Seattle Schools Board Meeting May 14 2025

001Interesting. [Music] All right. Good afternoon. the May 14th, uh regular board meeting is called to order at 4:17 p.m. We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands in the traditional territories of the Puet Sound Coast Salish people. Miss Wilson Jones, the roll call, please. Vice President Briggs, here. Director Clark, present. Present. Director Hersy here. Director Ms. Rahi present. Director Ranken here. Sorry that was loud. Director Sarju present. President Top here. Student member Bragg. Do we have Oh, not not quite yet. So, I do believe we'll have student member Bragg and student member Ilas joining. Great. Thank you, Miss Wilson Jones. Uh, this afternoon, we're going to start with superintendent comments, but I just want to make note that Dr. Jones is on health leave um today and his intention is to return

002before September 3rd. In his absence, the delegation of authority goes to the chief operating officer, Fred Podesta, who is here at the podium with us um and ready to provide uh superintendent comments this evening. Thank you, President To. Let's see. Am I doing this right? Uh Fred Podesta, chief operations officer. I'm going to make comments on behalf of Dr. Jones, who can't be with us uh tonight. We'll be on medical leave for a while. We wish him nothing but the best. Um uh and so I'd just like to make a few comments on his behalf. Uh last week, as you know, we celebrated National Teachers Week and also um uh uh National Nurses Day. I think I don't need to tell the board or the community how important teachers are to our system. Uh Seattle

003Public Schools is teachers and they obviously serve their role as educators, but they provide welcoming environments. They create the environment um for students to thrive and learn. Likewise, uh nurses uh play a vital role in our school. They ensure students are healthy, that they're safe. Uh they create a calm and welcoming environment for students. Again, um to provide the the baseline by which they can learn. Uh another event this past week on uh Saturday, I had the privilege of joining Dr. Jones and the community to dedicate some spaces in Reineer Beach High School which has been reconstructed and the community honored three members of the community uh dedicating spaces to them. Um the uh rededicating the Betty Patu Library. Uh Betty Patu had a long history with Seattle public schools including a seat on the

004board. Um the court was rededicated for Jamal Crawford who um was a luminary at uh Rainer Beach High School as a player and in the NBA and has been a pivotal member of the community since. And the athletic complex was awarded to coach Michael Bethea who earlier this year won his ninth state championship for Reineer Beach and um was really moving to hear from students and former students of beyond coaching basketball just what an important figure he is. um in students lives at Rainineer Beach High School. So um uh Principal Patu said it well referring to um Rainineer Beach High School as the crown jewel of their community is the way she looks at it and the honor she has being the school leader and it's a beautiful building. I invite people um to uh

005visit it whenever you can. It's really a testament to what this community can do, what Seattle public schools can do. Uh tonight we have a very full agenda as as often we are going to um do some progress monitoring uh on uh some guardrails to give us a sense of progress on how we um work to uh uh comply with the um visions and values that have been laid out by the board on behalf of the community. And thank you very much. Uh and we'll uh turn it back to President Top to get to that full agenda. Perfect. Thank you so much, Chief Operating Officer Podesta. Looking now to student board director, seeing if there's any comments. Director Ilas. Um, so we've been working closely with director Ranken to reflect on what this role has

006actually looked like over the past few years and we're hoping to update the policy so it starts to align more with what we've been doing and there's no handbook or a real guide on how to be a student board member. So we kind of had we kind of had to figure it out as we go. Um, which is why it's so important we have a policy that is clear and supportive, especially for future students stepping into this role. And now that SPS has had student members on the board for a few years, we've learned a lot. What works, what doesn't, and what support is actually needed to make this role meaningful. We've also been talking and comparing with other districts across the across the state to see how they structure their student their student board

007rules. Some have more formal mentorship programs, handbooks, or clearer systems for student input. We'd love to see Seattle public schools get to that level, too, where student members aren't just present, but are equipped and empowered to lead. Director Brag, I'll probably just be brief because Sophia said most of what I what we planned on saying, but we are super excited to be able to work on that policy and work with the directors to see what we want to see the change be in that policy and to provide this amazing opportunity for more students in the district and create a better idea of what we're supposed to do. Uh we've already uh shown a difference in this year with the fact that we have had almost every student board member if at least not two at

008a meeting uh instead of just one. We have a much deeper connection between each other and we hope to teach that to the next members. We recently had the uh applications close for the next and we cannot wait to help them and see what the next student board members are and what they plan to do. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we will move into board comments. Um, I'm going to start with my gratitude for the community members here with us tonight and who have been in joining us at our monthly engagement sessions. Had some good conversations at each engagement session on a variety of topics and gratitude for the staff as well participating in the in the the conversations. I think we are stronger when the district and the board are aligned

009in in supporting kids. Um the insights we've shared at our community at our gatherings are being used by the board in our planning our superintendent search and will continue to inform our work on budget and strategic plan um to improve our district. We do need the insights of our entire community and I really thank you for continuing to advocate for students, staff, schools, and helping chart our our vision and shape the system to best serve our community. Um, and I look forward to these conversations con to continue. But I also uh want to offer an apology to our deaf and heart of hearing community. As we wrote to our community earlier this week, uh, we did not have an American sign language um, available at last week's engagement session. Um this meant parents from the

010DHH community uh were not able to access the meeting and discussion and as directors we were not able to receive their their insights and and their help in guiding us. Um as I shared in a letter to SPS families we apologize to those who joined us and the broader DH DHH community. Um, last week's meeting was not a single incident, but part of a larger history, and I'm grateful to our community members who are here tonight, who continue to work to make our school system better for our students. Um, your commitment requires us as a board to meet it with our own commitment and action. I think leadership uh takes admitting where you have created where you're at fault and creating a plan to do better. Um, I'm working with board staff and we're committed

011to providing ASL interpretation at every regular board meeting, other public meetings of the full board, and our engagement sessions as well. Um, before we move on though to additional director comments, I want to summarize a few pieces of our work since we last had our regular board meeting. Um, we are moving ahead with our superintendent search process. Uh last night we met with our search consultant HYA. Um and we will uh be sharing the timeline for our search on our school board website here shortly. Um our community um as we talked about last night can expect engagement that includes a survey numerous focus groups um as well as uh I'm hoping we can pull off an engagement session led by our student board directors. something they're interested in doing, which I'm super excited about. Um,

012this will support the creation of a leadership profile for our next superintendent aligned with our community's priorities so that we can use it to recruit and to vet candidates for the superintendent position. Um, our next full bo board meeting will be on May 21st. We will have our final budget development study session before the introduction of the budget. Um, we will also return to our interimm metrics and new guard rails and following that board meeting, we will end it with an executive session on bargaining. Uh, I chief operating officer Podesta mentioned the Reineer Beach High School dedication. The what it was an incredible event. Also in the intervening time, we had the Seattle Scholarship Foundation event that Dr. Jones and I got to celebrate and participate with awarding 72 seniors with $10,000 scholarships. If you're

013doing the math, that's 7 that's $720,000. Um, and one of the takeaways from that evening was the importance of counselors in in in schools. and Director Rankin and I had an opportunity um this week to meet with a group of counselors from elementary, middle, K through8 and high schools to hear about some of their concerns. And it was a really impactful um moment. One of the counselors asked, you know, do you remember in high school what your counselors did for you? And I think director Rankin and I both had stories and me me and and specific instances and ways which counselors helped support us and their important role in schools. Um as we move into June uh we will have the introduction of next year's budget and a public hearing. We will also anticipate uh

014review receiving policy recommendations from the ad hoc policy committee uh sorry ad hoc policy manual review committee. um some student safety updates and we will hold a board retreat. Um so those are sort of the upcoming items. Do other board committee chairs or liaison have reports? Director Clark. Thank you, President Topp. Um well as the city of Seattle um I guess and families education preschool and promise um liaison the longest liaison title ever. Um I just wanted to provide an update from our April meeting. um the levy oversight committee that I serve on, which is overseeing the administration of the current levy, um met on April 24th and we received a presentation um on the um sorry on um on our the um our the early learning program, um, the Seattle preschool program. Um, and

015I'm going to send around, um, the slide deck and a link to the full report, um, to board members. Um, I just wanted to, um, highlight a couple of items. This was the year five evaluation um, process, and they looked mostly at the um, SP plus uh, program. Um and um some of the highlights the um SP plus classrooms um which include um children uh with special needs and children without special needs. Um had higher average class scores across all three domains. Um evaluators observed alignment with um the evidence-based indicators of high quality inclusion practices. Um student skill growth um were higher in the children um in SP plus um classrooms showing that they were more likely to meet target growths. um and SPS kindergarten students with and without IEPs um who attended an SP

016plus uh classroom had higher walk kid scores than comparison groups. Um so really encouraging findings and I'm excited to share um the findings of the report with the board. Um, we also received, I guess, a preview of the um the levy renewal um that Mayor Harold announced, I believe, also on April 24th or he um transmitted it to city council. Um, so I will send around a fact sheet that we were given. Um, I did want to point out that as of right now, as a bo as a body, we have not discussed um our advocacy on the FEP levy renewal. Um, and so I'd like to recommend that we either have a special meeting to talk about how and if we want to engage in um advocacy as a body on the FEP uh

017the new levy proposal or um I can draft um a legislative agenda for the the um renewal and send it around for comments. And um I think we should probably try to vote on that at our next meeting. Um there's been some concerns that have been been brought to my attention um from the community um around uh expansion of the current city SPS partnership on um prevention and safety supports in and around schools. Um, so I think we need to get some clarity on what exactly the proposal entails and um and decide where we are as a body on supporting that proposal. And I think it would be great if we also provided some clarity for the community. So that's it. Thanks. Thank you, Director Clark. Other committee or liaison reports? Director Ranken. Thank you.

018Um, a few things to share about uh, conversations I have had in spaces I've been in in the LA since our last meeting. Um, seems like a really long time ago that the legislative session ended, but it was just like a couple weeks ago. So, had uh, you know, continuing um, regular conversation during session with uh, partners across the state on other boards. um uh also was able to attend it's it's WASDA regional meeting season um where by director district area there are uh regional meetings for boards to get together um share a meal together talk about uh common issues and themes. Um I as a u representative on the WASDA board for district area 2. I went to both the north and the south district area 2 meetings. Um and uh would love to

019have more company from my colleagues on our board at these meetings. Um and I know it's more meetings but uh you know some some other folks attend with their full board and superintendent and and it's a little bit lonely. Um there's I know but it's also really it's it's an it's one of the few opportunities we have throughout the year to make connections with other boards and we usually spend some time talking about common issues and concerns and then focus on a presentation from WASDA staff that has to do with our role in board governance and I always find it really valuable um and it's always great there were a lot something I noticed that we may all want to sort of have on our radars is that um there are a lot of uh

020new board directors on boards. Uh the I it's it several of us noticed like woo there's a whole bunch of people who have been on boards for a year and a half and they were like coming because they were like what is this job we need support what are we doing? So, just something I think for us all to think about and building those connections with other districts and working together to collectively build um best practices and and our work for students um ac across the state and share our knowledge and share our advocacy efforts. Um, another event that I attended was uh hosted by the uh regional NAACP, the NAACP for Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and the Black Education Strategy Roundtable for Higher Ground was an event focused on securing black academic fe futures. Um,

021I I think I h I know I took some photos of slides. I may have some materials I can share with the board, but we had a really great presentation on some data for the state, particularly to do with black students. And um there were folks from just so many different um community organizations all serving black students across the street. It was it was really um it was exciting and I felt really uh lucky to be able to be part of that um that gathering that was at Highline College. Um, and then, uh, I missed the scholarship night, um, because I was invited to attend the DHH family night at TOPS, which was really fun. Um, and just connect more with folks about, uh, from that community about what they need and how we can

022better support. They have a group that is really really excited about and committed to increasing access to um ASL both for students who are deaf or heart of hearing for kodas which is children of hearing children of deaf adults and also just for peers who are interested in learning a second language. There is a lot of excitement and appetite at the school around creating a instead of the deaf and heart of hearing program colllocated with an option school creating a whole community that is dual language immersion with spoken English and ASL. Um so exciting possibilities for us to talk about with staff and maybe the next superintendent about what that can look like and of course the community themselves. Um so that was that's just sort of a um and then of course met with

023um counselors with uh director top which was which was wonderful and really appreciate them them willing to share their thoughts with us um for a legislative meeting. I do have a final kind of wrap-up legislative memo for the session that I was hoping it takes me several hours to put together. I was hoping to have it today to put into meeting minutes. It is not done. it is coming. I'm just going to sort of recap the session and put in some sort of, you know, things to think about for next session. Um, I will make sure that that goes somewhere that is accessible to the public as well. Maybe in meeting minutes in the next next uh board meeting, but if I get it done sooner, I will send it to board directors sooner. Um,

024but I do want to especially shout out our Seattle delegation for their consistent commitment to our students and public schools, not just in Seattle, but across the state. Um, they they stayed really consistent and strong and worked very hard to increase progressive revenue um and provide options for progressive revenue. And while the financial outcome is not what we were hoping for, um the collaboration and the consistent messaging of K12 advocates and of legislators like we are lucky to have representing us um it strengthened I without the collaboration um I don't think we would have gotten what what we did get. Um even though the doom and gloom version is that we didn't get what we needed. I think it could have been much worse if we hadn't um worked so strongly together. I want to

025especially thank Representative Pette and Senator Peterson for their leadership in um particularly special education and capital funding and working not only for our students in Seattle but to support um their colleagues from other areas in the state and really learning about what's going to make an impact, why it's important and just keeping on message about what our kids need. Um, I also am pleased that I heard from legislators that they felt good collaboration from SPS, which has not been the case historically. Um, specifically got a message from a legislator that said, "We appreciated the months of fiscal policy and organizing efforts that were dedicated before the session by SPS to prepare proposals and the response responsiveness and organizing with other superintendents and districts and for providing testimony during session. I wanted to say that out

026loud because most of the staff that that is for is here in the room. You may not have heard that otherwise. So, it was recognized and appreciated and makes a difference. Um, and the the the big sort of we got everything we asked for was we make a capital ask every year because the SCAP formula, which is what funds capital projects, does not reflect the contributions of the Seattle taxpayers. And so as a kind of makeup for that, we usually get a couple of additional capital asks and um both were approved. They are literally going to keep roofs over the heads of children in two different schools. And so thank you to the entire delegation for um signing on in support of that request and to our staff for getting that there and for getting

027that over the line. Um yeah, so more detail I will put in a written memo. Um and apologies for not having that today. um policy committee. We met last week and we will be meeting again next week. We're moving through our 1000 series. As a reminder, we are not rewriting or making new decisions for the full board in that committee. We are um I I heard something uh that's actually quite ridiculous a scri saying that the reason that something online and and I'm out of these I encourage everybody to just not pay attention to Facebook but sometimes people send them to me. Um apparently policy committee is my way of disempowering the whole board and handing everything over to the superintendent. And I cannot overstate the ridiculousness of that comment. Um, policy is the law

028of the school district. Okay? Our power is in writing and upholding policy and holding the superintendent and staff accountable for following that policy. If we do not maintain our policy manual, we are giving up our voice as a board on behalf of you, the community. and leaving it open and leaving us with only having veto power over things that staff chooses to bring to us in meetings. That is not power. That is not community representation. By taking control of our policy manual as the governing body that represents the entire community for the education of our children. We actually claim the authority that we should have as the representation of the people who own this school district, who is all of Seattle, in setting expectations, clearly describing to the superintendent and district what we expect, allowing

029you, the public, to see in our policy whether or not we are living up to our commitments that we made to you. And then it is our job to hold the superintendent accountable as the representative of the district to us to make sure that our district is delivering on the education that our community wants and our children deserve. So I just have got to make that extremely clear. Policy is the law. We get to write it. We're responsible for enforcing it. And if we don't do it, we are giving up all of our authority. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] Do other directors have reports? All right, then we are going to head to the uh the tables. We're going to do progress monitoring. Um and we will stop at 5 to do public testimony. Please

030bring your microphones. All right. Director Hersy is our progress monitoring lead. So I will uh uh and we'll facilitate this portion. So I will pass it over to him and I'm going to pass it over to the staff. Let's get rolling. Thank you, Director Hersy. We're here uh we'll have two teams rotate through to talk about guardrail one and two. Uh the first one is engagement. I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues uh Chief Redmond and Associate Superintendent Torres Morales. I believe we're starting with Dr. Torres Morales. Thank you. [Music] Good evening board directors and community. We are pleased to provide an update on our current guard row one engagement as part of ongoing progress monitoring. This session will briefly view key interim metrics, describe system practices underway, and preview how this work

031evolves under the new 2025 20 to 2030 guard progress monitoring framework. Next slide, please. So, here is just the scoring rubric that we use that's colorcoded. This is aligned with how we do our other um goals and guard rails. Next slide, please. So, in terms of this guardrail, I'll be looking specifically at guardrail 1.1 and then Chief Redmond will be talking a little bit about guardrail 1.2 and 1.3. As you see here, we have rated guardrail 1.1 as in the yellow. And just for context, this guardrail is the percentage of students furthest from educational justice who express having agency and opportunities to give voice in their school community. And we were initially saying that this would increase from a baseline of 47% in 2022 to 55% in the fall of 2024. We currently have this

032rated as yellow. And what that means is that the interim metrics indicate conflicting evidence as to whether results will be delivered. In terms of interim guardrail 1.2, Two, this is the percentage of school leaders, school staff and central office leaders responsible for policy implementation who are trained on best practices for stakeholder engagement. And we rated that in orange in interim guardrail 1.3 as percentage of school leaders and central office staff who have completed community engagement training and prepared to implement best practices in community engagement. And we rated that in the orange. Next slide, please. Oh, and for context, orange is intra metrics indicate that results are unlikely to be delivered without significant changes. No surprise there. I think we'll get into that a little bit more. We've heard this uh from the community and so

033happy to share some thoughts on where we think we need to go next on that. So these first set of data, this is related to 1.1 and as a reminder this is the portion of students of color for this from educational justice and the goal was to go from 47% to 55%. When you look at these data, I want to be clear that this is students who responded agree or strongly agree. On the next slide, we also included the kind of agree, but we'll talk about that in a moment because when we set the actual goal, it was based on agree or strongly agree. So what we see is that when you put the two uh constructs together, so to be clear when I say construct, those are the actual questions the kids get on

034the survey. And so the question is at my school I can be a student leader and make changes if I want. The other question for this school uh guardrail was my ways of knowing and understanding the world are valued here. What we see is that in terms of at my school I can be a student leader. We did make some progress. We went up six percentage points in that which is good. It shows that what we were doing is is working towards what we were trying to get to. But when you look at our my ways of knowing and understanding the world are valued here, it was actually pretty flat. So that means we still have some more work to do there. When you combine these together, that's where the number 47 comes through. So

035if you look at fall 2021, it's essentially the 41 and the 53 would be to the 47 which was the baseline. And then we wanted to get to 55 and we're only at 51. So did we make progress? Yes. Did we make the progress that we wanted to make? Not exactly. We know that we have further work to do. Next slide, please. This slide just provides a different look at the data. This is if we were to include students that also said kind of agree. So the previous data was a student either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. These data are showing kids that also said kind of agree. This is important for us to look at too because what it tells us is there is a good chunk of kids that agree in

036some form or fashion. But the wondering becomes why do they only kind of agree versus fully agree with the statement. So that gives us an idea of some of the work that we need to do there as well. And next slide please. I'm going to hand it over to Chief Redmond at this time. Thank you. I believe we can go into the next slide. Thank you to everyone here and it's good to see the board together again. I think we're getting some feedback on a mic. Okay. All right. Wait a second. Okay. You want to try this one? I can handle. All right. We're gonna go freehand a little bit. All right. Again, greetings to the board and thanks to Dr. Dr. Torres Morales for leading us into this. It's a pleasure to join with

037him and collaborate with him on engagement, I believe we both align in the reality that while we are seeing some elements of progress or tipping our toe and seeing some bright spots, there's much more work to do. Um, but my job is to tell you about 1.2 and 1.3 in terms of our response to incidences. And as evidenced on the slide, we have uh presented this to the audit committee, but SPS has implemented and initiated an initial training protocol that standardizes our process framework for school specific incidences, coordinating responses, and districtwide issues. These protocols are included to or are designed to uh enhance our communication with families, follow up on conversations, and make sure that we're providing necessary training for staff. And ultimately, a goal is to enhance and to build trust through consistency and

038again providing that supportive training to our staff. Um, moving on to the next slide. Uh we also want to acknowledge some places where we do believe we're seeing some evidence of movement. Again, not communicating that we have arrived. There's much much more work to do. But we are very happy to see some input and some impact and seeing students serving on some of our hiring committees and our equity teams. Also strategic planning task force and focus group work that's yet to come. and also making sure that there's legislative advocacy and school safety that includes student voice. Again, tipping into that area, but knowing that we need to increase that. And as evidenced on screen with the slide, you can see that there has been activity and some engagement within our memorial stadium projects, our levy

039work, and we don't want to negate that again. But turning a corner and looking forward and we can go into the next slide. Looking ahead to 25 through 30, we have seen and been able to support and happy to support. We don't take credit for but happy to support the board as we as you're launching out there on your own community engagement journey and providing that structure for you. Great to see our community being responsive and coming out to those sessions, but we want to be that mirror or that group that walks beside you and making sure that we're doing our job on our side with community engagement as well and getting richer in that and where we're aiming to go. And hopefully when we're back here next week talking about those interim guard rails

040that you can see evidence that we're planning to track and measure the quantity and the quality of the engagement. also making sure that we have our support from our school leaders and departments and bringing us closer together in terms of how we train and how we embed equitable engagement practices into what we do. You've heard some of that through the CSIP work. And then also making sure overall that our families, our students and our educator voices, it amounts to feeling consistently that their voice is represented and influential in decisions at every level of the system. Again, uh aligning with Dr. Torres Morales, there are many more places to go, much more work to do, and we're looking forward to as we're sunsetting this particular set of guardrails, really ratcheting up and digging in and getting

041better at what we do. So, thank you for your time. All right. Thank you. Do we have any questions from directors? Director Sergio, I don't know that I necessarily have a question. I think, you know, we have people in the room and we need to not pretend like they're not sitting out there listening and watching and wondering and they don't get an opportunity in this uh format to ask questions. And so um I have heard just adnauseium uh about what is perceived in the community and it's when I say the community I mean people who are in my ear um that there's been a failure of engagement and so part of that is I don't think it's as much as of a failure is that we have actually haven't set people up to understand what

042engagement is right the engagement of district staff is different than the engagement of the board. And so when we actually haven't done a good job of explaining to people what they can what it is and what they can expect, then we're setting them up not by intention, but by outcome to be disappointed, frustrated, angry, whatever whatever the things are. And so, um, you know, we're all, uh, you know, particularly for board directors, you know, there there are at least three of us who work full-time jobs. This is not a job. This is a a volunteer opportunity. So, our ability to, if I didn't have to work a full-time job, I could spend a full-time job doing this, right? And I don't want to do that. I mean, I I wouldn't want to do that. But

043my point is we leave people disappointed, frustrated, angry. So where does that show up? Public testimony. Right? So, we're we're caught in this vicious cycle, this loop of what I think is is preventable if we can just slow down and figure out what we need to do, educate the community so they can come along with us, not stand up there against us because it feels very adversarial to them as well as to some of us sitting on the deas. And I'm not I'm not interested in being your adversary. I'm interested in being a partner for you and your children. And so how can we get to that? I think it's and it's it's got to start with doing something different. If we want something different, a different outcome, we have to do something different. But

044I feel like we're stuck in this perpetual loop of doing things the way we've always done. So, if that's the decision we're going to make, I think pretty much everybody in this audience would agree with me. We're going to continue to experience the things we're experiencing because we're actually not engaging with them and not partnering with them. So, I don't have the answer to the staff. I don't have the answer to any of you all in the community. But, I'm saying this because I want you to understand that I see, hear, and feel your frustration. and I'm a board director of one and I have made several statements about what we could do related to community engagement. Maybe someone will take that up and maybe they won't. I'm not tied to this outcome. But what

045I am committing to you is that I'm going to continue to try to advocate for a different way forward because I don't want you frustrated. I want you to show up here, feel like this is a meaningful opportunity for understanding how the district is working on behalf of your kids and not that you're trying to get on the first 25 testimony list so you can express your frustration and your anger and your disappointment based on the information you have. It's totally legitimate. It's wrong. I'm telling you most of the time is wrong, but you're you're you're legitimate. You're val I'm validating you in your frustration because you don't have another way. So that's my my comment. Thank you. Um I am going to attempt to stick to what is here. Um and ask about the

046data that is being presented to us. Uh what is I'm having a hard time seeing uh and maybe this is maybe this is something we need to think about for interims for the next batch but um if if we have this indication that progress is unlike you know results are unlikely to be delivered without significant changes I want to know I would like to know what significant changes we might be considering. Um, you know, I know that there h there is a pretty comprehensive audit that is on the school district. This is not a secret. It's on the school district's website under completed audits. We asked for it in 2022. I think we've gotten some updates through the audit committee, but I'm not seeing changes in practice or behavior that are reflected here. And I

047think we can all say that we're not seeing changes reflected because we're unlikely to see progress without making changes. So I am wondering if staff has identified what's working and what's not working and how that relates to the recommendations made in that very comprehensive report. Um and the uh report uh from the PSESD related to rainer view that also had some uh pretty comprehensive recommendations about what Michelle is talking about which is for me when our public testimony list is full and when it's full of things that are operational issues or family to school or family to district issues that is an indication to me that engagement is not working because people would rather do anything than have to come down here. They come down here to sign up for their 2 minutes because they're

048not getting what they need from the proper channels. And there are a lot of very clear recommendations in that communications audit and the PSD PSD report. Um, and so tying us back to our, you know, best practices and progress monitoring is what is happening to keep us is is there is there a barrier to implementing some of those recommendations? Is there uh an opportunity here from staff that you're seeing about a plan to implement some of those practices or what what are what are what are you looking at to get that metric to move from orange to um to to make progress on that? Thank you so much Director Ranken for the question. I want to provide just a couple of examples of some of the things that are upcoming that are different. And part

049of the reason that I want to highlight that is because it's an example of how we recognize exactly what you're talking about. We have a lot of conversations, particularly me and Chief Redmond, around some of these topics. If we don't give people an outlet to share their ideas, they're going to share their ideas. So, what are we doing about that? And frankly, for the work that I do, it's very helpful. So, I think if you talk to a lot of community members, what you'll find out is I've been doing a lot of parent one-on- ones almost just to learn more. I'm like, tell me more cuz I need to figure this out so that we can do this in service of community and ultimately in service of students. That also isn't very fair because then

050who gets the time with me and who doesn't? So, how are we creating the structure so that people get the time? So, one of the examples that I want to share is unapologetically I've been saying that we're going to come out here in the late summer through the early fall to meet specifically with the whole community, but on the topic of highly capable services, what's going well, what's not going well, getting information from families. So, what you'll see tomorrow is we're actually going to release all those dates. We're going to release how they're what districts are going to well actually they're going to be in the five different regions of the city. There's going to be a Saturday option and there's going to be a virtual option. five languages of interpretation and ASL at every

051single one of those. We're going to be releasing that tomorrow, so be on the lookout for the dates when they come and it's open to the whole community. There was this notion that this is for the HC families. And what I say is no, we serve the city of Seattle, so this is for anybody, especially people that are curious like maybe I want my kid to go to Seattle schools, but I don't know. This is why I'm not going. Tell us. We want to know. So, I just share that as an example of we are listening and we're trying to figure out how do we get better. Is this going to be almost like a first out the gate on this specific topic? Yes. But hopefully this provides us with a roadmap to say like,

052hey, this is what we're talking about. We need to do more of this around various topics. So I wanted to share that as one example. And then real quick just hit on in terms of guardrail 1.1. One of the things that Dr. Mia Williams has been doing very intentionally, if we go back to the intent of the aart the department of African-American male achievement, it was always supposed to be the target to the universal. the target to the universal. So some of the strategies that that team did where they have very strong data was around just student learning groups and student voice groups and those sort of things. And so now she's been doing some intentional work to say, hey, this is what we did. These were the results we got when kids were surveyed

053on this. How are we going to try to take that now and make that more broad across the system? And then I'll let Chief Redmond respond and then we're going to go into public testimony. Yes, we Okay, let me let me zip on through this. U in terms of other reassurances, want to make sure that um when things come to you as a board, right now on your board action report, you can do a check box on whether something was just information engagement. Uh we need to actually present the engagement plan for all of those areas. If you're not finding that, then perhaps uh we don't submit it. And I know that's a firm and strong thing, but if we don't submit it or you have a right to send it back to us to

054say this is undone. So being much more firm in how we require engagement. But in order to require that we have to supply training we have to provide support again underscore on support to our building leaders to our own staff out of the John Stanford center on how you do that and what does that look like for SPS so that it is easily identifiable. So I'll pause there. One more question from students after sorry about that. Um, this question kind of strays away from what the other board directors commented about, but as a student, I see like a lot of engagement, but it's not always clear what happens to our feedback. Um, not engagement, sorry, a lot of efforts to engage us. And um it's not really clear what you guys do with our feedback

055and what systems are put in place to make sure student input leads to tangible results. And how exactly are you guys closing that loop so students aren't just heard but you know listened to? That is an awesome question. Thank you for it. uh as part of that requirement, whether it's student voice, whether it is voice from any slice of our community, we have to be able to demonstrate how that was utilized in that plan and then also be able to communicate it back out to the group that we sat down and spoke with or the community at large. So that would be required as part of you can't go past here in order to get this to the board and to get you to sign off as approval. All right, we're going to head back

056up to public. One last comment in response to the point that um Director Rankin had with regard to when you get comments about uh concerns at a particular school. Um, Chief Redmond described a kind of our incident response process. We're working with school leaders and management in schools to not think of that only for safety incidents or power outages or other kind of operational incidents, but anything that's going to in the end require communication back to the community because that's that's how we let people know that oh, we're not having school tomorrow because there's a power outage in building. We could use that for many other things and we're working hard to leverage that as well. And that's also how the local community, local school community has a say in the education of their children

057at the school level. They also have a say at the district level as members of the broader Seattle community. But everything doesn't have to come here. Much more should be actually in in in the schools with the people who are the most impacted. All right, we are going to begin public testimony. And I know there are some folks who need to leave here by 5:15. So, we're going or some students who need to leave here by 5:15. So, we're going to try to get started as quickly as possible. We've reached the uh public testimony portion of the agenda. Uh uh board procedure 1430 BP provides our rules for testimony. The board expects the same standard of civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself. As uh board president, I have

058the right to and I will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of civility required by our procedure. A speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines, who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting, may be asked to leave the ME meeting. I am now going to pass it over to staff to summarize a few additional points and read off the testimony speakers. Thank you, uh, President Top. The board will take testimony from those on the testimony list and we'll go to the waiting list. If we are missing speakers, please wait until called to approach the podium or unmute and only one person may speak at a time. The board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak to.

059Speakers may seed their time to another person, but this must be done with the when listed speaker is called. Time is not restarted and the total time remains 2 minutes. The timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for the speakers here in person. When the light is red and a beep sounds, that means that the time has already been exhausted and the next speaker will be called. For those joining by phone, the beep will be the indication that time has been exhausted. Moving on to our list now. For those who are joining by phone, please press star six to unmute on the conference call. And for everyone, please do reintroduce yourselves as you are called as I may miss some pronunciations as we move through today's list. The first speaker today is um

060this Chris Jkins. My name is Chris Jkins. Box 84063, Seattle 98124 on authorizing $4 million of capital fund interest for use by the operating budget. The amount should be much more on the $ 122.5 million purchase of a warehouse. The purchase is driven by the district's wrongly giving up use of the Memorial Stadium site. Please vote no on the interlocal agreement regarding Memorial Stadium and the connected granting of exceptions to board policy on commercial advertising and drugfree schools. Five points. Number one, the proposal would turn over Memorial Stadium to a private group with a long-term lease while still allowing school left use. Number two, Memorial Stadium was meant to honor Seattle school alumni who died in World War II. The proposed plans are disrespectful and lose the central focus on students. Number three, in order

061to accommodate the glitzy plans that big businesses want for the site, the board would grant exceptions to board policy against alcohol and marijuana use and commercial advertising. Number four, the naming rights can be sold by the private group as long as the word memorial is kept. Such commercialization is disrespectful. Number five, bluntly, redevelopers want to sell booze, commercial advertising, naming rights, and whatever to make the project pencil out. They should not be selling booze and commercial advertising at a public schools owned facility. Please vote no on these plans. Also, my compliments to Laura Grammer for her comments in today's Seattle Times on deaf and heart of hearing issues. Thank you very much. The next speaker today is Alice Rivera. Alice will be followed by Knox Taylor. And we do have um some seating at the

062front of the room which and we for um anyone who may wish to be able to see the sign language interpretation a little bit easier. I'm Alice Rivera and this is my brother Zach. We are in four fourth. I'm gonna move your mic a little bit. Wait. We are in fourth grade and I yield to my mom. Good afternoon. My name is Laura Marie Rivera and I'm running for Seattle School Board Director 4. I'm the mother of four Seattle public school students and the only educator in the race. I want to speak tonight not as a candidate, but as a mom because my kids are watching, all of our kids are watching the system closely and they see what's happening. They understand that when families aren't given real choices, when schools lose ser uh resources,

063and when students with disabilities are denied services, or when students are left on weight lists, it's not just a policy problem, it's a justice pro problem. And I agree with Director Sarju. Uh this engagement is not working. To serve our students, Seattle public schools must invest in the programs that help them thrive. project-based learning, the arts, hands-on technical pathways, advanced curriculum, dual language immersion, student wellness, and strong special education services. These are not extras. These are essential. And we need particular care for those students for educational justice. To make our schools work, we need the people who keep our kids safe and their education whole. And I'm talking about our nurses, our assistant principals, our music and art teachers, librarians, reading specialists, recess monitors and counselors, all of the grown-ups who create those safe and

064inclusive and inspiring environments. We must move students off the weight list in a timely manner. We must provide interpretation services. We must end discrimination in special education. And we must ensure that every student has access to learning opportunities that meet their needs. and honor their dignity. I'm running for school board because it is time for a change. I can help fix what's broken and we can make sure 100% certain that each student in every school has access to the quality public education that they deserve. Thank you. Go. Next speaker is Knox Taylor. After Knox Taylor will be Caitlyn Winterstein. I want to give the time to my dad. I want to give the time to my dad. Taylor. Nick Taylor. This is Knox's letter, but I'm going to read this on behalf of him. My

065name is Nick Taylor, by the way. Hello, my name is Knox. I'm a first grade student at Pathfinder K through8. And I want to tell you all about how awesome Miss Thomas and Miss Everman are. They're our school administrators, and they make everything better at my school. They care about our school, our teachers, and our students. They've made our school safer, and they've made our school more fun. Miss Thomas and Miss Evman are the best, and I think they should stay forever. We need their support to keep making our school the best it can be, and so many of us will be very sad to lose them and have to say goodbye. Thank you for listening. The next speaker will be Caitlyn Winterstein. Hi, good evening. My name is Caitlyn Winterstein. I um am a

066resident of Seattle, a former product of the Seattle public schools where I attended the deaf and heart of hearing program in my youth. Um I'm also have been um for the past decade working with deaf and heart of hearing children first in my role as school aiologist currently as a school psychologist at top K8 which houses the deaf and heart of hearing program in the Seattle public schools. Um I um am here recognizing that I have a voice and I'm in a position to advocate. I appreciate the school board's apology regarding lack of interpretation of of at events. I do want to highlight that these are families that were utilizing um the protections under Americans with Disabilities Act and section 504, the Rehabilitation Act. I do recognize that the the board is by implementing interpretation.

067Um but that's just one step. Um we we need more systems and practices in place. There needs to be an ADA coordinator. What if the individual was had vision differences or mobility issues? We at uh Lisa Franken shared that you know the the law of the land um having training a more clear system for uh requesting ADA accommodation um trainings for staff which we're required to do every October regarding um implementing ADA section 504 at the school level and at the district level three and I would encourage a path for um with members of the community, deaf individuals that Yeah. Thank you. The next speaker is Chi Cornetta. Miss Wilson Jones, is she on on online? Um the next speaker is Chi Ketta. If you are online, please please press star six to unmute. Um

068my name is Mari Santiago and she was supposed to call to see her time, but she may be having difficulties with unmuting. We are wait for her. We're going to need to go to the next speaker, but I will call the name again. Um time needs to be seated at the time uh of the testimony. The next speaker is Trisha Deville. Trisha Deville, if you're Oh, you're here. Sorry, I'm here. This is my 25th year teaching in SPS and my 23rd as a newcomer teacher, formerly BOC or bilingual orientation center at both Tha Marshall and Dunlap. I'm so proud to be standing here today with other newcomer teachers and former BOC students, including one of my former students who is now an amazing teacher at Dunlap. The mission division of SPS states that SPS provides

069excellence for all. It should be changed to excellence for some because that is really what is happening at SPS. The newcomer program is for students who've been in the US less than one year. We use the district curriculum with a focus on vocabulary and language development. We also teach students how to acclimate to the US school system. We care for the whole child and support families in ways that cannot be done in the regular classroom. For the past four years, newcomer students in SPS have been left out. We at Dunlap have had zero students in our newcomer classrooms. Our home room classrooms at Dunlap are full, but any newcomer we receive is not able to enter our classroom, and they are placed in the regular education classroom. For example, our fourth grade has 31 students

070with three newcomers. Come see how it's going for these newcomers in these huge classrooms. It is impossible that these newcomers are receiving the same attention as they would in a smaller newcomer classroom since they are in need of intensive support. We are ready to teach yet we have a classroom full of empty seats. Dunlap is just one example. There are newcomer students in most Seattle public schools sitting in regular education classrooms. They're getting no special support besides what the typical ML student receives. The criteria used to qualify for the program is too difficult. Why is the district making it so difficult to even qualify? The messaging families receive from the district about their options is confusing and misleading and deters them from our program. The district has a new plan for the newcomer program. Starting

071next school year, each of the six newcomer teachers will be staffed in one to two schools based upon the numbers of newcomers in June. We'll be spread across schools using the same model as an ML teacher. This is this inconsistent support of being spread across schools will not benefit newcomers, especially those who are in schools without an assigned newcomer teacher. These models are not equitable for this population with such intense academic and social needs. This plan of inclusion without appropriate support is not working and will not work. And parents are unaware of how little support their children are actually receiving. What metrics does SPS use to evaluate the effectiveness of a program? How do they determine if a program isn't working? Give the newcomer program the same attention and urgency as the HC program. Keep

072the newcomer program open so SPS can devise a thoughtful instructional model specifically for our neediest ML students. The newcomers be as clear and concrete as you intend to do for the HC program. The next speaker is Hem Nolini Morzaria Luna. After that will be Joanna. Hi, my name is Heather Mortaria and I'm a former John Stanford International parents co-president and member of the dual language immersion task force from two 2016 to 2018. I am also speaking because I am no longer a parent at John Stanford but some weight list of families are afraid of speaking up for fear of retaliation. When my youngest child joined JSIS in 2015, the school had between 460 and 470 students every year. Children to Seattle regularly enrolled midyear in grades two fifth as long as the child already spoke

073one of the target languages at Spanish or Japanese. Our own family spent four months working abroad. We withdrew from the district in March and reenrolled in September and my kids rejoined their junk classes. This would not be possible today. Today students applying to upper grades are simply denied entrance to JSIS. This goes against the policy set in the soon assignment plan in the recommendations of the dual language task force in which I serve and is inequitable and unfair to families and students. At the last board meeting and in statements in the press, Pentel district staff have said that this is how things are done and that staff have always made taken this decision. I am here to say that it's not true. The weight list used to move and native speakers could join upper grades

074in Spanish and Japanese advanced efforts. A recent Seattle Times article cited central districts staff saying that the student that they have to protect neighborhood schools. Please point to the policy or the section in the student assignment plan where it says that when families apply and they get into an option they join a lesser class because that is what the current policy is doing. It's creating two or class students creating inequities where they shouldn't be any and they don't used to be any. This spring I helped give tours at John Stanford. When the tour ended, a parent joined us, pulled me aside. She wanted her daughter to join John Stanford because in the neighborhood school that she went to, there were no other kids that spoke Spanish. And I wasn't sure if I could tell her

075the truth that she could apply, but she would not get in because in Seattle public schools, adults are making decisions for their own benefit, not for the students benefit. Please fix this in guided enrollment process. Thank you. The next speaker is Joanna Arziaza Taylor. Thank you, Joanna Ria Taylor. I stand before you today as a proud member of the Pathfinder K through8 community, a place where transformation and renewal have taken root under the guidance of our intern administrators, Miss Thomas and Miss Everman. A year ago, safety and communication were major concerns for us as parents. In fact, you saw many of us in this room back then. But today, I'm thrilled to report that the changes brought by our interim administration have not just addressed these issues, they've exceeded our expectation. The proactive enhancements and

076safety protocols have created a secure and nurturing space for our children. Positive behavior intervention strategies have reduce incidents of distress, allowing our kids to thrive in a supportive environment. Communication has vastly improved with timely and transparent updates keeping us informed and engaged. This openness has built a bridge of trust between the school and families, enabling us to better support our children's education. The collaborative spirit fostered by Miss Thomas and Miss Everman has renewed our school's atmosphere, making Pathfinder a place where everyone feels welcomed and involved. Given these remarkable advancements, we strongly urge you, the board, to push administration to look past their very outdated formulas for staffing. With the district's current plan, our AP is being reduced to half their hours, and we risk losing incredible interim principal Thomas, despite all she's done for our

077community. This is a school that serves a high number of distinct students, which require a full-time principal and assistant principal to be present in our building at all times. The manipulation of enrollment from the last few years is now making that impossible. With our reduction of full-time staff and administrators, we need to push for better for our students. After all, isn't that all of our missions? The next speaker is Patrick Conway. Patrick Conway. After Patrick will be Elsa Jones and then Manuel Sie. Hello. Thank you for your time. Hi. Thank you for your support board members um and also from admin and the community as well. So I met with SPS admin yesterday and uh we they've really encouraged the process of we've decided everybody who wants to help but maybe they don't know how.

078Um then I would say first thing to do is don't listen to people who make excuses. Look for the people who say yes, we can. We can make that happen. And really, we should include services for everybody within our system. And I mean that we need to include more people. We need to add um we need to design a system that's more effective for more people, not just for one. For example, subsidies would be one way. I would love if our advocacy efforts resulted in a system change that would benefit everyone and uh it would succeed and continue after staff turnover. So, I look forward to continue working with you guys. Thank you so much. Next is Elsa Jones. Good evening. My name is Elsa Hunison Jones. I am a deafblind graduate of Seattle public

079schools, a parent of SPS students, and a former president of SCPTSA directors. SPS has an abbleism problem. It's been on full display publicly in the last month from an engagement session with no ASL interpreters to this board continuing to discuss deaf and heart of hearing families after interpretation ended to yet another round of apologies without meaningful action behind them with the exception of the interpreters which I see tonight which I'm very happy about but it has to continue. Those public failures are just the surface. Beneath them are deaf parents without interpreters at parent teacher conferences, inaccessible curriculum knives that put deaf as disabled parents in danger, or at the very least at a serious disadvantage, families sidelined by staff who still don't understand or respect what disability access means. If you're truly committed to equity

080and safe and welcoming schools, then that equity must extend to disabled parents and families because we're equal partners in building our children's futures. DHH families aren't just in pathway schools. We're everywhere. My children are codas. They're not deaf. I am. And yet, every building in our district doesn't have an emergency system that's accessible to all. We don't still don't account for deafb blind students or parents. And that's not a minor oversight. It's a safety risk and a civil rights risk. Nothing about us without us must be more than a slogan. It must be a policy. It must be a practice. It must be part of how this district operates, not a box to check when it's convenient. We've waited long enough. Thank you. Next is Manuela's light. want to start. My name is Manuel Sly.

081I'm a parent, former Seattle Council PTA president. And I'm here today uh because I'm actually angry. I'm frustrated. I don't like this. I have heard our other communities talking about lack of access, lack of interpreters, and I have now noticed that I've been in this district for 17 years. and I have yet to see real engagement of my community and it's not okay. And my daughter is now a college graduate and we're still not getting it right. And it's not because you don't agree with me. You agree with me. We have had real conversations. People in the district agree with me, parents agree with me, board members agree with me, but there's no nothing after that. the words of extensive engagement uh opportunities, robust collaboration, ongoing engagement, broad community engagement, robust engagement with families and

082students are empty. Words are empty and they're very harming to our communities. We have parents that have um interpreters like we have heard before for parent teacher conferences for IEP meetings, for board engagements, for graduation ceremonies even at world school. That is our pride and joy in our community. No interpreters until I had to go and fight for it. So I'm going to take credit for that because nobody else did it but I did. These are empty words. We have language barriers. We are invited on the surface, but we don't show up because we don't feel comfortable. And then when we have interpreters, those interpreters are underqualified. It's not their fault. They're underqualified and they come here and they give you half of what the person is saying. That's not okay with me. I have

083offered my talent. I have offered my time. I have offered solutions on the spot to step as an interpreter and still don't see any progress. So please let's stop pretending and let's do the next speaker is Sawyer Wells. After Sawyer will be Kay Low and then Samantha Fog. My name is Sawyer Wells. I was an SPS student my entire life. I'm here on behalf of Miss Peace, a former teacher of mine, and an SPS educator of 34 years. She has not been seen at her school, Concord International, since October of 2024. She has not been terminated, and she has not resigned. Staff, students, and families have been left in the dark as to her sudden disappearance. Throughout my six years at Concord, Miss Piece was the only teacher I had that made me feel excited

084about coming to school. She was engaging in all of her lessons and always went the extra mile to make sure that her students reach their academic goals. She was and continues to be one of the only black staff members at the school. More important than Miss Peace spending time to write copious rhymes to help children learn math. more important than the immense amount of energy it took to keep her students engaged in virtual learning during the pandemic and the prizes Miss Peace and parents distributed for being in class. The most important thing she does is to create a culture of respect. From the first day that anyone meets Miss Peace, she makes it abundantly clear that the expectation she holds for her students, her co-workers, and herself is to always maintain respect. The dense atmosphere

085of respect for your fellow humans has been one of the greatest factors in Miss Pie's ability to build real trust in a community and a community in a school system that is not designed to do so. If you ask teachers and students at Concord, they will tell you that Miss Peace is one of the most trusted and respected adults in the entire building. I started this campaign because Miss Ramona Peace deserves better treatment than what SPS has given her over the last half a year. We demand answers for the following questions. One, how can an educator who has given 34 years of her life to this district be on leave for 7 months with no concrete explanation? Two, how can you justify the negative impact of students caused by the sudden and unexplained removal of

086a teacher? Three, how can you rationalize the cost of a I'll conclude my remarks. How can you rationalize the cost of a seven-month paid leave for Miss Peace as well as paying for a sub or spreading staff even thinner than they already are? My final question, where's Miss Peace? The next speaker is Kay Lo. Kay Low. Hi, I'm Kayla and I seed to Aaron McDoodle. Good evening. Thank you school board directors for your commitment to continuing to partner with us as we solve difficult problems together. My name is Aaron McDougall. I'm a parent of three SPS students and an SPS alum. The evidence of parent concerns about weight lists is pretty overwhelming at this point. Hundreds of emails sent to you, 500 signatures on a letter, and many media reports all describing how enrollment mismanagement

087is harming our students and families. Instead of rebuilding trust after the school closure controversy, SPS has amazingly created more distrust. See, SPS has lost sight of its core mission, educating students. By ignoring family choices and refusing to move weight lists, you are pushing families out of the district. There are real concerns about legal action. The enrollment crisis affects every neighborhood with the highest concentration of applications coming from the south end. That's for you, Dr. Mr. That's for you, Director Hersy. Your people are talking to you and we'd love to hear what you think. Immigrant families simply want their children to stay together. Cleveland High School wants to survive. Enrollment of elementary schools are the best lever to engage families for the long term. More than 400 students never enrolled this year to the tune of

088$12 million in lost potential revenue. Every student that doesn't enroll is lost revenue for up to 13 years. And their younger family members, too. How is this equity and fiscal stability? It appears SPS is deliberately reducing enrollment to justify future school closures. The board has a responsibility to the electorate for effectively operating our schools. Yet, the student outcomes focused governance, a right-wing governance model originally created in Texas, is a model that allows the board to evade its responsibilities and avoid fixing problems. Due to SOFG on enrollment, student safety, fiscal oversight, academic outcomes, HR violations, and much more, the board is failing to properly ensure the district's effective operations and ethical operations of our schools. I'll end early to just say that all together for Seattle schools has put together this hand handout to educate folks

089about SOFG and I've included a letter to the Pittsburgh public schools from a number of national organizations urging them to not do SOFG. Thank you. Next is Samantha Fog. Samantha Fog. Hello. This is Samantha Fog, co-president of Seattle Council PTSA. I was glad to see that on the engagement memo um engagement was listed as orange because things need to change. I am concerned though that there's this idea that what we need to do is reinvent the wheel or figure this out because we have staff who can engage with families. We've seen it. We have families who are experts in this and who have offered services. We have had plans put forward, discussed, debated. We have seen staff punished for uplifting community voice. And we need to do better. We need to honor those within SPS

090who do the work. We need to honor those who try to partner with SPS. We also need to be honest with community when we speak to them about what we are doing, what we can do, and what we cannot do. When we have listening, we need to tell community what can be done with that information. Can change happen or not? Are we wasting time? What are the restrictions? What are the benefits? When we make changes, we need to clear with communities that we made changes. We should think our advocates when they bring things to us. We make changes and we improve things. When we have accessible alarm systems go in, we should honor the advocates and heart of hearing community who has been uplifting this work for years and years and at great expense. We

091need to do better. We have the ability to do better and we have made choices within our district and allowed leadership choices to happen that perpetuate discrimination and that cause failures of engagement. Communities have done their own engagement and done their own investments. But we are often volunteers in PTA. We are volunteers and Seattle public schools has some very highly paid staff who should be doing this work. And we ask you to help them lean in and to make sure that we have systems that uplift the good work that the staff who partners with community does do. Thank you. The next speaker is Laura Sorenson Blackburn. Laura Sorenson Blackburn. After Laura will be Susanna Bellisrachi. Laura, if you're online, please press star six to unmute. I'm going to go to the next speaker. I will

092come back for Laura later. Oh, Laura, I think you're there. Hi, we can hear you. This is Laura. I yield my time to Susanna Corny Belli. Hi, I yield my time to Susanna Corny Bellrachi. I'm right here. Um, I have some papers that I would like to share with you. May I approach? They are statements from members of the deaf community for your review. Two pages, two separate two separate and then I will I will read them for you. I'm my name is Susanna Balastrachi. I'm the spouse of Patrick Conway and um affiliated with the deaf community. Um two members of the deaf community asked me to read statements to the board in response to your apology. Um so I am here to honor that commitment to them. Can you speak directly to the [Music]

093Yes. The first statement is from Laura Kramer, DHH parent advocate. Thank you to the board and Superintendent Jones for your public apology. I say with respect that we have been offered many apologies as well as listening sessions over the course of the past 10 years. Personally, I'm leery and tired of both. I seek something more productive with a purpose that yields positive and sustainable outcomes for DHH families and students. For example, a task force that meets one to three times per year to offer solutions to pressing problems for DHH people such as ADA access, inclusion, and anti-abbleist and anti- audist initiatives. The DHH community would also like to work in collaboration with SPS administration to establish a dual language program at TOPS for American Sign Language and English as bilingual education is best practice for

094students with hearing differences. I asked the board and Superintendent Jones what specific changes to SPS procedures will be made to begin to rectify the harm done to DHH people in this district. What policies written? Okay. What policies written? what plan created, enacted and made available to the public with accountability measures. There is also the issue of changing minds in SPS so DHH people are no longer harmed. There are employees at the administrative level who discriminate against the DHH and disability communities. Their abbleism goes unchecked. In fact, some of them even receive promotions. I want to know what is the board's position on allowing an employee who is actively discriminated against the DHH and disability communities to continue to be promoted. Is it actively combating a is it actively combating abbleism and autism not something that

095is a priority for this board? The DHH community would like to see the creation and implementation of a DEI initiative to combat abbleism and autism in SPS much like those that have been established to combat racism and transphobia. As starting points, these initiatives should include cultural sensitivity training for SPS administration as well as education on the basics of ADA and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. In closing, the DHH community wants to see less talking and more action. We also remind you nothing for us without us. Lastly, just as SPS administration and the SPS board has begun to listen to the DHH community, we ask that you begin to do the same for the American Indian community, namely Gabriel de Los Angeles, who spoke at the April 23rd board meeting. There is one more statement.

096This is from Bill Harkness, engineering accessibility leader at Boeing. Thank you. Let's be honest, deaf and heart of hearing students, families, and staff have never truly been centered in this system. We've been managed, accommodated, explained away. We are always the afterthought, never the blueprint. Inclusion, as it stands today, is a temporary gesture. It flares up when the spotlight shines, then it fades. But we are still here living in the aftermath of your forgetting. I'm sorry. Every delay in interpreter access whispers, "You are an afterthought." Every school announcement spoken aloud but never signed or shown murmurss, "This message was never meant for you." Every decision made without our voices echoes, "This system was never built with you in mind. This is not about feelings. This is about design. And a system designed without us will always

097fail us. Every failure accumulates until it becomes generational, cultural, inherited harm. You cannot fix fix this with a task force. You cannot fix it with an apology. You fix it by rebuilding the foundation. You fix it when you stop treating DHH inclusion as a gesture of goodwill and start treating it as a basic requirement for dignity. We are not asking to be included. We are demanding that you remember we belong. Build systems that expect us. Train leaders who respect us. Design processes that never require us to ask twice. Because if inclusion can be turned off, then it was never real. And I leave you with this. When you're accustomed to privilege, equity feels like oppression. So ask yourself, not what it costs to include us, but what it has already cost us to be left

098out. Thank you. The next speaker is James Hunt. James Hunt. My name is Jim Hunt. I've been a teacher for 34 years in the district. I'm now retired and part of the group standing with Miss Peace. We were here last month and it's now month seven of her unfounded administrative leave. We're here again to express our frustration and demand a speedy resolution to this injustice. We're here again because we hold Miss Peace in the highest regard. And there are countless others who do who do likewise. For me, there are only two other people in my life with her level of integrity. My best friend and my father. And I know of her integrity because I teamed with her for a number of years at Concord International School. A teacher with the highest level of professional

099and personal ethics. A beloved teacher that works effectively with students and colleagues alike. So consistently does she rate as most trusted by her colleagues on climate surveys that SEA regularly invites her to become a building rep. Trusted enough even to be named principal designate for the last two years. A level of positive influence on a school rarely seen. I invite schoolboard members and media to to alike to visit Concord International School and find out about the reputation of Miss Peace for themselves. Visit a visit a a lunchroom. Go up to a table and ask a student if they know Miss Peace. Then watch the kids turn heads. Watch their eyes light up. Watch them rise up from their seats in excitement and tell their stories of how Miss Peace impacted their education because that's what

100will happen. Interview teachers, too. Remember to assure them of their anonymity, though. So, now imagine you're such a reputable veteran teacher of color with impeccable with an impeccable 34 year teaching career. And one morning, you receive an email banning you from the school. It says you're now on administrative leave for creating a hostile work environment. Yet you are yet you're not given any specifics about what you did to create hostility at the school and seven months later you still don't know. You're portrayed as a danger to students and staff. How would you feel? How would you respond? Would you find a therapist for your mental health? Would you seek legal recourse and sue the district for millions of dollars for pain and suffering because this is how the district has forced forced Miss Peace to

101respond? This is the thanks she gets for dedicating herself for 33 years to a teaching career in Seattle and she wants everyone here and the whole city to know about it. Thank you. [Applause] The next speaker is UN. Hi everyone, my name is Lujin uh Franklin Quicker uh alumni and I'll be speaking about geographic equity and accelerated curriculum with a focus on HD for West Seattle. Um first of all, thank you for prioritizing our children's education and hearing the community. I'm sure the last few years hasn't been easy for the administration from co disruptions to uh possible school closures and dynamic changes in leadership and vision. Uh I emphasize and want to partner in providing the best education for our children and advocating for accelerated learning and geographic equity for uh the student population. Um

102SPS has instructed neighborhood schools to implement HC services but not but has not provided any meaningful support, funding or HC training for teachers who are already stretched thin with their daily gen ed responsibilities. Uh before sending my daughter to our designated cohort school, we asked our neighborhood school's administration about ways we could enrich her learning, but we're told they are limited. Um at our neighborhood school, uh my daughter was grouped with uh students of similar math and reading skill level, but received limited accelerated instruction simply because there's just not enough time in the school day for a teacher to teach both Gen Ed and HC materials. Bringing programs like walk to math, bringing back programs like walk to math would solve uh this problem because it would allow students to learn at their level and

103and alleviate the resource constraints at the school. Um on the topic of West Seattle, the physical void of HC services in Seattle leave many parents like myself isolated and hoping that a 30 to 60 minute bus ride one way is the right decision. In our case, it 100 100% has been. Um, but we are we've been fortunate to to have flexible work schedules that allow us to drop off our daughter instead of getting her at her bus stop by 6:30 a.m. But many working families may not. We estimate there there are about over a 100 kids in West Seattle who are entitled to roll in pathway school uh school. Um, reinstating a cohort school in West Seattle will fill that void and give neighborhood schools more time to train and prepare for what the revised

104HD plan will be. I'm quoting Mr. Howard uh where a student lives shouldn't decide what kind of uh school experience they'll have and bringing back a cohort to West Seattle will bring geographic equity to students in West Seattle. Lack of meaningful to close lack of meaningful HC services and and the absence of an HC cohort in West Seattle contributes to the enrollment volatility in West Seattle. I believe enacting these solutions will stabilize enrollment uh enrollment volatility in the neighborhood and more importantly provide equitable resources for these students. Thank you. The next speaker is Tobias Collins. Tobias Collins. After Tobias will be Matt Bertnes and then Melissa Barbara. Hello. Thank you for listening. My name is Tobias Collins. Both of my children attended Seattle public schools. My youngest is currently a sixth grader at TOPS. He's

105been there since kindergarten. I'm a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter and have been active in the deaf and heart of hearing community in Seattle for over 30 years. In my 30-year professional career, I have coordinated, deployed, and managed deaf and heart of hearing accessibility and disability accommodation services for Belleview College, the University of Washington, and Amazon. During my children's tenure with Seattle public schools, I have seen mistake after mistake made by Seattle public schools district leadership and how deaf and heart of hearing accessibility disability accommodations and assisted equipment are managed and deployed. In all cander, the mistakes I see often at the district level are the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest to fix. Simply looking at the last board meeting as a case study and what not to do. Um, brief examples, you

106only had two ASL interpreters. The last meeting, those placed too far across the room for comfortable sightelines for the deaf and heart of hearing attendees. The cameras facing those interpreters were set at inappropriate angles and did not stay on the interpreters. The interpreters left the meeting before the meeting ended. Yet, the meeting continued without them. No mechanism was provided to allow deaf and heart of hearing community members who use sign language as their primary mode of communication to testify remotely. The live feed at one point during the testimony was 120 seconds delayed. I was watching the live feed and listening to the audio by a telephone. There was no captioning provided other than machine and to be very clear machine captions do not meet with accessibility needs to anyone who is relying upon them for

107communication access. I could go on, but I will stop. All of these failures would have been anticipated and remediated by anyone with experience in providing death and heart of hearing accessibility and disability accommodation services. You SPS leaders are failing the deaf and heart of hearing community in Seattle. Um, it would be great if you could find a dedicated deaf and heart of hearing accessibility and disability accommodation specialists coordinating these services districtwide. I have no interest in working for SPS, but I would love to help in any way I can. Thanks. The next speaker is Matt Bertnes. After Matt will be Melissa Barbara and then Will Roach. My name is Matt Bertnes and I'll be seating my time to uh Nemo Farra. I attended bilingual orientation center known as BOC, a program created to support students

108who are new to the country and are learning English. I remember being asked to take a state test and feeling completely lost. I didn't understand the directions and I blamed myself even though I had just arrived and everything from language to classroom routine was new. But at BOC I had teachers who were trained to support students like me. Even with that help I still struggled. Now imagine students having to face those same challenges without any support. That is what will happen if SBS removes BOC. It's is it's not fair or realistic to expect newly arrived students to succeed in general education classroom without language and cultural support. These students often left feel left out, discouraged, and this affects how they feel about school and how well they will learn. Research shows that early support in

109school is very important, especially for immigrant students. Without it, they more likely will fall behind, feel disconnected, and miss out on a future opportunities like college or getting good job. Many immigrant families trust SBS will do what's best for their students, but they often don't know change like this. Meanwhile, schools programs like Highly Capable are growing because these families know how to advocate. They have resources. They speak the language. As a mother of multilingual student and educator who works closely with these learners, I am very concerned. BLC helps the students who need the most support. Instead of cutting this program, the district should be investing it. I invite you, I ask you to come visit our schools, speak with our students and teachers. The need is clear. The demand is real. Please see it for

110yourself before making a decision that will affect many lives. Thank you. The next speaker is Melissa Barbara. Melissa Barbara. After Melissa will be Will Roach and then Sam Gutierrez. Do we have Melissa Barbara in the room? I believe she's on the phone. Oh, but she's having trouble unmuting. Melissa, you'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference call line. This is Sarah Fellows and Melissa was going to see her time. I can see that Melissa's here. Hello. Can you hear me? We can. We could hear you, Melissa. Um, I think you'll need to press star six again. Melissa, you were unmuted briefly. Please press star six. You are unmuted. We should be able to hear you. Hi. Yes. I want to feed my time to Sarah Fellows. Thank you. Can you hear me?

111We can hear you, Sarah. My time to Sarah Fellows. We can. Thank you. You can go ahead Sarah. I'm the parent of a student at John Stamford International School. I'm here to talk about how the decision to hold weight lists is negatively impacting both students at the dual language immersion schools and our school district. Three years ago, the district office began refusing to admit students in grades 2 through 5 to JSIS and McDonald's international, even when there was space in the students grade level and language track. These students are native speakers of Spanish or Japanese, the very students that the district says these programs are most designed to serve. The principal advocated for these students and told the district that we absolutely had faith in their grade levels, but was shut down. We know these

112families and their stories. One family only speaks Spanish and is navigating this confusing process with the help of a friend. One Japanese-speaking family has been trying to get their older child into JSIS for three years to join the sibling. They plan to leave the district next year if they don't succeed. Two years ago, JSIS was scheduled to have a fourth kindergarten class, something it has regularly had in the past. But the district held us to three classes without explanation. Over the past four years, the district has deliberately shrunk enrollment at JSIS from four 470 to 429 students. This has caused JSIS to lose staff. For example, the district is artificially holding us just below the threshold that would qualify us for an assistant principal under the weighted staffing standard. Even more frustrating, when the district

113refused to fill open spaces in the upper grades, we lost teachers. This has forced the school into large four or five split classes unnecessarily despite having qualified native speakers sitting on the wait list. It's the same for McDonald's who will lose their assistant principal and two teachers next year. JSIS is one of the district's highest performing schools and has demonstrated that it works for lowincome students, multilingual learners, and students of color. Why are we denying kids the opportunity to enroll when we have space? These districts are these decisions are directly harming students and this issue can and should be fixed immediately. Please admit the weight listed students in grades 2 through 5 to JSIS and the other GLI programs. Thank you. Next is Will Roach. We are not yet seeing your video. Will I think

114Will you'll need to turn your camera on? Oh, so for some reason it disabled my camera and I can't get it turned on. So if you guys would uh allow me to do it this way or if you guys can give me permission to turn my camera on, that would be great. Says only selective participants are able to show their screens. Will will your camera should work on here? But if you are um on the phone by FaceTime, we can also take your testimony that way if it is working for the interpreters. Okay. Yeah, I'll just do it this way. Great. Hello, my name is Will Roach and I so sorry we're having some freezing issues. I do appreciate SPS's apology um to the entire deaf community, deaf families, um for you know the accumulation

115of mistakes and failures that have happened in the past um in regards to meeting our communication needs. However, what we've seen is really just words. What we really need to see is change and action. I really need to see that the board com I see that the board has committed to having interpreters at these meetings which is great but I think we al should should have interpreters for all special meetings or um we also need to extend those services to all events that involve our deaf and heart of hearing families and their children. SPS leadership and committees need to um actively engage with the deaf and heart of hearing community and families so they can understand how to improve accessibility within the system and create that very important relationship. We're not looking for more apologies.

116[Music] We're looking to be included in creating a more inclusive environment within SPS and we would do that by working together and uh we can prevent these mistakes from continuing to happen. We are ready to collaborate and we really look forward to seeing actual change. Thank you. Ne the next speaker is Sam Gutierrez. After Sam will be Liz Barry and then June no Ivers. Hi, this is Hves. Um, at a previous meeting, Marty Campbell said that if parents submit the form in time, they will likely get their choice and that the wait list is for the forms that are submitted late. Um, but the first time that my kid was rejected from the option school process, I submitted the application at 12:01 a.m. on the first day of choice enrollment. I indicated she was a

117native Spanish speaker and we were still number 96 in the weight list. We said elementary school weight lists are nowhere near the hundreds. Yet we were number 96. No families that were even further down. And this year our school list our school weight list for case report is well over a hundred. According to the weight list report that SPS released last month. Sorry, I was running from the bus stop. I'm a little out of breath. Um SPS staff says that all parents who reach out to ask get answers to all their questions. Plenty of parents have already expressed their experience was the opposite. And I also want to ask, what about the parents who don't even know they can question that position? I grew up in Mexico and I had no idea how public education

118worked in this country when I was filling out forms to enroll my daughter into kindergarten. I got the standard this is where she will attend and that was that. S claims that all their work centers equity and minorities, but understanding the enrollment process is very hard and the person in charge of it is not particularly or proactively helpful. There's a lot of conflicting information. It feels like gaslighting. In short, so many parents have shared how they are being negatively impacted by weight lists across the district. And immediately after staff and directors deny this is happening, state that everything is tended to, but they have all the correct data and everything is done right, essentially dismissing our leave experiences. And because the directors are not supposed to fact check them based on the student outcomes focused

119governance frame, things go on unchecked. This is the kind of thing though that breaks trust and contributes to SPS's negative negative reputation which in turn drives down enrollment. You have to do better for the sake of our public schools. Thanks for listening. The next speaker is Liz Barry. [Applause] [Music] Hi, good evening. I'm Liz Barry, SPS dual language teacher, SPS parent, and Seattle Council PTSA board member. And first of all, I want to say that Seattle passes the levies because we have a citizenship that believes in our public school system. And so, we can make change and we have support and we need to do that. I'm here to continue right now to advocate for expanding our dual language offerings. Dual language meets the needs of a wide diversity of students. It supports MLL students

120in both maintaining their home language and also developing their bilingual and multilingualism. It provides challenge for both monilingual and multilingual highly capable students. This connects also to the access issues that are facing our deaf and heart of hearing families and students and have faced them for years. These concerns raised by the families are very similar to concerns of families who speak languages besides English. Many feel excluded, interpretation is not always provided and some feel that their pres presence is even not welcomed. Expanding dual language programs in SPS is a pathway forward. Imagine having DL programs in ASL, Vietnamese, and Somali, as well as the current languages we offer. The second topic I want to address is around family engagement. I was unable to attend the school board's community engagement session on April 30th at Denny,

121where I teach. Despite being a Denny teacher, I was not aware of the session until the day before when someone outside of Denny informed me. At the Denny staff meeting the next day, it was clear that most of the staff were unaware of the event. I tried to rearrange my schedule to attend but could not. I recommend that these engagement events be tied to an existing school event such as our multicultural night which happened the next day. The school board could set up a table with a sign that says talk with a schoolboard member. I encounter many families who do not actually believe that SPS is interested in their thoughts. By attending events like this, it would allow for more authentic ways of connect of connecting and engaging. Lastly, I want to connect with the

122folks about Miss Peace. My son is a student in Miss Pie's class this year. I have emailed district staff about supporting the students and families who are confused and concerned about their teacher and have received no information. I have also not received any response. Please find a way for Miss Pie's class to express their gratitude to her and to give Concord staff a way to explain this challenging situation to students and families. Thank you. The next speaker is June No. Ivers June No. [Applause] [Music] Ivers June, you'll need to press star six to unmute. I'm going to go to the next speaker. I will come back though. Um, returning to Chi Kren Krenetta. Hello, this is Chi Krenetta. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Um, my name is Chief Cornetta

123and I feed my time to Marz Santiago. Hi, my name is Marita Santiago. Thank you for taking the time to hear my perspective on the lack of access to highly capable services in West Seattle. My son earned its highly capable designation as a kindergartener in 2022 and we chose to stay at our neighborhood school in West Seattle because sending a six-year-old on a bus at 6:30 a.m. for a 90-minute bus commute to Third Good Marshall was out of the question, even before considering the need to take our second child to a different school. To shorten the morning commute, we would need to drive 30 to 50 minutes, which is not feasible for our work schedules and limited access to vehicles. West Seattle students need a geographically equitable access to highly capable services. And this can

124be solved in two ways. One, reinstating teaching beyond the grade level and walk to math at neighborhood schools. HC students at cohort elementary schools are taught two grade levels ahead in math compared to HC students in neighborhood schools. So the two programs are not equal. And two, reinstating a cohort elementary school in West Seattle. There are over 100 HC designated plus additional advanced learning designated elementary students in West Seattle. Their only cohort option is Ther Marshall, a school that is already nearly at capacity with about 500 students. There wouldn't be enough room for West Seattle HSC students if they all opted for Therid Marshall. and the cost to the district for busing these students would be high. The most cost-effective, reasonable, and equitable solution is to return a cohort to West Seattle and to allow

125above grade level instruction. Again, thank you so much. Next, um trying one more time for June. No, I June, you'll need to press star six if you're online. Okay, I'm going to go to the test or the wait list now. Uh the next speaker is Sabrina Burr. June is online. I'll take it. Jun's online trying to get on. Next is Sabrina Burr. [Music] Why are we here? We've gone so far backwards. I was looking over some older documents about our community engagement guiding principles and we're not following any of them. Um I didn't bring my glasses. I should have. Community engagement involves all sectors of community including teachers and internal staff. And it's important to bring people early. Involve the community early in the process. Has learning componented that helps build community awareness and acknowledges

126acknowledges around the subject at hand. Utilize community partnerships as expertise and employs clear, open and concise communication. We once had our styles of communication where we define what was when we went out into community if it was a form collaborate involve or if it was a or if it was um consult or inform or if it was collaboration. We've come very very far from where it is. What we really have instead of community engagement is we have emotional abusive relationships with families and that's where we are right now and that's really really sad and we talk about accountability but board you have not held anybody accountable I have gone down all of the guardrails all of them are broken all of the time what are you doing to hold this district accountable for the outcomes

127of students. What I want to say is these are lives and those furthest from educational justice, you are failing. And this is the last thing that I want to say. All of you guys voted, most of you, for a 10% increase over 5 years. For those who are furthest, who are in the gap, who are at 30 and 40% at standards, what is that going to do? People who are talking against student outcomes focused governance are those who do not have kids in the gap. We started this a long time ago. It didn't get implemented when it could. But if you guys don't do it, we will bring it into community and we will demand you. We are not letting you fail our black kids anymore. Period. Full stop. The next speaker is Justina Schwarz.

128And this will be a final speaker, final speaker if Justina's uh here or online. Justina, you'll need to press star six if you're on the phone, but I'm not seeing your number. I'm going to go to the next on the wait list. Jana Parker. Yana, I can see that you're unmuted, but we're not able to hear you in the room. Okay, going to go. Um, we've heard from the next several people on the wait list. Shan Shantel Hazelws. Do we have Chantel in the room or online? Chantel, you'll need to press star six to unmute. Okay, moving past Shantel to Jen Elliot Blake. Do we have Jen Elliot Blake? Okay, moving to the next on the list. Um, Michelle Campbell. Not seeing Michelle online. Eleanor Warren. Eleanor Warren. Gonna go to William Harkness. Do we

129have William Harkness here? Laya Woods. Laya Woods. Alex Wakeakeman. Roose. Miss Wilson Jones. Looks like we have a few of those folks. So, I don't know if we want to start from the beginning and see if folks are available from the top. If the last four digits of your phone number are 19 or less or are last two digits are 10, I guess we can see folks. Um, we have one testimony spot and um I'm going to the first up that we had on the list. The first up we had on the list was uh I believe I want to say was Jana Parker. So Jana, if you want to leave the meeting and then rejoin, we can see if we can take your testimony. Move the cursor to the bottom right hand of the

130screen. There's a muted icon. See that speaker with an X in front of it? There you go. Jana, if you want to give it one more try. She We're just going to give it just a second. Jana was on and she exited the meeting and we'll be coming back in and hopefully we can get her testimony here. So, just let's be patient for folks who are on the phone. I can see that you're unmuted and um speaking. I'm going to let you know sometimes the team settings get goofy and so we are not able to hear you in the room. I understand that you can potentially hear each other or you're speaking. Um but I think the best we can ask is that you leave and come back and we will go in order if

131we are able to receive testimony from you. the team. Um, oh, we can hear somebody. I think we can hear Parker. It um, can everybody who is not named Jana Parker please mute who is on your phone. And Jana, if you want to provide your testimony, we should be able to hear you. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you for your patience. Oh, okay. Good evening. My name is Jana Parker, Seattle Special Education PTSA President. As you heard tonight, the community is tired of the district's enrollment game and the almost accessible events. Student enrollment manipulation. Last spring, hundreds of students sat on weight list while the classrooms in successful schools sat half empty. Families begged to move in. Instead, we lost lost them to other districts, homeschooling and charter schools, and their funding went

132with them. This unauthorized practice of balancing the budget numbers without consideration of students needs to end. Why why take students away when they're literally knocking on the door? Is it to make sure that staff are not allocated and less resources and administrators can be provided? Are you looking at the needs of students and and teachers at each school? How many disabled students, low-income families, and multilingual learners do they have? About accessibility sales. The April regular schoolboard meeting continued for 30 minutes after the ASL interpretators left. The closed captions when provided have been too small and not contrasting enough to be accessible. Not to mention the small screen and tiny font on the projected presentation in public meetings. This is why I'm not in person tonight. The school board community engagement sessions have no ASL interpreters.

133Deaf parents could only lipre your apology. If if the school district can't make its own events accessible, how can families trust that it provides appropriate universal design training for our educators? The asks are simple. Therefore, move every weight listed child into the MTC's now and staff them accordingly. Um, stop denying students with IEPs enrollment in schools based on their disability. Examine why some schools are more desired and replicate what's working well. The program's families are lining up for don't starve them. Provide certified interpreters an accessible close captioning system and large enough screens at every public meeting. Our kids aren't budget widgets or numbers in your spreadsheets. They're humans with very real needs. Students and their families need true access to participate in the district events. Please do better. President Top, that was the 25th speaker

134tonight and concludes testimony. Perfect. I appreciate it. Um I thank you everyone. I so appreciate you making time to be here this evening. I think that we try to harness the care, the energy, and the innovation in this room. We can try to make a difference for our kids. and I see it as a huge asset. Uh we're going to go board directors back to the tables to finish progress monitoring guardrail 2 and then we will take a break. But first we're going to finish progress monitoring. So please bring your microphones to the tables. Right. Passing it back to Director Hersy for progress monitoring. Passing it back to staff for progress monitoring. Love it. Thank you, Director Hersy. Joined for my uh we're here to give the final uh progress monitoring session on the former

135guardrail 2 which was about uh consistent and predictable operational systems. Um the uh measures the intra measures that were adopted for this were in three operational areas and the goal was to use them as kind of broad indicators of our overall operations things that mattered to students and had a had an impact on our ability to deliver services and provide uh great learning environment. Um we're I'm going to ask the department leaders, the functional leaders from each group to introduce themselves and go over um the measures that would relate to transportation, um uh placement of uh teaching staff in schools on the first day of instruction and um uh technology. And so I think we're starting with transportation. I'll turn it over uh to Dr. Campbell. Good evening, directors. Thank you so much for being

136here. Um appreciate all that you do. Um the transportation guard rail um that we have chosen to track um the quality of our system and structures is um on time AM arrival. Um we feel that this captures uh sort of the heart of what what we want to do when we're providing transportation, which is to get kids to school on time. Um, and we want that to be pinned specifically to the AM arrival at school. Um, so you can see we have two, and this is also really critical for our partnerships with our providers. Um, Zoom and First Student are our primary providers. So, you can see the metrics here. Our goal is to have 95% on time morning arrival. Um, our two providers um are are making strides and growth toward that. uh first

137student um has met uh and exceeded that. Um Zoom has not consistently um but you can see the trend here. Um and that is our work for um getting students to school on time so they're ready to learn, ready to have breakfast, all those things that are really critical. And maybe we'll take questions for these by each subject area if directors have any so we don't have too much handing off if that works for you. Director Hersy um we thought we'd take since we've got three operational areas that we'd um uh see if directors had any questions about those after we go through each area. So if you have transportation question now would be a great time. H my my microphone is dead. But I do not see any questions, so we can continue. Thank

138you. Thank you. I'm going to let you take it. Okay. Oh, sorry. Now we have a problem. Yes. Okay, this one works much better. Director Ranken, please. Thank you. I have a question that I wish I had thought of before when we have um looked at this although this is our first this is our first time this year monitoring this. Um this is uh this the transportation reflected here is it just uh arrivals and departures from school at the beginning and end of the school day or does it include district provided transportation that goes between schools or between programs during the day? not field trips necessarily, but like skill center or uh other reasons why students might go correct school to school. So, and then what would I mean I'm surprising you with this question.

139I did not think to ask it ahead of time. Um, so I don't expect the answer, but I would be curious to see how including all district provided transportation would uh if it would reflect um the same or if it would impact the that uh this data. Thank you for the question. This is on time AM arrival only and we chose that as a really specific um target because again that captures and it's only for our yellow bus providers um for uh and it doesn't include alternative service providers. So we captured that because it felt like the biggest um measure of how overall systems are working and that has to do with some of the things that have been problematic in the past. um you know enough bus drivers to make sure that routes are

140running and those kinds of things. So this is just on time morning arrival and again we chose that because that again captures what we think has potentially the largest impact on student learning and really that's as we work with our providers on this we really focus on how this affects the students ability to feel successful through the day. Do they get there on time to have breakfast? Do they get there on time to go to to start the day in a comfortable way? So that's all that this is. Um we certainly can look at though in the future things like midday transportation um uh alternative transportation field trips but that's all that this represents. Okay. So for the Thank you for the ontime AM arrival yellow bus services provided by Zoom and for student is

141that only general education routes or does it include special education routes that are also expected to I expect them to bring students to school on time in the morning? A great question. This includes all routes. we don't differentiate between that because it's equally as important for everybody to arrive to school in time. Yes. Thank you. My question is pretty simple. I I'm thinking about traffic and how traffic impacts uh not just buses but cars. I mean not just school buses but metro buses, cars, um other forms of transportation. Does do you all collect data on that? Does that impact No, let me restate my question. Do you have any data that reflects whether or not our traffic patterns um are impacting it's not a big difference and so I just want to make sure that

142um for me it's important that kids get to school safely not that they're rushed there for an ontime arrival data point. And so we're only talking 3% I think between the two providers. So, it's not statistically significant, number one, but what what do you know when a bus rides late, what do you know about that? Thank you so much for that question. So, and I won't go into it, but if you look into the finer uh print around um the the actions that the transportation department is taking. Again, I think it's a great question about what enables our students to get to school on time in general. um this specifically captures how operations within the department are are responding to that very thing. So for instance, when you see in in the month of September,

143as you may or may not expect, the uh on-time arrival rate is much lower. That has a lot to do with um routes being new, drivers being new, systems getting established. But what we do is we meet twice a week with our providers to say, "Okay, this bus is consistently getting here late. What's up?" And so that might mean rethinking the the arrangement of the stops. Maybe there's some construction going on in particular part of the city we need to adapt to. So this enables us to say month well every twice a week to say um you know how can we respond in the moment and over time to those things that are creating those difficulties and certainly traffic patterns is a big part of it. So we know for example students um you know

144that are going from downtown say to Lel elementary that was an area for the past two years we've really worked on um increasing on time arrival just because of the nature of the traffic patterns um during the times of day when their students are being driven there and also driven home. So I think it's a great question. That's exactly why this becomes an interesting metric because it shows how well is our department organizing itself to communicate and collaborate with our providers and sometimes it's a question of we need to get some more buses on this route or we need to have more backup drivers and that just this just cues us to say okay how are we going to you know I don't want to say push our providers but collaborate with our providers to

145make sure that that they're meeting this target. Yeah. All right. If there are not further questions, I'll ask to advance the slide to interim 2.2 and turn it over to Dr. Pritchette. Good evening. Um, Dr. Sarah Pritchette, assistant superintendent for human resources. Uh, in the guardrail for interim 2.2 was related to human resources hiring. Um, specifically, the percentage of classrooms with a teacher on the first day of school would increase from a baseline of 94% in September of 2022 to maintain at least 95% or higher beginning September of 2023. Um, as noted, we started this school year with at a 97% fill rate for the positions and for having teachers in the classrooms. And this only speaks to teachers um in the classroom. it does not include our classified staff in this particular interim um

146measure. We um have done a lot of work over the last three years to really look at our systems um emphasizing building the relationships with our um HR business partners and our school leaders so that they have accurate information as they start going into hiring season. Um our HR business partners are working um side by side with school leaders as they're doing their budget and staffing. So they have acute awareness of where the vacancies are. Um what um areas are need are the highest needs for particular regions. Um they're spending a lot more time working on an ongoing basis with school leaders so that they are prepared. We are also we've also stepped up the timeline on um placing our displaced staff into positions so that they have their assignments before they leave in June.

147That's our goal to finish the majority of hiring by June 30th of every year so that as we go into summer um that school leaders and teachers can plan and have that summer to to be able to get ready um for an exciting school year to start. Um, I'll stop there and ask if there are any questions. I see Director Sergy. Okay, Director Ranken, thank you. Um, I I mean 94% is already pretty high and 97% is some growth, but also already pretty high. Um, I was wondering based on what you were just talking about, Dr. Bridget, uh, if the timing of our I know our in SPS, this is something that's come up a lot of times over the years that our hiring cycle is slightly different timing than other districts. Do you know

148if that has an impact on recruiting and filling those those spaces for the um start of the year? And if it does, if there are plans to uh look into making any changes, I think that we've done some initial changes. We have um phased hiring that we work on the timelines with our labor partner with SEA to agree upon the timelines for hiring. So we do internal and move through all of the phases to get to an external. Um I think that in the past and and I'll take a point of privilege to speak as a former principal. So there were there have been in the past um kind of lagging times um to get hiring out. We've done work on emphasizing and part of that was due to um the amount of time that

149it took to place um staff that have been displaced from buildings based on enrollment changes and fluctuations and we've really worked hard to move that up because that actually holds on whether or not we move into an open hiring position. Of course we have some positions that we know always um have shortages. So, we have open hires for that. We've been aggressive with that. We also um so I don't know that it's necessarily as as big of a timeline piece. I think for some other positions um certainly there is um we see that with our certainly with our school leaders there are some concerns around timelines um for those particular positions and and just process of how we're doing that. But for our teachers, um, we track data on, um, how successful we are in

150filling vacancies the later it gets. Of course, um, in the spring, we're able, if we have known vacancies in the spring, and that's around when our budget and staffing season is, that we're pretty, um, comfortable with how our ability to fill those positions. As you get later into August and September and October, um, again, we struggle to fill those positions when we're identifying them that late. Seeing no further questions, we can proceed. Thank you. And our uh if we could advance the slide to interim 2.3, which um measures systems availability of technology in a variety of dimensions. Um and I'll ask assistant superintendent Dova to cover this. Good evening. I'm Carlos Eva, assistant superintendent of technology. Speak a little bit about um these key metrics. Uh the intent is is to provide uh equity access

151to reliable and high performing technology systems to support students um staff productivity and engagement. Our goal was uh 99.9 um and the first one that we we got is the data center u data center and uh systems availability uh with 99.98 uh this is where we have all this um the students information systems the um the LMS the business the ERP uh the major critical systems um the network infrastructure which is more of the the fiber the servers the routers that that contain the work we have it at 99 99.87 uh% availability. Um and then the Microsoft uh 365 that's a whole platform that that composes all our teams, our SharePoint, email um collaboration uh at 99.96 uh uptime. Um then we have the uh telecommunication systems um is are we still in this? Yeah,

152telecommunication systems at 99.82 82 and this is basically fiber and connectivity uh for telephone and cell phones for the district. Uh next slide please. So there's an error in this in this slides where it says um school of year 23 24 it should say 24 25 but uh this is uh what uh the issuing of computers at the beginning of the year in September uh 49 26 226 and that was a 100% distribution of these and um about 1300 uh hotspots Um let me see what else. Uh in in customer service the average resolution uh uh for a uh uh travel tickets is about anything from one to two days and 5 hours. Uh depending on the complexity of the ticket it could be just a passport reserve that takes a minute and uh or

153it can be a another complex problem that needs back repairs. Um I'm going to um go back to to the uh um to the data center availability. I'm happy to report that Renee Beach we have a redundant system uh data center that is going to come online in uh in summer. Um so if there's any cut off from the north side, we'll still have uh uh digital services provided uh on the south. So that's a great win. Uh also we uh we completed the um on on the network side of the house we completed an upgrade to our wireless uh network. Uh all the schools are are done. Also we working on the interactive power supplies uh the that were allows you know not to be down um and also um in the infrastructure side

154of the house the Windows uh 11 upgrade uh we completed all the devices across the uh uh the district. So that's we have Windows 10 standard is going to be is not not going to be supported. So that's why we need to uh migrate to it. Um on on the on the percentages for the uh u for the system availability the industry standard is uh 99.9. So we're pretty close uh on all of them. Any questions from directors? Oh, I see you. Director Bergs, go for it. Um, this is a general question. Um, I know, right? um I was not on the board at the time that this uh guard rail was devised or the interims and maybe this actually might be a question for the senior board members. Um but I I'm just I'm

155curious how these were chosen in the first place just because all of the um baseline rates already seem pretty high for all of these. So it doesn't feel like um like so I guess what got me thinking about this is uh if the official guard rail is the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service. I was thinking of like how do you define operational systems? Like would our enrollment process be considered one for example? Um and we obviously have like a major issue there. Uh, and it doesn't feel like any of these things were major issues. Um, unless I'm missing something. So that I'm just curious about how we ended up uh tracking um data that was already kind of on the high end to begin with. Do you want me? Uh

156well, I believe uh Director Briggs um directed a question to the senior members of the board. I'm happy to give my two cents as well um having been there, but it um this was a a swap if you'll remember the when the first um set of guardrails were developed, there was a different guardrail too. And so I think the board um replaced this with a operational one and it was um kind of an abbreviated process. So I think staff um and and there had been given the timing of all this with um hiring staff related to COVID. The district had gone through years of t transportation challenges and then I think technology we um really accelerated the deployment of technology during COVID. So I think those were top of mind at the time. I I

157don't think there was deep thinking into it, but is this it was can we pick um three canaries in in coal mines for lack of a better term that just how are we at operations in general? I I don't know that there was deep thought into what operations mean and um anyway that it is what it is. But that that's my recollection and I would defer to colleagues that were here for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My recollection is that it was a last minute swap and it was mostly at the insistence of uh this was a high priority for one board member. Okay. um and it replaced something else and um I think yeah it was somewhat response to co I think also were we to now what we know now about this process I

158feel me personally I would not I would probably have some strong feedback about these interim guard rails if they were presented to me now having done done this already um uh yeah Yeah. Could I could I add something? Yeah, please. Yeah, thanks. Um, I I know that that that the number that you see in terms of on time AM arrival is a is a substantial improvement from what had been going on the years prior. And so, um, and that is the result of some strategic decisions. for instance to have two carriers that vastly improved the the number of drivers and vehicles that we have in the fleet. But prior that those numbers were we were nowhere near that in terms of AM arrival. So um I think it served its purpose. It taught us a

159lot about how to improve that operational expectation. It has also enabled us to again lean into our providers and say getting kids to school on time in the morning is job one. And so that the numbers there reflect a fair amount of work to make sure that everybody understands really clearly that that's our priority. But that's a pretty significant improvement. If we could advance the slide two slides because there were some questions about what um how the board might provide support in these areas going forward. Um, and the recommendation from staff would, you know, with regard to transportation, as Dr. Campbell noted, we've made I'm sorry if we could back up one. I I um I did want to highlight just that these are supports that the board could make to um help the district

160continue make improvements. And um this was developed before the end of the last legislative session, but while we made, as Dr. Campbell alluded to, we made significant improvements in our transportation system overall. We are funded about 50 cents on the dollar right now in transportation and we've invested heavily to do that and folks know of our financial situations and the um spending that we rely on levy funds or others to do, you know, is a a significant amount of money on the order of uh uh 25 to $30 million. So, um, continuing to get support on transportation, the transportation funding model, um, whenever the legislature is willing to hear from us again would be great. Um, human resources are driven by policies the board, you know, approving collective bargaining agreements, you know, making sure that

161we stay in the market to attract um, uh, staff and be competitive in teaching positions and in other critical positions uh, across the district. and then um keep doing what we're doing with regard to technology and supporting levies and um continue to make those investments I think is what we would need to sustain all this. Any other questions? Okay, seeing none. All right, we are concluding progress monitoring. We are going to take a fivem minute break. We'll be back at 6:55 uh to start the uh business items on the agenda. We are back up on the dis [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] All right. I was serious about the five minutes and so hoping we can get

162a quorum back. Director Misrai, you're going the wrong direction. Uh Carrie, would you just check in with staff and or with board directors and let them know we are [Music] starting? I don't have a quorum. [Music] I Heat. Heat. [Music] I'm still looking for a quorum. Missing director rank [Music] director. All [Music] right, we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda. May I have a motion for the consent agenda? Absolutely. Let me just get oriented here. I haven't been in leadership for a while. I move for approval of the consent agenda. Will that suffice? Yeah. Yes. Second. Perfect. Do directors have anything that they would like to remove from the consent agenda? W. Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying I I I I I I

163I. Those opposed. All right, we are moving on. Um we are moving on to action items. We will now move to the action item on today's agenda. Action item one is uh the Beex 5 property acquisition for the purchase of existing warehouse located at 32233rd Avenue South Seattle, Washington 98134. Do I have a motion for on this item? Oh my gosh. Wait, is this on? Oh wow. Um Um, I move approval of the consent agenda. Oh, shoot. Shoot. Sorry. Sorry. Um, where? Sorry. Where are we? Where are we? We are on action item one. This is the Beck's property acquisition of the existing warehouse. Um, where? No, I'm I'm looking for my direction. Miss Wilson Jones, will you help provide a little assistance here? Yeah. I move that the school board approve the purchase of

164the warehouse located at 3223rd Avenue South and authorize the superintendent to fully execute the purchase and sale agreement dated April 21st, 2025 in the amount of 12,500,000 with any minor additions, deletions, modifications, and actions deemed necessary by the superintendent to implement the purchase. Immediate action is in the best interest of the district. Second. Great. Um, I'm going to now call on uh it looks like uh Mr. Richard Best to uh present and provide an update on this action item. So, thank you, Director Top. Uh, so Richard Best, executive director of capital projects and planning for Seattle public schools. Um, this property was made, uh, Capital Projects was made aware of in early April of 2025. Um, it is a property that is approximately two blocks away from the John Stanford Center. Um we have toured

165this properly um several times um specifically with our facilities operations staff and our grounds manager uh to ascertain whether this would be a facility that could be utilized in support of the grounds operations at Seattle public schools. Some of you may not be aware, but uh for the past 25 years, our grounds operations has been conducted really in the north parking lot here at Seattle Public Schools. They occupy approximately 100 parking stalls. They have a a small out building at the north end of the site um in which they store their fertilizer. It was previously a building that the auto shop utilized for tire um storage. And so we are looking at uh um housing the grounds shop and their activities, their equipment at this facility. And then in addition, we are looking at moving

166the mainten uh the uh facilities operations, masonry operations and roof um equipment and operations to this facility as well. Um we have done our due diligence on this site. I will note that the seller acquired this property approximately four years ago, made some seismic improvements to it, and then has returned it to the market. Um, we had an appraisal conducted. The appraisal price is matching the selling price of this property. We believe this is in the best interests of Seattle public schools to acquire this. Um, we have done some analysis as to potential cost savings for our facilities operations department over the next 10 years and we believe it would approximately be a million dollars a year in equipment savings, operational benefits um to for Seattle public schools. So, open it up to questions. Board

167directors have questions or comments? Director Clark, um, was this the only site that was toured for this per the purpose of trying to find a actual location um to support the grounds operations? Like did you look at any other buildings and um how how did you se select this site if so? So, we have looked at I'm going to say roughly a half a dozen sites in either the Sodto or the Georgetown neighborhoods. This site we are most uh you know is most attractive to Seattle public schools capital projects and facilities operations because it's literally two blocks away from um the John Stanford Center. So, we see a lot of operational benefits there. We identified those areas, uh, Director Clark, both Sodto and, uh, Georgetown, because they allowed the we had the correct zoning. We're

168not going to have to go through a departure process to have our operations there. Um, and costs. Um, this was actually a very cost-effective site for Seattle Public Schools. Other questions or comments from board directors? Director Miss Rahi. So the 12.5 does that include the modifications and the actions deemed necessary or is that going to be above the 12.5? That would be above the 12.5. The modifications are going to be relatively um simple. We're looking at potentially removing two columns uh just to allow vehicles to enter into the warehouse um without you know the potential of hitting those two columns. Uh the estimate for that was approximately $100,000. And then we're looking at enhancing the ventilation system to take vehicle exhaust out of um a large warehouse structure. Other board directors. Right. That ends discussion

169and I'm going to ask staff for the vote, please. Director Clark I Director Hersy just gave it to me. So I director Miss Rahi I Director Ranken I. Director Sarju. Yeah, she's here. I Vice President Briggs I I almost disappeared. President Top I. This motion has passed unanimously. Great. We are moving on. We will now uh move to tonight's introduction items which relates to Memorial Memorial Stadium project. Uh since both are interrelated, I will read both titles into our record and then I'm going to pass it off to Chief Operations Officer Fred Podesta to introduce both these proposed actions. The first one uh introduction item one is approving an interlocal agreement regarding Memorial Stadium between the district and the city of Seattle. Introduction item two is amendment to board policy number 4237 advertising and commercial

170activities and 5201 drugfree schools community and workplace and repeal of board policy number 4262 community use of Memorial Stadium and board procedure 6800 BP regulations for stadiums owned or leased by Seattle public schools. Now that I've read those titles, I'm going to pass it off to uh chief operating officer Podesta. Thank you, President Topp. And want to say thanks uh to uh directors on the dis now and many of your predecessors who have heard about this project in great detail many many times over the years as recently as last week. In some respects is a construction project like many that we do, but it's a bit more complex and is a bit more visible given the nature of the facility. So, we wanted to make sure you understood it. There are some policy implications, so

171we want to talk about those as well. Um, that are fairly narrow in their scope, but it's good to understand them. I do have a couple of slides just because um we're excited uh to to be able to um as you know when we talk about the capital program and levies, we talk about uh condition site assessments uh facility condition assessments that we do in the seller all the time in that ranked order um is Memorial Stadium in terms of the facility in worst condition in our portfolio by a large uh measure over the next worst facility. So, this is something that's needed attention for a while. So, if we could advance the slide. So, anybody who's been to uh Memorial Stadium uh knows why we need to replace it. Um the facility was built

172over 70 years ago. Its major systems um are have long since failed um in terms of HVAC, electrical, mechanical systems. The facility is not really accessible um to any level of ability. Anybody who's ever gone tried to climb to the back row of bleachers in Memorial Stadium and didn't come away scared um you know is a better person than I am. Uh the the site and situation and the condition of the memorial wall is frankly an embarrassment. Um this facility is meant to honor students and uh the current condition that the memorial wall is in is does none of that. Um, and so we can advance. I'll just show you a few pictures and we'll get into the So, the the plan is for a modern facility that's better integrated with Seattle Center. Um, Seattle

173Center grew up around Memorial Stadium, which was built constructed in 1947. Um, and you've all been there. You know that when you're in Memorial Stadium, if it weren't weren't for the Space Needle, you would have no idea where you are. Um, because it's it's walled off. It doesn't allow the users, students, anybody to have access to everything that occurs at Seattle Center which was developed later. So this um facility is better integrated. If we could advance the slide and uh the um the number one thing I hear from students about Memorial Stadium is the locker rooms and um what a disgrace they are. And so, uh, we really are, um, changing the amenities for student athletes, for performers, and others to, uh, to have it be actually an uplifting experience, um, to participate in something

174Memorial Stadium. We go one more and um, kind of before and after of uh, a restored and enhanced memorial wall. We want to restore the facility itself, the fountains, the surface. um it has been landmarked and so we'll be um very careful about that but also to create a surrounding environment where people can really contemplate and think about the students that it's meant that the whole stadium is meant to honor and and um provide a space that actually accomplishes that I think and then again it's just we wanted to be a better um a better facility a better event space for student athletes but for all the other uses um of Memorial Stadium. So the partnership, the reason we felt there was partnership needed is there really three goals, but we think they're aligned, but

175they're not all the responsibility of Seattle public schools. So we didn't want funding for this to compete with funding for making improvements in school buildings. It's a it's an important facility, but it isn't a school. It gets used a lot by the community, and we wanted the community to share in the cost of the redevelopment. So, our three goals again is to replace an aging facility that serves students. Um to help uh Seattle Center with um its operational needs and then also to create a civic space, a civic amenity that can be used for lots of um purposes. And that's why we wanted to partner to bring um both management expertise and funding for that third um goal to the table. uh we um and the structure of this partnership is not fundamentally different from

176the way we use this stadium. Now I've heard many many anecdotes over the years of people's memory about attending something in Memorial Stadium and it's not usually an SPS event. It's I saw um our legal council with some I saw or was it you where you saw RM and I Yeah. So it's it's always served that civic purpose. Um but we don't and we're happy to provide it. We will own this facility when it's built just like we do now. We're happy to share that with the community given its location, but we don't think we ought to pay for that. That the community ought to. And that's why um the partner the private partner is a consortium uh devel nonprofit consortium developed by the Seattle Kraken and their nonprofit uh foundation to build an LLC

177memorial stadium redevelopment to help us with fundraising for that and to manage the construction and then to be very clear to manage the stadium when we're not using it. So now as all those concerts that people went to, all those events, whether it's folk life, Bumbershoot, the interaction with the city and others to make that happen now falls to our uh sixperson athletics department as the venue operator for Memorial Station as a place and that's not fair. That uh distracts it's it's an un it's not their core business. It distracts them from taking care of students. So we want a private partner to to manage that part of the business and not SPS part of the business. We will still be um in control of the facility when we use it and we are the

178primary tenant and primary user and we will remain remain the owner. There is no change in ownership as a result of this. There are a few policy changes we'd like you to make um to support those commercial operations. They do not apply um when we operate the stadium. they would allow the sale of um alcohol for those kinds of events. That's a long-standing request we've had from promoters who use the facility in other areas. Could they be more viable um when there's commercial use of the facility? Uh we want to uh have some carveouts about how Memorial Stadium community use is used and we want to allow advertising. Again, controls over that advertising would not be for SPS events. It would be for commercial events. The nature of the partnership, all revenues, all net revenues

179that come from this facility will go back into maintaining the facility or to the district to support students. There is not a profit motive for any of the partners. And then the city um u Mr. Best talked about a warehouse. The district has long used the Seattle Center and the district have long used Memorial Stadium as w as warehouse space under the under the grandstands. That is a terrible place for a warehouse particularly for Seattle public schools. It's not shaped right and that's not a convenient location for us. It is convenient for Seattle Center since they live there. Um and so their contribution is mostly to replace those nonstadium uses that are helpful to them. Again, that's not something that we wanted to fund, but we're happy to uh maintain the partnership. Should note that

180the land that the stadium is built on was conveyed to the district for a dollar in 1946 so we could build this facility. So, we've been partners the whole time. This kind of formalizes that and builds us a new stadium for a new uh generation. And I think it's a it's a huge win-win for the community um for city operations and for district operations and for students first and foremost. So happy to take any questions you might have. Board board director's questions. Director Ranken. Thank you. Um I did have the opportunity to ask some of these or ask some questions already. So, I have kind of some follow-ups and I just want to because I'm not a legal expert confirm that this this agreement is really an agreement to we still have to there still

181has to be agreement about what you're talking about with the the details of the site management and all those things that's still to come. What you're approving today authorizes the superintendent to negotiate a potential operating agreement. What we are committing to today would be the construction and then while it's under construction we will see and um again uh this was in response to a request for proposals um where the Kraken team um responded and they want to get to know us better too. They they've learned a lot about Seattle public schools since they responded to that RFP and during this construction we want to finalize hey can we all work together? Um they obviously know how to manage facilities. Their uh redevelopment of the former key arena into climate pledge arena was um very similar

182in terms of they um they on behalf of the city redeveloped NASDAQ and then now operate it. Um again there there's definitely a profit motive for us. Um, this was uh this is a nonprofit enterprise and um I I mean I live uh pretty close close enough to the um Northgate facility that I have been in and around it a lot and they have three rinks in there and no matter what time of day I'm in there, there is community use happening and I'm so excited that they are the partners that wanted to do this because they do prioritize making I mean in the case of the the ice facility making hockey and and ice sports more accessible to to everybody. And you can see it every time you go in there. It's it's really

183awesome. Um I've seen adult hockey leagues in there. I've seen uh they have an a program with Rew um early childhood where they bring in kids who, you know, have never been on skates before. It's it's just it's just it's like part it's just part of what they do. They want to do it cuz they want to do it. That being said, they obviously can't just do it out of the goodness of their hearts. So, um I think when we get into the further parts of it, um I'm interested in talking more about the revenue sharing or how that's going to work because I like having a six person athletic team for SPS. I completely agree. We want them to be focused on student athletics, not to suddenly become event managers and venue managers. has

184a huge job. Um, and that that speaks to the policy changes we're asking for to allow for the advertising and uh sales will make them more viable. We've worked several pro-forma models. We don't see a windfall for anybody here. Um, but I think they're willing to participate. they just want to have um uh a chance to defay the cost because if we do in fact enter into an operating agreement they would be bearing the risk of if this thing is in the uh red every year um that that would be the operator's problem not our problem. So then the two questions that I have uh are probably more about the operating agreement which will come later but I'm going to ask it now just because maybe it's part of this and I don't know. Um,

185I know I've heard some concern, not a lot, but some concern about, you know, what happens if this this other entity takes over and our students don't have as much time. Something that I think we could consider as a board or keep an eye on in the operating is um thinking about requiring board approval of the calendar use. I know that all those dates have to be set way in way way in advance. A mechanism that we could use for transparency for the community and to provide our oversight and make sure that students are the priority users and beneficiaries as intended would be for us to um approve or receive the usage calendar. Is that something we should think about now or is that part of So the action tonight approves staff negotiations of the

186operating agreement not a separate approval process for that. That's obviously something we can consider. The um the calendar will be ne and again this community use of the facility is not something new. So it does fall to our small department to have to negotiate that. But but this is something um we we do all the time. I think we've gotten a good enough relationship with our partners to know that they know that this needs to be a student centered facility. What we're trying to do on behalf of the community is it's not it's pretty well loved by us. I mean, we use it a lot 10 months of the year, but there is openings in the summer. There's openings on weekdays to to make to leverage that on behalf of the community, not to um

187uh anyway constrain students use. Yeah. Hopefully um this will be a friendlier uh venue for arts than the current facility. So hopefully there'll be more student use. Yeah. Um Yeah. So that's great. The uh I think just for the transparency of the community to see that yes, we are still maintaining student use and also if it becomes a you know twice you know every other year board approval people would have the ability to look back you know if people start to say oh they're just taking all of the time for students we would have the then the the ability to look back at board approved documents to see has there been a shift or not and then and then we'd be able to address it as an oversight. So oversight piece. The second question I

188have is about the revenue coming back. Some of it would go obviously for their their operating costs from from the events that they are managing. um would this be an opportunity or I guess I'm asking uh where the if that would be money that would just go to the general fund or if and we don't know what it would yield but if if something like using that that is from athletics for athletics to cover student athletic fees would be something that that could possibly go towards that that's everybody's first choice in regard that presumes that there are net revenues I personally that I I'm not sure but we'll we'll see but that I there's agreement among the partners that that would be the point of net revenue and to make sure that the that the

189facility does not fall into the state that this one has felt that we we at least take care of the facility and then is there net revenue beyond that that could support students and then particularly athletics since that's what the facility is mostly about and any advertising that would be up during um events that are not school sponsor concert. These those will all be temporary and they would only be there during those events. They would not remain when when a school is using them. Is that right? Okay, that's correct. And then one point uh of the policies that we're requesting be modified when you see that's not on that list is naming rights to um changing names of SPS owned facilities. That would that uh the existing uh policy would govern that. That takes board

190approval. Um and so so it would be covered by the policy that requires a recommendation to be made to the superintendent the superintendent to authorize whether or not it can be explored and then ultimately would come to the board for approval just like with the building just like the Betty Patu library that we talked about earlier. So that is all my questions. Thank you so much. again other board directors. All right, thanks again for your time tonight and again many many times over the years. We've been working on this for a very long time. Perfect. We're going to head to the tables for the last two items on our agenda and we will adjourn from there this evening. So, one last uh transfer Okay. Our last two items on the agenda are both updates from

191staff. The first one will be an enrollment planning update and then a strategic planning update. Um, so with that, I'm going to uh pass it off to Chief Operating Officer Fred Podesta. Um, thank you. We've um had a few discussions lately about enrollment planning. Um, and uh, I want to thank the board for um, the session that was held uh, last week, the community engagement session. We got to hear a lot of great information from families. It was very appreciative of staff ability to kind of participate and um um provide um some dialogue during the course of the event. I think that was helpful. I um and I know it was a little bit of a pivot in real time. But I I want to thank um enrollment planning director Fal Manuv um for being

192in that space answering some questions. I think we all uh appreciated um the conversation we're having. We understand the concerns um that this issue raises. You'll recall the first update that we had for the board on April 23rd. I acknowledge that this whole system is completely of our our making and we have choices that we can make and um so um thinking about that and um uh trying to uh balance the interests of the entire community um you know will be our work. Um I we want to talk uh today about some things that might happen in the short um term and if we want to make larger systemic changes, how we would want to approach that because again we um this has systemwide impacts. We want to make sure that everybody gets a chance

193to understand um the trade-offs and the complexities of this situation. Um so I will turn it over to Dr. Campbell and uh Director Manu. Thank you. And and thank you as well Dr. Torres for being here and thanks to all of you for persevering through all of this. This is learning uh for us. So I want to start with um our agenda for this update. First of all, we want to talk about what we have learned or what have we learned. Um we want to review the March through May choice assignment status. So how are we adapting in the moment in response to what we're what we are learning? And I want you to check me if you would please. my partners in the um deaf and heart of hearing community tell me to really

194move towards saying what have we learned rather than what have we heard so that we're actually really inclusive of that. So what are we learning um in all the ways that we're learning? We certainly learned a lot um tonight from our community um practices and patterns for the past 10 years and then future options and considerations. So if that uh feels like a good um direction to go in, we will um head in that direction. So, I'll turn the time over to Director Manu and again thank her and her team uh for the the work that they're doing to be responsive and to also continue to do the real-time work that's happening right now. Good evening board directors and community members. I think we've learned a lot um last week and tonight. Um my name

195is Fal Manu, director of enrollment and it's a honor to be here. As we listen to the testimonies tonight, I really want to continue to express um the value in us leaning in and making sure that we show up and be present. Um I had an amazing opportunity last week to do that. And it was um so great to hear families um one-on-one and express their concerns and help provide clarity and um about our systems. But we all understand that um there may be another way to do this and look at that system change together and to really um open up those conversations and dialogues and hearing from Sabrina Burke tonight to make sure that we're hearing from everyone. And so when we talk about balance, for example, that this is what we're talking about.

196What do those strategic goals, how do they align with a system um like school choice? And so um it was an honor again. And so I just wanted to go over what we've learned from tonight. It's the same the same echoes as we heard from last week. And um people just want more access uh to our um programs, our dual language immersion programs. STEM, our science, technology, engineering, and math, and then a focus on expeditionary learning. It is incredible to um have this um continue as we did because we've been doing this process for a very long time. And so we know that hey, there can be an opportunity to look and see what we can do better and in expanding that. And so we wanted to just be sure that we heard you, the

197community, and thank the the families that attended um and participated last week. Um it was greatly appreciated. You go on to the next slide. Oh, be I'm sorry. Can you go back before I I want I do want to acknowledge that the families uh for the children of deaf adults um that also came to light including the ASL interpreters and so Dr. Torres Morales will speak more about the progress that we made with those conversations with Kota. Can you give him your mic? Okay. Good evening board directors. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So given some of the conversations that have been going on recently with the deaf and heart of hearing community, there's been a team of us that have been put in charge of trying to really clear out the way for

198what's going to happen in terms of accommodations across the board and also specifically deal with the issue that was raised up around codas and enrollment cod children of deaf adults. So I was charged with doing this work with a small team fu Dr. Campbell were both part of those teams through enrollment. And so we have made the determination that the KOTAS will be allowed their place in TOPS. And so I have met with some of the families already and engage with them to learn more about what their needs really are. We are in the process of doing that. There are some technical things that we still need to work through. So I just want to be clear that this is not for for this moment. It's like a band-aid. We need to get to the

199actual system solution though, and that's something that we've committed to working on. So some of the things that you should see coming forward in the near future is where does um American Sign Language live on our home family surveys or when families come to enrollment. So we're working on that. My understanding is that it is there but it's not prominent in the same place as some of our other languages which causes some of the problems. Additionally, director Manu is in the process of working with dots or a department of technology services around how are we doing the coding of students because that also impacts and what we found out is that we currently don't have a code to capture koda students in the system. So, it's work that we're doing to make sure there's a

200code for that. We do have codes for our multilingual students but not for kodas. Regardless, we have already started to communicate with families that they will be allowed into the program at TOPS and now we're working through some of the technicals on the back end with a commitment to get into more formalized plan through the student assignment transition plan going forward. Thank you, Dr. Torres Morales. I also want to note that parents express uh students with IEPs that they have more access and um to their own schools and services and really uh value the attendance area or neighborhood schools that they're at, but also want more options if they wish. Next slide. So, what's going on behind the scenes is another update um as I shared last week, but as um applications keep coming in,

201we have new information. So, as of today, we have 4,100 applications that we received. 1,700 students have been assigned to their first choice. We are continuing to review our weight list and uh that is through August 31st when they will be dissolved. Um just so you know that um those offers 75 75% of families that we offer those seats accept. And so we are constantly looking at um those that decline. We're going to keep moving down the wait list until we've satisfied those seats. And again, we are looking to see how we can better acknowledge what our families are concerned about having more access to those schools. Thank you. Next slide, please. So, I will recap uh something that we have shared, but just to frame it a little differently. when we hear uh the

202concerns about weight list, the first thing we did was to say, well, let's look at some historical data is is our are our practices anomalous right now? And what we found is that for the past 10 years, so 2015 to 2025, pretty consistently about 10% of our K12 families are participating in the choice process. So again, we want to check ourselves. Are we doing something different that's creating this? I and we can think about why the response is different now but the the practices have been pretty consistent doesn't mean that we don't want to change them because our framework is different our context is different a lot has happened since 2015 um again a pro those applications are roughly split between requests for option schools and other attendance area schools. So, we were also interested

203just to know where are those where are folks saying that their preferences are or are not and that district-wide for the past 10 years about 5% of those um students and families that request a different assignment receive that choice other than their assigned school. So, just again to frame it um that has been pretty consistent. Um but again what we're hearing or rather what we're learning and understanding is that we need to adapt and change. Um that's very clear. And next slide please. Do you mind if I take the slide please? Thank you. Um be I want to take the credit or the blame because some of the some of these are my observations and I don't want to have people have to answer for um my look at this data but the the 5%

204that Marne referenced again it's across the whole system 5% of all enrollment and so what we've historically been doing over the past 10 years um fairly consistently is 10% enter the choice process about half get their first choice. So that leaves 5% who don't and um 5% you know may sound like a small number but we're still talking about 2,000 people 2,000 students. So that and that so that's really the question I think before us as we think about this going forward. Should that 5% mobility in the system turn to 10% or 8% and what are the tradeoffs? what are the how does this align with um the the goals that this uh group uh have put forward on behalf of the community and and the guardrails particularly the guardrails around uh allocation of resources

205and kind of equitable student assignment. So what what will be the impacts if um that choice goes from 5% to that we move everybody on the wait list just so we understand that and then um what would be the what will be the impacts to the 90% to the that go to their assigned school out of the system because we will be moving a lot of resources around or some resources around. So we just want to make sure that we understand that and then there's choice the constraints that we place on choice in the system and there may be other constraints that families face in terms of transportation or other issues. So how does everybody get the benefits of those who can participate in choice not because of our constraints but you know how do

206we mitigate that to make sure that um choice is fair to everybody and and again I will stop interrupting but I I these were mine and I just didn't want um you to have to apologize for my work w I would celebrate it but thank you but yeah I think that that pri this slide really gets to the strategic questions that I think are the purview of this leaders leadership group and of our community. Um that to say uh you know really I think the second bullet point how does the questions on the table really align with our strategic goals and guard rails around geographic equity as well. And then that final bullet is is also very important for us to think about. Um choice comes uh we have to have infrastructure in order for

207choice to be truly equitable. So a choice to go to a different school if you have to provide your own transportation might not really be a choice for many families. So then that leads us to then the operational questions. So you know we certainly want to participate and support in that strategic conversation. But then we as as the as the people who are charged with creating the operational structures that support that. These are just some of the considerations that as we reflect on this wanting to again be responsive to our community want to put to use. So um we tried to make these as generative as possible to kind of open up our thinking for um how we work together. Um so how could transportation service standards for example be adapted to support equitable access

208to school choice. So again school choice without the capacity for all families to really maybe get to a different part of the city um where that's not something that's they don't have vehicles or the ability to you know the time to drive. I mean that's that then ceases to be a choice. So, we need to think is that then we're going to think about our transportation system that that very much could and should be part of the conversation. Um, would the expansion of choice constrain our ability to guarantee school assignment um for attendance area students? Again, that that um guarantee is part of our current student assignment system. that could change but right now working within the parameters that we have and and uh director Rankin you pointed out very well we we create the

209policy that guides us and then the procedures that build on that policy right now that student assignment plan is our guiding it's it's not policy but it's our guiding document um how could staffing allocations be modified to address schools with significantly declining enrollment. So, if we do have schools that are getting much smaller, how do we make sure that those schools are still um healthy, thriving places where students have what they need and deserve and where staff also are where staffing is sufficient. These are all again things that um are both uh could have to do with how we design our staffing assignment processes, but also would potentially have fiscal um implications. all of these things likely do, but again, we we prioritize our values and our goals and then we fund them according to

210what we think is going to best meet our students and families. Um, so this is one that has come up. How could school choice and budget timelines be adapted? So, if we want to say allow all the choice um assignments to be decided and determined in advance of staffing allocations, we could certainly change that time frame. Um so that is something that we could also look at doing. And then what are the recruiting and employment implications of increased shifts in educator staffing? So bearing in mind that um teachers teach in a particular school setting, if we were going to have a fair amount of movement um from year to year or maybe initially, how would that impact um staff members who are not just teachers but say staff members in general who are part of

211a team in their school who have developed um you know grade level practices um and then you know are shifting from one place to another. Would that change um how it feels to be an educator in Seattle public schools? Again, all of these things are possible. We just want to think about all of these different operational uh implications. This certainly is not a comprehensive list, but it gets at some of the things that we have thought about. Next slide, please. So, our next actions, and we've broken this down, and I'll let director Manu take, you know, what are we doing right now and then longer term. test. Okay, sorry about that. So, just to summarize what uh Dr. Campbell just went over, these are a lot of things that we should um as schoolboard directors,

212superintendent and staff really understand um because it is um a lot of shifts that we are considering um if we go in that direction. So, it's important that we think about these things and really understand where that um leaves all of our students um especially those in under enroll schools. Um the next actions we're going to take is um we're going to continue uh moving the weight lists um and do our reviews. Um we have until August 31st as I stated and these decisions all impact our staffing adjustments. So our next adjustment revision will for our projections is in June and so budget will receive that the first week in June and then we're going to take a look and see what those impacts look like so that we can um also run the WSS

213through those changes. um a recent decision of the highly capable cohort to allow the second grade cohort um and pausing the decentralization that has um that had an impact on our projection. So we adjusted immediately for that. But um as a natural course of what we do with um school choice and our lottery, we do look at the enrollment trends of how this uh all tumbles out as students are being offered and declined and then um most students uh want to come go back to where they were at their neighborhood school. So all that is happening and so that is all captured in these projections as we look at our historical view um in the last two or three years. Thank you. And to that second sub bullet weight list moves and we've heard voices

214tonight saying please move all the weight lists. Um that uh what we're doing right now is actually addressing specific situations where we can see um there's a Queen N would be an example where rather than just moving all of the weight list right away, we're trying to be sensitive. Uh TOPS is another one. Pathfinder. Um, Southshore is another school where we would say, "Okay, we're seeing we're here. We're learning and we're seeing or are perceiving some different things." And so, we're going to address those those immediate significant situations now while we then make plans for the future and beyond. So, that community engagement, we've heard a lot about that tonight, and strategic planning. So, this is an opportunity again to revisit looking at our student assignment plan. how has it been functioning for the past

2152010 was when our current student assignment plan uh came on board. Um and really looking at the data and saying what do we need to modify and update again we have moved from a system that was increasing enrollment to one that is decreasing in enrollment. It's it's time for us to reconsider then how assignment looks and feels uh develop options for modifications to school choice budgeting and staffing processes. So based on that strategic planning, we will develop those options and then have an implementation timeline so that we're very clear in how we can carry those things out. So thank you. That is our update. Well, just I'm going to start with my question. Is our current enrollment system the best system we can have to align with our goals as a district? I'll take that.

216Well, obviously we've heard from our community is that it's not. And so, let's take a look at that because they they said very loud and clear, they don't feel that. So, I'm not going to sit here and try to defend it. Like I said last week, this is a systems concern that we need to look at because enrollment may be the driver, but it really has something to do with bigger than that, right? Okay. I mean the current practices were developed before the current strategic goals. Um Seattle public schools used to operate more on a choicebased system and u move to attendance areas and um I I think the operations side of that has worked to um you know probably emphasize m making sure that there are always seats in attendance areas. The other thing

217that's really changed in this timeline is this system um created less of these issues when it the questions were all about building capacity because enrollment was going up and it so the the answers felt one way when the buildings were full and they feel a lot different now. So now it has become more about staffing and operating viable schools. So um it it was it would almost I I appreciate um director Manu's cander but it would be almost impossible for the given the age of this system and the other changes that for this system to actually be aligning with our goals. So so now is the time to make the adjustment see what we can do now but make sure we think this would be a fairly big system change. So we just want to

218um accommodate as much as we can in the short term and be thoughtful about if we're going to retool the whole approach that we understand because of course um the the folks where choice is being constrained. We've heard from them loud and clear. um I don't know that we've invited the same kind of input from um the members of the community that aren't participating in choice and will feel the impacts if we make a a very deep system change. So I just want to make sure that that that's covered um um before we um completely retool this would be our recommendation. So then one last question and then lots of board directors have questions. Uh so I just want to make sure that I understand sort of the next steps both short-term and long-term. So

219shortterm is trying to push on the weight list as much as possible within the current framework that we have um to move the weight list as as much as possible for the upcoming school year. And then for the following 2627, it's looking at a larger review slashs systemic changes to what this looks like, what enrollment planning looks like. That is the that that is the way that that that is the the update essentially and and including the you know depending how significant and profound that change is. what is a realistic implementation timeline if we reorder this in terms of the the choice process gets rebuilt and that is an input into the budget process which makes a lot of sense but that means that it's way earlier than we've operated it before and you know

220we would we need to be ready in the fall we need to ask the community be ready in the fall to make choices for the next fall um and so we just want to make sure we understand that. All right. No questions yet on this side, but I don't I don't didn't check the order here. So, I'm going to start here and go this way. Director Hersy. All right. Thank you for the update. I I'm honestly just confused, right? Because I've been receiving messages from folks saying that like uh the district is saying like, "Oh, well, if the board gives us direction, then we'll do it." or and then people are hearing from board directors. Well, the district's got to be the first one to move. So, can y'all give us some clarity around what

221how are y'all operating? Are y'all waiting for us to do anything? So, cuz I was just told at a at a meeting at Bagley last night that it was said that if the board gave y'all direction, then y'all would do something. No, I I for our short term, we're again, we need to think through the ramifications of each weightless move. moves already if this discussion hadn't come up. Um I'm probably advis that are kind of hot spots where there's you know and that we can make a move because it's you know students are not perfectly funible entities. It's like what can be accomplished to move this weight list? What are going to be the impacts? How many staffing changes are there going to be? So, we will work those. We will work those some percentage

222more aggressively than we have in more recent years. There's still going to be a weight list in a I don't I don't think it's I don't think we'd ever be we can't clear a weight list. We can't completely clear it. Um we're trying to see, you know, if you go back to my um eyeball analysis of 5%, can we can this year can we make that 5% 6%? Can we make it six and a half%? It's not going to be a wholesale move, but there and um you know, we're filling option schools to their uh uh uh projected capacity. We see we could make other staffing changes like we did for Queen Anne Elementary and just it's also you know late in the game to be hiring teachers and and and so how much can

223we do um and not and also not as pre set a precedent before we decide what the ultimate system is. But um and uh there is no policy that guides exactly how we work this. The the one policy that was um inferenced here is there is a policy that says everyone's guaranteed a seat at their neighborhood school. That is a board policy. You want to change that. We need to get direction. The rest of it has been built by staff can be changed by staff. All right. Bet. Thank you for saying that. The reason that I asked that question is that like and and we see this with issue over issue is that there are definitely like wild communication problems within the district. There are wild communication problems on this board and between uh senior

224staff or whatnot. I think in the cracks of all that when things get hot, there are both uh I would say actors who are acting in the best interest of their children and probably some folks who are acting pretty nefariously out there to an end that I would say doesn't necessarily benefit the community as a whole. Right? I say all that to say uh I'm taking this opportunity to identify a hot spot for me personally, Cleveland, right? I think that when I am thinking about the impact that I can have as a board director in order for me to do my job effectively like I think the dissemination of information about where the decision-m power lies really I think exploits a big confusion point for the people around this table and the people who come

225and spend the time that they could be spending with their families here talking to us. Right? So I want to keep it a buck. I would like to see some movement on Cleveland's weight list. I am one board director. That being said, that being said, I think that what I also really want to see in whatever next iteration, and we've had this conversation here, and I've been very critical, not because I don't like y'all, but just because it's the fact that like the way that we have these conversations make it really difficult to understand why something is happening. And I want to be super clear and on the record that like while I support like, you know, moving these weight lists in a more prominent way, we also have to look at it at a

226systems basis because if I move, you know, some kids off the weight list at Cleveland, that means that enrollment at another school is going to go down, which means that we're just changing one set of families for another, creating chaos instead of doing what it sounds like y'all are planning to do, is take a holistic approach to this. Now, there's a lot of people who are going to be out there and I'll catch whatever charge that think that's right? Because for so many years, it has been. And I think that like for me where I'm getting frustrated and I'm usually not this animated, but I'm like, you know, I I really want to drive this note home. there there's what we understand based on our conversations and then there's what the families are experiencing and

227there's a whole lot of middle in between that and it makes it really really hard for me to do my job and I've been sitting in the same seat for a minute so I feel like I have a good understanding of what my job is but it gets more and more difficult when my understanding of what's happening in buildings is not actually what's happening y'all's understanding what y'all are telling me is align with what I think But in that big old middle, there is a lot of changes that are happening. So I don't know how we can continue to run a system of this size when we don't understand what's in that middle. And I don't know if that means that we need to shrink the middle. I don't know if that means that we

228just need to like blow the whole thing up and like cuz I was really getting to the point to where Thank you. I really appreciate the claps. I hear you. But it just I'm ADHD. It's disrupting my train of thought. Um, but I'm really to the point to where it's like I was ready to walk in here and propose the fact that like just clear everybody off the weight list so that we could figure out what is what like are y'all telling us the truth? Like will the system break if we do it right? I know as an intellectual that that is a terrible idea. So that's why I'm not presenting it. But but but there is our way. There is what is actually happening. And then somewhere in there is like what actually needs

229to happen. I don't feel as a board director right now who has been sitting here for 6 years that I have a good understanding of what actually needs to happen because there's so much disinformation, misinformation, and lack of information that is being shared with community. We just had somebody come in here and tell us that student outcomes focused governance was created in Texas and is a conservative think tank plan or something like that. But that's not her fault. It's our fault because we haven't done a good enough job of telling people what's going on. I would imagine that enrollment is the same thing. So, I really I I do not have long for this seat, but I also want to make sure that whoever comes after me and the board directors that are here because

230a lot of them have not been with us through the trenches of COVID and have not built up the relationships with y'all that we have. And we specifically are not going to be here in like 20 minutes. So to avoid board directors feeling emboldened to come in and blow everything up, there has to be a system of trust and accountability, not to use words that have been like, you know, been out of shape. But like there is a lack of that because I feel confused. And if I feel confused, if Brandon Hersy feels confused, there is a problem here significantly, right? So, like, help me help you. And like, let's figure out where the source of all this misinformation is coming from. Point A. Point B, let can we please just help our families out

231in these situations as much as we can? And I love what you said, might go from 5 to 6%, great. I want to push you to go for 10%. You know what I mean? And I'm not asking you to break the system. I'm not asking you to blow this up. But what I am asking you is like I I'm sick of people coming here spending time with us that they could be spending with their families for stuff that we know good and well we ain't got no control over. You know what I mean? Or if we do just press the button. You feel me? And I know I'm preaching to the choir. I get it. But I think that there is a big disconnect between what folks are experiencing and what we understand to be

232true. And that's a problem. [Music] Chief Operating Officer Podesta, do you have anything to respond to? Well, um, so this will be the last day Dr. Jones ever gives me the keys to the car. Um, that uh, let me be crystal clear. These are not board decisions. These are staff decisions. Um we made decision you know we have um reversed some courses we were on um in terms of again hotspots I'm af I shouldn't keep using that word but we we've tried to make some changes we'll see as much as we can accommodate yes it um uh if we completely eliminate the weight list at Cleveland would have enormous impacts at beach Franklin and other schools and so we want to understand that better we I think the team has uh embraced that well let's

233see what we can do um we need to work with our finance and HR partners on well can is it possible to move that we we made you know we've done school budgets um staff think they know what their assignments are if we're going to blow that up um what does that mean for the coming year and then if we do that this year have we then um preempted the ability to stop and think about how would we like to retool the system because it's going to be if we go to it's going to be hard to come up with an argument for not going to 10% if we if we just do it and just jam it through. So, um you know, but yeah, express to the board your dissatisfaction with our decisions, but

234please know that there are decisions and we will and people can call me um if if they're not happy um and I will call foul. But um but and can I just um not to interrupt you, I just want to echo and and share uh what uh Chief Podesta has is is saying and I hear you um Director Hersy and the reason why I was so quick to respond to President Topp is because um it isn't working. And so we recognize long-standing practices doesn't mean it's okay. it's just mediocre. And so that's hearing from our families. And so if we if we need to truly understand that, then um what is that? What does broken mean and how do we define it and how do we work around that? Because that is not their problem

235and we understand that first and foremost. And that is a internal um discussion and dialogue um of our current practices and matrix and how do we navigate that and so I hear you and understandably and I'm glad you understand that there's impacts because that's what we tried to explain as far as balance um you know in in its purest form we have um students our schools already at risk they're under underenrolled And so when people want to move, well that that reverberates everywhere. And these are tentacles. And these are families that are at these schools, split classrooms, three grades with one teacher. They have less than seven teachers. I mean, we need to we need to broaden our horizon a little bit here and really not talk about moving that weight list, but what are

236we doing with the strategic goals? When we put language in there that every student should thrive, how do they thrive in those conditions? We have to understand that ourselves and it's not talking to each other. We got to go out there, engage because our families are telling us they had great ideas last week, great ideas. We can't do everything. And to quote Dr. Jones, but we can do some things and we can do it and get it right. Just wanted to add that. I appreciate that. I appreciate Director Hersy's comments. I agree with I I I wholeheartedly agree with them. I also really appreciate staff's push to try to push things where they can this year and realizing the system is not working. Uh, Director Briggs, I'm so I I don't know the order, so

237I'm just going from All good. Um, okay. I'm going to try to tie this all together using my tired brain right now. But I I think what I the main thing I want to talk about is um just zooming out like 30,000 ft and recognizing that this enrollment cluster is a symptom of a a much deeper issues. Um and we need to be really focused on root cause analyses here because those same root causes are the same reason that we have failed the same kids for generations. So this is not just about enrollment. It's about a pattern of behavior where we are reactive to the loudest voices and do not actually deal with the root issue. um and and and kids are suffering as a result of that. So I am curious to know whether

238or not staff feel that you all have a shared in-depth understanding of what the root causes are. Um I think a big one of them is is lack of role clarity which is something that Brandon touched on. Um which is what student outcomes focused governance attempts to address. um being really clear about whose role is what, which is again another thing that came up in the engagement session. Um but I'm just I'm wondering how far down the road you all feel you are in really having a an indepth understanding of of what the root causes are and how we get ourselves out of that. Um, and then I have so that's one question and then like the last thing I'll just tag on and then I'll be done talking um is and this is this

239is very similar to what Brandon was saying but um these operational considerations here like these are really legit considerations like they're totally real um valid all of that and somehow the emails that we're getting from families um none of none of this stuff is what's happening like it's it's something else. And so there's this disconnect between like I'm not saying that there is no there are no barriers to granting access to choice. There are there clearly are but but the scenarios that we are hearing about don't fit into any of these categories. So I'm not really sure again like to to Brandon's point like I'm not really sure what's going on there but there is clearly just a chasm of misunderstanding. Um, and a lot of it comes back to just, you know, communication. Uh,

240and and also if we're not clear on what the real root causes, then doesn't matter how good our communication skills are, we have nothing to communicate. So, that's all for me. So, I'd like to address the root cause. Um, I've been in enrollment for 12 years. Um I also understand um deeply our communities of color. Um what they've experienced I've experienced as well in my life. And so the root cause is deeper than these white lists. There is a privilege and entitlement beyond. And those voices are heard over and over and over and over. And there's policies and that are changing because of it in the past. I'm not saying right now, but I've seen those shifts as a witness and testament to that. They are very loud and very strong and powerful and influential.

241But they are our community and they do matter. And that's my point is the ones that don't come to these meetings, they don't need to chant or to get rowdy and and hold signs. All I'm saying right now with this root cause is how do we protect all of our schools? How are they thriving? And what measures are we doing to take a look at those under served students who consistently fall behind? And if we're doing our strategic goals, I want to be very clear, they're already behind. Yes. So if we do these lofty goals of a western type of language, culturally speaking, it doesn't make any sense to our families and how to support their children because a lot of them just trust that the system will tell them where they go to school.

242They trust that you are taking care of their child. So if we are to think about this in a larger scale that root cause is just that what decisions starting from the board are we adopting that are protecting those very children. And we heard that tonight they continuously over and over are left behind. And we see it in the data wherever we want to look at it and we always scratch our heads and have a plan. So what do we need to do to change if we're going to shift the way we do school choice lottery which is a mechanism for a family to have access to whatever they want to get right but there's parameters. What does that look like on a larger scale when we're looking about shifting all of that curriculum instruction

243everything? Thank you. I just want to add to that I um I was a school leader at the time when we moved to our new I was actually in the central office but had been a school leader with our prior enrollment plan and also a parent where it was very open choice lottery you had to there was it was I I can't express how much more complex it actually was previously because you were not even guaranteed your assignment to your neighborhood school and at the time the rationale was again I think what we have all expressed here which just that and what director Manu just said. Thank you for your words. Um that to make sure that you can navigate a system um without having to be a statistician or without having to understand how

244to how to work your first, second, and third choice options. The remedy at the time was you are guaranteed your neighborhood school and we will provide academic assurances at all of those schools. Now, did we follow through on that second? Maybe not so much, especially when we think about students with IEPs where there might not be intensive services. As we as we learned during our last conversation, 67% of our students who have intensive services can't go to their neighborhood school because they don't have the services there. So, I do think that um again, although certainly it is a staff responsibility to work the system, there is a shared work for us to do and I don't it's not about blame. about how do we come together to say uh in order to meet those goals

245of genuinely saying this is our community, we recognize where there is um capacity and influence and power and we also have to be the voice for those who aren't speaking into those spaces. Um how do we make sure that those academic assurances are available however we do it that there's never a time and this is you've very wisely built into your strategic guard rail around um geographic equity. There's never going to be a time where you cannot get to a school where your your student will have what they need. And getting to school, we talked about bus transportation certainly is is one way that we do it, but that means that they do those schools do have to be located and or or else we have to provide a way for students to get to

246that school. We have to provide that and really be thoughtful about that. So again, I just want to remember that where we are now is very much an outgrowth of these same values, which was to say you should be able to navigate the system and you should be able to be assured that your school, wherever that school is, has what you need. What we're hearing is that not all the schools do. So that's when we take a look and say, okay, what are those academic assurances and then how do we provide access to those? Thank you. Director Briggs, did you have a followup? I'm good. I'll let people other people talk. Thank you. Director Misrai. Yeah, thanks. I have Why is my thing so loud? Is it maybe if you want? Yeah, I have a

247few questions, but um I'll start with one that it's more of a statement that I'm going to disguise as a question. Um on the first page, you have what have we learned? And one thing that um you are talking about the value of these programs dual language STEM explor um expeditionary learning and I think that was something that really came through to me at the engagement session is that a lot of times when people are talking about choice and option and weight list what they're really talking about is program and I know that when we were having the school closure discussion there was some intentionality around like how do we expand these programs How do we get these programs into more neighborhoods? At the engagement session, we saw a very interesting heat map of where

248folks are trying to choice into other schools. And I would think that maybe that heat map is a good start for thinking about where these popular programs should go. And that's a question. I don't know. Yeah, I'll just make Yeah. So, I mean, what do you think about that? I I think that's definitely a basis for the the programbased root causes that director Briggs talked about. Um you know, one thing that where this um that we need to remind ourselves is half of the choice applications are just for another neighborhood school. They're not about program access necessarily. And so and sometimes this conversation gets teed up like this is neighborhood schools versus choice schools. It's much broader than that. But but so understanding in that heat map. So what are what are people choosing that

249that was the origin of the applications where are they going to and understanding those patterns but but yes that be the exact data we need to look at and yes we've certainly heard about programs that uh people um definitely prize and I don't know uh Dr. Dr. Torres Morales, did you have something you want to add? Yeah, I just touch base a little bit on the on the dual language question because that is something that we have started initial initial planning on and what I mean by that is we're we're not fully out the gate on it, but we do recognize that it's an issue. So, one of the things that we're looking at is how are we going to move to create actually research and evidence-based dual language schools across the city aligned to

250language need. So right now, if you think about it, our dual language schools, some of them are are prized and people really want to go there. But are they actually dual language schools? Once you're running three languages, you're really not running a dual language school. You're running an international school. So how do we work with our community to say this is what a dual language school is. It's actually a service pathway for multilingual students that all students could benefit from so we can get other kids in there so they can learn another language and get a seal of biiteracy eventually when they graduate from high school. But we are in the initial stages of planning through that and thinking what does this mean up to including an ASL dual language option. More to come on

251that. But I want to just make sure that we're we're putting that out there because it's it's something that is in process and something that is important for our community. I think I think that's good to hear and I hear your point Brad about you know that it's not people always going to option schools. I do think that one way, one other strategy in thinking about the long term to ease the weightless burden is to just have fewer families who want who who want a choice out to a different school because they're happy with the the program offering in their neighborhood school. Right. So, I think that that we should think about that as a strategy. I have other questions, but I'll I'll defer. Can I comment on that really quick? Of course. Yeah. I

252think the secondary piece to that to your um question there director Miss Rahi is when you have people who are leaving their neighborhood school to go to another neighborhood school the question becomes why so what are we providing as a baseline so something that Dr. Campbell hit on is that we said we had academic asurances. So the question becomes did we? So it's not about creating cookie cutter schools especially we think about our elementary schools but there should be some baseline asurances of this is what your kids going to get no matter where they go. One that aligns with the zip code guardrail that's coming out. Two it aligns with the work that we're talking about in MTSS. If and when we create the effective MTSS system it does not matter. you should not have

253to want to move your neighborhood school to another neighborhood school. Now, there is a little bit of nuance in there because if you're just right on a borderline, it could just be because it's closer to you, just the way that the boundary was drawn, fair, but it should not be because you think you're going to get a drastically different academic experience for your child. So, that is work that we're working on because we're seeing it and it needs it needs to be addressed. So, wanted to make sure to put that in the space. Director Ranken. Thank you. Um, and I want to thank staff and my colleagues for probably one of the least performative, most open and honest conversations we've had in a board meeting in a long time. Um, uh, even though if you

254were to ask me, I would say this doesn't belong on a board meeting agenda because it's operational. because there's a lot of stuff here that I'm like, this is not a board decision. Like like you said, Fred, this is the work of staff and we approve it. We approve things. We don't we don't have no say. But I just like I said with highly capable, I don't want to talk about this anymore. I don't want to talk about the ins and outs of the stuff that we meet twice a month, you all meet every day. You guys figure it out based in what we expect for students. And this is where this is where we are today. And I I know I'm a broken record. Where we are today is the result of decades of

255failure of the Seattle School Board to be very clear about direction and holding the district accountable to do that and superintendent to implement according to the direction of the the board. That is I mean we have when we have we do have the policy. The policy says here's here's what we expect at the end of the policy because it is a management policy. The superintendent is authorized to write procedure to implement this policy. That is the the the um uh contingencies for we had family advocates. There was a lot of people pressing for that. But what moved the needle was a combination of that and I just said you are already authorized to do this. This is an alignment with the direction from the board that has already been authorized. Just figure it out. That

256is how we move. And if we can't stand behind our policies, this is what we end up with is that the most dominant voices pull everybody in a lot of different directions. You end up with seven board directors giving seven different directions. a superintendent who can't possibly figure out what is actually expected of them and then they're turning around to staff. A and you know um our policies are only as good as our willingness to hold people accountable for following them and to make sure that they actually reflect what we want to see happen. So um I wish we were here a year ago, longer than longer ago than that. This is the conver this is why we needed to have a conversation about well-resourced schools. what is available to what students, what kind of

257educational equity and quality are we providing? And does it look the way we want it to look? And do we need to make some changes? Um, we need to make some changes. And choice has been a part of Seattle public schools for a really long time. It's very highly valued. Um, but we as a system haven't been clear about the viability, sustainability, and fair access to those choice programs. So we have beloved dual language programs. We do not provide curriculum to them or really uh I mean those PTAs raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain those programs not at Concord or or um Deer Park but you know the others and it provides a great benefit to the students who attend it. People clearly value it, but if we as a system value it,

258we should invest in it and sustain it and make it accessible for for people who want it. Belleview school district is way smaller than us. They have dual language programs in Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese. So, this isn't a matter of like, oh, maybe we don't have enough interest. We have the interest. We just h we have to decide what we're going to do and stick to it. Um, so we've got uh optional programs that include dual language immersion, self-contained cohort for highly capable. More things that have come and gone have competed with neighborhood schools for students and resources. So when there's an enrollment uptick, there's there's no shortage of options for people because it's not going to have the impact on the whole system that it has now where we're enrollment downline and

259everybody's spread very very very thin and that limits access and opportunity for everybody. Um we also haven't been clear as a system for a very long time about asurances about our neighborhood schools. This goes back to the 90s when the intent was a system of charter schools where schools would compete with each other for students and resources. That was the the stated intent at the time was the idea that school quality would increase if they had to compete for market share. That is right-wing, my friends, not a governance model centered on on elevating the needs of the entire community. And so we have a legacy of that with kind of different values on top of it. Um and so we we we have this competition amongst our schools and then the programs and efficacy are

260all very highly dependent on individual school principles who we also don't support adequately as a system. Um, and the parent pressure and support to maintain some programs, a lot of which are reliant on the contributions of families, have actually overshadowed the need for very, very alternative programs and settings for certain populations. SPS used to have a high school program for students who had survived trafficking. That is an alternative program. We have kids who end up dead on the side of I-5 because they are they are exited from their neighborhood school and in the transfer to inner agency which is ignored which is actually serving a highly on the margins very different need population are are lost and and I'm not that's not me being hyperbolic that happened last year and So, when we're talking about

261alternatives and we're talking about student need, we can't only talk about expeditionary learning, which is, by the way, awesome for all kids and there's no reason that that can't be present in some way in any neighborhood school. So it's it's just I feel like this I appreciate this conversation and as a board director thinking about the whole system and all kids we have spent the last 5 months 4 months talking about 15% of our students who have all of the options unless they have a kid with a disability then they don't because they could qualify for highly capable or be able to go to an option school have access have all the privileges and then that option school could say we don't have that here. But we've been talking we've been spending all of our

262time talking about the students who think some of whom believe a neighborhood school is something to be escaped. Our neighborhood schools are incredible. Especially those that are trying so desperately to cling to survival as their resources dwindle as enrollment declines, but we're still making them hang on. And so we had an opportunity last year to decide restructure like let our system uh flex with enrollment and consolidate schools or keep them all open and we're going to have to change staffing models so that we can afford it. We didn't do either. Next year's budget's going to look exactly the same and I'm livid about that because we asked in January for scenarios that showed different options. We're not going to have any. So, um, what we need to do is as we enter the next strategic

263plan and with our next leader that we will have by the fall, focus on all the longer term things that you're that you're saying. And what I hope we can commit to as a board is what has happened historically too is the short-term fix comes in and people people move on before it gets before it gets embedded in policy before we have the proper reporting mechanisms before we have the accountability measures and we end up right back here because we actually have not implemented any new governance structure. This is status quo right now. This is standard practice. This is what this district has been dealing with for 30 years. We had an audit done that's available on the website in December that says SOFG is not a thing in Seattle public schools. We've talked about

264it in the boardroom. It has not moved into implementation. We're not doing it. This is status quo. No accountability. No board. So, I'm just I'm imploring on us all to stick with it. We have to provide direction for implementation to happen. And yes, the implementation is your job and it's our job to make sure that it happens in alignment with what is best for our whole community. I'm frustrated and I'm excited and I look forward to us having real options being clear about what they are, who can have access to them, and having strong neighborhood schools and having specialized program like Recovery High School that meet a very unique and outsized need. And we can do we can do that if we're serious about making decisions to do that, sticking with it. Great. All right.

265So, well, Director Hershey has one thing, but we're going to continue on and just we we have one more item on the agenda that we didn't get to last week and we have to wrap up by 9ine. So, we will be wrapped up by 9ine. So, Director Hersy, I just wanted to say how comedy it is how often we hear that SOFG is ruining a district that has already been ruined. If you go back and look at every single public comment for the last 30 years, but we're not even implementing it with fidelity like it like that is. And I'm not saying that to be koi. What I'm saying is is that like when we do not communicate, the conspiracy theories fill the void and people will make up whatever it is they want to

266service whatever it is they might be advocating for at that moment. And it's not their fault. It's our fault because we're not doing a good enough job of communicating. Like I just that is just wild to me that we are getting beat over the head for something that we really wish was implemented and it is already getting blamed for stuff that it has even if it were implemented at 100% would not have any impact on what we're talking about. Bring us back to enrollment. We got f bring us back to enrollment while we got here. So director brag. Thank you director. Yeah. anytime. Every time you go before me, you say like half the stuff I'm gonna say. Uh that's good though. That is really good. Okay. But ah so a lot of these are

267statements not questions and I already know that and I'm not going to try and phrase it as that. Um but from a student perspective, I'm coming in this with the fact that like I am not a full-on board director. I don't get as much information as them. So I'm fully coming at for where the parents are and where the students are here. Uh it is communication. It is so much of the root of what we are hearing every single time people come up to public testimony is they do not know what is happening. They do not understand how long these implementations are going to take. They don't understand how we got here. They don't see the road map. They don't see where we made our faults. We don't acknowledge those faults and show them how

268we got there and where our solutions are. And when we have solutions, it takes five clicks through a maze of a website to get to a memo that's barely readable and we're not and when we do engagement and when I hear about engagement especially, I hear so much of people just being told what they should know and not being asked what do you know and where do you know that from? Like how how are you getting your information? How can we make this information better for you? because currently you're getting it through conspiracy theories that are running rampant because we don't inform. Um, and the fact that a lot of what people have been saying, they don't see the communication of it being imple implemented or they don't see the fact that like yeah, a

269lot of people will get upset about things because change doesn't happen in a day and they want it to happen in a day. Um, and we all wish it could happen in a day. Uh, but they're also not communicated to as why it's not happening. Uh, and then I sit at this meeting and I hear all of this and I read the memos. uh and I'm hearing a lot of things being said, but as I sit in my high school um or I or I sit I go from cuz I have gone through such a transitional period in Seattle public schools. my kindergarten. I've been here since kindergarten till uh I mean my senior year and I have seen things be said because I started to get interested in the school board years ago cuz

270I'm crazy. But I have heard things be said like at the first time I watched a board meeting uh I want to say I was in sixth grade and I hear things be said and they're talked about and it's performative because when I sit in my school and I see 5 years later I see the 5 years later that plan I did not see it happen. I did not feel it in my school. And it's also the fact that I just every day in that school and when it comes to this enrollment conversation when it comes to implementing these systems, making the weight list available, making it more direct for these students to understand where their education is and the parents to understand where their kids are going, how it's happening, how they get that

271communication. What they see is they see the top level here talk and they don't see it happen down here. or if they see it happen, it is a microscopic amount of what we say up here. Uh because it just does not trickle down because we set honestly kind of little goals and only 5% of your 5% gets down there. Uh yeah, I wasn't vetted before talking because normally we do that. So I don't know what I just said. It's fine. All right. So again, director Sarju, but we have the we do have our educational resource analysis in our strategic plan that I really would like to get to. So go but so just rem remind us all that we want to try to wrap up. Yeah, I'm not going to take I'm not going to

272take long like Liza. Um I'm coming over here because I want the interpreter to be able to maybe have an easier time in seeing me so you all can turn around. Um first of all I want to thank and acknowledge um Dr. Rocky for um your articulation around your seriousness to actually actively respond to our deaf and heartened of hearing community. When you say you're going to do something it actually gets done and I want to publicly acknowledge that. Um the other thing that I want to point out that you said that is totally relevant to this enrollment conversation because I am paying attention is earlier when we were at the table you talked about Dr. for me had taken the targeted to the universal. Right. For the entire school year, I have been advocating

273and demanding that we have interpreters here. I have been advocating and demanding. When it got serious was last week because I threw a complete hissy fit. I'm still angry about that. It shouldn't have to get to that point. I don't have a child who's deaf or heart of hearing. But you know what? That's a marginalized community. And you know how I know? Because my kids went to TOPS. That community has been asking for interpreters for school meetings for 35 years over that. We were asking for that when my 35year-old was at TOPS in kindergarten. It has taken 30 years for there to be a serious response. The reason why I'm honing this point is that it should never take us 30 years. It shouldn't even take us a year. When we have another situation like

274this, and there will be another situation, we need to take the targeted of this DHH situation and take it to the universal because when you focus on those who are most marginalized, everybody benefits. We say that, but this school district does not move in that way, nor have they ever moved in that way. I think because you have made a public statement, we are making the turn. And so if there are deaf and heart of hearing families on the website, I know you have engaged with me. We we I've gotten many emails, many texts, many phone calls. I'm saying this publicly because I actually trust and believe that we have turned the corner now. And if we haven't, then you can feel free to to still come at me. They come at me, but they

275come at me with love. And they come at me with you got to keep you got to keep pounding. You got to keep hounding. But I don't want to hound anymore. I'm exhausted from this. Right. It's kind of like I feel like we've just like we're just going to ignore them until we can't anymore. Right. And so I'm not going to take up a lot of air time because these people are contracted till 9:00. But what I am going to say is we will never again in the future have a meeting like we had where the interpreters went home at 9:00 and we keep going on. We will adjourn the board meeting or I will adjourn myself because if we can't be fully inclusive, we're not going to continue on because you know what that

276is? That's bigotry. It's gaslighting. It's placating. It's I'm not going to say it on um it's not a cuss word, but I'm not going to say it. Um it's problematic. I'm just going to say that. And so I believe we are turning a corner. And what I'm asking is that we use this situation, right? Because enrollment is important to deaf and heart of hearing students and their parents, right? But we've never actually demonstrated that they're included in that conversation and in that planning until this evening. You I heard you what I think I heard you say is you articulated a change in the way you're enrolling those kids. Y'all, that's what action looks like. That's what action looks like. And unfortunately, it took a lot of trauma. It took a lot of anger to get

277there. But we don't have to do that because now we've learned our lesson or at least I hope we have because what you demonstrated is that what is possible when we actually put our minds to it and we don't ever have to go through this again. So, I I am I am publicly thanking you because I don't think and I know you're not comfortable with this cuz I'm looking right at you, but I don't think we get here unless you did some personal reflection and personal thinking after that meeting that you made a commitment something was going to be different. I don't think we sit here doing this today. So let this be the lesson for any of the for all of the future things that are to come because they're going to come. We

278know they are. But now we actually have a roadmap. We know how to do this. We look at the problem. We take the targeted and take it to the universal. And if you haven't been trained in that, go get training because it's not really that difficult. It actually isn't difficult. It's where there's a will, there's a way. Director Mizrai. Yeah. I have two very quick questions. Uh I know we're watching the clock. Um on the work that's happening this year, the immediate, how will families, how will people find out what I I know you're just looking at what are the things that we can tweak without there being big systemic problems caused by it. Get all that. You're trying to get closer to that 10%. Um how will you've told us a few things you're

279doing. I know you you all are looking into more how will that be communicated out hear me? Yep. Yeah. Thank you for your question. Um absolutely. So we understand that we need to do a better job at communicating. So we will definitely own that. So if there's any switch in um outside of our normal review and um expanding choice um we will definitely have a communication that we will send out to families um and work with our office of public affairs um on that communication and explain in detail what that looks like and the impact um and um be more straightforward in and how that process looked like and and the impact. And I would add building leaders into the when we made some moves about that really affected John Hay and Queen Anne team

280work with both building leaders so they could also understand the impacts and work with their communities as well to know. Okay. Question two for this long-term looking at the 26 27 um what is the timeline of when these community engagements and the options have to be presented so that we're not back in this place where it's sort of too late to make big changes? We haven't completely um plotted out that work plan, but it really would need to be near the start of the school year. If it it you know we there's a decision we need to make in the fall. It may be well there's a half measure for 26 27 and then something broader. But we we we're focusing right now on on the coming school year and what we can do now.

281And then we're just starting to plot out what that work plan looks like. you put on the June board agenda then. Yeah, we'll we'll come back in in the normal course of how we change um you know certain guidelines within our um student transfer or student assignment plan um we tend to engage um in the fall and then we bring an update to the board um in November. Okay. Yeah. I just want so there's there's some time the timing is from a planning perspective maybe think about uh bringing this back for another update come September October October time frame so we can hear where where things are at and get an update from staff. Yeah, we might try to put a placeholder for a little bit earlier if in fact we need to move the

282open enrollment period, but we I I don't want to overstate how much we've thought this through. We think this is the right sequence of events and we need to develop that list of options and is there a interim option or a final option? Um but but definitely by this fall we can't wait past this fall to make decisions about 2016 August September. Yeah, August. Yeah, that'd be great. I'm looking at Miss Wilson Jones to hopefully take a note of that somewhere. All right. Uh strategic planning update because this is exciting. We didn't get it to it last time and Vice President Briggs and I already detailed out our June 4th meeting and we definitely don't have time for it then. So, let's get we're going to do it uh now. Um um I am going

283to turn this over to uh Deputy Chief of Staff Eric Gersie who um as someone who's relatively new to the district has done an amazing job hurting cats um on uh getting the strategic plan to where it is. Great. Uh thank thanks uh Chief Podesta. I want to start off with just a brief um introduction. We have our uh consultants and partners from education resource strategies who are with us. They're going to walk us through some slides here. I'm going to kind of just give a brief voice over and then skip to some slides later on. You've got them. We can go back to them. But I do just want to ground us in uh a story from a student that I heard today, a student from the Seattle World School who shared uh his

284plans for after high school. And what he said is, "Thanks to the support that I got over the last 3 years that I've been here, I've applied to college and to the University of Washington. Because of the knowledge I've gained here at the Seattle World School, I was accepted to the University of Washington. So, I feel like I'm ready and I'm very thankful for the school for helping me achieve that. I don't have anything to give back to them right now, but maybe in the future I'll be able to help others the way they helped me. Right now, I'm just receiving all the gifts and support they've given me, but in the future I want to share and give that back." And the reason I share that story is because what we're talking about today

285is fundamentally the student experience, the student and staff experience, and how we want to change how we leverage our people, time, and money across Seattle public schools to enhance that school experience to achieve our goals within the constraints of our resources. And just briefly, if you were to walk outside of the classroom that that student was sitting in, what you'd see is very similar to the life ready goal that the board has adopted. you would see a bulletin board and on the lefth hand side you'd see all the students names who are seniors and you'd see check marks on whether they've done their senior meeting, they've applied to the Seattle Promise program, they've done their FAFSA or WAFSA, they've done their networking meeting, they've done their world language test. So, they're being really intentional about

286student by student. What have students accomplished and how are the resources being leveraged to support them? Um really quickly I'm just going to tee up sort of four phases, three points of process and two insights that are going to guide some of the work that we have in front of us. The first is that we're embarking on sort of a four-phase journey. The first is the goals and guard rails. The board has set the goals and the guardrails, the topline goals and guardrails. We've shared initial interim goals. We're continuing to work on that and tinker with that and director Rankin, thank you for your feedback. We're looking at that and incorporating that. We'll be back in front of the board on the 21st with revised or preliminary interim guard rails to have that discussion. Today

287we're talking about our strategy and resource analysis to understand how our resources defined broadly as time, people, and money are distributed across the school system. And we're using resourcing as a point of entry into the strategic planning conversation because we believe that resourcing intersects with sort of three areas that are big rock issues for the school district. The first is that we're declining in enrollment overall and we're managing a differently sized district. We kind of just talked about that. The second is that we have an $und00 million budget deficit according to which we're spending about hund00 million more than we're bringing in. And the third is that we're looking to conceive new academic strategies to move the needle for students to achieve our goals within the constraints of our guard rails. So, we're taking the

288the insights that we glean from looking at resources to sort of begin to piece together some initial shifts for year one, which we'll be bringing back to the board, and we'll be standing up sort of a series of what we're calling strategic imperatives long term that are going to guide the work of the district. Uh, briefly, three points of process. The first is that we're keenly aware that we're planning in the midst of a superintendent transition. We are being intentional about how we do so so that we're establishing for now just a fact base. What we're trying to do is understand and develop a shared understanding of where our resources are distributed, some strategies we're standing up for next year and how we can begin to set the stage for priorities and and how the

289next administration will take those on. And in the PowerPoint in front of you, you can kind of see best practices for how we're going to do that. The second is uh stakeholder engagement. We've begun to engage stakeholders pretty deeply, including students, school leaders, educators. We conducted a survey with school leaders that had about a 90% uh response rate to understand how we're serving them. We've held four focus group sessions with school leaders. We've talked to educators and we're beginning to bring this work out to the community. But we think right now sort of the precedent is for the superintendent search engagement to take the front seat and we're going to gain a lot of insight along the way for what the community's priorities are there. And in a second I'll turn it over to our

290partners. But I just want to raise sort of two insights that I heard from board directors over the last several months. The first is from you President Topp. you've shared that graph a number of times that shows kind of our outcomes versus our spending and you've said hey it looks like in our higher need schools we're spending more money but we're not necessarily achieving better results for that is that true are we really upholding our values is sort of the first question and sort of the second question is why are we not achieving better results I think we're going to begin to unpack that question with some level of depth uh the second is from you vice president Briggs and you've asked how much would it cost for us to achieve our goals and what

291will we spend that money on. I think what we're going to see not our goals, but like ex way exceeding our goals. How how could like I was saying, how could we exceed our goals um and how much would it take? And I think that the the answer that we're going to kind of suggest tonight is it's a little bit more complicated because we not both need to look at how much we're spending, how well we're spending that money, what's the experience that's creating, and how does that translate into outcomes. So, I think that'll be a productive way for us to begin thinking about that as a team going forward as we establish this fact base. So, with that, we'll turn it over to our partners and we will end before 900 p.m. Let's target

292to end at 8:55 uh from ERS. And any questions board directors have, can we send to the board office uh Ellie and we can make sure staff responds with answers. Perfect. And we can start I think on slide six. This is uh Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Yes. Okay, perfect. Okay. Um to President uh top board directors of the administrative leadership, my name is Dr. Angela King Smith. My colleague and I will be providing an update regarding the work around the strategic plan um education resource strategies or ERS. We are a national nonprofit uh organization that partners with district leaders to transform how resources and as Eric mentioned resources we think of them as people, time and money all are very precious to uh K12 school districts and are used to support student

293success. We focus on helping school systems make strategic datainformed decisions that really focus on promoting equity and improved outcomes. Since January, we've been working across the district to review how resources are being used in the district across all levels at both the school level, regional level, and central office departments, teams. Today, we want to share just a little bit about our work that we're doing with the administration and what we're learning about the system and uh that can be used for the future um decision making. Um, as Eric mentioned, we've been thinking deeply about both your strategic planning work as well as this current state analysis or factbased that we've been doing. Um, the transition of a superintendent before or during a strategic planning process is a very real situation. And so we as a

294national organization focused on supporting the work of school districts across this country. We wanted to help Seattle public schools think about how to best move forward um and what adjustments might need to be made uh given uh this transition. And so um we've been really trying to think about both the challenges that the district and the staff may face during this transition and how to best adjust the strategic planning process um to really think about the the long term uh for the district. And so on this slide, on slide seven, uh you can see some of the things that we've taken into consideration from research and best practices associated with leadership transitions. And we've made adjustments to the timeline or recommendations um so that this work stays on track and stays focused focused on long-term

295impact. And so ultimately that the system maintains momentum and progress, but also takes into consideration some of these um challenges that the district may face. And so on slide eight, you'll see um some of the things in terms of how we're thinking about this work, really focusing in on that current state, developing that fact base, um really understanding priorities and um the work that is happening for what now is year one um of the strategic plan. We really recommend u the system to really think about uh long-term around years 2 through five of the strategic plan waiting until you have made decisions around um the incoming superintendent and um when that person is sitting in the seat uh that they can really provide that vision and future direction. So, we've made adjustments to the work

296that we'll be doing and the work that we're doing with the system um to provide support. Um I'd like to go ahead and transition to my colleague so that he can get into what I'm calling some of the things that we're learning about the system um regarding uh some of the analysis that we've done today. You're just seeing um just a few uh pieces of data and information that helps is helping the system to really focus in on a couple of key areas. And so today we'd like to share just a few of those items. So I'd like to turn it over to my colleague Rob Dagnau uh who will be going through that information at this time. Thanks Angela. Uh and for sake of time I'll I'll probably just go through three things here

297to make sure that we end on time. So I'll start with slide 10 actually. And we wanted to start this section by grounding in the the purpose of our first phase of work here uh with Seattle public schools which is about building an understanding of how resources are currently used in the district in order to identify and prioritize the highest impact shifts in resource allocation and use so that they could be a part of the sort of next chapter of SPS strategy. To do so we're looking at two questions. One, how much? Two, how well. We name both of these very intentionally as when talking about resources both matter and are in service of creating the different student and teacher experiences that enable the highest possible outcomes for students. In the following slides, we'll walk

298through just a few people uh key sample analyses um that illustrate current patterns around how much and lay the groundwork for deeper conversations and alignment around strategic planning. We'll shift um to slide 15 uh for example here. And uh I think there actually might be a couple clickthroughs here as well. Uh so there might be one more click. Thank you. Um so we brought this up uh and the reason that sort of we were looking at this particular thing is is for part of our analysis we were looking at how um how does Seattle public schools measure need or sort of use different measures of need uh in its school staffing formula. And this slide focuses on one specific component of Seattle public school staffing approach. the differentiated teacher allocation tiers that are used at

299the elementary school. So, as you may know, Seattle allocates teacher uh staffing at elementary school levels in part based on a school's percentage of uh students that are eligible for free and reduced price meals. This is a strategy we see in many districts, an equitydriven approach to ensuring that higher need schools receive additional instructional staff, for example. But there's two things that we really wanted to highlight. One is that there can be significant variation within a single staffing tier. So if you look at that purple tier for example, schools in that tier could sort of range between 40 and 75% and yet staffed uh the same. Um so you could imagine that uh needs may be different in those schools yet have sort of a similar staffing allocation. The other thing that we wanted to

300draw the attention to here is sort of that difference between say the light green and that purple. Those are schools that may have like very similar levels of need yet staffed again very differently. And the question that we were sort of teeing up is, you know, what are the uh different ways that Seattle could think about need? Again, we have just sort of one measure here and what's the way to sort of address potential challenges um with regard to sort of staffing uh using tiers as another. The last slide that I just want to share with you um given the sort of the time we have is slide 16, the next one. As a part of our exploration of this question around how much um we took a closer look at staffing patterns across uh

301elementary schools in Seattle with a focus both on sort of baseline or foundational staffing and then how these staffing allocations vary based on school needs. Uh this slide compares staffing at sort of two ends of the spectrum sort of schools at the lowest cortile uh of students that are receiving free and reduced price meals versus schools that are on sort of the highest cortile. Our goal here was to prompt two really important questions. Uh, one, the staffing and lower needing schools reflect the types of student and staff experiences that uh, Seattle public schools aspires to create systemwide. And two, uh, importantly, are schools serving higher need populations receiving the differentiated resourcing in ways that are sufficient to also create the types of experiences students and staffs need in those schools to be successful. you know,

302uh we do see again those additional staffing at those highest need schools. But if you look at sort of what that composition of that is um about twothirds of that comes from uh differences in student population around multilingual uh multilingual learners or students with disabilities. A smaller proportion of that comes from those more general education resources, which again just sort of prompts this question of are those the set of resources both amount and type that create the types of student and staff experiences that Seattle wants to be true in its schools. So I know that I went quite quickly and sort of abbreviated but want to be very respectful of time. Um so we'll sort of pause for Angela or Eric to add anything else. Perfect. So I appreciate board directors or ERS further staff.

303Uh we do not have time for comments. Director Ranken, we are going to sorry. So So here's this is what we're going to do. We're I appreciate those board directors who took time to interview with ERS. They've also offered a deeper dive if you uh have I know Director Rankin took an uh took up the offer and did a deeper dive. I've got it scheduled on my calendar. If you don't have it scheduled, please see Eric and he will get that scheduled. Um and we will uh dive deeper into this at a a later time. If you have specific questions on what was presented, let's get that to board office. Um but we're going to wrap up the presentation there tonight. Um the full deck is in the materials. Yes. Um so with that uh

304that that concludes our business. A quick happy birthday to Julia from the board office. Thank you for spending your birthday with us. And at our next regular board meeting, so not the one not our work session, but our regular board meeting, we will have a celebration with our student board directors. Very excited for that. So, make sure you come early for some treats, some some fun words and the celebration. But there being no further business to come before the board, the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 8:56 p.m. Thank you everyone.