, again, the conversation that Kurt and I just had was trying to
124answer that by saying, "Here's the transparency. Here's the equitable allocation. What What are our next steps?" They wanted to improve communication, engage families early, strengthen the academic rigor. Academic rigor, academic rigor, differentiate based on skills. You know, we heard from parents over and over again. My child loves their school. They love their teacher, but they're not advancing at the level that they want to advance, that they're not allowed to move at the speed they want to go to, that they feel being held back. And so that's something we have to deal. And then again there was a real push towards dual language programming and other special programming but dual language got the most kind of like votes. Um and again they want us to reduce the technology and clarify expectations and simplify the volunteer stuff
125and again if we are going to consolidate uh to have clear transparency around facilities and consolidation planning because again many families were like look we get it if it's going to happen but we got to be clear about what's happening and it cannot be done kind of in a scattershot way. So I don't know Eric or Bev if there's anything you want to add. >> Fake fingernails. Um the piece about stability or instability that was on the other slide. I want to translate it to here. The thing that underscored for me is when we are not confident with our information or transparent with our information, it causes parents to feel the same. And especially when we're talking about enrollment and marketing our schools that our ability to transfer information completely thoroughly translates in their ability
126to be confident in us and calm and choose us every day. So we have to keep that in mind uh with everything that we do. >> Yeah. just just want to elaborate that the superintendent's been sort of charging the team with beginning to make some progress and sort of get some quick wins in these areas. Budget transparency, the last presentation was a strong example of that. the way we've moved the enrollment timeline up which should help to kind of stabilize um the enrollment projections upon which we staff our schools in turn kind of ultimately stabilizing the staffing superintendent's newsletter and sort of some other communications tools and our engagement with media partners our work around both a new curriculum as well as working to provide summer mathematics opportunities for students the cell phone policy and
127we're beginning to look at some recommendations around how we can appropriately simplify the volunteer process so we're trying to get some quick wins and make some progress in these areas coming out of next school year and going into next school year with some momentum. >> Okay. So, the other good news is that we always want to take surveys of our folks who participate in our activities to see if they liked it or not. And so I'll defer to Eric because he did a lot of the kind of number crunching here, but what we got was an overwhelming uh kind of support on that, you know, it was well organized, it was purposeful, and it was valuable. That's that's great. Like that's that's a huge win. Um so over 90% agreed or strongly agreed that they
128started and ended on time. 82% agreed strongly agreed about meeting had clear objectives and that over 75% found the meetings valuable and again this is a fivepoint liyker scale so these numbers are really quite good meaning that you have a you know strongly don't like don't like kind of neutral strong like strongly like so we're only talking about the like and the strongly like not even including the neutral. Uh so if you looked at it in in a reverse in terms of who found that it wasn't good, those numbers are actually really really small. Uh so I'm really thoughtful and thankful for this. And then the coolest one or at least the one that I'm really happy about is that the atmosphere was welcoming and participants felt engaged. 90% plus on on agreed strongly agreed.
129So you're not even including neutral here and that they felt that they had an opportunity to contribute. If the whole purpose was to listen and hear the voice, well, we knocked it out of the park. And so, I'm really proud of that. Now, I what's also good, and I'll take it as good, even though you could see it negative, is that the the lowest ratings we got was that they felt that there wasn't enough time. So that's pretty great when you're having a meetings with, you know, over a thousand people and they're like, "No, no, we want to spend more time doing this uh in an elementary school gymnasia cafetium, you know, and so like that's good for for us that people really wanted to do this." Um, and that there was, you know, some
130folks that sense that they they didn't leave kind of invigorated, but, you know, we also talked to folks and it's like, yeah, because they left saying, "Wow, we've got work to do." Not like, "Oh my god, everything's great." So, you know, I think there's some real wins here, but again, we're going to look at the data and we're going to rethink how do we do our our meeting structure. And we'll talk about this in a little bit, but what we learned, of course, was they felt people felt their voices were heard, they felt engaged, they felt that there was uh there was well organized, but the question about, you know, clear topics or, you know, valuable um were a little bit less. And what we've heard from people is is there's maybe some specific topics
131and things like that and we'll talk about that later. But Eric, you really kind of dug into these numbers and also uh the board and the public would have some of the hardcore numbers here, right? >> Yeah. Just on page of the packet in front of you that looks like this that doesn't have scribbles on it like mine does that they're on page nine and 10. You can look through the numbers and um at your discretion. But what we did was we had iPads around the room. folks after the meeting, we encouraged them to fill out the survey. We also had paper copies and then I sent everyone an email in the morning, the following morning, encouraging them to fill out the survey with a follow-up a few days later. So, not everyone filled it
132out, but what was suggestive of um some validity is that over meeting over meeting similar questions were producing similar results. And then for the virtual meeting, again, similar themes as well, but it was um just clear that we have to continue refining the virtual space because we have a little bit less control over it um compared with the in-person environment. And just wanted to highlight then sort of the qualitative feedback. Something we heard a lot was what are you going to do with this information? Where are you going to share it out? What's next? And we tried to address some of that by transparently posting everything online, trying to be detailed, trying to share out. And at our next meeting which we're going to get into, we'll do sort of what we might call feedback
133on feedback. So this is the feedback and this is our thinking about the feedback that we received. >> Yeah. And then uh next steps and looking ahead. So synthesized and shared out information available online. Again, you know, we're trying to make everything is uh open. We're not trying to hide anything or sugarcoat it. We want all of the great work to be out there in the public so people can take a look at it. uh we're going to use this feedback to guide both short-term and long-term actions and leading the district. And of course, we want to host uh these meetings and we will make them longer. We appreciate that. Um and we also want them to be more focused because that was one of the feedbacks we had as well. We appreciated that the
134first meetings had to be open-ended because we had to get people talking and we needed to see what was going on. Um but what we really heard was, you know, what about specific topics and what about specific grade levels, right? you know, people would say, "Well, you know, my kid goes to elementary. It's a lot different than, you know, high school." And so, uh, what we're looking forward to is creating, uh, a series of these meetings moving forward where we're going to have specific topics and also do it by grade level. So, next, uh, meeting, which is at Mercer Middle School on May 19th, uh, that's going to be the final one for the year because June is graduation and all the other stuff. uh that we're going to talk about safety, instruction, facilities, you
135know, those kinds of topics. And then we're going to have breakouts based on grade level or school level so that the families of elementary school kids can really come together and talk about these things. And the last thing I'd say also, the feedback about the meetings themselves will be used to improve the format over and over and over again. And so the next steps again is that we're going to create a year-long engagement strategy. We're going to have these monthly. The idea is that we will have nine of them a year. We will start in September and the last one will be in May and it will be again in each of the board uh districts and two online. We'll do you know the first four on the next three and online. That way we'll
136have one meeting a month. We will cycle through the city and then we'll make sure to have two uh online meetings. Now, of course, everybody is welcome to come to all of them. And I will say shout out to those that did. Uh we had a couple of people that come to like seven out of the the eight ones or six out of eight. Uh which was awesome. Um and so that's kind of the idea. Now, in addition, we're also going to be having some uh you know, we're going to promote some targeted engagement and recruit to meet with special populations. Uh but we also um are doing a lot of other things. And I want to kind of turn it over to Bev. I want the community to really understand these are the meetings
137that we are hosting. I think everybody knows that myself and others are going into the community at a ton of events when we're invited and other kinds of events that we are hosting as well. So be if you want to talk about that. >> Absolutely. Uh as mentioned, we just talked about us being in space SPS created kind of spaces, but community organizations often invite us in such as SCPTSA. We al CC various orgs always say, "Hey, can we host you? Can we bring you into our space?" So that extends our reach and allows us to get a little more granular and and personal. Uh so we will be continuing to do more of those and attending those organized spaces. I want to say that this has been an an excellent bridge having been on
138the superintendent search engagement tour till now to say that this was a nice bridge and a nice handoff and a good way to open up SPS at this particular point in time from the beginning and not try to build it in as Ben was four months in that we started from the beginning and wanted to be very open and community has welcomed us not only for the meetings that we hold but again for things that they would like to see us show up to as well. >> Yeah. And just as a kind of reiteration, so we are hosting these, you know, monthly district-wide or you know, schoolboard districtwide events. And then I also or we also will have let's say monthly meetings with the citywide PTSA or you know monthly meetings with and so the
139whole idea for me as superintendent is we should bring in the community at large and then we need to go to the groups that already exist and give them deference so that we can listen to them as well. And so I think if we do these monthly meetings as well as go to the other monthly meetings, uh we'll really get a good sense of what's going on. Of course, we have to learn, we have to listen, and then we have to act. Um but I'm really proud of these first, you know, 3 months and six days, uh in terms of really getting the voice of the community. Um, Eric, is there anything you want to add or I know we're almost at time here. So, um, and then the last thing that I want to
140say is just, uh, thank you to the board. Uh, the fact that you showed up when we were in the community means the world to me. Um, I think it really meant a lot to the community. again uh that so as we host these meetings throughout the next however many years you'll have me uh is that the joint superintendent and board presence wherever possible to hear from the community together because I think it's super helpful for you to hear what's going on as well and thank you for being there with us and that we're going to work together to address what we learn about the meetings and please uh we know that these will happen once a month. Uh but you know, we really appreciate the board bringing constituent services to to me and to
141the to the district so that we can address them. So, you know, we're really thrilled that this was the initial engagement. You know, well over a thousand people, lots of packed houses. I want to thank the staff for really really going above and beyond being a part of these conversations and then of course thanking the community for showing up letting us hear your your unvarnished truth and hopefully we're starting to already act on the things that you want us to act on. So with that, thank you so much and I want to turn it over to President Top. >> Great. I appreciate that the presentation. So, just so folks have an understanding of why now, not only are you wrapping up here with your last meeting on May 18th, we all had our engagement, but
142at our retreat, we did say uh once the superintendent sort of did his initial seven district engagement sessions, he would come back to us with sort of his both his his findings and then sort of next steps for us as a board in in engagement. So, um, with that, I kind of as we're discussing tonight, definitely questions for staff on, uh, what they heard, what they learned. Um, but also on sort of the proposal that I'm putting out on the table, which is, uh, Ben has proposed sort of this monthly engagement cadence and having our board staff make sure that there are, you know, at least two directors at, you know, up up to three, not a quorum, at each of these engagement sessions throughout the year. so that we are also hearing and and
143and learning because it is helpful as we prioritize our work. I look at sort of the what we learned priorities and these are all things that I think that um I I am definitely working in in my role and I I know many of you are in in prioritizing the budget with our our both the presentation tonight and the work from the the community. the sort of stabilizing staffing um and and sort of the enrollment changes that we made. Uh the sort of focus that we've had as a board on on communication, the conversations we've had on strengthening our academic rigor and what that looks like. Um sort of our the importance of our dual language and and special programs, uh reducing the technology with our new cell phone policy, but also I know there's
144a lot of interest in screen time and what that looks like in the future. the the simplified volunteer and family engagement process. That one's new to me and interesting and I want to I want to dig into that that more. And then uh the last one seems obvious after the last year in the consolidation conversation. But I think all of that it's helpful for all of us to be and have ears in these meetings so we learn so we can do our job. So that excuse me that is my proposal. So, as we sort of go around the table tonight, think about that, provide some some feedback, and we can start uh initiating as early as this next meeting on on the 19th if we we're comfortable with that process since the resources I think
145that we want to have in our engagement sessions are set. I will also just say I the feedback is super helpful on the responses. Um I would have not thought that you got was the meeting valuable as high as 75%. So, I think that's really interesting. I also appreciate that it's not going to be the same conversation every time. You're going to take what you've learned here and continue the conversation and and dive deeper. So, I appreciate that. Um I think that's what I pretty much want to say. So, we will just I don't know if you have Yep. We'll go around the circle here and I'll start I'll go the other way this time. So, uh Vice President Song I mean director Song I saw I Evan signs right there. Um uh where do
146I want to start? Um well, first of all, I just want to say thank you um to you and your team for standing these up and I think it's pretty incredible when Eric was going through the slide in terms of some quick wins. It's um it's been a actually a relatively short amount of time and you have really been responsive to community feedback. So, thank you very much to your team. Um, as the chair of the finance and audit committee, having this information is really helpful. So, what is not going well budget? I think I would invite my committee members um and staff maybe we should add to our work plan to have a conversation about what does communication around our budget and financial situation look like together and how can we as a board
147partner with the staff and what are specific things that we can be doing um um and just add that to our work plan. Um I have I don't think you'll have answers for these questions now. Um but two wonderings I have are one if there were regional differences in some of the answers to these questions and that's just something that um we as directors for our district can be aware of that we need to engage more on. Um, that's one question. And the second question is, um, what's not going on? The communication, transparency, and trust. Where are families actually getting their information? And in particular, I'm really interested in knowing where families are getting their information about our financial situation. >> Yeah, I mean, I can answer the first question a little bit. There were
148some regional variances. Uh, but what was interesting was just the overwhelming similarity around all three questions. what was working, what wasn't, and uh you know, so there were some schools that some locations talked a little bit more about dual language than others. Some spoke more about kind of advanced learning than others. Some talked about safety and security more than others. Uh but in general, and we're happy to share, I mean, you know, Eric's created one for, you know, kind of each and so we're happy to share the regional differences, but in general, they were there was quite a lot of triangulation. director of the >> valley. >> Yeah. So, my first one of my questions was going to be about the differences in each region and if there was anything >> that was particularly different
149or stood out as being different just so that we know if there's gaps somewhere and we know if there's strengths somewhere. um and and we might not see it in a forum like this, but I know there are different both gaps and structures in some of the different areas of the city. So, um I would also like as we continue forward with your plan, I'd love to know a little bit more about how we're planning which topics in which region >> just so that it's not um you know so so that it's the thing that's best applied and the be thing that most needs to be discussed as well um within the individual regions and not just haphazard of we pulled one card and we pulled a region and that's the random setup that we
150get. Um, and then I guess my only actual question for you guys is was there anything that really surprised you that you heard? Even if it was just kind of a oneoff thing um that just one or two people said, was there anything that just you weren't aware of or surprised you in listening? >> Um, not that I wasn't aware of it. I I said it earlier, the amount of people who really want to see SPS work for their students was super clear that they're not our enemies. They're not against us. They're actually for us, but they are absolutely for their children. So, that was very, very clear. Yeah, I don't think anything was surprising, but it was it was really validating to be a part of these meetings with families who just wanted to
151serve and to help and support. And I think what was great was to see how many staff members were at the tables engaging with families and then bridging those divides. You know, I think and I've said this before, the superintendent specifically, but I think this building has been some sort of like Wizard of Oz place where everything is behind the veil and you know, just meet, oh, you're the head of this department. Great. Oh, and you're asking me these questions. So I think what was great was to see this desire to meet as humans and as people to collectively move children towards success, but really those relationships between central office and the community which might have just not been that strong. It was just really nice to see that over and over again. Yeah, I
152would concur with um everything everyone said and kind of the similarities you see across the different meetings in terms of the themes um I think are are pretty powerful and also just the ability of our team which was amazing to have folks not only talking with uh staff but talking to one another. So the more we can have community members talking with one another and uh is powerful to to move things forward. >> All right. Um, I had one more too that's uh carrying on from what Director Song said with communication. There's communication about what the district's doing and the budget and the committees and you know all of these different things. Um, and there there's hopefully improvement there and will continue to improve there. I know before the meeting I had gotten a call
153which um superintendent Schulner I tal chatted with you about where a a student had had an incident at school and the parent had just not gotten notified and it's something that they should have gotten notified regarding. And so just making sure that communication at all levels is increased um to kind of the right measure which is a hard thing to measure because it's different for that line is different for everyone. So trying to make sure we can kind of we can kind of move that direction so that parents know what's going on about their kids that they need to know on a daily basis or a weekly basis. so that you know they know what's going on with their school on a regular cadence and what their school offers. I know so much of the
154times um people coming in have no idea what after school programs there are at the school or if there is something. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, so really just getting an understanding not just of how the district is communicating to parents, but also how information is available and how schools and teachers are communicating with families as well. >> Yeah, I I want to be really clear what uh was just said is exactly what we heard at large. It's communication at every level. It's the communication from the school, from the teacher, from the district, from the departments. And so, you know, we have our work cut out from us, but for us, but it's really important to hear that because that, you know, when a parent doesn't know about something that happened to their child that day
155and they only hear about it when the child tells them, that means that there's a communication breakdown, right? And so, I really appreciate you highlighting that. >> And thank you. Just to take that in a slightly different direction to answer your previous question, one thing that surprised me was the floodgates of folks really opened when we started pushing the communication out to principles and school leaders who are the trusted messengers as was reaffirmed through our data to then push the information to their families and hearing from them. I mean increase the numbers two threefold >> in in addition to your promotion director Lvali in your district. Director Ranken, >> thank you. Um, yeah, I'm like equal parts excited and grateful and also super super frustrated um just at the reality of the situation. Um because
156I know that I have the honor. I don't know. I've been around the longest. So having the same conversation over and over and pretending that it's brand new is exceedingly frustrating. Um, so I want to give some of the benefit of some past work that it is the the board asked for an audit of the district's communications in 2022 23. We got the results of that audit from the National Public Relations Consort. I can't remember what the NSP >> Yeah. high seven highlevel very uh actionable findings and recommendations that came to the audit committee because the board at the time was also like our communication it like these are not new problems. Um the results of that audit were what looked like pretty actionable basic administrative things to address and instead we were stonewalled and
157there was a lot of hostility around even the expectation that there would be a response to the audit. And so, um, it's on our website. I hope that you've been provided with, but if you haven't, it's on the website. It's a completed audit. Seven recommendations that are completely within the purview of the superintendent on improving communication and they, you know, families, you know, participated in that. Not to say there that there are things that will be mysterious to you or that you couldn't have figured out, but like >> happy to look at >> if we can not redo work like we have a history in SPS of identifying a problem, asking for help, being presented with some potential solutions from experts and then totally ignoring it and doing the same thing over and over and
158over again. That's the frustration that I have is just like if something's wrong, I want to fix it. And I kind of cannot get over such a engaged um intelligent, caring community as Seattle receiving expert recommendations and just wholesale rejecting them over and over and over when we could be doing better for our kids. Um and honestly honoring the work of the people around us and honoring everybody's time much more but and resources by not repeating this. So there is that 2023 audit. Um uh there's also a um the PSESD review of the process uh at Reineer View in 2024 outlined a number of broader issues on school-based communication, incident reporting, uh kind of clarity around what happens when things are again really actionable. And I remember when we received this, those of us who
159have been around were like, "Yes, this feels really really accur." Even even those of us who had nothing to do with the particular school, it just rang very true. And there were a number of basic recommendations about um addressing complaints and things that um again we've gotten outside support recommendations and like let's just please follow those. Um uh I the idea of having the monthly I'm also wondering how how pick the topics um wondering because different different things come up at different times um in the past past like precoid there would also be different engagements that were you know if there was a boundary change coming up the staff it wouldn't necessarily have to be the superintendent but the staff associated with that would go to the community impacted that's part of also of the
160community engagement. So I I'm not necessarily assuming you're not going to do that, but I'm kind of I'd be interested in kind of a overview of what we can expect as an approach. >> Sure. Yeah. I mean simply and I'll try to be more articulated about it as we move on to next year. But what we're trying to do is hear the community, they tell us the topics that they think are the most important and then those would be the ones that we discuss. So like a lot of things that we heard around let's say facilities or extra programming or safety and security those again would be like the topics that we would do. And to to the point that was made earlier if there were specific regions that had a specific topic it would
161make sense then to have that be one of those as well. And so you know right now we have you know a thousand people probably a lot of different data points. there was a lot of triangulation. There were certain topics that they wanted further conversation about. I think they translate so well that it doesn't really matter where we are for those. But then there were some topics that were very specific to region and that was what we would kind of add to that. Yeah. And again, levels are levels, right? The elementary school folks wanted to talk about elementary, the high school wanted to Yeah. Um and then I uh want to second or appreciate director Song uh saying you know what's what's our role in this and how can how can we support? So I
162um uh encourage everyone to look back at the WASDA board standards and the fourth standard is community engagement for the for the board. Um because the other thing I'm a little bit nervous about is that we are actually giving our obligation over to the superintendent of representing the v vision and values of the entire community. >> Um and so I wondering how we as a board want to address like being present at meetings with the superintendent is fantastic. We should do that. And I would guess most of those issues are going to be operational things. It's good for us to hear, but our job is to represent really what does our community want for education, and we need to not um uh let that go. Um uh uh uh and then there was one other
163thing, but I forget what it was. Oh, we can have a quorum if the public notice meeting that's open to the public. Four directors can be there. That was all. So if there was a hot topic or something, if there was some hot topic and everybody really wanted to be there, as long as it's the public knows that the full board might be there, that's totally fine. >> But I think this is a good start for the plan for next year. >> Thank you, >> Vice President Briggs. Yeah, I just wanted to second um the recommendation to uh look at the communications audit um because a lot of this work was already done and there's a lot of great information in that audit um that still hasn't as Liza said suggestions that still haven't been
164implemented. Um and I think it's all still really relevant information even though it's a couple years old at this point. But that's it for me. >> Great. Thank you, >> Director Miseri. >> Um, my only thought feedback was that I think that the whole experience is really good. The one that I went to was really good. Um, it'll be interesting to see as you transition to more driven meetings with like a topic. I think one of the feedback that I heard in my community was that they enjoyed that it was just a like little bit of a the district didn't come to us with an agenda. They weren't trying to commit to some of something or even get us to like decide on something. They just wanted to hear from us. So, I think mixing
165that in will certainly be helpful as you go forward, too. >> Yeah. No, I really appreciate that. And the hope is that the topics that we'll be discussing would be so large that it would be topics that people would feel comfortable talking about. But I do uh agree that there needs to be a place for people to just share you know in a structured way uh you know because I do want people to feel comfortable having these meetings with us. So >> just put airing of grievances on the agendas for every >> That's right. >> Director Smith. >> Not not too much for me. I think on the topic of the different topics in different regions, um I would just hope to see some repetition um since we've got some pretty clear topics that it
166wouldn't be like, oh well, we're doing instruction in North Seattle and then that's it. Like should keep going. >> Yeah. >> And probably even just over time too, you know. >> Great. Thank you. >> Any other comments? All right. I sort of got a warm feeling of we'll be join we'll have board staff work on coordinating us a little bit so we can make sure that there are at least two of us attending these these meetings and um that concludes the engagement section and really our work session in general. So, we have our regular board meeting next Wednesday, our student presentation portion. We will have Gatewood School, a grant presentation from them, and then Chief's South High School wrestling state champions here with us. So, very district 6 heavy day. That was not my design,
167but I'm very excited for that since that is my district. It is also Representative Yun's last meeting, so we'll have an opportunity for board directors to to say a few things. So, please come come prepared for that. Um, but there being no further business on the agenda, the meeting stands adjourned at 6:57 p.m. Thank you everyone.