Seattle Schools Board Special Meeting May 21, 2025

001[Music] Heat [Music] up here. [Music] Good. Good afternoon. We will call the meeting to order momentarily and SPS TV will begin broadcasting. To those online, if you'll be accessing ASL interpretation for this evening's meeting, please use the QR code on the screen to join via Teams for improved viewing options. the May 21st, 2025 board special meeting. Oh, there is a little bit of an echo there. All right, let's try this again. The May 21st, 2025 board special meeting is called to order at 4:32 p.m. 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 will call the role. Vice President Briggs here. Director Clark present. Director Hersy here. Director Misrai. Director Ranken here. Director Sarju present. and this is

002President Top. Um so for this evening we're going to start with a budget presentation and discussion. Uh then we will have a presentation and discussion about the interimm guard rail metrics. Uh this is following the initial discussion we had at our April 23rd regular board meeting. Uh for tonight uh we're going to do comments a little bit differently. We're going I'm going to ask directors to try to keep their their comments to two minutes um to give everyone an opportunity to speak. We're going to start uh and we're just going to go around the table. Um if we start hitting around four minutes, I'm going to ask you to please conclude your remarks and then once we go around once, we will see uh if we need to go around again. Um, so with that

003being said, we're going to just move jump right into our uh budget presentation. Uh, we're joined here by Chief Operating Officer Fred Podesta and uh, Assistant Superintendent of Finance Dr. Kurt Butleman. Um, there will be um, an opportunity during the presentation for us to discuss what we've learned from our February 26 community engagement session in this presentation. So that was a a little bit ago pre the end of the legislative session, but here are some of the key themes um from that. But now I will pass it off to staff to kick us off. Thank you. If we could advance the slides, I'd like to go over the agenda briefly. Um and as uh President Top mentioned, we did want to allow some time um for discussion amongst directors about um the feedback that um

004you've heard in your budget engagement sessions. We tried to summarize. Want to make sure that we understand what you heard and that uh if uh anyone wants to kind of expand on that. Um we'll as always go over kind of where we are in the process. Um the legislative session was a particular um pivotal variable in our planning this year. So we'll spend some time on how that turned out and how we um how uh Superintendent Jones will work that into his uh budget proposal. Um and then talk a little bit about the process and how um we have some re-engineering of budget processes that we've been talking about for the last couple years. This year has been a bit of a transitional year because we had many variables going into this year that weren't

005really fixed. Um a transition amongst strategic plan and and the legislative session. We have major bargaining going on with our biggest um labor partners. So um and we'll talk about that as well and then talk about what we see um what staff sees going forward in a in the long range future and immediate next steps. So if we could advance the slide again so you all um know that um but remind us all the questions um that uh you asked in the engagement session um with the public about uh in in your board engagement sessions. So you really started off with what questions do people have about the budget? um what are the fact you know what are thoughts of the community about how to more actively engage um in our budget process and um

006you know we've got heard a lot of uh interest in transparency and and better and clearer information and what should the board consider and um we've tried to summarize in the next slide if we can go forward um uh to some level what we think that feedback was we'd like um to walk you you all actually really to walk through it and talk a little bit about um does this reflect what you heard? Are there any particular comments? Are there is there anything missing um and uh any guidance you'd like to give staff on um how we work this into our planning into our processes and our engagement with you all and the public? So, if I could turn it back to you, uh President Top. Sure. I think I think the transparency theme was

007particularly strong for me in our engagement session of how how we can be better transparent and more upfront I think in the in the budgeting process. I also heard a lot of clarity on how the feedback will you be used by the board staff. You know there folks are giving their their time. How are we using the information collected? do other or let's we can just we'll just go around the circle um to see if board directors have anything additional they want to kind of add director Briggs um just are we talking about in response to the feedback? So this is so we all took notes that e so this was the engagement session on February 26th. It was a full board engagement session. I think each director took notes. I think we've since refined

008that system. Um and uh staff are taking helping us take notes. We gave those notes to staff to kind of collate and pull out the the major themes that they uses does is this reflect what you you've heard anything additional you feel like you need to add as we go into the budget conversation. Um I yeah I actually missed that engagement. So, um, I'm relying on my fellow board members to fill in the blanks for for that. So, I'm no comments for me. Um, one of the uh not one but several people uh asked me um and I think this relates to the transparency um theme that um if we were really going to actually do something with the information and if there would be what I'm calling a feedback loop where in real community

009engagement there's a feedback loop that happens. And I, you know, I said, well, historically that's not the way that it's worked here. And so I think my comment relates to this. If we are not or cannot give families, if we can't get back to them and have a feedback loop, then we need to just let them know, right? Like that's part of of transparency. And so if we set the expectation that right now our process doesn't work like that, then we're not setting them up to be disappointed when we don't do something. I also heard that exact same thing um with this last engagement. Like people are not hopeful that anything will come of you know what was said, what happened, what we talked about because historically it it hasn't happened. And so I think

010that's work on our part as a board and as a district and knowing our role and how we actually do complete that cycle. Um because that is part of community engagement. I appreciate that and I hope part of this is how we're using this information and before we go into the budget conversation here have us having a discussion about what what we heard so we we have that grounding and understanding. Director Hersy. Okay. Director Ranken. [Music] Um I mean that that engagement session was extremely frustrating I will say and not uh in terms of transparency. I think a lot of times people want um not just for the information to be available but to understand why and and its context. Um because we actually like there's quite a lot on on the district website, but

011transparency doesn't mean relevancy. And so where that session like dramatically missed the mark for me was that um it was the same presentation that we had gotten in a board meeting. And we need information at a different level and for a different purpose as the oversight body than community members who want to see how money is being spent and provide their feedback on the efficacy of it. Um it's just different. We're we're we're different parts of the ecosystem and so um uh I am I don't know. I'm jet-lagged. I was visiting my grandmother. Um, so I'm gonna pre-applize for being maybe crabby, but I'm even feeling like there's a lack of transparency in having this budget session today because building budgets are done. Next year's budget, it's done. It's too late for us to give

012feedback on next year's budget. That should have been what we were doing in February, which is why with the board directed receipt of preliminary budget scenarios in January, we are failing our community by not holding the superintendent and the district accountable to having provided that. And so this is a bit of a we can talk about it, but buildings already have their budget. Staffing decisions are being made because that's how the timeline works. And so the lack of transparency in that process is a really big miss for the board and for the community and contributes to the frustration that um director Sarge was expressing. People want to be engaged in a meaningful way. And if we say, well, we heard your thoughts, but don't tell them that actually the time for that decision was a

013couple months ago, that's just not um not transparent or collaborative at all. So, um, none of these notes surprise me at all. Um, I also, one thing we'll add is in terms of the board needing different information and the greater community needing different information. Staff does not need the board's permission to inform and educate the community about the budget process. That is actually part of the job of staff. You don't have to do that through the board. We actually already expect that to happen and it has happened in the past. online. Director Clark. Yeah, thanks, President Top. Um, I think just a couple um things came to mind um from the feedback session. Um, one I think just piggybacking off of what director Ranken shared around um, like preparing the presentation or the information that's

014going to be shared with um, community um, like with the audience in mind. Um, I heard feedback from folks that, you know, the way that the presentation described the budget was just at such a high level or using terms that really only people in the system could understand. Um, and we had to spend a lot of time at at my table just breaking things down before we really could even get into um, feedback and discussion. So, um yeah, matching the presentation um and the information to the audience um I think would be incredibly helpful both for um community engagement and transparency. Um and then one other thing I wanted to lift up. Um there we chatted at my table and there was some feedback from community around frustration that it seems like um the the

015way that we've been budgeting um you know we have this $100 million approximately in overspend every year and that it seems like we're making cuts in other places to support that overspend. Um, and there isn't really folks were asking for clarity one on like what what is costing us a h 100red million more and being able to really understand specifically what those buckets are and and and the amount of money that we're spending. Um, and I think the concern is that, um, if we're continuing to overspend at high levels every year, how are we going to catch up? How are we going to make investments um, in our strategic plan and other things? So, I just wanted to lift that up. Director Ms. Rahi, thank you. Yeah, I have no additions. Uh, I guess I

016would just wonder if um, and maybe this will help inform the rest of the presentation and comments too. If staff had any response or thoughts on this timing question and you know where is there flexibility in the budget and if building budgets have already been allocated, is is this more of a FYI or are there things that if the community or if the board had strong feedback about that could be altered? All right. Now is the time I'm going to go and I'm gonna just kind of look at board directors. See if we want another two minutes per board director. We want to move on. And what what I'll do is just see if there's a majority of us that want another two minutes. We'll do another two minutes type of thing. Otherwise, we will

017move on. And I'm seeing I want to echo Joe's question. You got to go under the mic so that the interpreters can interpret. I I just wanted to um echo Joe Director Miss Rahi's question about is is the purpose of this really just an FYI because or and to director Rankin's point too. I think there's very little it's that can be changed at this point. So it would be help helpful to know what what are we actually doing here now tonight. All right, we're going to now pass it over to staff. I think the Well, thank you for the feedback. Thank you for facilitating um that engagement. Happy to continue take comments about what you heard from the community either in that session or offline. Um I think those points are well taken that um

018in my time at Seattle Public Schools, the timing and the structure of this. Um we we talk about school budgets kind of at the structural level of how we do allocation. Don't get into the details of so after you turn the crank what happens and then the timing is such that there is it's not impossible I think the uh previous boards and the district have made changes this late in the game but but it would be very difficult and disruptive and so staff have been talking about well if we change the sequence um with regard to the budget process just as it is and the several discussions we've had lately about weight list and enrollment since that's the key driver of those school-based budgets. Do we need to do this different? You know, what are

019our options? How quickly could we do it differently? So, if if um that's what director Miss Rahi was asking, yes, that staff are already gauged in this in that exact conversation um to address the concerns um that we've heard about uh are we really offering a choice when we say school choice? And then how would that fit into this timeline? What are the impacts um uh in school-based staffing and budgeting year? What might those changes be from one year to the next and within a year? So yes, we're open to that discussion. And then I think that would make um uh there would be different milestones for the board to provide um uh guidance and um and uh that could have greater impact in the process if some things happened earlier. Um and we're going

020to talk more about um lessons learned in this process and um what we see as some long range uh next steps. Again, this was a difficult year to re-engineer everything for a lot of reasons just because there were a lot of unknowns and and we still are in the transition of many issues, but um uh we we're taking that to heart. Um the point that you raised is at this stage, you know, what discretion is left and not that it couldn't be exercised, but it would be it would be difficult in terms of to for us to operationalize that. Um we've used this graphic um many times. who want to go on just and in um I think really trying to emphasize collaboration here. I think the discussion we just had um working with the

021board on the feedback you've heard the uh wonderings you have about our whole process um and um director Rankin's point is well taken um we can provide that clarity to our community not just in uh collaboration with the board that's something the staff can take on and I think we're going to have many opportunities uh if we could advance um the slides that would be Great. And so again, um, uh, I think this timeline is the discussion we've just had where could the milestones potentially change in terms of board direction and guidance. In the last few years, um, we have uh, instituted a new process where there's a resolution where there is actually some real decisions upfront. They're kind of thematic general guidance. if we change the shape of this a little bit, could they

022be more effectual on the actual numbers? Um, I think is the question that you're asking us. And we're um I can only go so far as to say we're thinking about it. What what could we make work and what could we make work in time for the next fiscal year because it would take some fairly significant process re-engineering. And if we could go one more. Um, this is I just want um something you said made me think we need to clarify that I well I'm going to put this way. I'm not I don't think it's realistic to ask you to ask building leaders to do something different. I think the fact that we are this late in the process without the ability to do that is a signal and a sign that we need to

023prepare to do it differently next time and now is the time actually to start preparing for that. So I don't want people who are on the call or families to think that oh well the board might make some recommendations. It might be hard but if it's the right thing to do they should do it. I don't think that's going to happen at this point. Um, the goal is not to disrupt. The goal is to make the changes that we know we need to make now so that come the next budget cycle, we're not having this same or y'all cuz I'm not going to be here. Y'all are not having the same conversation again. And families are yet frustrated another year. And I think so I want to I want to keep us go. I want

024to keep us going. So we'll have a time for comments. And uh one of Yeah, I will keep us going. And then um because I think the important point here on all of this is I think this is a frustration we've all had. We've all expressed I think staff realizes it. We have a review or assessment of this process in August. And I'm hoping we can figure out what that what are and I I think that aligns a little bit with when we said we were going to get an enrollment sort of update and what that looks like come August. But please continue and one um small thing to director Sarju's point we are we are looking we are trying to be flexible even for the coming fiscal year not asking for things that are

025unreasonable we did make some decision you know we've talked a lot about um moving weight lists and um some other configurations we um reopened uh the highly capable cohort both those things in terms of enrollment Both those things were relatively late decisions in our process and we can accommodate some level of flexibility and we're doing our best and we're not asking buildings to do things around unreasonable. We're going to help them but um we we can do some of this and we can do more certainly for the f next fiscal year. It still might only be halfway to what we think the the right solution would be because this all starts early be you know before we know it. We're going to be working on uh the following fiscal year's budget and certainly enrollment and

026and all the things that all the moving parts. So um there is some work to be done. Um I think uh director Clark may have a question. I just director I want to try to keep question let director Clark we're going to try to keep question we're going to try to get us through the presentation here and then get to questions if possible. My question is just about the slide that's on the screen. Is that okay to ask? Now, let's let's have staff present and and let's go from there. Um, this was just a reminder. I've made this point already that we had a lot of things going on this year um that uh as we assess how we did that again were kind of unfixed variables that we needed to land uh legislative session

027in in particular before we could make other decisions around that. And we had just highlighted that at the beginning and I'm just reminding people what that is. So do you want to take questions on this slide? Absolutely. If there is one in particular. I I was just curious. Um there's a the strategic plan um and the weighted staffing standards have some months that are have a black slash through them and I was just wondering what that meant. I don't see a legend. Think we were just projecting uncertainty about how how long um some of that might take. I'll ask Dr. Bleman if he has any Yeah, we had we had presented this slide earlier a couple months ago and the the anticipation at that time the strategic plan work would be completed by June and

028the weighted staffing standards would have a proposal by May. Both of those things are still under development. So, this is just trying to illustrate that those are still being worked on, not that they've been completed or forgotten about. Thank you, Director Ranken. Um, thank you. Yeah, so something that I would like to see or ask about is, you know, knowing knowing that these things are when they happen. These are when they happen every year. So, it's not a surprise that legislative session is in January to April or um and so my question is what you need from us because my understanding of what the board directed in 2023 was addressing all of these pieces and a timeline for the weight of staffing standards for for all these different things. And it feels like we're in

029the exact same place. And so I would like to know if we have not been clear um what we or if we just have to wait for a different superintendent or a different board or like what's the what's keeping us from these are these are known. These are not surprises. We directed in 2023 for the superintendent to bring the board a long-term plan to eliminate the deficit and to align resources with students. We again in May unanimously accepted the reality that allocating resources to meet student enrollment could include consolidating buildings. And that wasn't a consolidation direction. That was a resource allocation direction. As far as I can see, next year's budget looks a lot like this year's budget. So what do you need to hear from us to start? We know that these things happen

030every year and that they do lock us into different things. Um I'm going to I don't want to see that. budget development slide again unless there's progress made on some of the things that are on it. Uh because that's the same slide we've been looking at for two years and the long-term plan and these various things like I don't this is this is feeling like groundhog day. Um, and so if there's something different you need from the board to kick off serious evaluation of our processes and actually make those changes that we did direct a year and a half ago, please tell us what it is and we will do it. I think the biggest variables this year um were the strategic plan work to make sure that um I think we've all agreed that

031we should be able to align uh budget proposals to specific um uh components of strategic plan. We're still talking about some of those. We the next part of this study session is about that. So that's something we need is that guidance needs to be complete as we go into the process. We just had a conversation about hey we ought to re-engineer the process so there are meaningful milestones. So so I think we need to have that discussion what that what is that going to look like? We know how much effort you know what a big budget play potential school consolidations were or or weren't and so we needed that to land. Um, and I while there's always a legislative session, it's this one seemed more significant than usual. And so there's the well, we need

032to know how it's going to land. And then there's what what are the what are the most helpful discussions for us to be having internally and in the public about our budget while that session is going on. So I I you're completely of course all these things happen all the time. Um but some some of them have have more of an impact on this than others and um we uh we heard you. I think we were also trying to somewhat kind of maintain a status quo to get through some of those things for it to settle. I think we all agree that um we need some fundamental changes and while we're happy to present um balance a budget that's ostensibly balanced for the coming fiscal year, it has not addressed our long-term structural problems. So

033um uh yes, we're going to be we're going to be having that discussion and this time we really have to do something meaningfully different. Um and then if we're also talking about doing it in a different order, that's that's two things. And so we've got a lot of work ahead of us. Can I interject something here real quick? So, what you're all saying is kind of music to my ears as a person charged with facilitating this process. Um, so I've been reflecting a lot on this. Your question around what do we need from you? So, looking at the the student outcomes focused governance work. Um it says you've mastered student outcomes focused governance around the budget if the board approves an annual budget only after determining that the board's goals are the first priority for

034resource allocation. So continuing to work towards more clarity on what that means, what level of decisions the board wants to be engaged in that are not driven by policy is something that would be really useful I think for the organization to further I would say clarifying our policy because that is our direction. Yeah. So this the the the question around is this just FYI, here's what we're doing. The the main focus of this conversation tonight, I hope is to how to continue to improve doing what we're doing so that we aren't just you're not sitting there thinking here's just an FYI next year, but it's an iterative process. We're not there yet. And there's a slide that's coming up that sort of was going to prompt this conversation. So I'm glad that it came up

035already. So just wanted to add that continue to work towards this mastery of student outcomes focused governance because it's a little bit opaque to someone in my role what that re what the board really is looking for in terms of proof that this does tie to the the goals of the institution. So helpful. Thank you. All right. So I think we're going to move into the major components that are reflected here and elsewhere and I'll let uh Dr. Bleman lead us through that discussion and um there are some parts that Chief Redmond will also take uh ownership of as well. Next slide please. So we're going to share what the outcome of the legislative session was for the board and for others with interest in this topic. Um, before doing so, I just want to

036acknowledge that there's a lot of people that do a lot of work to get to this point with the budget. Last night, the budget book, uh, the formal document that'll be a part of the public hearing on June 4th was put on the website. And so, I just want to acknowledge Linda Sebring, who's the executive director of budget, Dr. Pam Falner, who oversees our grants program, Christy Maguar, who's our director of accounting, Melissa Cohen, who does capital projects, manages that process, the HR team led by Dr. Pritchette and Katherine Kle with all the staffing components of this and the principles, the BLTs and all the budget managers at the central office. There was a lot of work that went into um this process in this document starting August 1st with the leadership retreat at West

037Seattle Elementary to kind of kick this off last year. So, just wanted to pause and acknowledge that there's a lot of folks that have spent a lot of effort to to get us to information that the the board can consider. Um the legislative we applause for that. Applause for the budget team. Put that in the record somewhere. So the legislative session was the longer legislative session. The state was facing a 12 billion dollar shortfall. They did prioritize K12 education. I think um K12 education came together for the first time in recent history around sort of what the needs of the systems were. Um so wanted to sort of acknowledge that there was some real teamwork going across the state and sale public schools was a part of that. Next slide. The state coalesed around the

038big three of special education, operating costs and transportation. And so this is a quick summary of how Seattle public schools fared on those three. Um you'll see that special education, the net for Seattle public schools is about $6.5 million in additional funds uh through some changes that were made. And then the net for material supplies and operating costs or the operating cost is about $2.7 million. Transportation, there wasn't a significant um investment by the legislature. There are some tweaks to alternative vehicles that can be included in the transportation formula going forward. The items on here that say past legislature sent to governor have now been signed by the governor as of the yesterday. So it's just not updated on the slides. The next slide. A significant bill of note is um ESHB 2049 which gave

039Seattle public schools and other districts with local levies increased authority to collect locally. So $500 more per student. The impact of that for Seattle public schools in the 2526 budget proposal that we're previewing tonight is about an additional $13 million um for next year's budget. And then additionally, because there's only one collection next year within the 2526 school year, the second collection will be about another $12 million, which will um add to that going forward. So, the net impact of this over the for the 26 27year budget is around 23 or $24 million, but we'll only collect half of that for the the budget we're talking about tonight. The other point of significance related to tonight is the the legislature extended the payback period on loans that districts took from their capital fund to balance

040their budgets um from two years to four years. Um it's something that is part of the proposal that we're talking about tonight. And then there's some other information there around parents bills of rights. And then there was a one-time um at the end of the session, $50 per student for all districts um for one-time spending for the 2425 school year. We can go to the next slide. And I'll have Chief Redmond talk a little bit about the federal funding and how Seattle Public Schools is managing some of the uncertainty around that. Uh is it's a fairly significant component of our budget about six and a half% right now. Yes, thank you, Kurt. Uh, federal funding, as Kurt mentioned, is definitely an important part of our budget and as most of you are fully aware, we've

041been as a nation having an elevated conversation about federal funding and its direction. We've received across the nation various executive orders, but how do we deal with that? Before we go to that particular portion, as you can see on the slide in that 6.5% you have important categories like title one, special education, our school food services, head start and other restricted funding. So all of that is a part of the services that we provide to students and having that compromised in any kind of way puts us in a vulnerable position. And so our superintendent did ask us to convene what we call a federal response team or a cross departmental team to begin to analyze any of the exe executive orders that come through determine what steps need to be taken if any and then

042communicating with families staff any kind of impact or any changes or pivots that we will have. At this point, OSPI has certainly prevailed and said, "No change at this particular point. Please follow our lead." But our federal response team is certainly cognizant of that. We're watching on a day-to-day basis. We meet there about three layers to the team. There's a steering portion, a smaller steering portion, and then a larger body of senior leaders that come together and then soon to be activated workg groupoups as we need to bring expertise around the table to discuss next steps. So, uh, federal funding definitely an important part of what we do, 6.5%, but that 6.5% really does hit some very significant and sensitive areas for our district. And this functional team or crossf functional team that has been

043developed is sort of standing in that gap so that our community as what whether it's internal or external they have a resource or a place to go and look to for regular information on what's coming. Uh, in fact, we're thinking internally when we're thinking about it, even if there is no change, making sure that we're lifting up to our our internal stakeholders and our our staff that are working so that they know that if there's no change, we're letting you know that, too. Just making sure that people are comforted as we're going through a very difficult time. Thank you. We can go on and I do want to sort of just note in as part of the state budget the K12 education was not reduced directly but there was reduction there were reductions in the

044budget do will impact students at Sale public schools um I'm a board member of the college success foundation they have staff at um as Mercer Middle School Reineer Beach and Cleveland high schools so those staff will be were reduced as part of the state budget through the college success foundation. So there will be impacts at schools but not directly in the K12 um space from the budget. So just bear in mind that there's other things that are happening in the state budget that are impacting the students at all public education across the state of Washington. Some camps that students from Sale public schools went to there was eliminated from the budget. So things like that will persist but they're not uh part of the direct K12 allocation process. I saw a hand up. Director Top,

045do you want or Director Miseri, does it have to do with the legislature? It has to do with one of the previous slides, but I can wait until we're at a more appropriate time to ask questions. I think so. We're transitioning, it looks like, from the legislative update to the update on the uh update on budget development process. Do you is it so if it's legislatively related please? Yeah, it is legislative then. Yes. So I'm just I'm I'm curious on the on the previous slide around the um federal funding. Um and I'm glad that there's a task force looking at this. one is the or is there a contingency plan for what happens if mid budget cycle that $80 million gets cut uh or some portion of it does of of where it's you know

046when you look at that list it's obviously some very essential uh services. So it's not like you could just not provide those things that that $80 million is going towards. So, um, what other levers do we have to fill in that gap? Or is there any indication from OSPI that there would be a statewide plan, assuming we're probably not the only district dealing with this problem, to address that? There's not an official plan that the district has put together to plan on whether if if any of these things happen or not. Um, I think the real results of that would be the district would look towards any of the committed or restricted funds and whether or not those would be eligible to fill these one-time gaps. But if the funding for something like school food

047food services at $9 million went away just tomorrow, that couldn't be sustained going forward without dramatic changes to the system somewhere else. So, there isn't a a backup plan sitting somewhere in case some of these just disappear overnight. Yeah. Well, so I would just I would just say as both a board member and a parent, I would urge the district to come up with the contingency plan for what happens. And you know, to what um Director Redmond was saying, which I think is helpful, is is also giving people peace of mind. I think one thing that would give a lot of folks peace of mind to say if this happens, this we have a plan in place. It's an uncomfortable plan. It's not something we want to have to do, but we sort of know

048where these other cuts or or or where money can be moved around in order to fill in this gap. And so the community knows that these very vital services would not be the things that are cut. Director Ranken. Uh thank you. I was actually just on a call um last night or the night before um with some other folks from the Federal Relations Network through WASDA and we are going to put together a group to specifically go, you know, statewide coalition, go talk to OSPI about the impacts of the federal dollars to districts to urge OSPI to also think about how they will support districts across the state if some of these things are um eliminated. uh there um Tacoma has a federal grant that pays for a lot of their um the mental health

049services that they've been providing in schools that was a three-year grant. Uh they're in the first year right now and the next two years have already been rescended. So things are happening right now that are going to impact children. We have other grants that are connected federally that are not in that bucket of title one and um special education that that are going to have an impact. And so we have to um I actually was going to put in a request, but I'll just ask right now. I would like a list of all the federal grants we receive and who the grantee is because um different department heads are sometimes the grantee through a certain grant that may not be reflected um in our total and um I so yeah we need to know if

050there are other sources that we have that can replace those if there are partners we can rely on that can come alongside us but also there are some of us um working to meet with our congressional delegation when they're in town I think in August. Um the uh legislative um staff person at WASDA is trying to figure that out. Um and also to talk to OSPI about you know their main role in the grant funding is to ensure compliance and they're the mechanism through which it goes to districts. So they don't as much look at the amounts and what it's providing. Um and we're going to urge them to look at that statewide and and we may have to if if things get dramatically shifted and those those funds go away. Um we're going to

051need to ask our state legislature how they can support districts and making it up because as we know there are a lot of districts right on the edge and on the verge of um state receiverhip. Districts do not have funds they can move around to cover um some of these losses. So we we need to be involved in the conversation at the state and national level with our partners. Just because of the potential urgency of some of this, just sharing in in response to your question about the list of grants on the web page, there is a list of active grants as of May 2025. So if you go to the school district website and put in grants, there's a grants office page with lists. It's current list of all the active grants. So people

052can have that information. We can go to the next slide. We'll get into the 2526. I think um Chief Podesta covered much of this the challenging year that we all faced in terms of the budget uncertainties. So we can skip ahead to the next. here was the placeholder for the conversation that um we started to have around the board's uh need for different information, better information, more timely information and similarly for staff how we can be more responsive to the board. So I'll look to President Topp if this is a good place to pause to continue that discussion or if we think we've got what we need on that so far. So, I think we spent a little bit of time on this at the start. Uh, looking to other directors if they want another

053two-minute round or we want to keep going. I'm seeing keep going. So, keep going. Let's keep going. Great. So, we can go to the next slide. So as this group especially knows the district continues to have a structural issue with deficit for 2526 is going to be in the ballpark of 100 to$ 104 million. Um as I stated earlier we tried to start this process in a on August 1. Um to get ahead of all those variables that we knew were coming this year. Um in January um the superintendent presented uh two options with his recommendation which is largely what you're going to see tonight. And in February the levy was approved. There was some questions around what if. So hope um luckily that did not transpire. Um the levies were approved at overwhelming margins.

054And then the the legislature, as we said earlier, did some did some focused work to try to help K12 education get out of the uh structural problem that it's in. We can go to the next. So, this is the preview of what you'll see in the budget book and what you'll get on June 4th at the public hearing and we'll have for your vote on July 1st. So, the summary level of information, next slide. Uh just a reminder this is the two options the superintendent brought forward in January um in response to the resolution. At that time he was recommending scenario two which I think was around trying to maintain as much stability as possible um given the the instability that was generated over the course of the last few years especially around the school

055closure conversation. So the proposal tonight is largely around scenario two which leaned heavily into hopefully some legislative investment. Next slide. So here's where I shared with uh president top I think yesterday when we were chatting about today's meeting. I took a little bit of a risk trying to be more explicit about how the budget decisions at large tie more directly to the strategic plan that the school board has put forward. And so this may not be what you're looking for and this is your opportunity to tell me what you are or what is wrong with this. So let me just go through this real quick. And these are just examples of things and they're not intended to be exhaustive. So, what you're going to see here is the three goals on the next two slides

056and then the five guard rails with some examples of items that connect to those that are investments from Seattle public schools of the $1.3 billion in funding that it has um at its disposal. So, goal one is around literacy for second graders and you'll see curriculum embedded in assessments, ELA adoption, instructional coaching. Goal two, you see some of the similar things around course or grade level math coursework in seventh grade. We can go forward to the next slide. Goal three is around graduation and and high school completion. You'll see some of the strategies there at the bottom that are specific to that. Again, this is not inclusive. These are the items that are just simply a part of what the district considers its strategic plan budget. Um, so there's multiple initiatives, dozens of initiatives, I'm

057probably selling that short that are all contributing to this, but these are just what the district has been talking about. So we're trying to broaden that conversation around all the work that's happening here and how it connects directly to the strategic plan goals that you've outlined. ERS, the consulting group that's working with us on that is helping to better inform this. So just think of this as some options for how we might uh talk about this going forward. Next slide you'll see the guardrails. So the guardrail the first one there is around um highquality educational opportunities and instruction for every student. And so the 2526 budget as I think director Ranken said earlier looks largely like the 2425. So it doesn't reduce program offerings across the district. So trying to be more responsive to providing

058that access. Um again the ERS the resource and strategy work will continue to inform how the the district is investing in that guardrail. Second guardrails around physical and emotional safety. So there was an investment in the budget of about $2.3 million on top of what was previously spent for safety and security. So that's reflected in the budget. And then the district spends about a half a billion dollars on facility improvements, many of which are around um physical safety and learning spaces for students. Um guardrail 3 is around um adult behaviors in school buildings and classrooms that are misaligned with the anti-racist values of Seattle public schools. So we're investing in continuing professional education around anti-racism training for staff. Again, these are just examples. These are not intended to be exhaustive of all the things that

059are happening. Guard rail fours around major decisions. So in this budget that's being proposed are not significant shifts in bell times, numbers of schools, significant changes to school staffing caused by the budget. Um so trying to be um responsive to that. And then finally, guardrail five, which is part of which is the most directly tied to the budget. um not allowing people, time, money, and other resources to be allocated in a manner inconsistent with student need. Um as we talked at the meeting meeting or two ago, um one of the potential measures of this guard rails around how much the district is investing in teaching and teaching support. So the budget for 2526 contemplates continuing to spend more than 70% of the general fund on that. Um the budget contemplates spending more than 85% on

060staff who FDE who are working directly in schools. Um not just the staff who are allocated through the WSS model but the staff who are not the food service workers the custodians the physical therapists occupational therapists all those people are in schools. The way we talk about the budget doesn't make that explicit for people right now. So we're working on trying to figure out how better to do that through the model or through different ways of communicating that. But the reality is the budget we're proposing today contemplates 85% of staff time and and cost to be people who are actually in the school buildings. Um and then the strategic plan budget, the one that I referenced earlier around the goals is being reconfigured to more directly line. And then this budget is intended to bring

061a measure of stability for next year by not having significant shifts in what schools are receiving. I'm super interested in feedback on that. If President Tob Yeah, I was say I think this is the perfect time for the break before the next section for seeing if directors have uh any feedback or comments. I'm just going to go, you don't have to say anything. We're just going to go around the circle, see if there's anyone. Director Ranken, thank you. Yeah, I um uh Okay. So the fact that the budget is not changing really in investment strategies or what's not what we're what we're deciding to discontinue or add means to me basically that we should not expect any progress for students that we didn't already see this year because we're not we're not changing anything to

062increase progress. And so I actually um uh some of you know not proposing major shifts in district operations that's not really responsive to not making major decisions without first implementing an engagement strategy. That's just not making a major decision. So um I I think we need to make major decisions and the guard rail is don't just drop those on people. you have to actually include the community, not don't make major decisions. So, what I am anticipating we're going to see and we're going to I've already started to hear about it. I'm assuming we're going to continue to hear about it is because the way that resources are being allocated is not going to change and the staffing model and how resources are distributed and because enrollment is still going to decline. And because we still

063have the same number of buildings open, buildings are actually going to receive less staff than they have this year, next year, because they're no changes were made to the way we're allocating resources. So, in the spirit of being extremely clear and transparent, not changing the staffing model, not changing how we allocate resources doesn't mean that buildings will have next year what they had this year because they're likely overall going to be fewer students. So, we actually are not providing stability. We're kicking the can on some really significant decisions that we have to make to better serve students. We've decided we're not going to do that next year. And so, I don't want people to misunderstand what stability means. We're not providing more stability and resources for children. We're just not doing anything different next year

064than we did this year. And I just need to be really clear about that. looking on online. See if anyone has any hands. I app in general as we talk a little bit about as we look a little bit at the sort of examples and connections. I I think this is the first time in a budget presentation I've tried to see that that's that that connection starting to be made between our budget and and our goals or where we want to go. And I think that that's a huge huge step in the right direction as we're trying to figure out how to h I think I think you're Dr. Dr. Bleman, correct me if I'm wrong, looking for how how best to present or or or show this information for the for the strategies or

065where we're going. So, I I think that this is, you know, an iterative process, but I I appreciate seeing this in in the presentation. So, thank you. All right. And keep going. Great. Next slide gets to some of the items director Ranken was referencing. Um so again the summary of the budget is more than 70% will be in teaching and teaching support maintaining all the current sites. Um no changes to the staffing model. However, some schools may see some fluctuations in their staffing due to enrollment shifts. Um reductions and changes. Um there were reductions at the central office budgets that we'll go through a little bit later. And then the the continues to close the budget gap uh by extending a portion of the interfund loan. Um so contemplates paying repaying up to $7.6 6

066million of the $27.5 million that was borrowed from the capital fund last year. And then utilizing some one-time funds from the unrestricted fund balance, delaying the rainy day reserve fund repayment, the additions from the legislature and the local levy, and then again those further reductions at central office budgets. Um, and then I know that, well, I know I'm excited. I won't say who else is excited. I know Eric Gerie and I are both excited about um and many of the other staff and I think board members are excited about the longer term visioning that's going to come about as the the strategic plan and resource and strategy work. So this is as director Ranken said this is kind of a status quo thing and hopefully it won't be a status quo thing going forward and

067we'll be having some good conversations around this five-year plan to get uh to where we all want to be for kids at Sale Public Schools. The next slide is just some details, very big numbers that are very small font on the screen. Um, so just the the math around how the $104 million deficit will be closed in the 2526 budget proposal. You'll see the the largest items are the the carry forward from the uh budget process or budget or the 2324 school year and then the delayed repayment of the economic stabilization account, the rainy day fund, the levy capacity, and then legislative changes. So, if you added up the the things on the other side, it was less than that. There are some technical fixes and changes in the the budget that add up to

068about $12 million when you add the special ed money in. So that's the the next largest component of this. And then this proposes continuing $11 million of the loan to to finalize the budget balancing and continues the furlow days and the lack of a vacation cash out for non-represented employees at this at the district office. The next slide is a sort of high-level look at what the $5.4 million in reductions on central office budgets would look like. Um about three and a half million of that is from currently vacant or eliminated positions. There's been a hiring freeze of sorts in place the last few years and so some of that is resulting in some savings that'll be ongoing. Um the next largest item there is some savings u from building spaces. So they're buildings with

069spaces that are underutilized that trying to get those spaces more efficiently used so we can save on utilities and maintenance and custodial costs in those buildings. Um some operational savings on math and science curriculum that's transitioned as the curriculum has transitioned to more online. um less compostable throwaways uh paper or compostable plates and and dinner wear and culinary is another thing doing using more sort of dishwashers that that clean the plates and they're just reused and then about a threequarters of million dollars in just reductions around contracted services and miscellaneous expenses. Director Sarju has a comment and I'm curious about it. You tickled me when you said using dishwashers that clean the plates. That's it. Noted. I'll put that in the feedback. Um, next slide. So, this is sort of setting up the long-term discussion

070that the structural deficit will persist. Um, as you've stated earlier, enrollment is projected to continue to decline. Um, there will be increases in legal, utilities, insurance, transportation, special education. Um, the need for school mitigation funds as the district gets smaller. Um there's contingency planning around the uncertainty of federal funding as director Mazrai pointed out earlier. Um there's multiple expiring labor agreements uh expiring August of this year. The strategic plan task force which we'll talk about a little bit later um how that um engages in this conversation. district needs to start to rebuild that rainy day fund at some point and then pay off that inter fund loan that the budget contemplates continuing 11 million of this next graphic I think you've all seen just trying to lay out the the next five years in the

071big buckets of work that that will happen um around the strategic plan and how to resource that in the the midst of hiring a new superintendent And I think we'll go to Chief Redmond for just a quick update on the strategic plan task force. Yes. Uh speaking of doing things differently and looking ahead, one of the things that the board asked us as we came into 2025 is to make sure that we established an advisory group that would work along with our strategic plan and make sure that we're aligned to our budget priorities and making sure that the two are are very much connected. So, uh, this last month, seems like a long time ago, last month, we did put out an application and, uh, drum roll for this board and how people want to

072be involved in the conversation. 211 applications came in. I would have to say I was probably expecting maybe around the 50-ish mark. So, we are uh, at 211 applications that are coming in or have come in. And at this point, we're looking through those, making sure that we've taken out any kind of duplicates that may be there, and ensuring that we have a fair process to get down to a smaller group. Now that said, one of my uh conversations that I've had recently is since we've had such a wide response or a great response to this, how do we continue to harness the voices that are in that group? Even if you are going down to a smaller group, what do you do with that body that came through? Obviously, there's some interest there and

073there reasons why they're interested. We don't want to lose that feedback. So, we're working on a way to make sure that we focus group or have some conversations with the larger group before we come down to a final decision in terms of who will be a part of the uh task force. Now, uh we will also be using a third-party facilitator as we begin our work. We're hoping to have those selections done in June for the task force or early June, but using an independent or a neutral facilitator. So, not necessarily the district staff standing before you at every moment trying to shape a conversation or seeing that we're seen as an over influence on a conversation so that it can occur more naturally and also wanting to share what the key objectives of the

074task force will be as we begin to get started. One, we want to make sure that we have identified and that we can ensure key groups and key stakeholders that will be providing uh feedback on our process and our planning process. Any kind of surveys, any kind of focus groups, we want their touches on it to make sure that we're inclusive, accessible, and that we're touching as a great portion of the community as we possibly can. They're also here to help us uh align our district emerging goals and then also provide that feedback to us as we're looking for that long-term budget uh forecasting. So, that's a little bit about the task force and the 211 people that are interested. Sure. Director Anken and let's do let's do let's looking at this let's do questions

075for the last few slides as well. So start so from the uh yeah from the header which is hang on the header of the 2025 proposed budgets summary all the way to the task force slide. We'll do we'll do a round of we'll go around. Okay. Um my question is specifically about task force and um I am wondering you know when we gave that direction that was prior to notice that we were losing our superintendent. Yes. And so I am curious about the charge for that task force what they're tasked with because if um you know uh if I were a new incoming superintendent I would want to be leading the development of my own strategic plan. Um, so how how are we going to make sure that these folks that their time is being

076well spent and that we're not going to say, "Oh, never mind. Sorry, we're going to start over." I just we I I am seeking um real clarity on what the uh kind of um I guess guard rails are around that task force because we also are not just opening up every possibility. What do you guys think we should do? we've already set the goals and guardrails based on feedback from the broader community. So that's not what's important. We're not we're not repeating that. Um I just don't Yeah, it feels a little um I don't have clarity. So um I would like to know more specifically about what what the objective is and how their timing of any possible deliverables might be adjusted due to the superintendent turnover. And then also would just throw out there

077that in the past when there's been something like this um typically a board member is invited to attend not all because we're not we shouldn't be part of that but as a kind of liaison. So I'm just kind of putting that out to director top. That's something that has happened in the past when there's been something like this. there will be a board liaison that may get go to one meeting and get a um you know where there's being feedback shared or get a report or something to share with the rest of the board just to keep us updated. So we might want to think about that. Uh noted on the final portion of that and certainly we can have conversation on how that should look going forward concerning the superintendent search. fully cognizant of

078that. And though the selection of the task force will occur in June and the contact will be made to make sure that that body comes together, we are going to do a little bit of a pause. We're expecting to be around a lot longer than we probably originally intended to be. So we have to make sure that we're getting out of the way of the superintendent engagement process that's coming. So we will make sure the body is selected comes together and then elongating our our time a little bit to accommodate for the selection of a new superintendent. Thank you. I could add one point um uh to Chief Redmond's points is in all these planning processes, you know, often the construct is a development of options. Um and we think an incoming superintendent would be

079well served by the existing team doing work along that line. So what are potential options in the view of the existing team not baking things kind of beyond that? Can we can we gather can we describe the landscape? Can we describe what we're thinking of are potential options um um for resolving issues meeting uh meeting goals and greater compliance with the guard rails and then um having the board give guidance to the incoming superintendent amongst those or ones that we didn't think of but that that would be time well spent for us. others in in these past few slides. Director Sarju, um I want to clarify that I'm that I'm actually reading this right. So on the slide that says closing the budget gap, um it doesn't have a page number, but it does say

080closing the budget gap. It says projected oh 24 sorry I can't see it projected deficit um because the the line of numbers doesn't have a total does that add up to the 103 okay yes so what we're telling the community is for the 2025 2026 we are going to uh basically eliminate the deficit for that school year, but the the correct it's going to continue to be a deficit. So, in other words, we don't have a long-term solution. That's correct. For solving the deficit. Yes. When is that going to happen? All right. That's the $und00 million question. That's theund million question. I will follow Director Sergey because it's sort of along those lines. So looking at this uh obviously everything's like like you said in this sort of long-term challenges and opportunities. We expect uh

081anticipate increases in costs. Everything's becoming more expensive. Legal, utilities, transportation, special ed. Um on the closing the list roughly what 40 million here is structural deficit items. Yeah. The legislative, the levy, those are both the district office changes. um the capital fund interest could be considered a longer term solution. We've done some initial work trying to project what the next years would be and it's in the $87 million range. We haven't finalized that yet, but as these solutions come forward, costs of everything go up. Um for example, the staff 85% of the budget is staffing. So when staff get a cola increase of 2% that's not fully funded by the state of Washington for sale public schools and so there's immediately an increase in the deficit for that. So you're chasing this growing number over

082time and so the district has made some progress. I think three or four years ago before I was here was 130 something. This is 104. Um we're looking 80 80 to 90 for the co the next year after that through accommodation reductions and increased revenue and changes in the system but it's not there yet as President Topp said this is not the the final answer for solving that problem. I think there an interest in really trying to forecast out here the long-term fiscal stabilization which I appreciate all the work on the this task force and I love the fact that there are 211 folks who have applied. I think that really says how much people care and want this system to work and and function. So, I appreciate the work there and I appreciate the

083looking out for also the work that they're going that that the task force is going to do and also bringing on a new superintendent in that process and also sort of the superintendent engagement that is going to happen. want to look uh for other directors or directors online. Yeah, I have one quick question um on the enrollment projections. I know probably now is not the time because probably wouldn't know until the beginning of next school year, but it would be helpful for the board to see how closely aligned those projections are every year to reality. Are we overenrolled for what the demographers thought? Are we underenrolled? And you know, as we project out longer into the future, I know the longer you project out, the less accurate it is. So just to be constantly for

084us to be seeing how how the how closely those projections align with reality. Thank you. We can provide you more specific numbers. In the current fiscal year um enrollment exceeded our projection um by 426 students if I remember correctly. Um and year-over-year um in uh exceeded uh enrollment actually increased by 14 students in the October count. So, um it's too early to say if that's a trend. Um but, uh and you know, we're generally forecasting um flat or gradual design, but uh a decline, but um most recently, um we've uh the enrollment has exceeded the projection. Thank you, Director Clark. Thanks, President Top. um you know just kind of thinking about longterm and um Dr. Battleman I know you said that you know a few years back the deficit was higher and um spending is

085coming down a little bit through some of the reductions. I I find it really hard to um to kind of grasp um yeah to have a true understanding of um of what you're talking about without having some sort of a visual to represent like um you know whatever the categories of spending are where we're overspending and a timeline of years. Um, is there a way that that you could visualize kind of maybe when the deficit was at its highest and you know whether it's through a graph or a spreadsheet so that we could kind of I just get a better understanding of um I guess what portions of the deficit are from a lack of Um, I'm not saying this very well, but it's I would love to see some more specific information about the

086categories of um spending um what kind of what's coming down in terms of um our deficit through reductions, what's going up in cost. Is that possible for you to provide? Yes, it is. and we can do that. Thank you. There is just this isn't the clean answer to your question. In the budget book that's published, there's actuals from 234 last year's budget and this year's proposed budget to give you a sense of some of the trend. But what you don't have in there is the actuals from the last four or five years. And that information is available. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to apologize in advance if this sounds defensive. Um, but I want to talk a little bit about the term overspending. So, because I just we've got a lot of people listening and

087um to me that implies that we budgeted something, we spent more than we were authorized to spend and our deficit is a little bit different. Those we made choices that we're going to spend more than we get in state funding. And that's what that structural deficit is about. Um, for example, if we followed state funding, I think we'd have um nine staffers supplying school security across our system. And we staff considerably more than that because we made that choice. Um, and I um, Director Clark, I I I know you know that, but just I that's a trigger word, overspending, and I just I these are choices we're making, and we're going to have to keep making choices to line up our revenues with our expenditures. But it's not that um staff are spending more than

088we're budgeting. Not not that that never happens, but at the bottom line that that's it's a little bit it's a nuance, but and again I I'm sure that did sound offensive, but I I just had to get it off my chest. Not at all. Um I can appreciate that. And in no way was I trying to make any accusations against staff. But I think again that just going to my point of like being able to have that information about what the categories are, what choices we are making in spending would be incredibly helpful. Yeah. Director Ranken, thank you. Um, this is a quick followup to what Director Miss Rahi just brought up and so thank you for bringing that up, Joe. Um I cannot remember when uh there's a there's a flow analytics enrollment study.

089Was that in 2023 or was that just I think it was in 2023. So um uh some folks on the board now may not have um well weren't here for the presentation and uh may not um have seen it but uh because I have been hearing from so many different places that you know the um enrollment and birth rate and uh in migration and out migration numbers precoid formulas were pretty uh reasonably reliable and a lot of that those trends and things have just changed so much postco that I'm wondering um connected to what Joe asked about updated if can uh could we ask I don't know what the what the cost is but if flow analytics did provide us with information based on their projections of declines in enrollment regionally like to middle school

090feeder patterns mostly I mean based on birth rates but also based on like housing costs. like the Xin Middle School attendance area has high housing prices and h uh low density and so there's not a lot of new children that are going to come in there that would drive numbers up because students that were fifth graders are now in high school and they still live in the same homes and there's not you know um but if there's other I I'm wondering how much uh those projections at the at the time that were accurate and based on a lot of assumptions that may have been true before co with different volatilities if we could have an up update of that and see if it still provides a similar I mean I don't think we're suddenly going

091to get a whole bunch of new kids but um in the city but just uh in terms of the in increased volatility if it would be helpful not only to have what Joe asked for but also maybe like a refresh on that 10-year forecast with more current circumstances. The team does do rolling and um 10ear forecasts. Some of the help that we get from consultants um is uh somewhat relying on other external milestone like census data and so when are new data available that it's um but we uh president top referenced an enrollment update and we've been talking about enrollment a lot. So somewhere in there um I think we can give we can refresh that enrollment update and include you know what the broad trends are how they're factoring into the coming year and

092then some things that we've done recently whether it's around choice whether it's about how we're handling some advanced learning have those what impacts have we seen from those but yes we'd be happy um to dig deeper and then the process discussion that we started this conversation with affects the timing of when we want to look at forecast and and frankly what forecast means um depending on how we build school choice into the process. So yes, we definitely um would welcome a session like this or some other opportunity to go in a little bit deeper on enrollment. We you want to close us out? We can close us out. So next we are almost going to hit six which will be our official end time which means that we can we're precise with the budget is

093how long people get a break for. a lot of power here. So, next step is June 4th is the public hearing with the official budget presentation. July 1st, the board will vote vote and as president top said earlier, we'll assess the process from last year, continue to improve on it going forward and then be talked about strategic plan task force. The next slide, you'll see our buses moving along. So, we're making progress towards that um roadmap to sustainability, but we're not quite there yet as we finally discussed. And then last slide is just the typical thank you slide, but I really want to thank you for the engagement in the conversation around some of the process improvements we can make and how we can be better serve the board and your decision- making around resources

094for Seattle public schools. I do want to end on a high note. My kids are both graduates of Seattle public schools and my daughter's graduated from college this weekend. So, a success story, a Seattle public school success story. So, uh you're all doing very good work and thank you for doing that. So, I love it. And we have high school graduations coming up which is my favorite time of the year. So, we're going to break till 6 where uh so we've got a six minute break in which we'll then begin and have our uh interimm metrics uh for new [Music] guardrails. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Okay. Down. [Music] everybody. [Music] Hey Heat. Heat. [Music] My god. [Music] All right, it is six. calling board directors back so we can get started here.

095[Music] Thank you. Oh, okay. Y got it. needs it. All right, it is 6 PM and we do have a quorum here. So, we're going to get started. We're going to move to our interim uh guard rails discussion. Um, and I'm going to pass it over to Chief Podesta. Thank you. Um I am just going to tee this up and um introduce the agenda and we have a different sequence planned for tonight. If we could advance the slides and a a couple I'd just like to talk about um just so people aren't disoriented the the order by which we're doing this. Um we uh given that we had some discussion about guardrail 5 in a previous meeting and um that we believe guardrail one is a really meaty topic. We'd like to put it at

096the end to make sure that we get to guard rails 2, three, and four. So that's why we're um doing the sequence this way. Again, we're still partway through this discussion. Um some of these I think we're having the really the first discussion um with directors. So we really appreciate the feedback and kind of um uh collaboratively creating these. And then we've retoled again we talked about guard there has been some discussion about guard rails one and five. Um there's been some major retooling based on feedback with respect to guardrail one and there was some discussion there about five. So we're combining those together. Um, we appreciate the feedback we got in the meantime. Uh, a special shout out to Director Rankin who um gave us um some great questions and feedback that I staff

097responded to and I think we posted with the materials. Uh, we may need to backtrack, but I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Howard um to just ground us kind of in the process and where we are. Guys did the budget part, but this is the fun part. Are we excited? All right. So, good evening board directors and community partners. Uh my role tonight is really to ground us in what we're going to do, which is sometimes people say set set the table. I'm saying tonight our soundtrack. What do we want our soundtrack to be? Think about the music you listen to. Think about what's in your genre of music that you listen to. I just want you to think about that for a second. And so as we think about that, it's about

098intentional design like governance and leadership to create but a clear and build on the following strategic goals over the next five years. So we're building on what we've started already in our conversations. So think about your soundtrack for a second. One of the songs are in my soundtrack is change is going to come by Sam Cook. Uh it creates hope. Uh what was I made for? Billy Isish is in my soundtrack. Um that talks about reflective attached into student mental health, identity development, and belonging. Uh another song in my soundtrack is by her, we the people. It talks about civic voice, collective action, responsibility. And then my favorite is uh John Lennon, a dreamer. Because we're all dreamers. We dream about what tomorrow should look like. That's why all of us are doing the work

099that we do on a daily basis. And if we're not getting up doing that work, then you have to ask, why are we here? [Laughter] As we continue to advance the strategic work, I want to take a few moments to reinforce our shared understanding about goals and guard rails. Our goals are strategic priorities. Our guardrails represent our community's non-negotiable values, conditions we must not violate while pursuing those goals. Very, very important. The board is responsible for setting those goals and the superintendent and his team are responsible for the guardrails and collaboration with the board. The superintendent is responsible for achieving the goals while operating within the guardrails. he or she is responsible for 80% of that implementation. Why? So we can shift practices if we're not meeting those goals. When we're sitting with our timed

100with the board talking about our calendar, our performance metrics, if we're hitting them, if we're not hitting them, we can make adjustments. So that's why the uh 80% is set up with the superintendent to be able to shift those practices. The role of the district leadership is to ensure that every department within the Seattle school district, including schools, move beyond compliance to lead in ways that intentionally transform student experiences and outcomes. So, going from minimum to leading change. As we look ahead, we are committed to launching monthly progress monitoring calendars that will use timely disagregated data to assess our advancement towards board adopted goals. This tool will strengthen our ability to engage, to be reflective and resultsoriented. This conversation with the schoolboard and community, supporting real-time course corrections and a deeper accountability. This continuous improvement

101cycle is designed to align strongly with our community's vision and ensure that our strategic strategies produce outcomes our students deserve. In closing tonight, we're we're not just revisiting a framework, but advancing toward more coherent and equitable governance systems. We're constructing and designing our prioritized transparency, strategic alignment, and collective ownership. This represents a pivotal step forward and and applying our goals and guard rails to drive meaningful and measurable improvements in student outcomes. So, as we set the stage, I still want you to think about your playlist. about hope, about creating uh a way for students to be themselves, for them to represent themselves, and we do that every day in the classroom. And then the last part about dreaming about the future. Think about our current kindergarteners. In 30 years, they'll be running the city of

102Seattle. So, we don't have to wait. We can see those current kindergarteners right now as we go to buildings to see what they're learning, what they need from us because we're going to make a difference with them. Thank you, Dr. Howard. And I hope everyone everyone is thinking through their playlist right now. I going to be distracted for the next hour, but um no, I I think that was a great grounding. So again, we're going to do this in a strange order and we'll try to move quickly um uh but substantively um through guardrails uh 2, three, and four and then revisit one and five. So guardrail 2 um it relates to student safety uh that the and I think it's this is uh just the wording of it is important and how we think

103about this that the student will not allow the existence of learning environments that do not promote physical and emotional safety is a little bit different than saying the superintendent will not allow anyone to be emotionally or physically unsafe. It is and in this discussion um it's difficult to come up with objective um metrics of safety. Um we can measure risks and you can measure safety in particularly physical safety in kind of an actual time scale but that is not um very helpful in the near term or in real time to react to situations. So, we kind of appreciate the wording and if we think about how we're um how staff are interpreting this um if we could go to the next slide is um somewhat of a due diligence exercise that um we will um

104take appropriate steps maintain controls m uh improve our practices um to promote a sense of physical and emotional safety. We also um uh very much appreciate kind of the broad um scoping of this with both physical and emotional and and in and terms of the current leadership. Um the staff leaders of this will be myself um and associate superintendent um uh uh Dr. Torres Morales to cover kind of both ends of the spectrum. Um in our first iteration, we think the perception of students and again it's hard to measure are you objectively safe and um just as important to measure do you feel safe? Um because again even if we had those objective measures um and you think of in civic life if if we hear about crime statistics or anything else that people can

105um recite um uh statistics and trends if it doesn't um end up with you feeling safe um it doesn't really matter what the numbers are. So we think that first and foremost understanding how uh both our uh um improvements to controls and practices land with students both with physical safety um and emotional safety is the key leading indicator. And so we're proposing inner metrics that um are would be a result of climate surveys that we really ask students um are they um perceiving the actions that we're taking and um do they feel they result in a safer environment for them and um Dr. Torres Morales I don't know if you I kind of looked at that from the physical safety standpoint if you want to um talk about uh emotional safety as well. Yes. Good

106evening board directors. Dr. Rocky Torres Moral's associate superintendent. And so when we were looking at this to what Chief Podesta was hinting, we were thinking about both sides of the metrics and how do we actually capture this for how our students feel. It's not just about the physical safety and it's not just about the emotional safety. So thinking about when we get into our climate survey data moving forward, being able to capture both of those constructs, we believe aligns with what we received as feedback for what the community was asking for for safety. And then to 2.3, which we haven't touched on yet, when we first started processing through this, we felt like it was a little bit, hey, is this the direction? But we landed at yes, we believe it is. Because if we're

107not prepared for those sorts of things, we are not we we're not fully hitting the safety metrics, we don't think. And so the intent of this is essentially to say, do our kids feel physically safe at school? Yes or no. Do they feel emotionally safe? Do they feel bullied? Those sort of things, yes or no. And then basically look at it from a baseline and how are we doing better to make sure that we're aligning with those things. And then the last part would be more so around the actual school preparedness like are we ready for these kind of things if they happen. It is another measure of safety. Um so I'm going to pause. I know I could add also for 2.3 the pro um participating in training drills are are important in and

108of themselves. It's also a comprehensive metric that applies to every student, every school, every staff member and there are many observations during the year. So it it's um we see it more than just the significance of those events but the engagement that school leaders have and school staff. We're um at this point proposing you know more counting and observations. We would like to move this also to a more qualitative measure. Not only are all these things happening, um are we um capturing lessons learned and the the quality of um these exercises and what what were the gaps? But we thought it's a good way to start to get the whole landscape with many many observations over the course of a school year and something that everybody sees and and that it would be a good

109way for this initiative um to have kind of a comprehensive touch point um with with schools with school leaders um staff at schools and with students because this is something that the whole system participates in. Yeah. And I think just to piggyback on that quickly, when we look at 2.3, it's not written up there, but the intent when you look at um the metrics is 100%. It's not up there in this moment, but essentially it's not that we're saying, hey, we already do these things at school and that's what we're going to continue to do. It's like, no, what we're saying is that we want to ensure that it's happening 100% of the time in all of our buildings. Director Clark Uh thanks President Topp. Um so in regards to um 2.1 and 2.2 um

110and kind of like measuring perceptions of I guess physical or emotional safety. I think that could be helpful. But if um are like let's say um students respond no are is there going to be a follow-up question that tries to narrow down why they don't feel safe at school. It just to me like it a yes or no question isn't going to give much data on what more could be done um in the event that um students are not feeling physically or emotionally safe. Yeah, this this would be large of a part of a larger climate survey that would have questions wrapping around it. I think we wanted to bring kind of the key one forward for progress monitoring, but yes, we need to get to the root causes. Yeah. And then I go back

111to, you know, we just were closing out our last set of guardrails and part of the feedback we heard clearly from the student board directors was around two pieces. if we're going to continue to use climate survey data. One was um making sure that we got the participation rates up so that we can really sit behind the data and the other was actually aligned to getting more open-ended questions in there. So, I think to answer your question, Director Clark, our intent would be when we're creating the construct to allow for that so that we can have some details from students as to the what, how, and why they're feeling that way. Okay. Thank you. Director Ranken. Um, so I for the um I can't remember what I said in my notes. Hopefully I'm not um

112contradicting myself. Uh but for the um perceptions of physical and emotional safety, you know, the what we what we want to see is what um our system can do differently to achieve that top guardrail being being true of students or of there not being environments that are not safe and um uh physically and social and emotionally. I am not sure that the superintendent has enough control over how students feel to make that I mean I think the the climate data is really important but students feeling about physical and emotional safety there's I think there's probably too many other factors in there and and and then the idea too is that you know we expect the system to make adjustments. So, if if these were the measures, the system would need to if if we hear

113um students don't feel physically safe, we would expect the superintendent to respond to that by um making changes that would increase the number of students that feel safe before the next time we monitor that to see that there's progress being made on the goal. Um, so I I don't know if um that is enough of a a lever that the superintendent has control over. Um uh it's it's Yeah. Does that make sense? I think it's important to ask, but I don't know if it's the right thing to measure for the we interim. We staff had a internal discussion about that that some um what's going on nationally might have an effect on um students overall feeling of safety. And so we're trying to get are we measuring the bottom line, if you will, or how

114do students feel about our response to things that are in our control? I I think it's and um again this is a this is a new guardrail and how we work that response to frankly any of the guard rails I think is it feels to me is still a work in progress that um I think we expect you know the guard rails are structured well everything um is compliant all the time and it's not going to be you spoiler alert um and so what um what is it that we do about it and how does how does that fit into these progress monitoring conversations um is important. I I think we we're committed to measuring this one way or the other if it's not useful to the board as a metric. Um we can talk

115about others. I um you had raised director an a really good um point is you know can you me um can you use as a measure safety incidents and the trends in those we very much want to we'd see that as the marquee metric but we know that our current practices and infrastructure really don't support that so we don't and we are very concerned that those um incidents are under reportported right now so we do not want to set a baseline until we fix those practices so we'd see that coming to the board with that as an interim metric in future years. I I'm happy to hear that cuz I think that would act like just the fact that you're identifying we already don't have a good accurate representation of different instances that involve physical

116unsafety, whether that be conflict between students, um whether that be uh threats at, you know, all all kinds of different things that contribute to physical safety. So, um I I think that also in terms of pushing using the metrics to shift our practices, what you just said is probably a lot more important that if we think we're not getting an accurate representation of what incidents are happening, there's no way we can be we would we are able to increase uh we can't address it if we don't know it. So I would maybe almost think about um an interim metric something around report incident reporting to know that we are getting an accurate picture that that could be something that um because even though we as the board only uh do a progress monitoring like public

117session on the interim metrics once a year, we should be getting that data multiple times throughout the year. So you're not going to ask students three times, four times a year if they feel physically safe. So that's not something that can be updated multiple times. But if you're doing something related to tracking incidents and the response to them, that could be updated multiple times a year and then we could talk about it at the end of the year. And again, that's very much our goal. We are still we um have uh technology being implemented in the coming year. We have some training. We just don't have quite the timeline for when do we think it would be appropriate to establish that baseline. We can certainly report what we have. I just don't want to create

118a perverse incentive to under report because we set our baseline too early. Others on this on the guard rail too. Oh, Director Sergeant, I have a similar I think struggle, internal struggle as Liza does. Um because again I don't I don't believe that the superintendent um has a direct there's not a direct line between how students are feeling and and the superintendent meaning a straight line. Um but where there is a straight line is accountability. Um what are adults doing? What is their response? um whether it's whether it's uh peer bullying or we we have reports and incidents of staff bullying. And so really it none of this means anything if there isn't accountability for the the uh the what do you call that? There's a word for it. Uh transgression, right? of the act

119of bullying. And so um I think uh I think Fred you kind of got at it at the end of your conversation with Liza like how many reports and you know what was the outcome but really for families whose children are experiencing bullying this means nothing to them. This means absolutely nothing because their their child's mental health is has already been impacted and will continue to be impacted if they if they are forced to remain in the environment because they don't have any any other choices. they don't have a choice to send their kid to another school or they don't have the resources to uproot their housing and move to another location so that their kid can go to another school. So I don't have a proposal but I I think we're missing the mark

120on supporting our students by not holding the adults accountable that really the focus should be on the when this happens because it's going to happen it that it continues to happen. What happens after that? Full feedback. Director Briggs. Um my question actually is uh about actually all of these. I'm just wondering when are we going to have numbers here um to plug in uh for the x and y variables um I don't have the specific timeline I think it's part of design with regard to the um we can provide numbers immediately um for 2.3 uh for 2.1 and 2.2 to um that the next iteration of climate surveys being designed. And so I think um what that process would look like would dictate um what how we set that baseline because some of these are

121kind of new questions also. Okay. Guard rail three. Good evening. Sarah Pritchette, assistant superintendent for human resources. I'll be going over guard rail three. Um, guard row three uh talks about the superintendent not allowing adult behaviors or instructional practices that are misaligned with the district's anti-racist values. Um, we see that as including curriculum materials, classroom interactions, and school climate. So that's what we were looking at and and um we believe this also reflects the values of SPS our community um and the expectation that all students feel affirmed um and respected in their learning environments. We can go to we can go to the next slide next slide. Okay. All right. Thank you. Um we're interpreting this guardrail to require both um professional development, professional learning for the adults um and systems that reflect racial equity.

122Um this means that our staff need to be trained. Um there needs to be curriculum that is representative and that students must feel that they belong. Um we are defi defining adherence um through the lens of adult preparedness and then the student actual student experience. So, our underlying interpretation for this guard rule is that if the school staff are trained and prepared to implement anti-racist practices, if students perceive that staff respond effectively and proactively to matters of race and equity within school, and if students see themselves in the diversity of their and the diversity of their peers um reflected in the curriculum, then the school system is adhering to the community values reflected in guardrail 3. we are proposing to monitor. So we have four um and I want to start off by saying that

123these are um foundational metrics. So much like some of my colleagues have talked about, these are some of the things that we want to understand that we are doing. So we want to be clear that all of our staff are taking the training um that we provide annually on anti-racism. So that's we want to get that out. We want to make sure that that's happening um that everyone is doing that. We want um to also measure that staff um are prepared um to implement anti-racist practices um based on the trainings that they've received that they feel confident in their abilities to implement um and to address um incidents of racism within the schools. Um we also then want to look at what is the student perception. Do they feel that the adults are able are

124addressing issues as they come about? um our adults um our students percentage of students who agree um based on our climate surveys that the school staff are responsive to matters of race and equity. Um and then the last one that we have in there really talks speaks to the um curriculum, the percentage of students who agree that on on our surveys that the curriculum is a representative um representative of student diversity. And so um part of this for us when I say it's foundational for for us gathering this information. One, have you done the training? Two, what are staff saying about the training? Do they feel that they are prepared? Um, this offers an opportunity for us to then go out into schools and um into focus groups talking with staff um about what is

125it that is making you feel prepared because I think there's both sides. So, if we have schools um that are reporting that they feel very prepared, what is it? So, I want to dig into that. what is it that um they're seeing around the training? Um are there other things that that are contributing to that? Um are there and then within schools that don't feel prepared? If we have a significant numbers of staff that are not feeling prepared, what is lacking in the training? So those are um so this for me um is around that foundational piece. Then giving us a rich opportunity to go in and start talking with staff about what is it is the training meeting the needs? what are some of the are the topic areas um relevant and then um

126and then of course ultimately going to our students. So if our students are saying that they feel that staff are prepared talking with student groups to find out what does that look like? What do you mean by that? Um likewise if they don't feel that staff are prepared, what's not being addressed? What are the things that are um um that you feel aren't being that aren't happening or aren't being addressed within your school buildings and gathering that information. one to develop um training. So looking at some of that feedback from staff and from students around what um future training looks like um what things are working are not working. Do we need to develop additional um opportunities for staff and uh to grow their um skill set? So those are the types of things that

127we're looking at. Again, these are foundational. Um they don't have the information. I've noted kind of the feel part of um 3.2. So really um for me in just in listening to that last conversation it would be more around that staff are prepared and so take the feeling out of it but that you are prepared um so just noting some of those things but I'll pause there um for questions discussion or let's just go around the circle here. Director Brics, she Oh, because it has like a yellow hand. Um I I my comments are basically uh in the same vein as the comments for the last guardrail. And I'm wondering if if actually instead of like um perceptions and feelings if instead it would be more effective to measure things like um like the tangible

128manifestations of a non- anti-racist environment like disproportionality in discipline for example like maybe we need to see a a metric on that. um or like number of schools that have have um embedded ethnic studies into all of their curriculum like th those kinds of things. Again, like to Michelle's point about what are the adults doing in the buildings to ensure this and less about what people's perceptions and feelings are, but what are the what are the tangible things that we can measure that will help us know that um yeah, that that are correcting the indicators that we have that show that racism is actually a factor. Does that that was a awkward wording, but hopefully it made it made sense. Yeah. No, it it does make sense. I do have some of the same um

129concerns having monitored um discipline when in a previous role in Seattle public schools. I do get concerned about non-reporting of disciplinary incidents when we're trying to look at them and then you know staff sometimes feel okay we're not going to report this because it looks better when we have less you know just just balancing some of that um when we're thinking about the incidents and then for me I think when I think about this I want to I want to ensure that our um training and professional development is effective so that so there's part of that in there is like we can do all the training if it's not effective and you don't feel like you're prepared to handle situations. We need to know that. Um and then um ultimately if I as an adult

130say that I am I do feel prepared, I need to know what the students think, you know, because that's I mean I can say all day, yep, I'm prepared and I could have a whole classroom full of students who say no actually you're not or you know we don't feel that way because these incidents keep happening and no one does anything about it. So that's I guess what we're getting at. I think that um and I would say that even if we have um you know 10 10 ethnic studies classes in a in a school that doesn't necessarily mean that because we have those classes that the behaviors of the adults have changed. It means that we're teaching and we're giving access to students. But I'm interested in what the adults are. Well, I keep

131saying me, but I'm sorry because I'm excited about I mean, I'm I'm actually, you know, excited about this particular guard rail. Um, because we've been working on race and equity for so many years that, you know, I want to see results. I want to see changes in how we um do our day-to-day interactions with one another and with students. So, that's why I keep saying I apologize for that. It is the collective. we um but again the number of things that we put in a school for classes or what have you um may or may not necessarily change the adult behavior that we're looking at. So that's kind of where where we're going. But I take that um I'm noting that and thinking about that and want to bring that back to the to the

132collective group to talk about other measures. I just have a quick followup. I I think that the ethnic studies one was just coming from having heard from community over and over and over again that that's really really important and the the failure to implement it districtwide um has a racist impact. So, um, that's where that was coming from. And so, I I feel like that is it is about adult behavior in so far as it is about changing a system, um, and to make a system responsive to what community is saying it needs to see. Um, okay. Um, I'm done. That's you, Michelle. Director Sarju. Um, so I too am excited about the guard rail. Um, where my excitement falters is the checkbox with a um follow-up participation trophy that we do well in our

133culture, right? People take trainings and they get a little certificate or a trophy that you took an anti-racism training and then they show up to the classroom exactly the way they did before because they're not being held accountable. And so this is this exercise is an exercise that we have to continue to refine and try to get right. Um because honestly our kids I mean you heard the NAACP youth council yesterday. They they they know what they're talking about. They know what these kinds of things look like. Um, and the fact that, um, and what I'm referring to is, uh, President Toppen, director Clark and I went and met with them and they have alumni who are juniors, you know, freshman, sophomore, juniors in college that come back to be mentors. That says something about

134that program, right? It says something about the value that they felt like they got in their time in being on that council and doing the work. They're they were real clear in their demands. That's what they call them, demands. They're not asks or, you know, we hope. They are demands and they're solid. And so, I don't know how we get, you know, I feel like, yes, okay. But in in this, I don't feel like there's a way to hold the adults accountable in practice, right? They're going to get the they're going to get the checkbox. They're going to get the certificate or the participation trophy, but how does that how does that land in the classroom, and that's where we have to get to. I I get we're on a path to this, but we've

135got to stay focused on the goal that it's more than just a flag or a trophy at the end of it. I would agree 100%. Um, and I think that the most important piece on here is how students are feeling and how students are seeing um, and perceive the staff responding to incidents of of race and equity and all of that. So, I do agree with that statement. Director Anken, uh, thank you. Um yeah, along the same lines, I think the uh like the the the first one I think is honestly in our system where everything where we it really is so variable building to building. I do think where we are that first one is important. Um just like you're supposed to take this, did you take it? every we expect everyone to take

136this and um and it's also something that the superintendent can directly I mean you can't make somebody do something but if they're not going to do it and it's part of their job to do it the superintendent can decide if they still have a job so that the superintendent has quite a lot of control over that one um the uh the uh I don't know that people who are I'm including myself in this on a journey to anti-racism are the best ones to assess whether or not they are the one they are prepared to um implement the practices. So I could be like oh I'm so ready I took the training I'm an ally and you be like oh you took one training I don't know that that's or I mean also people's self-perception they

137could have taken a ton of training and actually be like one of the best accompllices in the building and still feel like they're not prepared to do enough for whatever reason. So I think if there was a way we could get more at um actual actions being taken or not taken. So um and even the students in the climate survey I think climate survey is important but I would also be interested if when students report an incident of racism how they feel about its resolution. So and I I'm I know that's going to face the same thing and all are reported. Well, the ones that are because if we expect our buildings to be implementing restorative practices and to be um interrupting and disrupting uh uh unsafe and uninclusive and racist environments, um the ones

138that are reported, we should I I don't know how those processes get closed, but part of the close of it should be did do you feel the person who was harmed. Do you feel this was appropriately resolved? Because I I am also hearing of some, you know, buildings where restorative, you know, everybody loves a buzzword, so restorative practices getting thrown all around. In some places, it's very authentically done. In some places, students are actually feeling more unsafe because they're being sat with an administrator face to face with the person who's causing them harm and are told like, "Well, we're here to talk this out." and that is not actually restorative at all. So h how we maybe try to capture um and then I I have to say too that what I'm noticing here is

139when we talk about changing adult behaviors, we're talking about our own behavior and also the behavior of other of people in this building. We're not just talking about those people out in the buildings need to change their behavior. And so I want to see a little bit more um you know percentage of surveyed staff who agreed they were fully supported by their building administrator and central office to implement anti-racist practice might be good because if they indicate like I do not feel prepared and I do not feel like I have the support I need that's something that the superintendent can then go oh hey this building or this person you know what can we do to make sure that they feel prepared. instead because it is about it is about each of us behaving differently,

140not about waiting for other people to behave differently. Um, so I I because what what we're really looking for is active change. Oh, I see it. Um, yeah. Can I ask a follow-up question if that's okay? Um, so when we're thinking about um talking with folks who have reported so that so that to me feels different than like our wide student survey because you're going to have a significant um percentage of folks who are like I no I've never reported anything next. So um perhaps we could get to some of that as we work with our office of student civil rights as they you know an exit interview for lack of a better term. Um maybe that's something that's different that you know that I think that sounds process um because I don't also don't

141want to ask thousands of kids who haven't reported something and they say sure it's great you know because they're not they don't actually know and haven't felt that process. So I'm I'm I think that's interesting and it also you know no one measure is going to capture like every single thing but if we do look at like like I mean maybe the place to start would be to look at how many incidents come through the office of student civil rights and and see is that a is that number going up is it going down might like whether or not that's a good place to look and then um like an exit survey or a closeout I think is a um is a really great idea and also because then a lot of times when there

142are incidents like that they are resolved for that one incident and don't necessarily um impact the rest of the system but if we were all looking at that together did this get the response and talking about it a little more systemically that I mean I it's it's an interesting thing to think about if that would provide the right um information and response um certainly could give us some ins insights into pro into the process itself and are there spaces that we can make process improvements. Um so I'm I'm interest you know so thank you for that. So I want to just do a check here because we've gone through guardrail two and three and we've provided some feedback. The superintendent is in charge of the interim metrics here. So, are is the board asking, I

143guess, to receive and have a another conversation on on two and three. A question I have is again that we're going through a superintendent transition and so this is a much bigger I think this is all really valuable work and I wonder how like we could have someone that comes in that says oh I interpret I interpret that in this way and in my previous district this and this worked really well and I'd like to try that and and I don't think we should say too bad we've already interpreted it for you. I don't. So that's another I'm not and remember the superintendent can change in inter metrics at any point. So this that that's where I'm saying we're giving this feedback and I just want to make sure that staff feels like they have

144the direction to be responsive and are we going to do we want to pull this back in with addition with our feedback come our retreat or something and and look at it again. Just trying to understand or gauge where we're where we want to go here. Yeah, I think that's a really good question and um and I'm wondering if if maybe I don't know that maybe we do want to even pause on this like I I I'm I don't know how what other I'm curious what other board directors think but um cuz I I guess what I'm like you're right that a new superintendent could change these metrics at any time, but why why spend our time workshopping these if they're just going to get changed when a new superintendent comes in. Um without and

145you know I I do think it's it would be really valuable to have that person's perspective on these. So for that reason it I I I feel like I could make a case for just pausing on these until we have completed that transition. But um curious what other people think. My only concern there is, you know, scheduling, trying to schedule out and looking at our calendar and our monitoring and and the work that needs to happen in that place, are we just going to miss having guard guard rails for, you know, the first six months of the school year type of thing. I I think because the guard rails get monitored so much less frequently than the goals, I think we could probably work around that. Um except that we want to see data more

146iteratively. We just don't talk about it as much. Right. Right. But I mean like there's just we have a we have a problem here which is that like we're we can't really do this right now. I mean that's just the reality without letting I mean I guess we could but then we're and there's a chance that the new superintendent would be like yep looks great like and then it would be done. I don't know. I I don't know. May I may I make a recommendation and this is um this mostly probably reflects my own failings. Um but I don't feel like we as a group have matured how guard rails actually work and what the process is. And again that I'm I'm probably projecting my own insecurity around this topic. It feels like if we

147went with something and just worked on the practice of progress monitoring, even if they're not what you think, we'll take the feedback we're getting to heart, make some adjustments, and then just work on it so we can work out how do these things work instead of what are they? And that maybe would give that flexibility for the next administration to adjust, but they would be adjusting for a system that's that we have some practice with. Yeah, I I think that's per I think that's perfect. And I'm hearing a lot of yes around the table and I think that makes sense because we can't stop doing our work just because we don't have a superintendent. We've got we've got the system in place. So, let's let's take that suggestion and then continue on to the next

148guardrail, guardrail 4. And and I may have interrupted Mr. Howard. I don't know if I think uh uh Fred exactly what you're saying. We need to continue to work, continue to pull the data, see where we're at right now and work with the progress monitoring calendar so you see that feedback and growth and you can continue to give us feedback. And then even if a superintendent comes in and shifts it, we're still making progress. And that's what we should be doing anyway with the guardrail. We should learn from what we're doing, make shifts in our practices, from your feedback, what we're learning, what we learn from our students, and keep making those changes because you're engaging the community. We're going to make those shifts on a regular basis. That's the practice that Fred's talking about

149that we have not had a lot of practice with. We had a practice of writing one goal and then coming back to you at the end of the year saying do we hit it not hit it and then trying to defend it. Um what we what we're going to be doing every 30 45 days is bringing you some uh data back to say hey this is where we're going or we on the right track. If we're not we want to shift our practices but this is what we've learned and this is why we're shifting those practices. So, that's the calendar that's so important. But you're right, we need to give you some metrics so you can see if we're on the right track because we don't know or uh if we are not until we

150grab the data first. And that's what Fred's saying. Well, I would love to see some knowing that the in the on the ideal if if things go as scheduled and a new superintendent is hired in August and is starting, we need to give them some some time to just get to know us and our system. and we still want to have something to to measure. So I think having I I what I would really like is the outcome of this to be not necessarily scheduling another session but maybe as you all work on the things that we're talking about today maybe just over email send us updated drafts and we could yeah I think that see if we come back to it in September or if we come back to it per I think so

151the system will be we're going to continue feedback today staff will try to inor incorporate feedback. We will have a draft just to look at. We won't spend time reviewing at our retreat um and we can and go from there. Okay, perfect. So, the guardrail four all right guardrail for engagement which will continue uh looking at as we look at a new superintendent as we go into strategic planning. So engagement is a bedrock of what we will uh be undertaking. Uh as you know and this is a continuation of our conversation from our last meeting. We started talking about where we wanted to see engagement go and looking at the guardrail. It ensures that the superintendent will make no major decisions underscoring major decisions without first implementing an engagement strategy that includes students, families, staff

152and community members. So tonight is not necessarily about looking flatly at words on the screen, but it is talking we are talking about making this an essential part of the fabric of what we do and not just uh a checkbox exercise. Yes. Okay. Hang on. Hang on. Haven't even gotten to the intermetrics yet. Let's let's wait till we get to the intermetrics. Okay. All right. All right. We're going to keep cooking. All right. So knowing that we're trying to make this more than just a checkbox exercise, again part of the fabric of what we do, we believe and are taking a look at things to say that if our central office and our school leaders are trained and prepared to implement effective engagement at the building level and I believe at our last meeting we

153talked about a lot of our engagement does occur at the building level and if students, staff and family members perceive and not just feel, but they have opportunities to authentically engage in major decisions. And if the board action reports as well as our updates demonstrate that our stakeholders, and I I almost hate the word stakeholders because it feels a little inhuman. Um if our families, if our school community are effectively engaged before major decisions are made, then we believe uh not that we have arrived, but that we'll be chipping at and aligning ourselves with the values of guardrail 4. Knowing that when we talk about major decisions, want to underscore that major decisions are decisions that could impact a student group. And when we define student group, I want to expand that a little bit.

154That could be a grade band. That could be students qualifying for a specific set of services. It could be a group of schools. It could be the entire district. Or it could be, and I added this, I don't think it's written down anywhere, a significant slice of our school community. So, when we're talking about uh major decisions and who it impacts, that's what we're talking about. not just saying, "Oh, this was a district-wide strategic plan decision." This is something that's impacting our community, whether be it small, a smaller subset, or whether it be the entire district. We can move on to the next slide. So, looking at the intermetrics and I am very interested to get some of your feedback. We did uh take a look at expanding this particular section. At one point it

155was solely talking or speaking to a uh a climate survey or a question on a climate survey. So we did expand out. You will remember and this will seem familiar to you on 4.1 and 4.2 that we are looking at leaders at the building level and in central office. Again remembering what I said that a lot of our engagement does occur at the building level and it also occurs uh not necessarily always at decisions from this table. There are individuals who are working on projects making decisions coming up with plans that they need that support. So making sure that we have a percentage of our that we can guarantee each year that we have a a high percentage of our central office and school leaders that have completed district training and know that there are

156expectations for effective engagement and know what to do and making sure that that increases. And of course we we would endeavor by 2030 my goodness we should be at 100% in terms of the the leaders who have access to the training each year. Now, I will align and say that this is necessary because I've heard from some of our principles, our building leaders to say, "Hey, we want some more support on our operational decisions. How do we do certain things outside of the academic decisions that we make on a day-to-day basis, then we should be able to come back and track after we have that number in place, we should be able to come back and have discussions with our school leaders and say, "How did that work for you? Do you really have the

157skills that it takes to go out and impact change? Not just the feeling, but do have you had that opportunity to transform and use what you were trained on and put it into practice. How did that work for you? And I would say 4.3 I'm almost ready to shift it to 4.4 because that's the end result. when you are uh taking a survey of students, families, staff, how many of them agree that they have the opportunities to participate in an in or informed decision-making processes? Um that's the end. In any of our climate surveys that we would put forth, that's actually the end. There are other key indicators before that, but going into 4.4 four bar action reports. We have sat before you on many days at many points in times and you have indicated

158your frustration. I I'll just underscore on frustration of being in a position to make decisions or vote on something that you weren't sure was fully embraced by the community. not necessarily agreement, but understanding and that there have been opportunities for input and what that input actually resulted in change or how it actually resulted in change. We're endeavoring to add a piece to the board action reports or to deepen what we submit in our board action reports to show you how was the engagement provided in this particular instance and if the feedback was given how did it change or how did it move the needle for us. So tracking all of those particular components uh as a start, don't believe this is the ending place, but as a start to really move from uh checking it

159on the paper to some actual feelings and actual um actualization of individuals involved and ready to engage with our families. So interested to hear your feedback on how you feel that will enable you to monitor. All right, we'll start with Director Sergio, then we'll go in the normal circle. Yeah, I'm not going to talk about the interim. I want to um make my comment on just and first thank you for acknowledging that we are not at the place where we're effectively engaging. You you said it. I don't remember exactly your words, but that you know that is the goal is to work on that. And you know, I don't know how many people are still a part of this riveting meeting online and are hearing this, but that is I I want our families to

160understand that we get that we haven't done engagement here, at least not to the expectations of families, and that we are committed to doing that. The point I want to make about this and I've said it before, you know, Bev, I'm assuming you're not a gastro interologist, but that your work has been in public affairs and as in chief of staff roles, right? Because that is your expertise, right? If we need a gastroenterenterologist, we we know where to get one of those, right? We need somebody to come in and talk to the community about that. You're not going to pretend like you are one and start talking about something you know nothing about. And I have said it before to this group. We need we need to hire professionals to help us with this. We

161have a really strong community engagement professional community here. Yes. Um in Seattle, we're really fortunate. not not every place has what we have to the plethora to the level that we have it. And so my hope, you know, I know I know we no longer have a community engagement department, but we have got to stop uh what we're doing because it's frustrating people. It's not working. We're not getting what we want right in the end. And we're wasting people's time. I mean, that's really what what is hard for me is wasting famil family's time. You know, I signed up for these Wednesdays. I signed up for, you know, what that means, but I, you know, I was a a parent of young children. And to come to meetings where I don't get anything out of

162it, I've wasted my time as as a parent when I could be home parenting, making sure kids are doing homework, right? getting ready for the next day, whatever the next thing is. So, I am excited to hear that acknowledged because we have to first acknowledge that we have a problem before we can do anything about it. And so, I appreciate you stating it. I think I heard it plainly. I mean, I don't know what anybody else feels, but I feel like you were plain in your language about this is what we're going for, and that that is the starting place. Thank you. Director Brakes. Um yeah, I just wanted to say that one of the things that I uh I think we all encounter a lot with families um that I'm not seeing necessarily reflected

163in any of these uh interim metrics is uh not just families who feel that they don't have a say in decision-m but also families who feel like an issue has come up or there's a problem or something and they have no way to get resolution. um they go to their principal, they don't get the answer that they need there. They go through let's talk and it feel I've literally had parents say to me that let's talk feels like screaming into the void. Um like they don't know what kind of response they're going to get back or if they will get one. Um or mo more often there is a response but it isn't helpful. Um and and that's when they end up at public testimony bringing their problem to the board. Um, and and so

164I guess I'm wondering what kind of metric we could come up with that could measure how effective our system is at addressing issues and concerns that arise for families. um where they feel like they're actually heard and that the the issue is being addressed such that they don't that their last resort isn't having to drag themselves down here on a Wednesday night and sign up for public testimony and bring their problem to the board because it's they don't know what else to do. Um so that's yeah just wondering if there's a way to reflect that somehow in one of these metrics. We will absolutely take that back. Um just to enlarge upon your point, uh let's talk is a wonderful system. It's a wonderful tool, but it's not the starting place for resolution. Yeah. So,

165I think that's what you're trying to grab at. Okay. And there's a great staff behind it, but often that's at the end of the line. It's not at the beginning or the middle where people are struggling. Director Anken. Um I uh I'm still just kind of purple. Like this isn't rocket science. Um and we used to have and I found it online, a toolkit that I helped develop as a community member 10 years ago with um Seattle Council PTSA and staff and uh superintendent at the time, Larry Nland. Mhm. And I like I don't know sometimes it feels like we're pretending that never happened and that we don't know how what to do. And that was working really well. We were at the brink of I mean actually functioning. Um and uh people I guess

166didn't want to get too comfortable and decided to blow it all up. Um and then and then CO really took out all of that. Um, but I my intense frustration is with the like and I don't know I don't know who or what force it is but some entity whether it's a person or something in this building does not want to do family engagement because if they did we would be doing it because it's actually not that complicated. So, I'm just naming that that like this all the talking around of it's actually not not that it's easy, but it's not that complicated. And um we're not doing it because nobody's been directed to do it and it the board has this is all we talk about um a lot that we talk about. Uh but

167people's I I would like to see I mean to Evan's point a metric could be the number of um people who sign up for public testimony that are speaking on things that are the superintendent not the boards because that public testimony is actually not engagement. It's one way. It's where you it's where you come when you haven't figured out how to get resolution and you don't know where else to go. Um but it's not engagement. We don't even respond back to the things. And um what it if if everything was fun functioning the way it quote unquote should function, that time should be time for people to come and say their piece before we vote on something. if there's something we missed or something. But that should be the kind of the last in a

168process that involved the board being apprised, community being involved, and then a recommendation being made to the board to approve at the end of the process. Not, oh my god, the board's about to vote on this thing. We all have to go down there and yell about it because we didn't we didn't have a chance to talk about, you know, to be included beforehand. Um so maybe something about uh number of people who sign up in testimony on things that are that should have been resolved elsewhere. Um I would love to see you know us develop that toolkit. I'm sure needs to be updated by this point but uh a metric on the use of the toolkit. um what does it you know and probably a version for building leaders and then again maybe a

169central uh so completing strategies and then uh similar to another one about preparedness um school leaders who feel prepared to communicate and engage families I would feel um I would maybe say prepared and sufficiently supported by central office because if we're going to ask building leaders to engage with their families on district-wide issues is we don't want people, you know, talking about 100, you know, we have 100 and however many principles. If we're going to ask them to do some of that district-wide engagement, central office needs to provide the the scope or the toolkit um or whatever. So, so maybe something about, you know, do they feel they have the access to the right tools or even if we identify the tool, use of talking points or use of um let's talk and uh how

170that translates to resolution or even if people know which tool to use for what. Thank you, Director Rank and Director Hersy. So I think that there is a a really interesting thread that director Rankin brings up. Um my question is just like getting to the base level. Do y'all feel as though that we have a shared understanding of what community engagement is? Because I feel like and I'm not this is not a gotcha. This is just like a genuine question because like I've sat on several different iterations of the board and several different different iterations of y'all. And my question is like and and and I'm not of one mind of this stuff. I know that there was a lot of work that was done with Superintendent Nland. I have a huge amount of respect

171for that work. And you know y'all very few of y'all were actually there. Right. So my question is and if it's easy just to nod your heads and say no I don't think that we have a shared understanding or maybe we do right I don't think we have an understanding quite frankly of what community engagement is on the board's end even though we do it so I I guess the heart of that question is if we agree that we likely don't have a shared understanding I think the first step is that and then because I know even in this iteration y'all have heard us talk about it. What do you think is the barrier from getting to what we're currently doing to what the expectation of the board and community is? Like is it money?

172Is it personnel? Is it the fact that it feels like a moving target? Cuz I know that that for me is true. Um, so I would love to just hear y'all riff a little bit about like from y'all's perspective. And again, this is not a gotcha. I'm just genuinely asking the question so that we can like bring it down to a level to where we can just have a brass tax plain language conversation about it. All right. Riffing freestyle. You don't want to know about my playlist. I Uh, lots of high energy and probably a lot of rap on there. Uh, in terms of shared understanding, I think that's probably a challenge point across any of our goals. Yeah, for sure. So, I'll just be honest about that, that there's common understanding between us, you,

173the public, everyone. So, I think there's work to be done across anything that we're talking about tonight to build common understanding. Uh could it be a lack of resources perhaps? Yes. Uh but relationships cost you very little in terms of building those. Uh so I can't blame it solely on money. Uh perhaps there is an additional personnel piece per Yes. Uh I think we need and this is really basic. I think we've got to slow down and feel free to challenge me on that but we do need to slow down. um getting it across the board sometimes is a matter of date, time, all of those things. But how do we back up that process enough time to make sure that we have room to work with our community, work with you all, build that

174common understanding about a particular issue. Uh it just may take more time. So that's my first entry into the riffing. My observation, we talked about this in discussing the clarity and transparency in the budget. Um, we've had some recent conversations about enrollment, sometimes explaining our capital program over and over. We put technical experts in the position of having to do outreach on really complicated things. And um we need to find a way around that because they're great at what they do. They understand it. Can they explain it to a civilian is a whole different subject and we need to find a way to get better at that. That would that would that's my observation on this front. Followup real fast. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So yeah, that that makes perfect sense to me, right? Because I

175remember again in different iterations of this board, the first request would be like, well, are you going to come to my community meeting with me, right? Where that might not necessarily be the best application of the expertise of that person, right? You wouldn't send an astrophysicist to explain to second graders how, you know, the world orbits. Or maybe you would, but I guess my Yeah, they would probably if it's Neil Degross Tyson, a lot of us would. Um, I think that where I really perked up was the fact that to what Bev said, not that what you said wasn't great, Fred, I think it was, but like specifically around slowing down. I think that, you know, between there's in and in and this is likely going to be unpopular, but I really do think that

176we as a board and I think that both of these things can be true at the same time. I think that it's important that we as a board through the function of communicating the vision and values of our community demand that we move at a breakneck pace to fix the wrongs that the district has done over many years. Fred, I think, articulates this really well with like we're expecting our families to endure and like solve problems that have been created over decades. However, and at the same time, I think that we as a board often times have unrealistic expectations based off of heat that we are receiving from community that things should be fixed yesterday. And I think that we have to come to an understanding of what is the balance between figuring out what

177is the appropriate pace to move that we push the system just far enough to where it bends but doesn't break. And that is a really hard needle to thread across all of these things, right? We're introducing a lot of change to our system all at the same time. Like again, we have just adopted this governance model like in 2021. We're still trying to implement it. I think even more so than the governance model is like we had this conversation last week or at least I brought it up in in my comments is that we have an understanding of what needs to happen at the top end of the system and by the time it makes it to the classroom, it's completely different. Again, I come from Federal Way. I talk about ERA a lot. It

178took four to five years to implement that with Fidelity and now it's great. I think that this is something that's very new for Seattle and I think that we haven't spent enough time level setting amongst us and really getting a deep understanding of what those goals mean not only for us but also for the day-to-day or not the goals but the guardrails but also for the day-to-day experiences of you know Ted and his job and all the way down to a you know teacher in the classroom Right. So, I am interested in I guess I say all that to say I am interested in taking some time in a meeting in a forum like this, not necessarily at a board retreat, but to do some really appropriate level setting about like us coming up with

179some really clear because even amongst the seven of us, there's like we're all going to have a different understanding and interpretation of what each of those guard rails means and what those interim metrics should yield. I can only imagine what that looks like for y'all. And unless we have a really clear and like plain language brass tax conversation, we're going to waste a lot of time, money, and like scorn a lot of relationships trying because we're all trying to accomplish the same goals and reach the same place. And I feel like unfortunately we're heading in different directions occasionally. And that's not I really genuinely believe it's not for nefarious intent. I believe that there just wasn't enough understanding on the front end to really have a clear sense of direction for us as an organization.

180And that falls squarely at the I'm wrapping up that she rift for 20 minutes. I'm I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. I got like 20 minutes left in this scene. I'm going to be silly. Um, but my point being, my point being is that I think that we should take a step back and slow down a little bit and like build a shared understanding of like what it is we're trying to do and what it is we're trying to prevent. Sorry, I'm I'm really am No, I app I appreciate I appreciate that. I'm just trying to keep things fair. I'm just trying to keep things fair and amongst amongst folks. I don't know if staff wants to respond. I appreciate these this idea of how of getting down to the brass tax and

181and level setting convers. Hello. All right. Accountability officer Howard, you asked a great question and the question you asked is what's the biggest barrier in this? And I think the biggest barrier in anytime you have engagement is actually understanding the goals but also sharing that process of what who's going to have the power to make that decision. And when you don't want to engage in the community, that means you're going to give the community some power that you want to kind of control the outcome. And so if you don't want to control that outcome and engaging, you have to share what that's going to look like. And when communities have been marginalized, they don't get a chance to share their expectations. They are supposed to come and participate in a certain way, but not all

182the way to be able to make that decision. And that's really difficult because they're sending us their their brightest their their kids their love. And so how do we engage in that conversation but then also turn it around so they can actually see the outcomes because they give us feedback and then we turn around and give them feedback by making that happen. So we always forget something that's so basic and I think we just get so wrapped up like you're saying we're doing too many things which is our teachers are the input. the outcome is our kids. So if we just stick with that, we'll know what's actually happening. Same thing with our community. Our community is giving us the output. So let's let's invite them in, have conversations with them, but also be clear

183about where their power starts and where it ends so we can engage them. But that's the bar biggest barrier that I've seen over my career. Um that shared power dynamic. Right. Closing remarks from staff here. And then I want to move because we've spent double the amount of time, more than double the amount of time on these first three and we have the very two complicated guardrails to go. Closing remarks. All right, let's move to guardrail one then. Good. Director Briggs has one quick thing real fast on this topic. Sorry. I No, no, no. It's totally fine. Um, I just wanted to say first of all, Brandon, like such a good call to be like what is our shared understanding of community engagement because so often we're not even talking about the same thing which

184and we don't even realize we're not talking about the same thing. So, always good to like define our terms. Um, totally on board with that. I guess my feeling about we need to slow down. What came up for me with that was um being on the audit committee and looking at the communications audit that came through like two years ago and uh and like that was like such a good road map of every like so clearly delineated everything that was wrong or not working um and and suggestions for how to fix it. So I I feel like we've had we've had this information for a long time. We've been sitting on it for a while. So, when I hear slow down, I'm like, for what? Cuz we know I I really feel like we have

185we know so we there's so much we could be doing that we we actually should have already done. So, um I just want to push back a little bit on that on that idea and just remember to that we have that document that I think is full of lots of really helpful um suggestions for how we can improve how we communicate with families. I put my table tin up just for for clarification. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um and I know we're trying to wrap and move to something else. When I say slow down, I want to provide some clarity. That doesn't mean you don't do it and you don't have urgency about what you do. Sometimes I think we compress our steps so much that we don't give uh space to fully work

186an engagement process all the way through. So just clarifying there. Right, let's move on to guardrail one. Good evening board directors. Dr. Rocky Torres Morales, associate superintendent. Guardrail one, academic assurances across schools. So, as a reminder, the superintendent will not allow a student's school assignment, family income, race or ethnicity, need or identity, determine access to high standards, rigorous programming, high quality teaching and supports. Next slide, please. So essentially when we were looking at this guardrail and I go back to we we discussed this once with the board and we received some feedback and essentially what we believe what what we were hearing was that families do not want to have the experience whereby depending on where you live in the city you can talk to a parent in another part of the city and their

187kid is having access to something that's completely different from what they have. And so next slide please. We've set up a couple of interim metrics for feedback from you all. But the first one talks about um surveying our families to see and and I I don't usually like to read out, but I'm read out a little bit here for you all. The percentage of surveyed families who agree that their school provides access to a highquality education that meets their child's needs. And we're going to set in the metrics. I know Director Briggs has been pretty adamant with us to put some numbers in. So we will get you some numbers. Um and by by 2030 so by the end of the 5 years with equitable increases across demographic groups and regions. Essentially what we were

188looking at here was we know think about what we're going through in this moment. We have some families that like their attendance area school and they want to go there. We have some families that go option schools. They want to go there. What this is saying is that they're going to have access to a school and that the families are essentially going to tell us that they feel that they're getting a high quality education from for their student based on what they have access to. 1.2 talks about advanced course offerings across our schools. This one at this time is currently looking at middle and high school or secondary schools, but saying that the advanced course offerings are going to be available at the schools regardless of where the family lives or regardless of what school

189the student attends. And the third one is a little bit more complex. So I'm going to take us to a forward slide and then come back to this because I just want to do a quick talk on it and have we have a graphic for you. But uh can you go back real quick to previous slide? Yep. 1.3 the percentage of elementary schools identified as foundational not needing support by the state accountability system ultimately we want to get this to is that 100% of our schools are at foundational so now could you advance the slide please so essentially this is a state metric I don't want us to spend too much time looking at this and and really unpacking it I wanted to get it to the simplest level and then happy to talk to

190any of you offline to get into the nitty-gritty on this or get into the weeds on it but essentially foundational support is where you would actually want your schools. The term sounds interesting because it sounds like there's something that's maybe wrong with the school that they need support. But what foundational support is saying in this state uh metric is that your school is allowed to just be their school. they don't need additional support from the state, additional intervention and those sort of things versus as you move up on this pyramid, you do need additional things or you're going to have to, you know, your kids aren't your certain subgroups aren't performing well, your graduation rates, all those sort of things get impacted in that. So foundational support is essentially where you would want all your

191schools to be. And just for a little bit more context, in general, the way this works is the lowest 5% of schools in the state qualify for some level of support, meaning a tier 1, tier 2, or tier three support. So, what that metric is saying is that we don't want any of our schools to be in the bottom 5% of the state. We want to say that by 2030, none of our schools are in the bottom 5% of rankings with the state. I know I said a lot, so I do want to pause for a moment, let you all digest and take some questions. Director Ranken, thanks. Can we go back to the the slide with all three of the Yeah, thank you. Um I I'm going to have kind of the same I

192think I the uh 1.2 2 and 1.3 for may do what I feel like seeing that information would tell us a lot about whether or not that topline guardrail is is being getting closer to being achieved. Um 1.1 I think I would uh this is again the kind of the conversation we had about other things about people's people's feelings. Um and uh we can't really do anything about how people feel about things. Um uh not that that's not important general satisfaction, but in terms of this measure, this instrument, um I I'd like to see a little more leaning into some of the other categories in the first one about uh not allowing race, income, other things besides geographic location. I wonder if there's an opportunity there to look at some something to do with disproportionality

193um about like whi which students do have access or don't have access to things being offered. Um because that would sort of indicate if if if students with disabilities are not participating in something because there's less access, that would be something that we would want to um make sure that they do have access to. or if there's, you know, if we look at, um, I don't know, IB program or something and see that there's there's big disproportionality, um, it wouldn't necessarily mean that we have to add a bunch more IB programs, but maybe think about who who has access and who doesn't and how do we support increasing the access. So, that's my feedback on that. Thank you for that. Thank you, Director Hersy. others. On to guardrail five. Too much. Oh, he's coming to

194the table. It's me again, Kurt Bleman, the assistant superintendent for finance. We did go over this guard rail at a previous meeting. Um, so I don't want to belabor it too much here tonight, but the guardrail reads, "The superintendent will not allow people, time, money, and other resources to be allocated a manner inconsistent with student need." Next slide. The interpretation of that is that the district is commit committed to meeting student needs by investing in high quality teaching and support. We can go to the next slide. and the two proposed metrics. Um, and again, there's a caveat to these at the bottom. You can see we're hoping to further inform this with the resource and strategy analysis and study and the strategic plan task force outcomes. Um, but the two currently proposed metrics are the

195proportion of expenditures around teaching and teaching sport will continue to increase over the five-year period. Um, we talked tonight about that being over 70% in the 2526 budget proposal. And then school spending at each school will be at least insert a percentage here of annual allocated funding in order to meet the needs of the current year students in an attempt to make sure resources intended to go to schools do get spent at schools for the students in that that year. Happy to talk about these or ask answer any questions. Director Ranken, thank you. really quick. Um I would love a uh and this may come out of the resource and strategy study. I would be really interested in seeing something to do with uh systemwide allocation. Um I'm not sure exactly what, but uh yeah,

196other directors. Okay. Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate we getting us through the uh interim guard rail metrics. Uh and that concludes our business for this evening. So, there being no further business to come before the board. The board meeting is now adjourned at 7:30 p.m. Thank you everyone.