001Heat. Heat. How are you, Jen? Yeah, we're almost there. We go. It's 4:30. Ah, this is Gina Top. I am now calling the board special meeting to order at 4:30 p.m. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puet Sound Coast Salish people. For the record, I'll call the role. Vice President Briggs >> here. >> Director Lavali here. Director Miseri >> present. >> Uh Director Ranken will be here in about 10 minutes. Director Smith >> here, >> director Song >> here, >> and this is President Top. So, we've got two sections of our work session this evening. The first is a federal response update and the second is our budget update. Just three sort of housekeeping items. Just
002a few reminders. Two of them on the upcoming our upcoming retreat on February 7th. First, I'm glad we moved it off of February 8th since we will since that is Super Bowl Sunday. Um, but a few reminders to directors. Uh, you should have gotten an email with a selfassessment to take. You should have received it yesterday. Um, it is due Friday. So, the turnaround time is really quick. It'll take about 15 to 20 minutes to complete this selfassessment. And this will be used by we'll have the executive director of WASDA. They'll compile a report for us. Um really helping to start shape the conversation on sort of the board goals for the year. So does anyone have a question about that self assessment? Awesome. Again, due this Friday. The other one is uh an uh
003an email was sent out from staff. Please send any questions or comments on the policy 1240 and committee charters to Julia by Wednesday, February 4th. So that gives us enough time to collect them all before our retreat. Um, and then the last thing is in our last in our regular board meeting for January, I um I said that the student assignment transition plan would be introduction and action in February. That is incorrect. It's going to be introduced in February, voted on in March. So, just so folks are aware. But with that, I don't know exactly who I'm handing it off to here. Superintendent Podesta for we'll start with the federal response update. >> Thank you, President Top, and thank you also for adding this item to the agenda. We know there's a lot of interest
004in this topic as a result of national and local events. Um we do want to start a bit more generally. We know some of the recent interest relates to immigration enforcement, but um there have been many um uh issues for the district to respond to um since the current administration was inaugurated last year. So, we want to just give you some background. I think it's good for the board to know. I um really want to thank our public affairs team who um has been leading this work and um uh uh in a crossd disciplinary fashion across the district because it involves many players. Um and so we've created a federal response team early last year that um included all the departments uh our uh Julia War um who has been doing a great job as
005as you know all work with her closely know how capable she is in really facilitating those conversations and gathering all these departments. Give Julia a chance to talk about um that experience or anything you want to add? Um so as uh Superintendent Podesta mentioned uh this team was convened in the winter of 2025 um to respond to shifts in the federal landscape um whether it be funding uh legal changes or any other um changes that may impact the district. Um and the the purpose is to really organize our district responses, communicate regularly uh to staff and then as needed to the broader community. Um and we've set up a couple of um uh infrastructure pieces internally in the district. Uh staff have access to a Fed response at seattlelesschools.org where they can submit questions, comments
006or um uh elevate anything that they are hearing that may impact their school students or programs. Um the uh team is made up of uh almost every division uh in central office and then also includes uh individuals from departments that um may be particularly impacted um by changes at the federal level. Um so you'll see health education, special education um grants and partnerships up here as well. >> Next slide. Um, as Superintendent Podesta mentioned, there's a number of areas that we are monitoring, uh, shifts, uh, in. So, uh, federal funding. Um, this includes changes to title funding under the Elementary Secondary Education Act. So, that would be your title one, title two, title three. Um, but also other grants. Uh, we get grants from, uh, the CDC um, and other, uh, federal agencies. Um so
007monitoring uh changes in uh grant requirements um how we can spend those funds as well. Um also monitoring uh title nine um so this has to do with uh gender um equity, gender equality. Um and there's been a number of uh different lawsuits in this area. Um IDEIDA uh Head Start uh immigration which we'll get into in more detail. uh civil rights enforcement um and then the role of our um federal department of education uh which uh is shifting um and some of those responsibilities are shifting to other agencies. Um so just kind of broad strokes uh of what the the team does um evaluating federal actions that may impact our district operations and our students. Um and we evaluate that by looking at uh student impact. Uh so what may change about a student's
008academic experience or the learning environment. Um, we also evaluate um any responses uh when when we develop our district responses, we evaluate any uh alignment with our values um to make sure that we are continuing to adhere to the values of SPS um as articulated by the board in our goals and guardrails and our our mission and vision. Um also looking at what the potential equity impacts of any um change in course or um uh or staying the course may have. uh looking at legal compliance and any risk to funding or other system impacts. Um so all of that goes into what the um district response uh to a federal action or shift may be. Um and then uh the team also works through uh the communication strategy. So how are we communicating this back
009out to uh school staff um to school leaders um to the board to the broader community um as needed um and as these shifts occur. back to you. >> Any questions at this point just about general overall federal response and then we'll get more into immigration enforcement. Great. So uh you know our community all of us are uh watching with uh justifiable great concern um things we're seeing in other communities with respark uh respect to immigration enforcement. We um uh had an event last week that we discussed in the last board meeting and get and at that time I said you know we need to commit to supporting school leaders better. staff have worked hard on getting that done and um we'll talk about that and then also what existed beforehand. So um again as
010part of forming this team last winter we revised um uh our um superintendent procedure related to policy 4310 which relates to how we interact with law enforcement to make sure there was uh particular language related um to uh immigration enforcement that appears at our schools. So I think we've given very um clear guidelines um to schools about how to deal with those issues. We um let the community know that we had done that at that time. Um develop more resources for staff to kind of understand how that works. That is uh very clear that um that if immigration enforcement appears on our campuses that school leaders are denying access that no uh nothing moves forward without a judicial warrant and advice from our general counsel's office which is not dissimilar for how we handle law
011enforcement in general, but we really wanted to put a fine point on it with regard to immigration enforcement. Um know that our school leaders understand it, know that their teams understand it, and that the community understands it. Um, we had training at that time. We've communicated a couple times to families about this, but we still get questions. So, it's clear we need to do more. Um, we've been in coordination with our city partners because there beyond just enforcement. There are many questions about access to resources and referrals. Um, and so we've been working um with the city on how they can help us with that and other partners since um they have connections that we don't. Um and uh there was meeting a couple weeks ago about that particular issue. We met um with mayor's
012office today because I had contacted them after um we u because of unsubstantiated concerns about immigration enforcement last week. talked to the mayor's office say, "Can you help us um figure out how to get uh information about um rumors?" Because we've long had pretty good relationships with other law enforcement agencies that we kind of know what's going on. We don't have those kind of contacts with um federal agencies in all cases, although we've had in the past for some things, but certainly not um uh the Border Patrol or uh Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And so um and neither do our local law enforcement agencies. So we're kind of living in different worlds. So we've talked to both the mayor's office today. We talked to the police last week. And while they're clear that, you know,
013they don't get advanced notice. It's not necessarily collaborative relationship. They usually know what's going on because they're in the field and um SPD and other agencies have a lot of situational awareness. So um we're making commitments to, you know, partner with them on these issues. uh mayor um is working to stand up a weekly check-in on these issues that we'll be a part of with other agencies. Um we also um had representation with the county the county exec um uh hosted a roundt um yesterday on some of these issues and we were represented there and we'll work with them as well. The city was there, a city attorney was there. So we really um trying to make sure that we have good partnerships um with anyone who can help us get facts on these issues.
014We revised our web presence on this just to advise the con community that I think we just um made that revision yesterday or or today. So there's some new information that we posted. There's a link in this connection, but we'll we'll get it to you as well. Um, and I've also updated um guidance to school leaders about we've been really clear about what um to do if law enforcement agencies show up on your campus, what you do when you're hearing about law enforcement in the area, uh, immigration enforcement, we were less clear about. Um, and so we think we need a more unified systemic response than a buildingby-building response, which we do in many other cases. and it serves us well. The again in in most other circumstances, people have facts to work with. Um
015so we're trying to find ways to support getting um facts and uh in into our process so we can make a more coordinated decision. Um so after this meeting and some um work we need to do now is in translation now. We will also update the community on the process changes we've made as a result of learning things uh next week or last week and we're doing some training with school leaders this Friday. um they have the guidance we want to have a discussion with them as well um uh on Friday and then we know it's not just school leaders you know their admin teams and others you know a lot of people um particularly when things um are circulating social media or otherwise you know the whole school community our whole district community knows
016things so we um need to find better ways to train more staff on this so that uh is still in the planning stages how how to make sure everybody knows what they need to know when they need to know it. Um, and we have these circumstances with, you know, other things, uh, you know, monthly drills. We even have other tests. I think in this case, we want to be um thoughtful about making sure people know what they need to know versus um making people feel like this is a credible threat of something that is going to happen because there really hasn't been contact with this kind of enforcement at in in our system or in many districts. So um and um that everyone's really heightened sense of awareness sometimes works in our favor. Sometimes it
017um can um create a lot of concern and anxiety and perhaps can run counter to our message that school is the safest place to be. If we're, you know, a little bit too heavy-handed and talking about the threat of this, are people going to wonder if school is the safest place to be? So we we really again we need more facts but the whole discussion um is kind of traumatic. So we need to figure out how to support families um support students and then we're getting lots of requests um for uh supports you know if families are facing their own circumstances and that's something um you know we're not exactly set up to do. So that's why we want to work with partners on, you know, what can we do to uh connect people to
018resources um again and so that's why partnerships are critically important um both with the city and the city's office of immigrant refugee affairs and the police department for situational awareness. Um the Puget Sound ESD is also convening districts and so participate with that. that I mentioned that um uh the county executive has also raised the forum and will participate. Um we have many community organizations that have offered to help us and are providing resources to schools. I think we want to catalog uh catalog that and inventory a little bit better and just get coordinated on who's doing what. Our labor partners are working on this as well and we're working with our um contractors. We've gotten this question several times about yellow school buses. Both our um providers have a protocol that mirrors ours about
019act, you know, we're treating access to a bus the same way we're um treating access to our buildings. I think we have um uh continued work to do with uh uh program providers that work out of our buildings and other uh people that rent our spaces or in our you know how do we um uh make sure that they have the resources they know the district stance and they at least understand our procedures and understand what their procedures might be. So, um, with regard to, uh, protocols, well, actually, Rocky, you're working with, um, school leaders on this. Do you want to walk through this? Um, because, uh, the schools division um will, this is really about issues that are happening in school buildings. So, I asked Dr. Torres Morales to talk through how how we
020expect this procedure to work. >> Thank you. Um, good evening, board directors. So, this is the portion of the guidance that Superintendent Podesta was referring to. That's an update to the original guidance because we had pretty solid information on what happens if someone actually shows up to the building. One of the issues we're butdding up against and I think many school districts are is what happens if there are things potentially going on in the neighborhood. And so, that's where um as staff we came up with this protocol right now. It's it's called the report or rumor of immigration enforcement. So if you're hearing, it's one of this similar to like if you hear something, say something so we can do an intake and figure out what's going on and do something about it. So we
021will be meeting with school leaders on this on Friday to go over this new portion of guidance and also intake questions that they may have. Some will be able to answer in the moment, some we may not, but be able to at least do an intake. Um they've heard a lot from their communities, but essentially what we're saying is one notify. So any staff member observing or receiving a report of immigration enforcement activity near a school on a school day should immediately make a timely report to safety and security and inform the principal. Consult our safety and security team will convene a central office response team if necessary and with the school leader and then assess the school leader and the central response team will identify potential safety concerns and determine appropriate responses. So, this
022is u this is going to be for any staff member. I would say even if you're a family member at home and you're hearing it, call into the school district, call into safety security. They have connections with SPD. They can do a lot of things to get boots on the ground for us to figure out like what's the threat, what's going on so that we can we can respond appropriately versus causing inciting any sort of panic unnecessarily. So, this is uh part of that. Uh next slide, please. here. This is what is our current policy and practice and has been, but we felt it important to bring it forward because we don't know if everybody's been clear as to what actually happens. So, this is more for clarity for the system. This is how this
023works. But these are the general protocols. If immigration enforcement is on our campus, like let's say they show up to the main office. So you you deny immediate access to the building. The front office and other staff should ask the person to wait outside of the building while you contact the principal. Reiterate that you must follow Seattle Public Schools established process and visitors policy to ensure a safe and non-disruptive school environment while the request is being evaluated. They are to be directed to the principal or the designate who's on site. So immediately contact the principal or designate. Call for security presence as needed. Do not share information. Staff should not share information with this person. We don't know who it is. One of the things we have to be aware of is some of the
024things we're hearing about are people who are doing impostor things. So we don't even know who people are sometimes. So people shall should not share any information. So do not provide any information about an individual, a student, a staff member, SCS employee. So this is the existing guidance. Now, let's say, for example, if it does appear to be an ICE official and they have an official warrant, the principal or designate would at that point have all of that information sent to our legal team so our legal team can vet it to determine is this is this valid legal information or not. And then we would take next steps as appropriate in accordance with our procedures. Next slide, please. context that um we're working with in our system and some of the referrals we want to
025make and so I think that is kind of the update of where we are. We know directors may have a lot of questions so we happy to take those. >> Thank you superintendent Podesta. I appreciate the amount of details shared in this presentation. I think the more the communication exists the better. Uh I also appreciate the website. I went on the new website today did a little exploration. I think that that will have some hopefully useful details. And then the last thing I'd say I think the the focus on partnerships is really encouraging trying this is not just us here it's our community and so how are we building those partnerships but looking to board directors for questions. Director Ranken. Thank you and thanks for um the the swift response to get getting this information
026together um for us. Um I yeah echo what um Gina just said that the partnerships and the community is so important that that and communication is I think how we deal with a lot of this. Um so uh a question about coordination with the city and you said you know we have protocols with other law enforcement agencies about letting us know when stuff's going on. So, is there like an agreement or understanding now with us and SPD that will SPD let us know if if they see something in the area or is that kind of too far removed from >> um No, I think they uh definitely will. It is uh not a written agreement. We had a long discussion last Friday >> um and that's been their common practice. We had an issue a
027few years ago, a school in the south end um that there was activity going on with the uh sheriff's department sometimes, you know, is in our city, but not that often. And um that protocol went through SPD. So they generally do if there's a safety concern. Um they acknowledged they were having the same problem. The mayor's office and the chief's office said, "We were having the same problem you were having." um last Tuesdays and we were getting lots of calls too and then they skyrocket after we made announcements and so we that we really need to talk first before so I think um they have a vested interest in um making sure because our actions um you know the city is less likely to do some I mean they might have police around and they
028might be monitoring things but you know they're not likely to close parks or close city hall or do something and then announce it like we did. So, they're very interested in supporting us and helping us. And they're again, that's why they're standing up a rap a multi- agency rapid response team and want us to be a part of it. Um, but like everybody we've talked to um at other districts at the ESD um is commiserating us with us saying, "Yeah, we have the same problem." you know, how do you how do you um validate this information? And we have a long history of other um social media threats. So, yesterday a few schools went into shelter in place because there were um roocalls that went to schools um threatening violence at the schools. We did
029what we would do in this case, made an assessment, thought, you know, an abundance of caution. Um we'll go into shelter in place particularly uh for schools with open campuses. in talking to law enforcement and the ESD. Um these calls went to schools all over the state. And so um this this is not unusual. I think the circumstances last week um and given the really heightened environment that we have right now. Um uh people felt they had to act um really really quickly. And I think again since we're trying to substantiate um reports and nobody's actually seen anything, we do have time um to make a systemic decision and we have practices to do that. We just need to make it clear that that's what we need you to do in this in this case.
030>> Um does our school I know we have you mentioned the um calls going to schools not related to ICE, but we do have a really robust school-based threat assessment policy and procedure. Do we need to make changes to that to specifically talk about this or >> I um I think in broad strokes it's about the same. It's the same people that would be gathered, you know, um uh we lean on safety and security, you know, to leverage their relation operational relationship with the police. So >> I think it's hard to build a flowchart for every possible circumstance in this. It really comes down to get the get the usual suspects together inside our organization that know about these things. Um find out what people know, find out what our partners know, and then um
031decide actually what's appropriate. Um in the CA, you know, if some of this had been substantiated, certainly what's appropriate for an open campus is might be different than what's appropriate for an elementary school. So I think we also need to think a little bit more clearly. So what is the problem we're trying to solve? Exactly. Um >> certainly if enforcement shows up on our campus, keeping everybody safe and keeping students away for it, a shelter in place makes perfect sense. If there's something happening six blocks away and the students are going to be on campus anyway. um does going into shelter in place what does that actually buy you is not crystal clear so that's why I think people um need to come together assess the risk and assess what is the solution um if
032this happens 10 minutes before dismissal right >> then we have another uh problem um to think about so that's why um it's not um at all fair to leave this all in the hands of the the building principal to try to figure this Yeah. No, I'm really glad we're thinking about this and I'm really glad that it was um you know an abundance of caution type situation that is leading us to have this conversation. Not there was something really traumatic happened and now we have to figure this out. One other thing I wanted to ask is Skip Hop Drive and other um uh transportation that kids are in. I I know those are I have other concerns and questions about about contracting with individual drivers. Um but this mentioned specifically for student and zoom are
033we also do we have expectations of um >> we we do have those I think we need to formalize those a bit more and there's you know a kind of independent contractor model and some of those business models so it's a little bit more complex and >> but if we're paying them to transport our students they should >> I'm absolutely sure we can get >> um that uh level of cooperation. I think the problem is it's again different um it's not like boarding a vehicle like a bus and and um and so we'll have to work through that and >> um and you know in all these it's um when you come to approach a school and a school leader there's a lot of infrastructure there and the transportation system is you know is going
034to be a different kind of challenge. >> Yeah. All right. Thank you >> director Lavali. Yeah, I'll try to keep my questions minimal, although you're very much aware I have many and have emailed you a lot of them before. Now, um within your notification step, you have that um someone will make a timely report to safety and security and inform the principal if something is seen. My guess is that it something suspicious being seen by one person will probably be seen by more. And as we saw on Tuesday, um that can go very quickly on social media and go very quickly through text message threads and communities and I think the speed of that will actually increase if anything and not decrease. So my my question then is how do once we've done that review
035and assessed everything and decided the threat level and whether or not there's um a shelter in place or what the action is from the school community or the area schools. How do people get that loop closed? So, do we um discuss with the school what happened and then do they notify families that uh that that anything happened or cuz my fear is that the message is going to be out there and someone will have gotten a text being like ICE is two blocks away from your kid's school and they're not going to hear anything at all from the school even though we've done that work. We've faced that circumstance many times with social media threats that um we've had bomb threats at 9:15 and it's completely on blast and uh we have many many calls
036and we use the same procedure for that. So um we would uh provide supports to the school so there's consistent messaging. Um that was one of the challenges in um messaging that came from a particular building. um a phone call uh from a private school to one of our schools somehow in that communication turned into a credible threat and that there no evidence that there was a credible threat that we're that that's part of the issue is we're not seeing things um that that actually anybody has been able to confirm. So we just need to take a beat but that message will be out there. Um sometimes in our process the first messaging is we are aware of this. You know what this is what we're doing right now. >> Is the district responsible for
037that messaging back to parents and the school communities or is the principal then responsible for that communication? >> That's typically part of the assessment. Um we want the principles you know who have relationships with their community. Is it a multi- so if it's a multi-chool affair I think we would do that out of the central office and we would provide supports they might um using the various technologies we have they it might come from the building but um our public affairs team would help with the language um and get a consistent message out but we unfortunately we live live in a world where we are used to reacting to things rapidly and understand that there's social media aspects to it in terms of people hearing things and then the minute we do things, students of
038of course are um texting each other, texting their families. And so that's why we typically try to get the word out really quickly if we ever go into shelter in place. >> It's just um we did it yesterday and it um for multiple schools it didn't because of this other threat we were disciplined about the um communication so that didn't turn into a thing. Um and again the backdrop um given what's going on in Minneapolis is a lot different. So everybody is really wound up and and so we want to not you know exacerbate that also. So we're trying to be measured and just take a breath. This doesn't take that long. We're we're you unfortunately we're used to doing things like this. >> Um I do want to have a quick one or two
039more. Um, and following kind of what Director Rankin was saying with the additional vehicles, I know you talked about buses and stuff like that as well. I'd love to see or get updates at some point into what, you know, drop off looks like. So, not just are they safe on the buses, but is there any security that we're not security forces, but like if if a bus driver sees something suspicious, can they keep a kid on the bus and notify the family that they will loop back around when something is sure to be safe? Is there any planning around different threat levels like that for our contracted services? Well, those aren't our employees. Uh the same process would apply to them. That that at that point becomes a report of potential enforcement and we would
040um we'll work with our service providers to say also we need you um to uh participate in this process if you're if you're seeing something again. And those are it's good for us that we do have those eyes on the street. And then um we do have uh processes in place if um a driver feels it's not safe to um release students at a particular stop or whatever there's something else going on there that they always do that. So it um while this is a unique circumstance, it does have parallels to other risks that we face. So as much as possible, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel here. We're trying to be clear about when to apply the tools that we already have. And so I think um we have things to work with
041this. There are differences to this and so we'll have to adjust as needed, but uh that's why we have this team and that's why um Julia is faced with hurting as many cats as she is um uh to try to make this work. >> All right. Thank you. >> I don't know who put their card up first. Director Smith. >> Thank you. um for the um notify, consult, assess. I am curious if during the assessment phase there are any plans to make use of sort of external resources. I think there's a lot of community organizing. Um I'm not sure it could get sticky making decisions based on um you know just like social media reports. I'm not I'm not saying that. But if there are any any ways to leverage some of the organizations that
042are, you know, becoming active in trying to help. >> I'm I'm sure there will be and um that's why we really appreciate the city and others convening, you know, broader groups to see how they're uh plugging into that. Um typically when we face these circumstances now school leaders or other administrators are part of the conversation and they have uh contacts as well you know so so what are they hearing and um again we've faced many social media threats and have um reached out to others in those circumstances. So, yeah, we're going to need all the help we can get. Um, and again, trying to um calibrate this so it doesn't turn into do, you know, do we need a lot of people to approach a school with whistles or something, you know, because that's its
043own problem. And so, um, but that that's why if that conversation could be two-way, that would be really important that, um, yes, we need your help or, um, we need everybody to take a beat and just make sure we understand what's going on. >> I'll say it is easy to envision a future where we we need shifts of parents with whistles, but that hasn't happened yet, doesn't we? Can be optimistic. Maybe it won't. I would hope for that. Um and then for the training for school leaders and school staff and for the leaders it's there's one day um and so I'm curious whether is that anticipated to be sufficient. Um there was I think during the public testimony last week and then I've heard had some input since then about the concern over um you
044know stu like students it's dramatic for students to be in the shelter and play situation. Um and so having um the teachers and staff in the schools have sort of like training on the language and how to handle that. You know it's aside from of course reducing instances as much as possible. We um we schools do monthly um drills on a variety of um responses and we've been careful thinking about you know what involves students um you know uh we need school staff and people to understand um how to respond in the case of an active shooter. We're careful about well those types of drills u don't necessarily involve students I think. So we need to uh uh do the same in this case uh that we want to make sure everyone is ready at
045this point in time you know based on the history and um it's it's hard to forecast where this is going to go there really hasn't been much activity certainly in our schools in the state really nationally enforcement at schools. We don't want to overstate the risk because we're also just as concerned about um people raising concerns of is school a safe place to be. We feel that it is and so we don't want to discourage people by overstating the risk of this but we also want to be ready and so that's a balance that we're trying to figure out. Dr. Torres Morales. >> And then in terms of the training piece, I can speak to for the school leaders. Um we are doing this Friday. Uh we did do it uh I think it was
046January of last year, but I think some of the feedback we received and we're aware of and this relates to some of what Julia was stating earlier about just the federal response piece in general. We have a meeting with leaders every two weeks. We bring up operational issues. So what we have committed to is that we do need to bring federal response issues in general up more into that agenda. Um a lot of times it's driven by what their needs are and there's operational things, but this is one of the things that they've also said they want to make sure makes it to the agenda more often. Um and I think it'd be yes immigration but also a little bit more global on some of the other federal response things that are going on. And
047I think as part of those discussions, we would be asking school leaders, so what do you need um in your building? What can we supports can we provide um to make uh to help make sure you're ready? >> Thank you. U and I also want to state just there there may be trauma around like the district's response to you know immigration immigration enforcement reports. Um, you know, we'll do our best to be balancing, you know, how much we react and how we react, but ultimately the the trauma isn't coming from the district. It's other other source. So, >> thank you, >> Director Miseri. >> You maybe just spoke to it slightly, but just want to make sure I understand. So, I see the um the January 30th training with school leaders. Some of the protocols
048on here are for everyone in the building, not just the leaders. So like when is that how's that getting communicated out? When's that training just what's the what's the plan to get this out systemwide, not just to the building leaders? >> And I think that's a discussion we're starting with leaders. Um we roll out many things that they say they can take it from here um in how they work with their staff. we're going to need to talk to them about what supports can we provide for that. Um, and we're trying to keep these protocols as simple as possible. Um, that um because as with other um uh safety based things, it needs to be something people can keep in their head, not run to a three- ring binder to figure out what to do.
049So hopefully this training is not really that exhaustive. The first step is you're not on your own. Call safety and security and we'll convene um helping you with this assessment. Unless unless there's somebody at your door, then we have this other process um that it again mirrors our general approach to law enforcement showing up with a warrant at our school. So we just remind people this might be a different flavor and we might be in a different time and um um some of the uh challenges we all face about this you know heighten the emotions but the procedures are pretty similar to procedures that we have but so we don't I I don't want to say we've got that all figured out but we understand that it can't be just the principal who knows um
050it it needs to be administrative staff needs to be the front office staff and then teachers need to know what their piece of it Or so is it >> is it the responsibility of the principal to make sure that all those pieces >> Yes. >> of the puzzle know what's going on or is that going to be a centralized district? >> Ultimately it will be we'll be asking them what what supports do you need from us to carry that out um because we want to do this quickly. So some of this going to have need to happen at the building but they'll need to get supports from us. >> Got it. >> I don't know Rocky if you want to add anything to No, I think that's >> when you think about safety protocols, those
051are things that are trained on and talked about at the building level. And partly because all of our buildings and our campuses are different and so how they're actualized is different. Like a shelter in place at one school is not going to be exactly the same as a shelter in place at another school. So that's part of the reason, but some of the conversation we're going to have on Friday is to probe at that a bit like what do you need from us to make this happen? If there is something that they need that the central office can provide whether it's through webinars or something we would be happy to help as needed so that this gets this gets over the line. >> Building leaders produce you know emergency response plans annually. They test them
052monthly. They have a their building safety team. So there's some infrastructure in place. Um, we know some of this is new, so they'll need some help, but um, building leaders and I think we'll stand ready to um, work in their buildings, but they'll need some help from us if because we also want consistency. The nature of these threats is it probably not going to be one building. It's going to be multiple buildings. And so that's where we're trying to avoid one building reacting one way and another building reacting a different way. >> Vice President Briggs. Yeah, real quick. Um, just on the topic of transportation, we talked about our um, contractors and Skip Hop being one of them. What about uh, Sound Transit and our kids who who ride uh, public buses? Do we have
053any communication with them around this? And what what can we tell parents whose kids ride public transportation to school who may be worried about that being like a like a dead zone so to speak um of where they're not, you know, being protected. >> Transportation um is reaching out to their metro contracts uh contacts. I don't know where we are with Sound Transit as well. Um we um often work with them on safety issues typically more related to the stops than the vehicles. Um but and then we are expecting both the county and the city kind of roundt function to um to pull them into that. So that that's why uh we're hoping not to do this have to make every contact ourselves being able to leverage these weekly uh mayor's calls to get everybody
054at the table and to know how transit agencies we talked to them about that specifically today. >> Great. Yeah. And I think when I said sound transit I meant metro but um >> our our students do soundit though. >> All of the above. Um but I guess yeah so that that totally makes sense but just it's more about the I guess maybe what I was asking about more was the communication piece to parents. Um >> so we're trying to understand what their stance is now. So what are you guys doing right? um if um you face enforcement on a bus or link light rail and how can we communicate that and then or how can we make sure there's an information hub because it's going to be hard to keep tabs on everybody's strategy and
055you know are are we the authoritative voice for public transit agencies or not or what's going on in the rightway that's why we need to all be together and and get a a common party line because their their world might change and we'll giving out stale information, but we're we're definitely reaching out to them. >> Okay, Director Song, >> uh, thank you for answering my original question, which was it sounded like some of the information was being disseminated, principal, but there will be opportunity for them to re kind of bubble up to you concerns or needs that they have. and it sounds like you're taking advantage of the fact that you do have regular meetings with our principles and it will be a recurring kind of agenda topic. Um my second question was about what
056have you been observing around attendance um just kind of more recently and over the past year and what should we as a board be aware of in terms of um kind of the impact of that on the outcomes of our students? We've heard it raised as a concern. I don't think um we uh are able to quantify it or see um the changes enough to um uh attribute it to particular concerns. We're also not interested in um gathering a lot of information about um concerns students may have. We don't really want to disagregate data that way. Exactly. So, but so far um and correct me if you know differently, Rocky. I I we know people raise it as an issue. We haven't seen like, well, this is clearly a problem at this school. Um but,
057um >> yeah, no, I I I agree. I think one of the issues that we have seen is just the number of families we have arriving from out of country that used to be fairly robust given that we're the city of Seattle. Um, I haven't really seen the numbers from this fall yet, but I know through the spring last year, post January, we did see those numbers start to plateau and quickly with obvious reason. So, >> Director Lavali. >> Yeah, real quickly, I just wanted to loop back to um some of your answers from Director Miseri's questions. When you're meeting with principles, I've been hearing the concern from community that there might be different applications of this in different buildings, quoting that some of it may or may not be needed. You know, if there's
058a sign in the window or something that says that says that they're going to keep ICE out unless there's a judicial warrant, but it's not in another school's window. Does that create confusion for parents who start to think, "Oh, my kid might be safe at one school but not another." So, I I respect that like each building has some differences within them, but what are we going to be providing consistently across these schools as well and what you know there needs to be some more clarification about what things are different about the schools that the principles are deciding and what things are the same that we want parents to know. So, the fact that ICE will not enter our schools without a judicial warrant potentially posted in the very front of the building so that
059it's very clear to families who are entering to know what is happening. Um, or that information printed out and translated into appropriate languages. Um, so I I respect what you were saying with that some of these differences are needed based on the schools and left to the principal's discretion and how are we balancing that we need consistency as well. >> I I think um well our discussion so far with principles is they would appreciate consistency and guidance on this topic. >> Yeah. And that's there's and I want to clarify what I was talking about is actual procedures like structural, physical, building wise, but part of the conversation that's going to come Friday is around exactly what you're talking about and what's the district stance, what is it going to be, what what do we need
060to provide so that it's consistent too, that it's actually even with our own logo on it and all those sort of things. So that is going to be part of our conversation on Friday. >> Thank you. And we'd like to hear from school leaders, you know, the temperature taking they're doing with their communities because maybe a sign like that is helpful or maybe it somehow we're telegraphing that we think this is a reasonable threat. So even though um we wouldn't uh let enforcement into the building without a judicial warrant that we're really concerned that that's going to happen. and are we are we creating concern? So I I I think I want to understand um what those what that messaging does um uh you know and and is it helpful? Is it certainly people need
061to know it? They need to know our stance. Does every student need a reminder every day that there is a um potential threat of enforcement and we haven't seen it? And and so I think we just want to have that conversation. Is this actually helpful or is it um raising concerns that will um maybe manifest themselves in these attendance issues that we're worried about? Um and so I I don't know the answer. I think school leaders understand their communities and we'd like to hear from them. So, is this going to um is this helpful? Is it going to be reassuring or is it going to create an anxiety? And at some point, we may absolutely need that, but is are we ready? And or how do we temper that message? Do we temper that message?
062Um is something I think we need to think about a little bit, but we certainly want the community to know our stance. Do we need a neon sign every day? I'm I'm not sure. I that's I I think we want to be thoughtful about that. >> All right. Thank you, Dr. Torres Morales, Superintendent Podesta, and Miss Worth. Uh we're going to move now or transition now into our budget work session, but we're going to do a sort of staff switch over. So, we're going to take a 10-minute break. Uh allow staff to kind of maneuver back into we'll have a lot of staff up here for our budget work session. So, but let's come back and let's we're going to start exactly at 5:30. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey. la. Heat. Heat. N. Heat up
063here. Heat. Heat. What you got? As promised, we're starting right at 5:30. We're going to reconvene and we're going to move into the budget work session. But we're missing our superintendent. >> I I kept on talking for too long. I kept him talking for too long. >> Dr. B, are you >> gonna kick us off or you want to wait for Fred here or for Superintendent Podesta? >> There we go. He's back. >> Yeah. >> I'm sorry. >> Replace me as superintendent. >> I I told them it was my fault. Yeah, >> it's nice to see all the staff we have here as we work kind of move into our first budget work session of the year. With that, I'm going to pass it over to Superintendent Podesta. >> Great. Thank you again, uh, President
064Top. As you can see, we've decided to try to outnumber the board um as a new strategy on on everything, but um so we we do have a ri revised format. Um and I will confess um uh right at the top of this discussion that this presentation is going to be a little bit more form than function because of um the timing of where we are as an organization right now. Um uh we'll probably talk a bit about process, talk about things that aren't exactly, uh budget numbers, but we really do want to have a more comprehensive discussion um tonight and going forward and hear from um my colleagues our past practice actually since I've been at the district in general, but really as we've been struggling with these deficit, structural deficits the last few
065years, these discussions have been um the superintendent and the district's chief financial officer coming and talking about that structural deficit and what we're going to do about it. So that ends up we spend 100% of the time talking about 6% of the budget that we're trying to figure out how to solve problems for. And that's critically important. I don't mean to downplay that, but um uh at our retreat at the retreat the board held last summer when you took your budget vote, you made it clear that um that that overall process wasn't necessarily working for you. You wanted to hear more. You wanted more substantive information. Again, at this point in time, we're going to try to satisfy how we're doing that. We're going to focus on a how we're trying to align to um
066the community's goals that the board has articulated and and we'll talk a bit about our structural deficit and what we're thinking about doing it. We're not presenting a full proposal and um so we can assuming I can make this thing work. So again, we want to um the three topics we want to cover is the work we're doing to ensure that um our budget will be aligned to the um the our strategic goals. Right now we're at a state where we have a draft strategic plan. Again, that's been very intentional that um we want new leadership. We want new leadership in the board and with an incoming superintendent to finalize that plan. Uh we want to again uh this is where we get back to our regularly scheduled program. We want to talk about the
067budget deficit that we've been um dealing with and what our current circumstances are and then talk about some of the options that are under consideration um and uh what we know about those so far. This is still under development. So I probably already uh uh buried the lead here but so again we're what we are going to talk about um today is a a high level overview of our process where we are with the strategic plan the and that's where our colleague my colleagues can um particularly on the academic side of the house can talk about um the investments we'd like to make um how we align resources um with our goals And then we'll get into and if we have to make shifts and adjustments what those might look like. We're not again bringing
068a line item. I mean in a perfect world we'd have that all figured out and have a very detailed proposal. I just um don't think that makes sense as we're finalizing a plan. We want the incoming superintendent to weigh in on it and um I just don't think it's helpful for me um to write a check that somebody else has to cash. Um, so this will be um a little bit not exactly what we might have done normally in January at this time, but I think um there'll be some new information here and a different way of presenting it and really would like to get feedback if this is at least a step in the right direction. All right. So, we want to start with an update on the strategic plan and this isn't meant
069to be an indepth discussion of the draft strategic plan, but just kind of where we are in the process and again we've completed a draft that we'll go into that um uh superintendent Sheler and I will go into it in more detail at the retreat a week from Saturday. Um but we want to uh talk about it a bit with regard to um uh how it affects resource allocation and the analysis we've done about resource allocation and um how we're trying to keep our eye on the ball about what the priorities need to be for the budget. So uh I uh don't need to explain to the board goals and guardrails but for um uh everyone you know as a planning process mission vision and values are usually where you start these plans. Um the
070community has articulated its vision and values and the um and those have uh been codified uh by the board in two policies that represent goals and guard rails. Um and that was the northstar for the strategic planning team is as you think about a strategic planning process and you think about how vision and values fit in those are documented. So we didn't that step was had been accomplished by the board. So that was kind of the entree um to that and the um you know when you all told the district's been working on this starting with the board work you know for well over a year in terms of the engagement that led to those. Um and then in this spring you know we started uh working on um evaluating our resource allocations and developing
071strategies um to address our our goals. And um so at the retreat last um summer and we um the board you know we had a lot of discussion about how it's hard for directors to see in budget proposals that were at play as well how do those you know link to the most important things and I think I was honest and saying well you know we want to live in a world where um the budget is a funding plan to achieve our goals, not just, oh, we're $80 million short. What are we going to do about that? And so that's been our process as we're working backwards from our fiscal realities and then that kind of implies a plan and we trying to move to we have the plan first, figure out what's most important.
072So that could create issues that are bigger than, you know, are beyond our um structural deficit if we say, well, not only are we x million short if we do nothing, we don't want to do nothing. We want to shift resources to something that's more important. So that, you know, creates a bigger problem to solve. It's not that's really not the right way to say it. You know, we've identified those opportunities, so we need to shift resources. So, we we want to do this in a different order that we have a plan and we trying to figure out what we can afford and how we're going to fund that, not let's try to do least harm to the status quo by prioritizing um expenditure reductions. And so, we want to think about this differently. Again,
073we're not ready to articulate all of that yet, but um we want to make sure you understand how we're doing this. And I would like we'll get to a point where my colleagues can speak for themselves about um what they're doing with the money that um they are accountable for not just what they're not going to do because we're trying to balance budget. So, um you've seen this before many times. I think up to now we can talk about again as I mentioned um the work the board did to develop goals and guardrails. Um really informed our planning team on so what are we trying to achieve? What's um Seattle public schools definition of success? um analyzing. So are we even in our current state allocating resources to align with those goals and we learn
074some things that we are but maybe not to the extent we think we are. Um and then try to understand and are those things working? What is what um kind of return are we getting on that investment? And then we've uh gotten to building a draft plan um wherein we again look at those priorities worked with a very broad uh interdisciplinary team on you know what are the specific um priorities strategies and initiatives that would help us address um uh meeting those goals. where do we need to make changes um to our current way of doing business and then how do we fund that? We'll revisit this slide later because we're we're pretty much done with the first three um columns here. We're entering this last phase now and um and just in time um
075as we have new leadership joining us, you know, we can kind of finalize um validate some of the strategies that our team has um proposed and really looking forward um uh for Superintendent Sheldoner to to weigh in because you know the board made a great selection um somebody who's an educational leader who can um put his own stamp on this and um I think we you know we'll benefit from a fresh perspective and different experiences in other places. Certainly during the planning process we benefited from the benchmarking abilities that our um partner um educational research systems do I have that acronym correct? Um helped us because they could um they could uh strategies. Thank you. They could help us uh put our work in context. what what is what do our peer districts do which
076is really valuable and is difficult for us to do on our own. Um, so, uh, part of this evolution of how we do this, I think lately we really talked a lot more about how much um, you know, how much are we going to spend and really we've focused on, well, how how much are we not going to spend to try to balance this budget? Where are we not going to spend um, uh, to try to resolve this um, deficit we haven't gotten into? So the other 94% of the budget that we are spending are we what kind of value are we getting from that is it and uh we all know since our goals have been at the highest level been pretty consistent or last year's you know our progress has been flat so
077um I think we know what the answer is to how well that we we need to do something differently um and that's why we really want to focus on that um to not just think about well what and that's really what we've been um struggling with the last few years is well what can we do really that would do the least harm not where are there opportunities to really make a difference um not um preserve results that aren't meeting the goals that we the community has for us again this is a cascading u conversation where u the goals and guard rails really tell us where we want to the the role for the superintendent and the superintendent's team is so how are you going to get there? Um you know what what are the functional
078areas the priority areas where you need to focus on what are the general strategies and then what are the very specific um tasks that we need to do to accomplish um specific outcomes. it uh you know I was trying to think is there an analogy for this to me it feels like the goals and guardrails are the saying you know I want to be healthier is is a goal you know priority in the way we're doing our work is so what aspect of that that you know I want to be more active is you know that that's the priority is to become more physically active you know potential strategies well I want to focus on uh my heart rate and and cardio type um activity. And the initiative is well, I'm going to swim, I'm
079going to run, I'm going to do whatever. And that's really we're trying to get from the where do we want to be to how we get there as specifically as possible because you need specifics to say so this is worth shifting a million dollars to do this. You can't that can't be vague. You have to get pretty granular um when it comes to the budget discussion. So the priority areas um again for the this is the decided that being active is my priority you know belaboring my past analogy. We really our priority areas are curriculum and instruction you know making sure that we have a qualified trained and supported workforce um that we have aligned leadership that we're um coherent in how we're working as team. I think there's a huge opportunity there and that's
080where I think new leadership for the district um will help us making sure that each school has um what it needs to be successful um in each and every building and then um to keep leveraging our relationship with the public. Uh I always feel that you know the most important word in Seattle public schools is public. Um that we're a public system. um the more we could you know operate as cooperative and leverage all the resources we have in the community uh the more I I think we could achieve and whatever it is whether it's funding through taxes or other things we really need to have trust in the community um uh to uh and build goodwill. we have to communicate more um and engage better and be clearer. Um and so those are again
081broad strategies um that we've identified to try to organize this work around. Um so we also uh you have a discussion next week on progress monitoring. We've had baseline progress monitoring on uh the three highle goals that we've set. So um and we uh have set our own internal baseline data as part of the strategic planning work. We also have baseline data related to resources. So the board has seen um in our progress monitoring sessions baseline data on achievement and meeting the goals in the work we did with the strategic plan and the resource study we're saying. So are we actually allocating resources to those goals? Do we think that in places where we're facing challenges it's because we're not spending enough or we don't have enough resources or that gets back to the how
082much and how well is um because it's not always clear that it's a resource problem. It may be a strategy problem. And so we want to keep building that into that progress monitoring culture that um what are the results and then when we get into a budget discussion what are we doing to support those results and support whichever strategies we come up with. So I um am now going to ask my colleagues um to start um working through so how do we make this tangible with regard to other data that you've seen and other discussions we have and I think I'm turning it over um to Dr. Dr. Torres Mors. >> Good evening, board directors. So, I'm going to start off as Superintendent Pendesta was noting. This is a different approach for us. This isn't
083just about let's get to a budget balance. This is about what are we investing in. So, if you look up on the screen, this will look familiar to you. This is from uh we've seen this most recently in our progress monitoring session, but we're going to start by talking about um like the topline measure five-year target for second grade map. And this was around our reading scores for second graders. Just as a reminder, we are attempting to and will work towards what would be a 10% increase. That is also up for discussion once our new superintendent comes in next week. But related to this, in order to do that, we do need a set of strategies. So, between myself and Dr. Saraski, what we're going to talk you all through here um in the next
084couple slides is one, what are our targets? Two, what are some of the strategies that we are considering? And then three illustrative investment pictures. So a couple caveats I want to give. These are all draft. Um it's some it's some solid thinking but also draft thinking even the strategies. And same with the illustrative picture. The intent of the picture on the investment is to show how we're thinking about this differently in investing in strategies. Not necessarily that every dollar amount that's there is exactly what we'd be spending or that we're going to spend more on math versus ELA, but it was to give an idea of how we're thinking about this differently and putting money into pockets because we know for a fact from the board that that was a challenge in the past and
085getting clear on strategies down to dollar investments. So, I'm going to give it over to Dr. Staskki to talk a little bit about some of the draft strategies. >> Uh, good evening, directors. Mike Stroski, assistant superintendent of academics. So, um, we we love having this opportunity to be able to share and deprivize how we're thinking about our planning, um, for, uh, the budget and how we do that specifically, uh, in CI. And so, um, specifically, all the slides you you are seeing now should be things you've already seen before. Um what we're seeing here is for early literacy is that our priority area from our proposed strategic plan is centered on rigorous and inclusive academic experiences. Here are our strategies that we are considering. Um again it's on high quality tier one instruction and alignment
086and MTSS multi-tered systems of support. That should be um uh uh not new information for folks. Some of the emerging strategies and initiatives that are coming out as a result of that um are specifically around adopting a new curriculum for K5 for ELA that is based on a stronger foundational um uh skill building and vocabulary for our students to hit that uh K or excuse me our second grade goal. And so for us being clear is so we need to build out our our data systems which you see here and M our MTSS. Another strategy is uh developing and recruiting and retaining our educators. One of the things that is a primary focus for CI is the professional learning and development and support of our educators at the building level. that includes our IAS, that
087includes our teachers, and that includes our school leaders. And so those are the primary uh uh form and function of CI. So it's the curriculum, it's the assessment, and the instruction. And what you should see here on our early literacy is how it's uh directly connected to developing is really it's providing high quality job embedded professional development to our teachers and our school leaders. Um and then also this third area here is unified leadership and a system of accountability is performance management. And so we've heard clearly um from our our planning and our discussions uh with the board and the community about the uh issue of accountability. So for our early literacy goal is here are some of the strategies we are considering. Here are some of the uh major initiatives that we are also
088considering. Uh next slide, Dr. Torres. So if you look at the next slide, I want to reiterate this is an illustrative example. So this is nothing that is fully vague. Some of the numbers aren't fully accurate, but this is an attempt to take the strategies from the previous slide and actually codified them in a way that's going to say, hey, if we're saying um a curricular adoption, how much are we intending to spend on that? What are the activities involved in that? What are the initiatives involved? So, you'll see, for example, um in the middle the approximate 15 to20 million updated K5 literacy curriculum and support for schools, a all K through five staff, all students. I want to take us back to a couple board meetings where we heard specifically from the board around
089let's just say um science of reading training like what grade is this going through? What this example showing us is that we're hearing the feedback. We're saying this is a K we want to think about this K through five and then trying to put some numbers to it as to what it would cost. And so these um we have these for each of the goal areas go back to their illustrative examples and drafts but directly from feedback that we've received directly aligned to the goals and guard rails directly aligned to some of the draft strategies. So this is an attempt to take what the feedback was previously on how we're doing budget development and actually align it to all the way up through the goals and the guardrails and have a through line. Um next
090slide please. If we look here, uh, similar to our previous benchmark progress monitoring, you will see the grade six SBA goal once again at 10%. That's going to be up for a little bit more discussion once our superintendent gets here. We know that's a very rigorous target, but one that we have at the moment. And I will turn it back over to Dr. Saraskki to discuss what are some of the draft strategies we are considering in order to move us along that goal. So again, replication of of what you're seeing here is uh rigorous and inclusive academic experiences as being the priority. The strategy MTSS tier one instruction and alignment uh of our assessments. So specifically getting into our um curriculum embedded assessments as being a priority um for our strategies and uh and proposed
091initiatives reinforcing universal design for learning. So, planning for all learners uh in classrooms and giving our teachers uh the tools to be able to do that in professional development. Again, you'll see the the the MTSS. What you'll see that's different here um for this specific goal is the implementation for uh the need for consistent school-based implementation of tier 2 and tier three supports in the classroom. Um specifically related to math. And we know one of the areas that we've heard that for need for improvement is um beyond the tier one, what are we doing for students in the classroom for their uh specific content area and this specific content area being math. Uh the other area again just seeing P PD for our educators uh for developing, recruiting, retaining um but also providing high quality
092job embedded professional development connecting feedback and educator support. So how are our educators experiencing the PD that we're providing and how are we being responsive as a system from the building level to central office to what our educators are saying is working and the things that need improvement. based on what we're hearing from uh specifically around MAP and then again you'll see that performance management is again uh uh coming back up once again caveat around the illustrative example but to draw the through line through the goals and guard rails through the strategies if you look at the box around the 1.07 07 million. What you're going to see is um talking about an investment in mathematics, supplemental curricular tools, curricular embedded assessments, and those sort of things which align back to the strategies that Dr.
093Saski was noting. Additionally, if you look at the box uh to the right of the triangle around the 90 million, really calling out uh middle school teaching for math, instructional assistants, uh school leaders, APs, what those roles are going to be. And so really painting a picture of how do we think about this differently and invest in the strategies that we think are going to actually get to the outcomes based on the board's goals and guard rails. Uh next slide please. This slide should look familiar from our most recent progress monitoring where we were talking about the life ready goal. And once again you'll see what our our data and goal what our data and goals are. And I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Rossy to get into a little bit about what
094the draft strategies are. >> Uh again, just last week, um we spent um uh some time with the life ready goal and some of the things that we've already incorporated based on just our meeting last week uh and the feedback is the high quality tier one instruction in high schools. And so for us is prioritizing the instructional materials at high schools is a big leap um uh for us and a need for uh strategic investment moving forward. And specifically um in tier 2 here um is uh creating district-wide expectations and supports that go along with that for tier 2 supports regarding credit earning opportunities for our students and then also credit recovery which is a big priority for us in this life ready goal. And so having a systemic response, systemic supports um for not
095only our educators but most importantly centering students uh um uh in those supports and then also you'll see that the post-secary planning with the school link the high school and beyond planning is also being a um uh prioritized in not only the strategies but also our initial uh uh proposed initiatives or emerging initiatives. And then for us uh is also again recruiting and developing uh specifically teachers and educators around CTE um the college and technical and the career at CC CTE specifically is a a big need and then also what you'll see a little bit later is um uh an investment of what we can afford specifically around CTE that impacts all of our students and then again performance management being um the accountability measures that we're uh doing and implementing uh embedded in the
096uh life ready goal. So in terms of an illustrative picture for the life reinvestment a couple a couple places I want to draw attention to. If you look at uh the third box under the with the 1 million, you will see clearly that we are intending to invest in high school and beyond planning. If you recall from our light our last life ready progress monitoring presentation, we all had some big u noticings around where the completions of high school and beyond planning were. So this is saying we realize that is a thing and we need to invest in it. Also right to the left of that you'll see investments in CTE programming because we understand that that's important and that's coming straight from some of the strategies that is coming straight from the goals and
097guardrails we received from the board. So next slide please. In terms of the 26 27 strategic initiatives, if we go big picture on a on the full of the strap plan, once again noting that it is a draft. However, we do want to keep work moving and relevant so that when our incoming superintendent gets here, he's not coming in with with nothing ready. There is a prioritization that needs to occur. And so what this slide is looking to demonstrate is in terms of the strategic plan getting all the way to strategic initiatives, what are the things that we should consider prioritizing first. This is of course up for discussion and some final approvals, but this is our best thinking on what are the things we need to look at first. So, we're talking about for
0982627 stronger systems and structures for building the multi-tered systems of support, updating the early literacy curriculum and supports, planning for a revised instructional coaching model across all of our schools, expanding high quality inclusive preschool, and uh some recommendations to improve student credit earning opportunities and ensure all students have access to and succeed in high quality secondary experiences across the system. So in terms of having a big body of work, having investment pictures, what are the things that we think we need to start with in those plans and those strategies, this would be the list going into next year for investments. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Bleman and Superintendent Podesta to walk us a little bit through um planning timeline. So we had this slide earlier and in this presentation I said you
099know we've kind of completed the first three parts of this and we're really entering this transition plan. Our goal was by the time u uh new superintendent was ready to join us that we had a fully fleshed out draft plan that um can be finalized and that that would ultimately um inform the budget proposal that that superintendent would bring forward. So that's exactly where we are now. We're um uh Superintendent Sheler has um gotten deep into our um budgeting discussions and our planning discussions. Um Dr. Bleam Bleman and I are meeting with him weekly. The our transition team is also meeting with him weekly. Has a lot of questions some of which we can answer. Some of which the um these are interesting discussions and it's great to have a new perspective. Um and um
100that we're not starting in the middle in these discussions because we've made assumptions um we're I won't overstate it that this is a a zerobased budget process, but it's kind of close in some respectives because he um is uh really kind of sanding down to the wood on some things and and the questions he's having for us and is a very quick study and as I'm sure the board learned um during the uh selection process, you know, had spent spent a lot of time um studying our existing budget. Um has been tracking progress we're making. So um this is uh kind of where we are now. He's also u wants to do some more engagement with the board and the community. I think we've all had questions and I think that'll kick off really well
101at the retreat about hey we set a baseline we had a plan um that was then this is now before we just um let the pay uh the concrete dry um is there any adjustments we want to make and that's that's the point of getting some new blood in the system so we should we should really take advantage of that would be uh my recommendation um we uh also um need to you know look at the whole kind of multi-year approach um to this one other aspect of the way we've been doing this and just focusing on the structural deficit is um we've had a lot of one-time solutions so we keep it's hard to get stability really at a point now where we need to say so this is what we're going to do
102and we're going to do it sustainably um because otherwise we are kind of swapping out strategies every year and say well this year we could get away with that and this year and we'd like to you know have more revenue revenue more um be able to reduce expenditures but we really need um to get to we are doing things that we are going to live with through the life of this planning horizon otherwise um uh we won't be able to sustain any of this. So we wanted to stop here again. It's kind of the the first part. Um we really wanted to be um responsive to concerns from the board is hey these discussions get really granular mechanic mechanical very quickly. You haven't um really explained how you're thinking about this in relation to our
103goals. And so that's really what we want to accomplish in the first part of the discussion. I know we if um the board would like to entertain questions or we would like to entertain questions if the board has them at this point and >> I think uh do we want to go around the table or do we want to put cards up? >> Okay, we're just going to I'll go around the table with in uh so we'll start with director song and then we'll go this way. Um, something that kind of pops out at me is that a lot of this investment is kind of dependent on city levy money. So, kind of, you know, not just the preschool programming part, but um, I'm looking at the early literacy and the interventionalists. Um, thank you
104for sending me the data around what positions are funded. A lot of them were actually interventionalists. So, how has this team started thinking about how it will approach deal and their team and how you're going to kind of merge what their kind of expectations and goals with the levy are with what uh we're trying to do here? Yes, those discussions are ongoing um uh to um try to make sure that they're aligned um with the broad district goals and how their processes that have been kind of building um centric and and involve different partners, how we make sure that we're working with um uh with our central office staff and building staff to make sure we're supporting things that have impact. Um that's probably since um there's a new uh work plan and evaluation process
105going to the council um this spring. Those we're in the thick of those conversations right now and we've um um kept them a breast of our kind of planning as we as we go along. Um Dr. Bleman um Dr. Torres Morales or Mr. Howard if anybody wants to uh add to how our conversations with deal are going I'd appreciate it. Let me start with you Kurt. I text >> I think what you've stated Kurt Pelman assistant superintendent for finance is accurate. We're trying to partner more actively with deal. The FEP levy is turning over. It's a new levy cycle that's beginning for next academic year. So trying to I mean Ted's been leading this conversation for the last year or so to try and figure out how to make this transition. One of the things
106that Seattle public schools has now is a more clear direction in terms of the strate strategic plan and how those investments could impact student outcomes which is what we and deal are all about in terms of those investments. So the momentum for that is definitely happening right now and I know superintendent Schultner has some lots of ideas around how to further refine those investments as deal and those public school um partnered together on that. Yeah, and I think that yes, they do fund a lot of those things that we're talking about, but that's not the only funding that goes to fund those. Those are quite substantial investments that we make and some of that does come out of different funding sources as well. Head over to >> good afternoon or good evening. >> You're absolutely
107right. Um, a lot of these interventions have been kind of oneoff and they've been individualized by the building. I think taking a hard look at what is actually being invested in, how do we lift that up for all schools and that's what's being looked at, not just our 30 schools, but how does this intervention that we're doing affect all our elementary, all our middle, and all our high school. That's a different way of thinking than kind of leaving the academic ideas to the building and personalize it. How do we say if I go to Dunlap or Maple or go to McGover, how's that similar? And how do we help all kids? because the levy was for all kids, not just 30 schools. And so we're having that robust conversation. And then we're also looking at
108where we have imple implemented strategies. How does uh the city come alongside and and help us actually help us get to more students, not just the students we originally were identifying, but how do we go if we're only supporting 30, how do we get to 90? So those are the other pieces that we're looking at. Um, it's still right now, I would say, in a beta system where we're looking at all that, looking at map data, looking at SBA data, looking at all those data points to actually see where those investments have worked and where they haven't worked so we can recalibrate. >> I at one level, I think what I perceive from our city partners and saying, you know, if you could articulate a more comprehensive plan, we would that they would welcome that.
109um because sometimes they're not sure what our priorities are at the system level and start you know developing um conversations with individual buildings and get whatever results they get but they're not always scalable for us. So they they have asked us to weigh in um you know in a more concrete fashion and um uh before we get to the follow-up question Dr. Rosski, you know, in terms of um the strategies that you outline, can you give your perspective on, you know, how deal funding and deal interventions fit in? >> Yeah. Well, I think there's just a a tremendous amount of um opportunity for alignment between uh the city investments in Seattle public schools. I think um some really good uh well-intended things have been happening at buildings in isolation that um uh bring up big
110issues of sustainability number one. Can we afford to keep doing that if it's happening at a specific uh building? And then also is it supported um centrally um for us for um uh issues of sustainability and can we replicate it? Should it be going districtwide? And have we been intentional about being able to um be partners on uh potential interventions um that could be happening uh at specific schools that we can learn from as a system that help us as a system. um I think is an a big opportunity for uh uh engagement and partnership. Where I think we're getting better even on this front end is being very specific in our strategic plan about what we're choosing to invest in. And I think that can help provide the clarity that um our city partners
111um may have been lacking uh from us um as a system in the past. So if we say second grade reading, we say sixth grade math, we're saying, "Hey, this is the investment that we need for CTE, that we can be very clear about the types of strategies that we want to invest in." Um, I think would provide clarity and support and partnership from the city that they uh may have not received from us in the past and including expanded learning, so summer school, including preschool uh investments. And then the other thing that gets complicated or I don't want to uh lose is that the investments are just from the city but also we have federal funding. We have grants. Um we have um you see a lot of the the dollars that are assigned
112there are for FTE so for uh employees and those employees. Uh Director Song as you saw from what we sent you is just you know it's just not all coming from Seattle public schools. It's coming from other funding sources. So, what we want to be intentional about is that whatever staff are going to be internal to Seattle public schools, that we are aligned to our uh goals, that we're being consistent with our guard rails, and that also that the partners that we bring in in the future um are similarly aligned. And I know that um uh you know, Superintendent Ben has some thoughts on that that will help provide us even more clarity I believe moving forward. >> Okay. Can we move? >> Oh, okay. We'll do we'll do one question first time around because
113we will want to get out of here at some point tonight. Uh Director Smith. >> Okay. Um so just looking at the um investment pictures um and that and kind of in combination with the um strategic planning priorities. I feel like it still feels a little vague. Um and I think maybe the one thing I would want to comment on is the district-wide ongoing foundational embmentsments. It seems like that encapsulates a lot of what we want to do, but you know the 100 like for the life ready one for example like the $121 million for you know general ed teachers, IAS, interventionists and school leaders that that is for a a good part of it determined by the different union contracts. Um and so like that number doesn't really tell me a lot about what
114our district will look like with these investments. Um and then the same for the um CTE and vocational teaching and the counseling and I think so on the one hand we don't want to be looking at how it has been and then looking at the change from there but then I also feel like if we're not looking at you know is this different than what is it than what it was before have we changed anything? Um I'm just feeling a little uncertainty around that. So um that if you could >> yeah I can start >> maybe address that a little and maybe just going forward that would be a request for you know continuing to refine upon how these are presented um which I also do want to acknowledge that there is a lot of
115work that's gone in and I'm not I'm not trying to tear it apart or anything. >> No absolutely not. I think you're spot on. If you go to if we go back to um the draft strategic plan development, what we'll see is that there's goals and guard rails, there's priorities, there's strategies, there initiatives. So, some of what you're hitting on is is accurate. The initiative level, like an initiative map type thing, is something that is a lot more detailed that would get into the what's, hows, and wise, which is I think what you're requesting. And of course, once those are more fleshed out and we have set strategies, that is what would live in there. These maps are illustrative of the strategies, hence why they're not totally in the weeds or totally fleshed out. The
116other thing is some of this stuff, yes, is going to look like um in the illustrative investment maps is going to look like, yeah, that looks like that's like core sta staffing type stuff and and some of it is because when we're thinking about a budget, there's the strategies, but there's also we do need to run the district and we're doing budget creation. we need to account for what is it that we're spending um even to run the district and the strategies in there. So to answer your question, you are accurate. Thank you. And there is there so there's there is more to this that we don't have up here just right now because we're not all the way through full strategies saying yes with initiatives if that makes sense. I mean, Director Smith, you're
117in the fortunate position of not having to had suffered through these presentations the past number of years where we're really only talking about the delta. We were trying to make sure that we say so and as we think about um our structural deficit. I think you know this is a little bit like an iceberg analogy. So what's below the line that we want to preserve? Where are we think we might need to make changes and where is that going to come from? And again, this these numbers aren't even as solid as they might appear on the page. Um, and again, I confess there's a little bit more form than substance in this discussion, but we want to talk about how we want to talk about the budget, not exactly what the proposals are because we
118want time um for Ben to kind of review and weigh in. And so you're you're uh will completely cop to that that yes, this is going to be a little unsatisfying in terms of detail because I I and I hopefully that's okay because I think that's um rational where we are that if we get too deep into it and then have to walk it back then I don't think that's helpful to anybody. >> Yeah. And I I also do want to acknowledge your point that I haven't been sitting through these presentations historically. Um >> consider yourself lucky. Oh, it was >> Thank you. >> Okay. One last thing too is I think it's our intention is to be able to um whenever we get there, however we or whenever we do get there, we can
119tell you how we arrived at what we're choosing to invest in very clearly and what we're choosing not to invest in that were equally clear to you and the public about what we're no longer investing in. and why. So that we don't have um just a baseline this is how many position unfilled positions we're not going to fill that we can say no this is what we're choosing to invest in and why this is what we're choosing not to invest in and why and that it's clear to uh everyone and it's in alignment to our strategic plan priorities. Director Ranken. >> Um I'm trying not to jump out of my seat. Uh this shift in that this approach is I'm so excited about which, you know, I'm still going to be, you know, picky and
120critical, but like I'm so excited about this shift in this conversation. And Fred, you said something at the beginning uh about that we've the last several years focused on 6% of the budget and doing the least harm to the status quo. And that is exactly that is phrasing it that way is like I think what we've been trying to get at for a really long time is like okay but the the like baseline foundation doesn't seem to be working. we're kind of putting lots of things on the surface or we're always talking about things people are going to lose and we're not talking about 94% of the budget and whether or not it's effective and um so just like really appreciate the shift in thinking and um the you know how much and how well
121is more important especially at the board level but is way more important than how many FTE and how many this and that and the other when we never even talk about if it's affect if it worked. Um, and so, uh, I have a bunch more questions, but I'm realizing they're actually more to do with some of the, um, the strategies and goals that are less about budget and more about, uh, CI stuff. So, I'm going to I'm just going to hold those. I'll write I'll write them down. I'll send them in um, so that I don't take us into a different direction. Um, so I guess I don't really have a question, but one other thought is that this shift from that 6% and and doom and gloom and how are we going to make
122up this deficit and not ever talking about what is and isn't working also is going to have the impact. I think the conversation has led to this sense of scarcity and this sense in our community and our schools that quick everybody, you know, grab and hold on to everything stuff. what's going to get taken away from us and that's really not like that's not a healthy place to be and it's not a healthy it's not helpful for central office and the board to be perpetuating like you better watch out budget season's coming that that's just like not a good place to be and so I think just shifting this away from what might get taken away to actually what do you have what do you want moving kind of from this scarcity mindset to we
123have so much we can do and could do if we all talk about what we want out of these investments. We don't get to decide how much money we have to invest. We're not like you know we we can't we can't add more taxes and do other you know things to to a cert you know to a certain extent without getting permission from the state. And so the amount of money that we have is not directly within our control. we have to do the best we can for our students within what we have. And I think just talking about what can we do instead of oh my gosh, what's what's going to be ripped away um is is a I think a healthier way to approach it. And um and it's realistic too because when
124we talk about what do we have that's working and then what decisions do we have to make, it's connected to an understanding of what some trade-offs might be as opposed to just feeling like stuff's going to get taken away and we don't talk about if like maybe some of that's actually okay to let go of. Um so I just I really appreciate this and I have a lot more questions that I will submit by email about some of the other stuff. Thank you, >> Director Miseri. >> Yeah, I think in line with what uh we were just talking about, um I am interested to see the other side of the coin. So, I was doing like a little bit of just back of the envelope math on the intended investments and it's like somewhere between
12530 and 40 million assuming we don't have a new 40 million like what are the we don't have to answer this now but like I think it is it was really interesting when we were doing the goals kind of thinking about it as a series of choices and like what are you doing and what does that mean you're not doing and how are you really focusing on like taking the resources of a building or of a system and really focusing them on second grade reading for example and so I think it will be interesting to see as we go deeper into this. What are the choices that we're making that we're not doing that we're moving investments away from and how we think that is like setting up the whole system for success in these
126three goals. So, I don't think we need an answer to that now, but I am really interested in that conversation. Not to be deficit-minded, I know that it's good that we're talking about the goals, but I think that's an important piece of it. >> Vice President Briggs. Um, yeah, I I want to echo Liza's um appreciation for the new framing and orientation to this. I I really like um talking about it as we're we're making a plan and then we're figuring out how to resource around it instead of here's our small pile of breadcrumbs and like we can sprinkle a few here and here and here. Like it just feels way more student centered to start with the plan. Um, and so I guess I just have a high level curiosity around um, something that
127I think you said earlier, Fred, which was like um, trying to figure out where in terms of what is holding us back from meeting our goals. Is it lack of resources being allocated or is it um, the wrong strategies? And I'm just curious what how how close you are getting to determining that? Like what are is it is that becoming obvious um to you as you look into these um various strategies? This is where we need more money and this is where we need a different strategy or is that still coming into focus? >> My high level perspective of this is we have um some insight into what's working, what isn't. I think we also have some questions about what if that is scalable and what is when we get to the resource discussion. Um
128maybe Dr. Stroski you could weigh in and and Dr. Torres Morales. >> Yeah, I can give you one specific example is um so last year when we were all working um and and trying to understand about the direction we wanted to go with the the literacy goal uh in in elementary specifically. One of the things that we were have been finding um about our current curriculum was it was lacking in some spaces or some places for our students that um if we were going to go in the direction of second grade reading for the foundational skills that our current um curriculum wasn't matching where we needed to go. So in anticipation for that we were uh looking at uh the curriculum adoption specifically getting around uh looking at uh foundational skills that need to be
129filled but also at the same time looking at the the previous uh curriculum adoptions that we've had where some have been very successful in the implementation and some have fallen short. So when we say that we're going to be doing a K5 curriculum adoption, that means every school, every classroom, and then for us centrally, and I've had this uh discussion with Ben is so how are we going to do that? So how are we going to do that? And for us being able to uh think about some of our strategies of uh with our 13 priority schools in the previous strategic plan saying well that was some really good learning that happened as a result of that and some really good things but some things that were not scalable. We can't uh scale that to
130all students, excuse me, all all schools. But the coaching model is something that was uh something that came out of that that was worth investing in and figuring out well so how can we use that coaching model in the curriculum adoption uh to make it successful for schools, for teachers, for our school leaders based on lessons that we've learned. So for us moving forward is saying no if it's if it's second grade reading it's the curriculum that matters but also that every single one of our teachers and our school leaders needs the um uh a multi-year plan on how to do that is um you know our most pressing example and then also for us why we started so early and we'll and I'll be coming back to you to the board um and uh
131bathing giving you an information uh about the process. But uh Ben coming here, we want to make sure that he's good with the process moving forward so that we're sharing the the 31 schools um the 34 teachers that are are um you know doing some of the um the testing of some of the curriculum that's going on so that we can come back with a full curriculum adoption of process that the board can feel good about and that the community can feel good about. But that is specific lessons that we learned from our previous uh um uh strategic plan that we can't afford to do. The 13 schools, there's some really good things, but we can't afford to do that. But there are some really good strategies that came out of there that really benefited
132um our teachers and ultimately benefited our students that we want to, you know, scale. And so our our expectation is every single uh teacher who's a K5 teacher is going to um get that uh support up with the curriculum and that every single student gets access to that curriculum. That's our commitment. And so how do we do that is where we're we're in the process of planning. So that's just you know on mind real time example that's happening behind the curtain but also we are going to start pushing that forward. um for everyone to hear. >> And I think in terms of the funding question, I think that goes to I mean we can all answer that I think at the table. Do we feel like we're fully funded in public education right now? We
133know the answer to that, but um and I think Dr. Bleman's going to hit on that here in a couple minutes. We talk about what we see as what we should be spending on certain services versus what we get from the state. There are areas of significant gap. What we're saying is we unapologetically feel like no, this is what we need to spend for our kids. So, we do know there's a funding issue. Regardless though, I go to a point that Director Ranken made earlier. We still have a finite amount amount of money we need to do for this school year. You're in third grade now. So, with what we have, what do we need to do? And that relates a lot to what Dr. Sarasi is talking about around strategies. But to for us
134to sit here and say like, no, we don't have a funding issue. I don't think we would say that. But I do think we we would say given the finite amount of resources we have, what are we going to do about that? Director Lavali, did you want to go? >> Um, I appreciate what Director Ranken said about not getting too off topic, but I did want to point out within some of these strategies that in like the seventh grade math strategy, we're talking about stuff, but the kids that are going to be tested in 2030 are currently in third grade. uh the kids that are we're looking at high school readiness are currently in fifth grade. So this is you know or life readiness goal when we're talking about that goal in 2030 I think
135they're I don't know um but we're we're looking at kids that are currently going through the system and so it's not you know we've got to look at it and not just have it be the one factor of only what's going on at high school but what's going all the way through. That aside, um I wanted to get to the actual question and it was going to be a little bit more in the weeds which was um when we're looking at different stuff and I know CTE was mentioned, there are a bunch of funding programs that when we classify other classes as CTE and expand that program that we can get federal funding back for at least at this point in time that we are currently not. So, are there additional things like that that
136we can look into that other school districts are utilizing right now that can help us expand these programs that we're looking at that align with our goals and further reduce that budget from what we're getting right now to help us both provide services and increase our direction towards our goals. >> We have been exploring that specific issue. Are we leveraging our CT funding uh to the its highest value? I don't know if uh Dr. Bleman or Dr. Stroski, you want to address at least what we're how we're looking into that. >> Yes. Uh just yesterday uh Kurt and I um met with um some folks in leadership to speak specifically to that. Um and there's some things that we can be doing and will be coming back. And so when director Smith was asking the
137question about uh CTT CTE specifically that we can say um that in order for us to move forward there's some things that we're going to have to realign and by realigning is how can we capture recapture some dollars um and then how are some of the the funding mechanisms over time that we've been using for CTE um need to be readjusted and I think there's some some uh significant um adjustments that we can be making to exactly what you're talking about. Um but we got to get specifics and we got to run some models and then also know that we can um change some funding sources or funding streams but that has um a domino impact on how it impacts human resources staffing um sea um uh building master schedules. But for us, just trying
138to uh focus on the funding stream um and how we can maximize resources. We are having those conversations and trying to do some action in a very short amount of time. Is that accurate? Okay. >> Director Song. >> Um I I'll start with a comment. I um I think without examining our WSS in a sense it is maintaining the status quo. So it feels a little bit like we're kind of nibbling around the edges with these strategies and initiatives. Um I think we need to look at how the WSS supports or doesn't support those strategies and initiatives. So it was just a comment. I did see it in kind of this baseline but I I think that work is really really important. Um relatedly um professional development so that is you know uniformly a very
139big uh strategy that you all are pursuing um an observation that I have made in looking at our budget professional development is actually a pretty large dollar amount um and today I kind of learned a little bit about professional development. there's like different colored days. I think it would be helpful if this is a strategic priority for our budget um for the board directors to kind of understand like what is the overall strategy around professional development like collectively in all these veins. What are um perhaps things that we need to make uh change in our CBA around that? Um what are additional investments that we need? What can we change about the money that we're already spending on professional development? Um I I would love to have a 2 by two to just kind of
140talk about professional development. What is the universe that we have now and where we would like to go because it is a large dollar amount, but I'm having I'd like to see how it matches. >> Yeah. Um not to speak for Dr. Pritchette, but um I know that uh we would love to have those conversations uh in 2 by twos to not only talk about what the current state is, but also the complexities of uh professional development in Seattle public schools. um because um we have some data that uh ERS has actually shown us um that we would love to uh bring back up but also to talk about um the complexities between those different colored uh Wednesdays early release days and then also we have data that we're um generating from CI about uh
141all the subjects that uh are happening on those specific days and then how many people are attending those days and then also so where they're uh currently um connected to our uh strategic plan if they are. And so we we have we're generating that data and we have a a professional development steering committee where we're um trying to be very aligned um moving forward with all the positions that we have in in Seattle public schools that are uh responsible for some form of uh professional development in our system. it is a large investment and then also moving forward we want to make sure that our investments are aligned to our strategic plan our goals and our guard rails um and then our specific strategies moving forward so I not committing us but I'd say we're
142committed to doing it >> um to expand the topic a little broader we said one of our priority areas is really around workforce and making sure that we can attract and retain qualified teachers and give them the level of supports. I don't know Dr. Pritchette if there's anything you'd like to just add in general. I think PD is a piece of it, but um in the end um you know, educators is what make this makes this all happen. So, you know, no matter what we do, if that um if we don't provide the supports um and that's how these strategies are going to touch students. So, I I think it's just critically important. Thank you. Um I think that one of the things that do Dr. Stroski hit on was really looking at alignment. We
143have a number of um folks that provide PD throughout our system that traditionally over the last decade have been siloed and kind of everyone doing their own thing. One of the things that as um I came into human resources was really to look at what are the resources that we have um that are focused on PD and how can we start to align those to our strategic goals um to the work that other departments are doing. So um our PD steering committee that Dr. Stroski talked about is a collaboration between human resources CAI and schools. Um and we've had um the past year to really start to look at all of our resources. What are we doing? What are some of the things that we can be super intentional about that we haven't say in
144the past? Um we have teacher leaders within our buildings. How are we working and um utilizing our teacher leaders that are in our buildings that are specifically set up for professional development and supporting schools? Um have we done direct training with them? um to support what's happening um at a district level. We've also been looking at how do we align what's happening with our principles in the summer in our summer leadership institute. um how is that aligned to what's happening with our try days and then how does that then ultimately align to what you talked about around the early release days particularly um how are we supporting our teachers in developing professional development in our red days and our yellow days um that are teacher directed. So we really want to um support our teachers
145in that support our teacher leaders. Initially when we talked about early release days, the idea of that was really to give more time to our teachers to collaborate um to work together to improve um instruction for our students. And I think that over the years we've kind of gotten away from that. And so um some of the work that we're thinking about and doing and working together on is really how do we realign all of that work? So that is exciting. I'm I'm super excited about that. There are um committees within um within our district as well. Our partnership committee works on try days. How are we aligning the work that they're doing um with our district goals with ongoing training so it doesn't feel like there's a one-off that happens every um you know
146in August on a district day and then we don't ever talk about anything again. So we are looking at all of those. It is a long process. Um fortunately I have known Dr. Stroski since 1999. So we're um so we're breaking down those silos together and um and we look forward to continuing to do that work and to maximize our resource existing resources because I think that's an area that we haven't done um in a while. And so part of as we've gone through some of these processes is really to look at are we maximizing the resources that we actually have right now. >> 1999 So let let's move on to the update on the current budget situation. >> So this is where we usually start and um and I'm glad I I hope that
147background was appreciated in a different way of entering this conversation was appreciated. Um I think uh you know we have uh boundless goals for our students. So by definition, uh resources are always going to be scarce whether we have a structural deficit or not. We're always going to wish there was more. There's always going to be new things. So we're always really need to have a process to make sure what wherever that line is drawn that we're making the best use of that and that um we're making, you know, that we're constantly um in a continuous improvement mindset and making sure that we're allocating that. So, we'll we'll never be out of off this treadmill where what will we do with the next dollar, but what do we want to make sure um how do
148we make sure that we're doing the smartest things wherever that baseline is? And so, um we have challenges and um I'll ask Dr. Bleman to kind of walk through where we are and let me know if you want to drive. >> Thank you, Superintendent. Um, before I subject you to suffering, I think was the word you used or the doom and glue, I just want to pause. I meant that with love, but >> a second and sort of acknowledge the work that not only this team has done, but the education resource strategies team helped instigate to get this sort of what it I perceive having not been here since 1999, but for the last few years is a new focus on what the goals are and how the strategies and the budget can start to
149um inform those and move towards those. So um not only has the RS partnership been really instrumental in this, this group worked together for a lot of time on trying to coales around how we're approaching this discussion and then the details that will follow as we prepare the budget. Um the strategic plan task force community members weighed in. All of a lot of their work is evidenced in these documents that you're seeing there. uh a survey was sent out yesterday from uh Chief Redmond and myself around this topic. How does strategic plan feel to you as a community, the draft strategic plan and how some resource implications in that. So, just wanted to pause there and um just sort of acknowledge that this is a different approach and it's not because Fred is so smart
150and the rest of us are now just catching up, but because this has been sort of a collective effort of the Seattle public schools um community and leadership team. So, just wanted to pause on that. On to a little doom and gloom. So, this is just a quick recap of where the district has been. um when we get to the formal presentation of the budget, we'll get into some more detail around this and how it um affects where we're at today. But as many of you know, many one-time strategies were enacted, reductions at schools and central office over the last few years and then considerations of larger moves um and then a loan was taken out from our capital fund that's um being partially repaid this year. So don't want to bel labor this um
151but want to just acknowledge that um the work the intentional work around trying to bridge the budget gap has been um extensive and ongoing. Um here's a nod to our ERS work. Um just wanted to highlight a couple things. Superintendent Podesta said much of this already, but um limited state funding. We're not the only school district in the state of Washington experiencing some of these issues. Many school districts are. many school districts will in the future. Um, unique to Seattle's, there's some transportation um underfunding for what our students um are getting currently, some special education underfunding for what the needs are that are significant contributors to this. Um, and then just the revenue isn't sufficient to cover sort of what um is required to operate Seattle public schools. Um so ERS and uh the collective
152leadership sort of came up with some policy implica implementations implications. Um director Sans is talking about revisiting the WSS and how we allocate resources to schools in the context of the the way things happen. So that's work that is going on. Multi-year fiscal strategy. So many of these things these investments aren't going to happen overnight. um they'll happen over the course of time. And now we've got this focus and this direction on how we're going to use the $ 1.3 billion dollars to affect change for students at Seattle public schools. And then of course advocating for additional revenue and exploring efficiency or cost reduction uh opportunities is something that will be ongoing and important. Um, I think you've seen this information before, but four of the larger areas where we're underfunded for what Seattle public
153school students and community are getting now are around special education, multilingual services, transportation, and substitutes. Um, just want to highlight the substitute funding from the state of Washington hasn't changed since 2011 2012 for school districts. So, there's a significant amount of underfunding that's going on in all of these categories, but that one just feels um like a huge outlier in terms of the attention it has not gotten over the last almost as long as Dr. Bridget Goodman and Dr. Saraski have known well there. Um you've seen this as well. Again, one of the things that the district has done the last number of years is rely more heavily on one-time solutions, which is continuing to erode those the opportunity for those one-time solutions. And so, we're getting down to the the part where that we
154need to make some structural changes either on the revenue side or on the expenditure side. And so, again, back in line with our strategic objectives that are becoming increasingly more focused. And then again here you've seen this uh Superintendent Podesta alluded to the 80 million or $87 million um problem we're trying to solve for next year um while we're trying to make sure that the investments that we're prioritizing are um as part of that solution. Just a summary here. So absent any structural changes um in revenue or expenditures or both, this will just continue to persist. Um we do continue to anticipate increases in operational costs in legal services, utilities, insurance, um transportation costs, special education needs. Um as schools get smaller, there's more mitigation that's happening. Um so there's an enrollment impact there. Um
155highlighted those significant funding gaps from the state. Um and enrollment has continued to decline, not as um significantly as anticipated a couple of years ago, but it is still on a downward trajectory, which has obvious impacts on the financial situation. We've had a number of fire drills around federal funding recently. Um knock on wood, there'll be a resolution um next couple of days in DC around that. Um, we're anticipating currently sort of a flatish funding for the titles that we get from the federal government. So hopefully that's what the result is, but we've got planning around what if the case is different. Um, Dr. Bridget Goodman's going to talk a little bit later about compensation. We do have many, almost all. There's a couple that aren't expiring this year. labor agreements, the SEA agreement, the
156um 302, the two of our biggest bargaining partners are expiring at the end of this year. So, that's an opportunity or challenge um the district will need to build into next year's budgeting going forward. And then I mentioned briefly the strategic plan task force community group and the survey and how they've been helpful in trying to inform some of this work. And then opportunity and long-term challenge. There's legislation. There's good practice. There's a district policy around having a rainy day uh economic stabilization account. And so trying to rebuild that so that the district is on more stable footing going forward. Um >> did you want to do this or do you want >> um I was this slide is repeated a bit later. All I was going to say is part of our strategic planning
157process has identified, you know, uh, specific areas of future exploration and map to the uh, goals and guardrails. I'm going to circle back to this. There's a lot here. Not going to cover every point now or later, but just in terms of process that again, every step of the way, we want um be able to link to our highest level goals um the guardrails that represent our vision and then categorize them into actionable categories. So um I'm uh going to ask my colleagues to um present a little bit about at a very high level not to present their budget in detail but um some of the high level numbers just so you get a feel for them and then also um and in our attempt to link this to our goals you know what findings
158we've had in our resource analysis and things that we want to further explore uh to to bring that more detailed budget proposal and I think um Dr. Torres Morales kicks this off. >> Yep. So, good evening. We're going to start by talking about teaching and teaching support. This is a significant significant part of our budget. If you look at it as a whole, it is over a billion dollars. This includes our teaching activities, teaching support, and the principal's office. Just for some context, teaching means basically the expenditures for teachers, educational assistance, extracurriculars and supplies. support would include things like our librarians, uh, counselors, psychologists, health services, security officers, etc. This also includes things like textbooks, curriculum, instructional technology, professional development, assessment, etc. And then our principal's office al uh would include our principles, assistant principles,
159school office support, and school office supplies. So, next slide, please. >> And I'll just add that those are OSPI sort of activity codes. We're trying to maintain some consistency across the state in terms of how we report those. >> And so what we're going to get into here is a little bit of the diagnostic findings. So what you would see this slide basically talks about what do we spend compared to peer districts. So when ERS did the study for us, you'll see they coded the districts at the bottom, but they looked for districts across the country that have sim similar demographic profiles to Seattle public schools and then pegged us against those districts to see are we spending more or are we spending less in Seattle public schools. What they found is that in general
160we are spending more than peer districts. There are some that spend more than us. There are some that spend less. But in general, if you put it at an average or or the peer median, I should say, we're eight% higher, around $2,000 more per student is what we're spending in Seattle public schools compared to um other large urbans that are would be considered peers to us based on our demographic enrollment. Next slide, please. This uh slide digs a little bit more into our what we would call our special ed spend. So, as I noted earlier, as Dr. Bettoman noted earlier, Seattle public schools says this is what we feel like special education costs and then there's a certain amount that we receive from the state and there is a gap in between those numbers. For
161context to the right, what you'll see is that we actually um in terms of spending on our budget, we are higher than our other peer districts in the state of Washington. But when you look at actual spending per pupil with students with disabilities, what we spend, there are some districts that do spend more to more than us or on par with us and some that do not spend as much as we do. So to think that we're completely out of line with our peers, not not exactly. But this is what we think the cost of servicing our students is. And I would even say what we hear from community a lot of times is that there actually is need for more support than what we're actually getting. So it does beg the question as to
162what we're doing with the resources. But we do know there's a gap between what the state is giving us and what we think is appropriate for uh funding for special education services. Next slide please. Uh this slide gives us a little bit of detail that I want us to dig into. So one is if we look this is specifically looking at instructional assistance or instructional aids, pair of professionals as some would call them. And what you're going to see is that we do have a larger number of instructional aids when it comes to special education aids. The data that are not on this slide, there is a difference when we think about our uh what they what's noted here is the weighted median of national comparison districts in terms of teachers. And so while we
163are heavier on the aid side in Seattle public schools, we are not as heavy as other districts are on the teacher side. So when we're thinking about funding and planning and what we're doing, it does beg the question, is there something we may want to do differently in the future when we know that we actually staff less teachers for special education but more aids than what other districts do? The other thing that's uh if you can go back that's very important to note on here is the multilingual instructional assistant piece because if you look to the box at the top that talks about context. We earlier were noting there's a gap in multilingual funding but one of the important things to think about is in our district we do have instructional aids multilingual aids that
164is not funded from the state. That's a decision that we make that we fund that I think we all agree with. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it, but it is not something that we get funded for from the state of of Washington. So, it's something that we we are footing directly out of our our coffers. I'm going turn it over to Dr. Steroski quickly to talk in academics and then I'll be back with you all to talk about schools and services. So, um the the fortunate thing about this uh next slide is some of the conversation that we've already had I think will um uh be coming back up again. You you've heard us uh talk about this in a very specific way. But, uh just to orient you on this slide is
165where you see in the upper right hand corner range of uh savings uh 0 to $10 million. um is intentionally ambiguous um and intentionally ambiguous because of the decisions and priorities that have yet to be made. Um but what I wanted you to know for from the CI U curriculum assessment and instruction uh perspectives here is what I'm working with my team currently and have been working with my team um uh for a number of months now. Um and what we're working through and we will uh start with that first bullet is refocusing prioritizing our investments to be in line uh with our people and uh to our draft strategic plan uh that will reorganize the CI structure to reflect those priorities to reflect those strategies uh and emerging priorities. Uh so it's in an
166alignment. U because if we didn't do that, we would be out of alignment. That'd be the what we were discussing earlier as kind of the status quo of just protecting positions not aligned to mission, strategy and and priorities. So that is the work that uh uh my me and my team will be doing. Um and also that we want to focus our professional development to be very specific uh on our new curriculum implementation that we focus our professional development priorities to directly impact and support teaching is saying that um I know that's important to uh superintendent Ben is you know keeping the supports as close as to the classroom as we can um and our intention is to do that but also making sure that we're doing so intentionally in our structure um and also
167realignment of our uh centrally funded programs and positions to focus on the drafted goals. And so that was uh some um uh opportunity what we were talking about which is we know that there's positions that have multifunding sources but making sure that those are aligned um to our strategic goals and that also if they are going to exist they exist for um very intentional reasons not just historically this is what we've been doing. Um the other thing I think is uh very encouraging about the previous conversation we had is you'll see uh there is the changes uh to the way that career so CTE uh career and technical education is organized at the central office to maximize resources but also that they're offered at our schools regionally but also every school. And so that's getting
168back to our guardrails, guardrail one, um, of equity. Um, and then also that they're focused on the specific graduation pathways as a commitment. And so we're trying to build some fences around some of the things that we want to protect and CTE being one of them. But also in order for it to be protected, we got to get clearer about how we're going to do that and what are the opportunities for um, some alignment and some savings, but also some uh, focus. And then uh finally, how preschool and expanded learning is provided across the district. Um we want to no matter what we're going to continue the investment. The investment is how big is it going to be? And one of the encouraging things is that we're finding um uh some uh investment with the
169the Balmer group who wants to and who is investing in our expanded learning. So there's some opportunities here um for us to um work along with outside sources to be um funding expanded learning and also our prek. The things that I'm not considering at this time um are when you see these and these will be replicated from my peers coming after me is realignment's not being considered at this time for any number of reasons. um that we want to make sure that uh the change in leadership is supportive of what we're uh protecting but also the efficiencies specifically related to literacy, math, science and then also I'd say elements of the life ready goal are protected um and they're because they're foundational to the strategic plan and our investments. So as CI we have 119
170people that are in my division 119 that have multiple positions that are supporting principles and teachers and educators throughout our system that we want to make sure that the good work that they're doing is focused work and aligned work and so how academics is choosing to do this should be uh consistent with uh how my peers are also looking at this as well. So, what you see and why you see 0 to10 million is because we're going to have to make some tradeoffs um and some choices and as we do that together as a system um we'll see some um some of those those numbers change um but more information to come on that but that's how CI is choosing to uh look at this uh challenge but that's systemically supported uh across all areas.
171In terms of schools and services, I actually want to start with the things that are not being considered just to take that off the table because I know that often becomes one of the questions. So, at this point in time, we're not considering targeted class size increases. Also, we're not looking at reducing schools discretionary funding or approaching the portfolio of schools at this time. Some of the things that we are considering, and this is similar to what Dr. Strasy was just noting is around how are we getting our staffing priorities on more on direct service to students versus indirect service. So really thinking about are we doing do we have some ability to do some restructuring there that is ultimately also going to lead to some cost savings. The other thing is academic interventionists in
172our high schools. This is not something that we're saying we're going to do for sure but something that we need to consider to explore. In each of our high schools, they do receive a halftime academic intervention specialist as it's something that everyone receives on top of a WSS model. That is something we've been talking about for a bit with some of our leaders um over the years, but never really explored in earnest. And we're at this time we're saying given the current budget constraints and what we want to do with investments considering considering that. And finally, explore non-comprehensive high school administrative structure. This does not mean that we're talking about getting rid of non-comprehensive high schools or non-comprehensive high school programs. That's not what this is saying. What this is saying is thinking about how
173we're staffing them at the administrative level and engaging with conversations with principles around what do we think may be most appropriate going forward. Once again, this is nothing that is definitive, but this is saying that we're going to be and have started some of those conversations. So, let's keep rolling here and we'll get to I'm sure there's going to be lots of questions. There's a lot more information here. I think this is again just the beginning and I think let's continue to hear from the experts. Um >> so we >> sorry uh with regard to hearing from the leadership we really want to divide this into um straight support for students and educational activities and then operations and central administration. Um so those numbers uh in terms of budget um uh are uh significant $325
174million. Um and again the other support activities includes many of the things that we consider operations, taking care of buildings, transportation, um utilities, um you know all the business kind of side of the house to operate schools um the infrastructure for schools. uh largely and kind of the business functions. Central administration um is there are executive positions and administrative positions within other sport activities and then there's some specific um things in central administration with regard to the very senior leadership legal costs and um and and those kinds of functions. So um all important infrastructure that allows us um to operate schools but not the cost uh directly associated with educational services although there are other important supports um uh culinary services feeding students as part of it is certainly a direct support to student not
175a necessarily an educational u program. We could advance the slide again. ERS just um uh have given us some insights into this. We want to leverage the resource analysis as we're making these decisions um in broad strokes. I said, you know, that our our spending in this area is not um necessarily out of line um with their benchmarking data. um that there still though may be opportunities to you know another finding was about unified leadership and kind of the coherence of our system. So while um uh at the bottom line it might be all right there but there are places where um some of our programs uh might be in conflict with each other or just may not be as integrated as as they could be. So it's not just an efficiency move. Um sometimes
176if and and ERS did a great job talking to school leaders about their perception of the central office and is a central office always on the same page and beyond efficiency. If you're getting an there's the efficiency aspect of well I'm getting answers from two people and then if it's well I'm getting answers from two people and it's not the same then there's another cost to try to reconcile that um beyond just the fact that it's two people. Um and could we could we get that same answer from one person? Um so uh there again they didn't um advise us well there's a whole lot of there there in terms of how many resources you have but um you could definitely look at how they're organized and maybe that would lead to efficiencies maybe would
177lead to more effectiveness. on the other side of the coin. Um they again they had some specific diagnostic um tools that show you know how we benchmark u again at the bottom line with cost and then this was what was really um great about working with was they had um standardized categories regardless of how Washington state labels things, how we label things. So we could benchmark our percent of spend. And I know it's a bit of an eye chart, but the um the bar chart on the right um describes our spending rel as a percent of central office spending in particular functional categories um relative to their um uh uh peer weighted median groups in their benchmark analysis. they've in this um particular uh chart highlights where we spend a much higher percentage um than
178our peers on a particular function. I think just as interesting as thing is where we're um spending low like at the very top of the chart um student transportation is an area where we have costs. So maybe our um staffing our leadership staffing there we need to think about is that creating the cost. might be a function of just we're outsourcing a lot of that that it shows up in a in a different in a different category than staffing per se, but it's really nice to have this diagnostic to say so where do we want to look? Um and and again at the bottom line it's not so much oh we're way out of whack but it's also again since most of these expenditures are not direct educational expenditures we really want to look at
179them very hard to see. So you know this particular function isn't exactly tied to our our goals. Um are we absolutely sure that this an expenditure we want to make? Uh next slide please. So um these are some kind of uh across the board um uh uh changes we're making. A lot of these involve payroll costs. Again, I mentioned, you know, at the top of our discussion that doing a lot of dis and the it this might be kind of a rabbit hole in percentages, but that our problem for the general fund at the bottom line is roughly 6.2% of our projected expenditures. Um, but 78% on average of what we spend is labor. So, trying to find that 6.2% 2% in non- labor costs. The the other 22% is really really difficult. So it's
180hard um not to find efficiencies um without affecting people because that's what this organization mostly is. And so um uh so some of these things will you know involve um uh uh numbers of positions and then how we compensate people with um which Sarah will speak to as well. Um this is an arbitrary number in terms of looking at senior leadership. Um this organization has grown a little bit in that rank and this is trying to um assign a goal based on well how big is our overall problem and what share of that should come um from uh executive compensation. This overstates a little bit at 1.5 million is bigger than 6% of the problem. Um, an example of this is something that we've already done. Our current structural deficit includes um, uh, funding for
181a deputy superintendent and a chief operations officer. We've certainly collapsed that function in the past into one and that's something we consider could consider and um, we those are the kinds of things we need to look at um, with new leadership. we are going to be looking at the organization on a functional basis anyway. So, as part of that, um, we're going to have to ask ourselves is is are there opportunities to save costs on executive compensation? We've, um, had a hiring freeze for non-represented positions um, I think since 2022 or 2023. It's not a hard and fast freeze, but it has led to savings every year. um and we continue to carry that cost in our our expenditure forecast. This could be the year that we finally bite the bullet and say we're never
182going to fill these positions, so let's just take them out of the out of the budget. Um again, uh we need to look at every aspect of this as I just talked about. We'll continue to look in central offices in the central office how we're organized where there could be um a potential further savings. Um we will see we are funding um using external funding to fund some things in the central office. So we want to make sure we understand that intersection and see what um what uh both challenges and opportunities there are there. Again as I just said we are going to make organizational changes. So this is the place to see if we can collapse functions um uh integrate departments um to uh lead to efficiencies in the management ranks. Um and then
183um we want to and we have a specific example that has come up year after year related to transportation we'll get into but um look at uh specific operational efficiencies um that we can find that aren't related to educational programs and um I'm going to uh turn it over to Dr. Pritchette Goodman to talk about some compensation things and at this time and please Sarah again as I said there's no way we can do this without affecting people. So beyond what's on the on this slide if there are other things you want to say uh about this please do. >> Sure. Thank you Fred. Um and I I would say that as Fred indicated the majority of our funding is based on people. Um I think we're actually probably more a little bit closer to
18481% of our budget that is actually funding um our staff. And you know part of that is I think that we all agree that um that the services that our staff provide every day are central to our students um being successful um maintaining safe and well functioning schools. So, that's not necessarily a a question there or um a surprise that most of our funding is actually for staff. Um that being said, we still have um issues with our deficit that we need to look at. And so, as we start to um think about how we can save money um in compensation, many of the things up there that I'll talk about briefly are centered around our non-represented staff. Um some of the things that we're not considering at this time are looking across the board
185at salary reductions for every single staff in the district. Um part of the context there is that we currently have six open contracts um that are being negotiated or will be negotiated um in the spring. and we know that um to unilaterally do a salary reduction would um not be consistent with our negotiated contract. So that's something that we haven't looked at across the board. It certainly doesn't mean that we wouldn't negotiate um and look at salaries in negotiations. So that's something that isn't on there at the time. Um but certainly like I said, as we negotiate contracts, we certainly would be looking at salaries there. Um, one of the things that we're considering for our non-represented staff is continuing our furlow days. And so when we really started talking about what was happening with
186our budget, um, our non-represented staff, and those are the staff that are here at John Stanford Center, um, have been doing furlow days now for three years. Um, we do two furlow days, and so that's, um, something that we're looking at considering to continue. Um, we also suspended uh vacation cash out or leave cash out for our non-represented employees and we've been doing that for three years as well. That is something that we're continuing to consider um as one of our ways to save um in compensation. We also are as we look at efficiencies, we're looking at our year- round employees. So, our 260day positions within departments and asking um are there positions that we can reduce to um a 223-day calendar or are there positions um that we can just reduce within departments? Those
187are things that each department is going to need to look at. We've certainly looked at those over the last 3 years um as we've tried to tackle um some of our budget constraints and it has all of us thinking differently, all of us um needing to pull together. Um as I joked about how long I've known Dr. Stroski, um that relationship has helped to actually think about um how we work together. um what are some of the things that we're doing for instance in human resources that are either supporting or um in contradiction to what CAI is doing. So those kinds of conversations have been happening over the last few years and we would continue to ask departments to look at that and some of those conversations are hard because it's what are we going
188to abandon? What are some of the things that we are no longer going to do? So, those are the types of questions that we're asking departments and we're asking um if our district goals are here, what are the things that we're doing within our departments that support that ultimate goal of our student outcomes and how do we get real lean and how do we get really focused on what it is um that needs to happen for our schools and for our staff within schools to reach those goals. So, we've asked those questions. That is something that we're looking at. And then um the other piece that we're also looking at is effective IPD for non-represented staff. And we've talked about that before in other in other ways. Um that concept would be basically the amount
189of money that we get from the state for what uh most people refer to as kind of a cost of living. Of course, they don't give us enough money for all of our non-represented staff. And so we compensate that by saying, okay, if we're going to give a 2.5, for instance, 2.5% cost of living raise or IPD, um we make up the difference um from what the state actually gives us. And so we're um if we were to look at effective IPD, we would take just the money that the state gives us and then we would spread that across our non-represented employees. So that wouldn't equal out to if for instance the cost of living or the IPD was at 2.5. You may see staff um non-represented staff looking at a cost of living adjustment
190of 1.7 or 1.9 because we would be only taking what we've received from the state as opposed to making up for that. So those are the things that you're seeing there. Again, these are um extremely difficult conversations um but necessary. Um, I think that it's led to some really great conversations as I as I've said between departments within departments looking at efficiency, looking at what do we really need to do? Um, how do we come become leaner? We're looking forward to having those discussions also um with our new incoming superintendent. It's always great to have fresh eyes because sometimes when you've been in something for so long, you say, "Well, no, no, no. We have to do it this way. That's the way we've always done it." And so, um, this is a wonderful opportunity
191for us also to have him come in and and question, so why is that? Why do we do that? And, um, and as he comes on and and really digs in with us in the central office, we'll be making some adjustments and really thinking through and flushing out what the other compensation savings would be. >> Thank you very much. Um, the last functional area in this part of the conversation I want to talk about is athletics. And I'll turn over to Mr. Howard. And I another just really want to thank him for um uh leaning into our athletic program beyond um just the financial things we're going to talk about. He's um uh taken that on and I really appreciate it. >> Thank you. Um as what you see up here is uh I'm going
192to fill in the blanks of what's missing. So you see uh in bold changes being considered at this time. So we're looking at everything. It's not just one thing, but I want to give you a flavor of what athletics is. So you had a handout and I want to walk through the handout in front of you. So you have the vision of athletics and I I want to say that athletics is an extension of what's h actually happening in the classroom. You have the theory already in the classroom and then that is the closest thing that we have from theory into practice our students do day in and day out. So you have a consideration for paytoplay if students actually would have to pay to participate in sports. Uh on page two uh you're getting
193into what we're looking at participate uh participation in program scope. So you get a chance to see the benefits of athletics at the same time. uh what you're seeing is student voice that's down below. What problems do you want to help solve when you grow up and what skills do you need to learn to solve it? And so those are two I would say instrumental questions that students ask and what we try to provide for them uh as they go through athletics. Then you get a chance to see about future skills and skills needed and how athletics develops them. uh the cost at elementary if we were to expand it to elementary, what the costs are currently for middle school and the cost for high school uh per student. And then you're getting into, well,
194how many coaches do we have at middle school? How many do we have that are paid volunteers and how many uh coaches participate with our students? So, you get a chance to see that breakdown. Uh middle school, you see the breakdown for high school. Uh going to the next page, I wanted to show you what the GPA are uh for our students. And so you get a chance of students to participate in um uh athletics, what their GPA are, when students don't participate, what the difference is. And then uh attendance as well. And then the last page, you get a chance to see the participation rates of students who actually participate in athletics at uh per school. and that's at uh at high school. And then uh it's a further breakdown at fall, winter, and
195spring. Uh what's not on here is the consideration of removing middle school sports. Uh you have a number in there. It's about close to 6,300 and something students who participate in middle school sports. Uh those are things that we're considering. If we were to remove uh middle school sports right now, we get a lot of that money from uh from deal uh deal pays for that. If we were to reduce that and only uh uh took the grant that deal gave us, we would still have to reduce uh middle school sports. And so we know the advantages to mental health. We know the advantages to students uh socially, emotionally. We know the advantages for students continue to participate in sports when they actually uh develop leadership skills. So we know all these are the things
196that actually go along with it. So I want you guys to have these other pieces but we are considering all these pieces to get to a range of 2.6 million uh uh savings and some of that's coming from athletic fees and some of it's about reducing what we actually offer currently at high school and at middle school. So, just wanted to let you know as we look diversely across the system, we are looking at everything. And I I would be remiss if I would tell you that we shouldn't be looking at everything. We should look at everything that we're currently offering to see if that's a good investment or not. And I I know that's what you as board directors would want us to do is look at that. So, that's what the athletic department
197is doing right now. Um, but I wanted you to have some data in front of you so you would see what we're considering and the impact it would have. Thank you, Mr. Howard. Um, we've talked about transportation efficiencies many times and also it was highlighted in the um, ERS U study. This is from the resource study that this is an area where we far outspend our peers in their benchmarking data set and we um, spend double roughly what we get in state funding for transportation. So there's um no way to uh have this conversation without at least saying this is something in consideration. And this is why um understanding the whole budget is so important because some of it um proposals here would be would be diff very difficult, you know, and disruptive. But are
198they um are they in fact more important to preserve this service model versus some of the investments we're trying to make um in academic achievement if you know again um if we only have the discussion about preserving the status quo. you don't get a flavor of that trade-off even if something is is hard as many of these things would be. Um you know the biggest uh the way our um our yellow bus system works now we um uh roughly seven or eight years ago we changed our bell schedule at all schools um and which requires you know nearly a third uh 50% or a third uh bigger uh bus fleet than we would operate if we uh had a three- tier schedule. It also we have splitting our service among two providers. Um the service
199level we're able to achieve with that model versus when we um had um a monopoly on our services for uh three decades are are significantly better. But it it is expensive um given that you're creating uh twice the overhead costs for those vendors by having two operations. But it's working for us. Again, that's what we're going to have to decide is um does this model that's providing um the best service levels that we've had in in my time at Seattle Public Schools, you know, worth the investment that we're making? We did it for a reason. Um how important is it compared to everything else? So um uh what is being considered are looking at bell schedules um to see if we can operate a three- tier system um uh changing the mix between two vendors
200um and then uh try to leverage our um we have special ed transportation and uh general ed transportation and try to provide a more a least restrictive environment by having more students with disabilities on gened buses. Again, the the goal is to just put as few yellow buses on the street every day as we can. Things we are not looking at that we've discussed in the past is um any model that would curtail um transportation to option schools is not something that that we're considering and and if we did consider it, it would certainly um not affect students that where were legally required to provide transportation. Um, and then I would like to talk a little bit about technology efficiencies. Even though that's capital funded, we need to think about how technology can help us
201save money. And I'll turn it over to uh Carlos Dvay to describe that. >> Uh, from the technology side of the house, we we I think I briefed this a couple of months ago about the ARP platform that that we are uh embarking in implementation. and we're into the second year implementation and that's going to bring some some some sort of savings internally and efficiencies as far as the cost and benefits of going to the to the cloud. We decommission a lot of services servers internally that we have in our data center and moving those out to the cloud that's going to reduce some of the uh there going to be efficiencies on the energy cost that we have um as as along with the technical debt and risk that that comes with it. We're
202passing all the risk over to the vendor and um in the past we have done a lot of coding internally that takes a lot of resources uh when we doing the testing not the resources but uh accounting resources HR resources that takes a lot of time from their work to implement these things we're going to be improving that um improving the cycle uh and lower the life cycle cost um also the uh procurement and HR and finance uh uh we'll be streamlining some of the processes. We have a lot of manual processes in some of those areas. If we can automate that, we can release those resources for utilizing somewhere else. Um as of today or tomorrow, we'll be putting out a um I believe it's going tomorrow. Um an RFI. We're going to be
203revising the cell phone contract. Uh we haven't revised it in about oh gosh, six, seven years I believe. And there's a lot of capability out there that we haven't tapped into it. Uh and then looking to reduce the cost. Uh so we have have put uh the RFI out to um the carriers to come back with the best pricing and uh the base capa capabilities that we can uh secure especially in the security office. uh they're they're the the the new services that we're looking into is uh uh satellite communications, you know, for for events that they that might require in blackouts when everybody's using the phone, nobody can talk. So, we have priority access uh by utilizing um the existing priority access and the uh uh satellite communications as an addition as well. So,
204we're looking at at that and also the alignment of the uh uh - um reimbursements that we could receive from the federal government. Uh some of some of these costs, they're eligible for for these reimbursements. Uh and finally, the uh HA uh HVAC at the uh our central data center uh here. Um it's an old system. Uh every summer we running looking for parts uh that ties up a lot of our maintenance guys. that cost come from the operational operational money uh because it's maintenance. Uh so we're trying to uh looking for a more efficient systems that we're going to put in place uh here uh entering into this year. uh bringing again some energy cost reductions uh as far as the electricity and also we we're we're we're gaining operational efficiencies in this in
205this data center center as well by minimizing the footprints of servers uh and replacing that with virtual machines uh virtual servers per se uh which still requires uh hardware um which reduces also the electricity. So, we're looking at where what kind of opportunities we can gain from this. >> You're saving about 90 million, right? >> 90 million. Yeah. >> We we'll see. >> So, I hope you the board appreciates an opportunity to hear directly from the folks who actually spend the money than hearing from Dr. Butleman and I about what we think about how they're spending the money. Um and um I'm going to make an editorial adjustment here and just get to next steps and then leave it um for any questions that you have at this point and I'll um let Dr. um
206Bleman talk about the next steps. >> So in terms of the board's next steps um there's the transition that's potentially happening with the ad hoc budget committee to the standing committee uh for finance and audit. So I'm looking forward to having deep conversations with that group if that uh becomes the the process going forward there. The policy number 0060 got uh requires a draft educational program adjustment resolution. Um so it anticipates something like that in February or March. Um that has happened in the December last year and I think February of the prior year. So try and get that to the board around that time. continue to update the board as the the machine works on the budget process and then importantly because of the transition year because of all the complexity in the budget
207um work with the board president and the board office to potentially move the timeline of actual approval of the budget into August so we have more complete information a chance to give you uh a more time to digest the details of the budget than we have in the last few years. So, >> so I'm kind of wondering I want to take the temperature here. Board directors, we do have a meeting on February 4th that's going to be on our uh progress monitoring. We could a we could kind of wrap this conversation up here, digest some of this information, get questions over to board staff so that they can uh get some answers or get those to staff and we could continue this conversation on the 4th. um and and be maybe a little bit more
208prepared or uh we can uh maybe take a five minute break and and dive into some discussion now. Is there sort of a temperature? Director Ranken, >> can you remind me the meeting on the 4th? Is is that a >> It's just a work session and it's just progress monitoring. >> Okay. I like the suggestion of writing down our questions, getting them to staff, and having answers come if we have time during that meeting. Yeah, I think that I think I >> there's a it's a shorter I'm just making stuff up here. It's Superintendent Podesta, but >> no, I uh that seems like a very practical suggestion. It >> um might lead to the shortest honeymoon ever between me and and Superintendent Sheler, but we'll see. What did you get me into? But but uh
209I'm I'm happy to do it that way. Yeah. >> Is there any chance that we could ask like one question if people want to right now and then more questions later or not? You want >> I mean I think let's just get it all. Let's >> push it all. Is there like a burning question that you have on >> No, I I can hold it but I Yes. Always >> is thoughts from folks? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Well, then we then we will be joined also by Superintendent Schultner on the 4th. Um, but I have a feeling that that >> and maybe me will find out. >> Yeah, Fred, you're not fully off off the hook, but this was a lot of information. I appreciate the way in which this was presented. Going to look
210to Julia or Carrie. I don't uh she will send out an email to board directors to start trying to collect questions if there are questions. Just as a reminder, >> you can put them in the form. >> We can put you we'll use the form. We'll use our general form. Um and then we'll continue and we'll add this to the agenda item on the 4th. Uh just before we adjourn, okay, progress monitoring is on the 4th and the other reminder is that assessment has to be in by Friday. So please please get that in. But as there's no further business on the agenda, the meeting stands adjourned at 7:33 p.m. Thank you everyone.