Seattle Schools Board Meeting Mar. 12, 2025

001[Music] good afternoon we will call the meeting to or order momentarily and SPS TV will begin Broadcasting e all right the March 12th 2025 regular board meeting is called to order at 4:16 p.m. um we would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please vice president Briggs here director hery here director Mahi here director Ranken here director Yun here and president top here all right thank you um I'm going to turn it over right away to uh super intendent Jones for his comments uh followed by a joint statement from the superintendent in the board thank you president top good evening everyone I want to begin tonight's meeting on a somber note our district is grieving the heartbreaking

002loss of a sixth grade student from Washington Middle School this loss is deeply felt and uh we also recognize that other communities are experiencing their own losses uh we want to remind families and the community that we're committed to providing necessary supports for those who need it counselors and resources are available for students and staff as we encourage anyone who's struggling to please reach out I also want to take time to acknowledge another recent situation that impacted the bridges and Inter agency communities at our Rocks Hill Annex Building uh president top and I had the opportunity to speak with students staff and families on site this past week and we will stay true to our promises to provide students St and staff a safer learning environment which they deserve we're thankful that our students and

003staff are safe but instances of community gun violence are traumatic and we want to reiterate that we are committed to providing the necessary supports to those who need to process their those experiences uh it's also uh women's history month and I want to take a moment to recognize that the month of March is women History Month a time to celebrate the incredible contribution of women throughout history and in our very own communities uh women have played and continue to play a vital role in shaping education from pioneering Educators to the dedicated teachers and Educators administrators and staff who support students every day uh I'd also take the opportunity to celebrate outstanding achievement of our student athletes I want to say congratulations to the Rainer Beach High School boys basketball team woo uh they are being

004they have been crowned the state champions uh I was thrilled to be at the game and witness their Victory I also want to recognize uh Ballard's uh girls gymnastics team they have first place in state as well give them a hand if you would uh their hard work and dedication determination have truly paid off and we're so proud of them uh we also have other top finishers uh the Garfield boys basketball team came in third in state and we have four athletes who finished in the top three in wrestling in their respective weight classes and so uh the Metro league and Seattle Public Schools is really showing out uh and these cases I these showcase uh the dedication and talent of our students coaches and we're immensely proud of their success um getting to our

005bread and butter around academics we will have another presentation from our academics team on our progress towards improving College and Career Readiness for our African American male students students of color and all of our students across our district we will go over our strategic efforts and our current trends and lessons that we've learned and planned interventions for keeping that progress going forward I'm looking forward to having that conversation with you this evening regarding highly capable uh yesterday we sent out a message to the community with an update on our highly capable Services after careful review we have decided to continue the hybrid model for the next 3 years specifically we are offering HC programming in neighborhood schools while also maintaining the cohort model we recognize please and and equally as important we recognize the importance

006of Highly capable programming to our students fames and we're committed to a thoughtful transparent process as we assess it uh during the next 3 years in the future we look forward to sharing more this evening in a conversation with the board we are also embarking on strategic planning so tonight our team will be walking the board through the planning process for the upcoming 2025 2030 strategic plan uh this will be the first in a series of regular updates that will follow a consistent format and schedule which we'll introduce later this evening the strategies that we're developing will build on the board's goals and guard rails and the associated interim metrics which we will discuss this evening our goal is to keep the board and our community informed and engaged as we shape the future direction

007of our district together so in closing we have a full agenda this evening I'm looking forward to a productive conversation and thank you all for being here your continued partnership your interest in what we're doing here at Seattle public schools and with that I'll turn it over back to president top thank you I'm going to turn it right back to you because you're going to read I believe the first part of our statement here that we will be sending out to the SPs Community yes and I will find that [Applause] please thank you um we acknowledge that this is a time of great uncertainty and we are striving to provide stability and predictability to our students families and staff as we navigate the con constantly changing landscape we are steadfast in our values and will

008continue to ensure that every student Seattle Public Schools receives a highquality education with the supports that they need to thrive We are following the guidance of the Washington State Office of the superintendent of Public Instruction and continuing to serve students we are committed to providing high quality education to every student in our district SPS students of every racial and ethnic background income status disability status immigration status language spoken gender identity sexual orientation religious affiliation and or any other personal characteristics will receive Equitable access to educational opportunities and supports thank you um I'll continue the statement our mission has not changed our work will not stop uh the values we articulate in board policy 0030 and educational and racial equity and 000010 instructional philosophy reflect the values of our Seattle Community and Define who we are

009as a district we live these values every day by celebrating the Brilliance and experience of every student uh cultivating learning environments that affirm student identities and broadening students understanding of the World Seattle Public Schools stands firm in our values and and will continue to stand with all with with and serve all our students and families so thank you that's and that statement will be sent out to today to just reaffirm our commitment to our values thank you so much thank you Dr Jones um we're going to continue to plug along here since we have a long agenda and go to our student board member comments um yeah so the student board members have been doing like a lot of advocacy work a couple weeks ago we helped draft questions for rainy day recess podcasts who

010are in the process of creating an introductory interview with all candidates running for the upcoming Schoolboard election and we've also been really active on Instagram with all our board meeting summary posts um aside from that one of the main things I would like to bring up is the meeting with Seattle youth commission president top and the student board members our scheduled to meet with Seattle youth commission also known as syc next Tuesday March 18th and this meeting will be held online and calendar invites have been sent to All board directors so please feel free to join the call if you have time um just for contexts I am a member of syc and our commission operates under the department of neighborhoods for the city of Seattle and our mission is to connect youth with elected

011officials and address issues that affect Young people in Seattle um the commission consists of 15 Commissioners but we were mostly speaking with the education subcommittee to talk about our initiatives and also the FF Levy and from the student perspective my peers have expressed concerns about many changes that have already been implemented or are potentially on the horizon and students are aware of what is happening not not only at the city level but also at the state level and they are paying close attention to the decisions being made so I would just like to say that we as student board members are trying our best to ensure your voices are heard and we have been doing a lot of work thank you thank you all right we're going to move into uh board member and liaison

012reports I I will start off it has been uh a difficult few weeks for the uh Seattle Public Schools Community as Dr Jones shared our community is grieving the loss of a Washington Middle School sixth grade student and no words I have can provide Comfort or peace to the family or the communities grieving this tragedy weighs on the hearts of of us and they're already heavy from recent passings of students and staff in the SPs Community um on behalf of the board I want to share my deepest condolences to our families and our school communities that are that are grieving um Dr Jones also me mentioned that our bridges and in agency School communities were also impacted by gun violence recently um these students are safe but this experience was one no student or staff

013member should go through um I had the opportunity to visit our Washington Middle School in our agency and bridges School communities with Dr Jones and I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all the staff who are working to support those communities saw firsthand how hard they are working for our students um and their work is vital every day for the success of our students um I'm going to move into a little bit more of our um board updates for our colleagues here um sorry just a sec um okay for our colleagues I have a few updates um as we move into additional committee and liaison reports um I've been working to share an update um every month on the things that we have been doing and meeting since the last doing since the

014last board meeting as well as sort of the updates of on the work plan that we collectively worked on at our Retreat um first I want to note we have a full agenda tonight and I'm going to encourage us to keep our comments and questions focused as we move through um on engagement we had our first full board engagement session on February 26th on the budget held at Bailey gater and had a really awesome turnout it was wonderful to see um I think I think we had some great learning lessons ways to improve the process and we will continue to as we focus and make Enga board engagement a priority this year um improve the process uh one of the things that I think was heard was how do we use this information that was

015gained where is that feedback loop um and I we will revisit the themes that were shared at this engagement session at our next budget session because it the uh engagement was on the budget and has mainly to do do with budget topics um however our next engagement opportunity is on March 26th at Rainer Beach High School and uh it will be with directors hery Rankin and myself joining that um we're structuring this engagement based on the work of the board's prior ad hoc engagement committee as well as our work and discussions that we had during our Retreat um directors Ranken and uh uh Briggs recently visited Whitman mid school for our first stop on our monthly School visits and next month board directors will will be visiting high schools to encourage students to apply for

016our school board student Member Program looking forward to that it will be my first time being able to see the Center School um and we'll continue to do these engagement sessions and School tours throughout the year um second on our assignments for the year director m will be our lead for our board work supporting the collective bargaining process uh state law and our policy share that the superintendent as and his team will be negotiating with our labor Partners so that won't be us but director mizeri will be our board lead internally um next a few reminders uh last meeting I shared that you would all board directors receive assignments for your self for our self- evaluation sections those have been uh divvied up uh you'll see them in the week you should have seen them

017in the weekly report but we're going to be sending a reminder email as well so please come to the next board meeting prepared for your uh section and review it um uh finally quick highlight on our committee work the ad hoc policy manual Review Committee Shar chaired by director Rankin met for its first meeting last month and she may have more to say there um forthcoming we have our ad hoc policy uh committee on student safety is in the planning stages under director Hy's leadership and our audit committee chaired by uh vice president Briggs held a quarterly meeting last week and vice president Briggs I'm going to go to you here real quickly for the announcement on completed internal audits okay uh board procedure 655 Z BP internal audit requires an announcement of completed internal

018audits as the audit and finance committee chair I don't think it's actually a finance committee though I think it's just audit anyway um I am announcing that at the March 4th quarterly audit meeting the office of internal audit presented two internal audit reports mckin vento and Foster Care students enrollment practices audit and Nathan hail High School audit all audit reports are discussed at a public audit meeting and the completed reports are posted for public viewing on today's agenda and on the office of internal audit Department website thank you vice president Briggs um so there's a lot of work going on board directors and we're all moving in different directions and doing our thing as we try to hold ourselves accountable to what we said we would do at our uh fall Retreat uh do other

019board committee chairs or Le aison have any reports for the board director Ranken uh yeah is this is it on yes um sorry I'm going a this is it's a hard time to be a person right now I think um I have a couple of clarifying questions actually um about agenda setting and work plan um when we approved when we adopted the regular board meeting calendar last year to the legally required one regular board meeting a month it was with the commitment and planning of a still having a second board meeting a month but reserved for work session study session other business of the board and Community engagement in a two-way fashion to um replace and improve upon one-way uh public testimony that would have been lost by that second regular board meeting I would

020like some clar ification on where we are with that it looks like we only have one regular board meeting a month and that's all that we're meeting as a board and um a district this size and our need to be transparent and hold do our business in public I'm not understanding how we're going to accomplish what's in our work plan in one regular board meeting a week um and the when the board voted on that regular board meeting calendar um the commit was a second board meeting a week so I um would like some clarity on that connected to that I would like Clarity on agenda setting I requested along with director Briggs to have our work plan discussed as an agenda item and that was not honored in the past um we have had

021if two board directors request something to be on the agenda it goes on the agenda the ad hoc governance committee recommended even that any one board director could make a request so if there's a change in practice that I missed um apologies I'm just confused about how the full board participates in what we do together as a board and how we're going to have time to do that so I don't need that answered right now but I wanted to just state that my request to have that become an actual discussion of the board about agenda setting and agreement on our work plan and how those things are going to happen um uh I'm requesting officially that again that that is placed on a future agenda so that we can be aligned every member of the

022board should have the equal opportunity to determine what we talk about and it should be voted on um by the board so I just need a little bit of clarity on that um and also just for planning my schedule what me what meetings I have when so um uh the legislatively Aon update uh I have a memo in information items attached to the meeting minutes um so you can read that uh the the top things I want to note I think are that um right now the House and Senate majority caucuses are working on their budget proposals and uh the state's revenue forecast comes out on March 18th so typically what happens is each caucus works on their proposed budget when the forecast comes out that gives a little bit more information about what Revenue

023might be available to budget they'll finalize their proposals and release those um by the end of session what will need to happen is for them all to come together and agree on the budget uh to to fund our state for the next two years um so there there is a possibility of a special session if things are too far apart um it's still a possibility right now we'll know in the next couple of weeks whether that moves from being just possible to being likely but as for now a possibility um what you'll see I'm guessing is that the Senate budget is going to be more focused on what they wish to invest in what they want to fund um regardless of where where the revenue may fall what you'll likely see from the house is

024more of a here's what we can afford unless we increase Revenue so they're kind of coming at the same issue of grappling with their own deficit from two different direction here's what we are trying to get to versus um here's what we here here's kind of the reality of what we'd have to deal with without new revenue and then we'll see more discussion between um them all about what people are willing to do in terms of Revenue versus cuts and what kind of a combination there will be there um I can't remember president Top If You said it already or not but we will be in Olympia tomorrow um not going to mind uh I was going to say that and I think director Mahi will be joining as well okay great so um we

025meet uh legislatively Ison and uh board president um if available and and know up to one other director meet uh um a few times you know in preparation for session and then during session um in addition to our regular Communications and advocacy um without meeting so we're going to have that meeting um tomorrow uh in Olympia and um everybody's going to be cranky because they've been up late and working really hard trying to get to um today's policy cut off any policy that didn't pass the caucus it was introduced in by 5:00 p.m. today is is dead for the session so they've been doing a lot of late nights trying to get things to there but um as they're developing their proposed budgets we want to make sure that we get another opportunity um with

026our Seattle delegation to uh make really clear um the reality for our schools and students um and how dependent that is on what they can do to provide increased revenue for public schools um and then uh let's see later later this month director top and I are both going to Washington DC to Advocate at the federal level um I have a number of meetings um with some different different Washington delegates um in addition to hearing from um um sorry I'm all over the place uh hearing about more about what's happening at the federal level and how it impacts in particular Urban school districts we'll be there with Urban um School boards and staff uh from across the country um yeah it's the policy committee we had our first meeting of this year we reviewed the

027charter and the scope of work um and materials from the meeting are on the website with any other meeting materials but I also shared a memo to the board um that's attached in information items for um anybody to read and it's got some examples of policy manual structures from other districts both in and out of Washington that I encourage folks to look at to see what it is we're um working towards and um yeah a number of school visit oh I do want to say the VIS to Whitman was incredible um to Whitman Middle School um I volunteered there right after the pandemic and it was it was it was a community in disregulation um and it was a completely different school and what's really powerful and that I want to highlight here publicly is

028that the principal has really taken ownership over creating a culture that supports staff and students to thrive and um it's really a model for the power of um ownership and personal responsibility and what we can all do to make things better for students how important it is especially now to take care of each other and create the right conditions for students to thrive so um thank you for arranging for us to take that visit and to the Whitman community for welcoming us and sharing with us what they're doing um it's the kind of environment that um we want for all students and staff and it's possible um uh number of other things here but I'll just move things along other board directors thank you director Ranken um we're going to move to the tables now

029for Progress monitoring uh but we're going to stop at 5: for public testimony um director hery is our progress monitoring lead and will facilitate this portion which will include a training uh and uh monitoring on goal three and please take your microphones [Music] all right uh in the interest of time we'll go ahead and get started so I will pass it over to the superintendent n so in terms of stopping at 5 uh do we want to try to plow through and be done by be done by five can you hear me okay did you look in the mirror wow [Music] wow all right uh not necessarily I don't think we necessarily need to plow through uh go at a comfortable pace for y'all and we'll just we'll do what we need to do right

030now all right thank you um director hery and board we want to talk about uh College and Career Readiness uh this evening I'm joined by my colleagues from the academic office of academics Dr Caleb Perkins and Dr Mike stovi uh during tonight's summary we'll be summarizing our theory of action we'll be talk we'll be uh going through what the data is telling us particularly in the areas of 9th and 10th grade credit earning and how it's informing the strategies that we are taking uh tonight we are looking at the class of 2025 next slide please we'll be reporting on the progress we've made with data for the interim measures 9th and 10th grade credit earning we will be identifying the next steps related to specific strategy levers including curriculum embedded assessments grading guidance College and

031Career Readiness data and school Improvement plans you all received memos last week so as a result I'm going to go ahead and proceed with outlining our theory of action for helping our students graduate ready for college career and life before highlighting later the executive summary sharing data and discussing what we are seeing next slide please uh let me start by reading our theory of action to help uh sorry interrupt Dr Jones it was just brought to my attention that we have um AJ and another uh rep from the Council on so it actually might make sense to have them do the training and then do the progress monitoring um that's on me sorry I just saw that uh notification in this moment do we have AJ is that kosher with y'all yeah that's fine okay

032perfect thank youj do we have AJ on the line yes okay um but I'm not clear on the timing that you all have what time are you wanting to be complete both with the monitoring session and with training associated with monitoring yeah so that is not a a high so we don't have a specific time we're trying to be complete right what we do have as a room full of constituents who have shown up for public uh comment and so we have about 15 minutes until we're going to switch back to take public comment and then we will come back to the monitor complete whatever we have not already completed for monitoring does that make sense uh yes um in that case I'd recommend that we go ahead and have the superintendent present the material

033and then that way um we can use that material as part of the training conversation later makes sense to me we'll continue as we were thank you please proceed okay so uh we left off on talking about our our theory of action and let me read that since it's not showing up on the screen just yet uh if C central office staff School leaders and Educators provide high quality tier one instruction remove systemic barriers and leverage Seattle's many assets than African-American boys and teens will experience improved access to and success in core courses Advanced courses and graduation Pathways this will increase their likelihood of success in a variety of post-secondary Pathways and careers after graduating from SPS more recently we've focused on the following specific levers to improve college and career Readiness and the outcomes

034associated with that we improved areas of uh curriculum embedded assessments use of college and Care career Readiness data continuous School Improvement plans and Grading for Equity these strategic areas are directly connected to Advanced coursework and graduation data in this memo particularly when with respect in improving tier one instruction in these grades and will be the focus of the analysis for this progress monitoring update so we track these specific levers through inputs outputs and outcome data so now I will now quickly review the executive summary before sharing data and discussing what we are seeing uh in summary Seattle Public Schools continues to continues to improve supports for College and Career Readiness and postsecondary opportunities particularly for African African-American boys and teens running slide please in looking at SPS data for our interim measures 9th and 10th

035grade credit earning it shows conflicting information on whether we will be able to continue to meet the targets for the classes of 2027 and 2028 the data shows that we are maintaining post-pandemic progress but not fully reaching the original targets that we've set in addition we see that some students are needing more support in response we are identifying next steps to better uh support students in credit earning uh related opportunities in four areas that we've mentioned before curriculum embedded assessments grading Guidance the use of College and Career Readiness data and school Improvement plans or we reference them as cips I want to note that the focus on developing personalized plans in the newly adopted life ready goal for 2025 2030 will also improve our course planning for students looking at the time uh let's go

036on to the next slide let's talk about some some ninth grade data this figure with the ninth grade semester one on track rate illustrates that we are above pandemic levels in terms of supporting ninth graders to complete required credits needed to graduate on time and that we continue to stay on a higher trajectory and above our current set Target that said we are seeing some small declines the 2425 semester on track rate for 9th grade African-American students is 76.4% which is 2.7 points lower than semester one of last year for students of color furthest educational Justice in 2425 the rate is 80.6% down 1.9% uh points from last year if we go to the next slide we this figure this figure illustrates whether 9th grade excuse me whether 10th grade students are on track to

037graduate on time having completed Advanced coursework on the next slide we're on the next slide I'm sorry I'm moving too fast okay thank you uh this figure as I mentioned illustrates whether 10th graders are on track to graduate on time having completed Advanced coursework uh this is critical to postsecondary success in 2425 semester 1 on track rate for 10th grade African-American male students is 51.9% this is slightly up by3 percentage points compared to 58.8% in SE in last year's uh Rec recording students of color furthest educational Justice uh for 2425 rate is 65.3% down 2.6% percentage points from the previous year if we go to the next slide we'll talk about the grade content areas and essentially what you're seeing here our 10th grade African-American male students have been showing a steady decline over the

038past four years in all credit credit categories at the end of semester 1 this trend is similar for students of color furthest from educational Justice and and this data is really what helps inform us around what additional support students need particularly in P specific content areas and one more data slide uh if we talk about this next slide this is uh 9th and 10th grade uh credit detail and so uh this this slide has four four key points one is the percentage point of 10th grade African-American male students who did not meet any criteria is considerably High higher this year compared to uh prior years for nth grade African-American male students uh who are off track 177% did not meet any of their credit requirements this is an increase a negative increase of 2% in

039comparison to the ninth grade African-American students from last year the percentage of 10th grade African-American male students who did not meet any criteria is considerably higher this year compared to Prior years for example in looking at the pink bars on the bottom right the percentage of African-American male students in 10th Grade who are off track after September 1 increased by 15% this year from 24% last year to 39% this year this speaks directly to the need for more options for students to earn credits and get back on track for graduation so um want to discuss the next slide here around Lessons Learned and this is uh probably the meat of it here in summary the data shows that we are maintaining the progress we've made over the last few years in credit earning at the

040ninth and 10th grade levels after returning from the pandemic but there are still many students in these grades who are not currently on track to graduate that said it's important to note that while 61% of African-American male students were on track with credits after the first semester after 10th grade ultimately 80% of these students did graduate on time we anticipate that the graduation rate for African-American male students in the class of 2026 will also be much higher than the current 59.1% that are currently on track with credits each high school has a mtss team or it's equivalent to regularly check in on the progress that 11th and 12th grade students are making toward gradu graduation this is leveraging the consistent standard credit attainment reports for school leaders and counselors so of course we still have

041more work to do to ensure all students have access to the supports that they need to graduate ready for a range of postsecondary opportunities and we'll seize those opportunities uh ongoing so given this I want to turn this slide turn to this slide and highlight some next steps we're making uh in these efforts so in the area of curriculum embedded embedded assessments the academic team is working with the Department of technology to expand current Atlas reports to include curriculum embedded assessment data this will better enable us to identify instructional practices that are working and students who need more support in the area of grading for Equity the academics the Academic Teams will work with school-based colleagues to develop clearer guidance for implementing the Equitable grading practices including providing potential thresholds for retakes this will ensure

042that our grading practices focus on helping students get more opportunities to show their learning uh and earning their earning credits in the area of school Improvement plans uh aligned to school strategies the CTE team is developing comprehensive professional development for summer and next year to support teachers in implementing high quality CTE Pathways a component of many school cips and this will enable more students to get the courses they need and the last point and I think we can pause here for the for for the 5:00 testimonies in the area of using CCR data SPS plans to transition to a new state sponsored high school and Beyond plan for grades 9- 12 in the 2526 school year this will inform and improve student course taking as it will be better informed by students personalized plans so

043that that is here that is here director Ranken so uh I think we can pick up with questions that the board may have when we come back uh but this is might be an appropriate place to pause can I can I ask a quick question um unrelated to the progress monitoring um I I'm just wondering um for clarification on our agenda it says that um public testimony will begin at or after 5:00 p.m. which implies that it doesn't need to start right at 5:00 P p.m. and I guess I just want to make sure that our coaches AJ and Alisha understand that they're going to be now waiting like an hour for us to come back here um this is this is AJ I um it is inconvenient but I would rather wait than leave

044your community waiting yeah we we have a commitment to our community to begin public testimony at 5 at 5:00 p.m. so we're going to move back to the DI can I recommend that can we change the language on our thing to say it will begin promptly at 5: instead of at or after 5 just for just so everybody's clear about it because in the past I feel like we have started after 5 when we were in the middle of something else um and I totally appreciate that people don't want to sit here and watch our training session um but I also want to respect the time of our coaches to and not leave them waiting so um just further clarification going forward would be great I think providing Clarity that we want to make sure

045we uh start public testimony on time and make keep our commitment to hear from our public makes perfect sense and we will work on the language board staff I think I'm seeing positive Mo moving forward but we'll head to the dis to hear public testimony all right thank you oh I'm on theist thank you hello all right uh we are now going to move to public testimony we have a long list which is awesome and I want to make sure we're respectful of everyone's time um so please conclude your remarks on time if you have written materials we would love to see them please make sure to get them to staff um and they will make be distributed to the board I'm going to be strict with our time limit today of 2 minutes um

046you may not have everything uh you may not be able to get through everything you've prepared but please be respectful of others um board procedure 1430 BP provides our rules for Testimony uh we expect the same standard of Civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself um as board president I have the 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 or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave this meeting I'm going to pass it now to staff to summarize a few additional points on how this will work and to read off the testimony of speakers Miss Wilson Jones president

047top um the board will take testimony today from those on the list and then we'll go to the waiting list if we're me missing speakers from the list from those who are in uh the lobby for overflow um I will come back to any names that we don't get to so if we skip past you please um rest assured that we'll come back to you later please wait until you your name is called to approach the podium or to unmute on the conference line only one person may speak at a time the board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent spent on the topic you signed up to speak to speakers may see their time to another person but this must be done when the listed speaker is called time will not

048be restarted and the total time remains 2 minutes the timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for speakers who are in here in person when you see that light turn red and you hear a beep that means your time is already over um and we'll move to the next speaker at that point for those who are joining by phone umcl some folks right now please do mute yourselves right now on your uh devices if you could mute um and uh the beep that hopefully will come through will be the indication your time is exhausted um moving to our list now for those who are joining by phone you'll need to press star six to unmute on the conference line and for everyone please do reintroduce yourself as you begin your testimony as I

049will miss um some pronunciations as we move through the list the first Speaker today is Arthur NES monen who will be followed by Chris jackins and then Sarah sense Wilson hi uh my name is Alex nishon I'm a parent of two wonderful kids one in Cascadia and one in our neighborhood school I had another story to tell you today showing the real difference between the two highly capable programs between the schools but after reading yesterday's letter from PS I just wanted to thank you the board for your thoughtful decision so I'm happy to seed my time to my son who will share his perspective with you um thank you for all you do hi my name is Dimitri and I'm 7 years old thank you for keeping the highly capable cohort program going for three

050more years because because of your decision next year I can go to a school where I'll learn with other kids who love learning just like me my brother said he started loving school when he moved to Cascadia and my dad told me I'd I'd make life long friends there too I know learning with smart kids will make school a lot more fun and exciting thank you for giving kids like me another chance I really appreciate all the hard work you do for our education thank you the next speaker is Chris jackins my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on the Personnel report under separations the report lists Ingram High School principal Martin Flo and Deputy General councel John ciry I wish to thank Mr Flo and Mr ciri for their longtime service to

051the district on the proposed $ 2.2 million increase in the guaranteed maximum price for the ex window replacement project does the school board automatically approve all contract increases when inflation is cited on Final acceptance of the contract for the North queenan School upgrades project three points number one the board report cites change orders of 38.2% and States quote the change orders were significantly greater than expected for a project of this magnitude unquote number two how about inviting District staff to discuss this in public tonight number three it's easy to do any board director can do it when the board president asks if any director wishes to remove an item from the consent agenda you say yes on board sponsorship of was to policy positions two points number one the suggested proposal would require training so

052that board members follow what Wasa considers to be best practice number two but wasda standards stink for example wasda encourages producing board meeting minutes which lack detail please vote no and I welcome everybody here tonight thank you for being here it's a great sign up list there's a lot of people on the wait list and I suggest that you try to in fact let everybody speak who's on the wait list I know some of them are here thank you very much the next speaker is Sarah sense Wilson Sarah will be followed by Christine Highlander and then Alex Feldman my name is Sarah sth Wilson I'm a member of the ogalala nation I'm a grandmother of a Olympic View student and a lifelong resident of Seattle I serve as the urban native education Alliance elected chair

053unaa is a Grassroots native Le volunteer Workforce student centered organization our 18 years of advocacy and support for Native Student Success is a model for uplifting the voices of native students while providing culturally responsive mentorship tutoring and a variety of educational cultural and academic opportunities I would like to share about our um advocacy for SPS to adopt the unea resolution number nine boarding school education and to designate September 30th as every child matters day or orang shirt day the boarding school resolution brings voice and Truth to a a lengthy 100-year era of United States force assem policies this resolution was co-created by native students parents Educators Elders survivors of boarding school and the national Native American boarding school healing Coalition We Stand Together to urge Seattle Public Schools to join the growing movement across Turtle

054Island and taking actionable steps to educate all students about the boarding school era and the trodes endured by boarding school survivors and in remembrance of those who passed away due to the conditions they were subjected to SPS uh leadership has an opportunity to support this resolution and to bring truth justice healing and Reconciliation to the survivors descendants and all student Learners within your institutions we urge you to stand with us on the right side of History make the right decision to uphold your core values through action collaboration and genuine commitment to Quality education for all thank you very much and we support the C CTE program 100% we have many Native students that are actively enrolled and benefit from receiving credit for career Readiness thank you very much the next speaker is Christine Highlander Christine

055Highlander thank you for pausing the sunsetting of HCC um I'm Christine Highlander parent of two twoe kids in SPS today I'm urging SPS leadership the and the board to stop a practice that violates state law specifically the prohibition on accelerated learning options for students not attending an HC cohort School director Rankin mentioned the RCW in wack last last meeting and for the sake of time I'll refresh you only on wack 39217 080 which states that quote each student identified as highly capable as a highly capable student shall be provided educational opportunities which take into account such students unique needs and capabilities end quote in reviewing seps of neighborhood schools throughout Northeast and Southeast Seattle they consistently do not include above grade level acceleration as a strategy utilized for HC instruction cips frequently mention of differentiation

056and increased depth of com depth or complexity but only two schools directly mention acceleration in one of those instances the acceleration involves students being able to check out books that are above grade level which is not instruction what is implied in some of the cips and what I've heard from school staff is that in light of the overt direction from SPS that they not teach any content that is above grade level computer software is the vehicle for acceleration a student can work ahead on their own using a program like ISL or zern so SPS got rid of evidence-based a grade above grade level teacher-led programs like walk to math and replace them with tablets this begs a question of whether SPS is fine with another violation of state law by having computers replace teachers as

057the means for the district satisfying their obligation to provide access to accelerated learning and enhanced instruction as required by the RCW and is the board okay with being complicit in that I con see that the existence of cohort schools could be counted as the provision of educational opportunities but the mere existence of these programs should not be mistaken for Access especially given the poor geographic distribution of HCC schools these cips are in place through 2026 but please act with a sense of urgency to allow learning acceleration in neighborhood schools today thank you the next speaker is Alex Feldman Alex Feldman after Alex will be Robert crook shank and then Claire Abe hi I'm Alex Feldman um just want to thank you along with uh with a lot of other people for uh keeping the highly

058capable cohort open as an option for students while the district develops uh a new program for neighborhood schools I know this will help a lot of a lot of kids in our city I want to seed the remainder of my time to Sydney daring thanks thank you hello I'm a teacher at Cascadia and our district has spent a lot of money in recent years toward this alleged hybrid model of HC Services which isn't really happening no substantive outcome in the schools and a strong bias against providing it at all the district trainings I've been to as a teacher we are firmly admonished not to that we should only stick to grade level standards teachers are also not versed in the needs of neurodiverse students I have a letter from a parent who couldn't be here

059today she's Lauren capable she's a parent of a 3E Cascadia student which means he is brilliant and black and neurodiverse and she says we have struggled in neighborhood schools getting Joseph's status as HC recognized and the inequitable treatment he and other HC kids I know have received just because their neighborhood schools don't have the capacity to meet them where they're at was devastating not only academically to but my child but to my child's mental health Cascadia has been a boon and the school district has documentation from his e IEP noting the market difference between his mental health after switching schools um in the summer and fall of 2021 this District hired a leading researcher in giftedness uh Dr Christina Henry Collins to help de velop the do the talent development in neighborhood schools big Institute

060over many many hours and days that could have been our cohort of leaders for services in the schools but the ball was dropped and the momentum was squandered that those teachers are all just dispersed thank you the next speaker is Robert Kook [Applause] shank hi my name is Robert krook shank and I'm a parent of three students in neighborhood schools in Seattle and I'm here to stand in support of all the option schools in our uh District there's a huge Coalition here tonight you know when you cap the enrollment of an option School you crash help crash the budget of the district as a whole we saw last fall when the district tried to close all of the k through eight option schools many of which had started off decades ago rooted in social justice

061and Community movements the public rejected strongly closing them but it seemed seems that the district is still trying to close them just more slowly rather than all at once the district is removing staff from option schools and capping enrollment at those schools despite strong public demand refusing to enroll up to their capacity refusing to move weight lists this is an obvious attempt to try to close option schools when we came together last fall to fight the school closure plan we did so as a kind of SPS NATO an attack against one schools and attack against them all it doesn't matter which kids our school which school our kids go to We Stand United against closures when we don't provide choices and don't process weight list families from all backgrounds leave and the district gets less

062money families in the city clearly want choices within the public system many of these schools are safe places for kids like lgbtq students Native American students and more we also know that one size doesn't fit all kids are different that means schools should differ too it's not enough to differentiate within a classroom sometimes a child needs the entire learning environment in the building to be different if you eliminate option schools that doesn't eliminate the need for different learning it just means only those families who can pay to get it privately get that different learning that's inequitable and polling shows the public agrees last fall we asked about this question in our poll 63% said closing option and alternative schools is inequitable only 20% said it's good instead of closing schools or cutting their enrollment let's

063Embrace Equity we need to convene a task force to determine the best ways to ensure Equitable enrollment in these schools and adopt those recommendations and have more option schools including in southeast Seattle thank you the next speaker is Claire a Claire Al after Claire will be Jay Lee and then Crystal Lee can I uh approach to give documents Miss Wilson Jones they have some documents for board directors um I seed my time to Audrey Muna what will you do if you can no longer afford your child's therapy their counselors their Educators what if the people who gave you guidance for your child suddenly disappeared because you couldn't fund it anymore could you shrug your shoulders and go it is what it is while watching your child become more sensitive and distressed I'd like to believe

064a lot of you would say no I'd like to believe that you would do whatever you could to to provide that money and get that support back SPS School Board I Audriana mtha senior from clevand stem High School am your kid every queer student in SPS is your kid these queer students within your District make up over 28% of your children and all of us have just lost our counselor our Advocate and your only guide for giving us the quality resources we need mix Crystal the aftermath queer kids won't have the help they need for most of us it wouldn't just be the absence of care but the deprivation of it something taken away this tells us queer kids that our well-being is dispensable conditional and insignificant how can we do well academically let alone

065mentally or physically how can we feel present at school if our presence feels disregarded in general I know your values strive against this and I trust that you would provide a quality education environment for us but if the scarcity of queer resources continues I fear that trust will falter so because I cannot reach out to mix Crystal for help anymore I am reaching out to you I know that there is a lack of federal funding and I know that the removal of the CDC see what works in schools Grant is a very flame that burns our bridges to the roles we need the most especially in this period of time I believe a good solution to dowsing this Wildfire is using SPS his own funds if the federal firefighters won't help us let's take out

066our own hoses and spray down these vicious Flames so our students and staff have access to the bridge between education and love for queer students like myself I would like to see it over my remaining time to Veronica Cardona the district chose not to close four schools three out of four being majority white and with those three schools being less than 35% economically disadvantaged now let's look at Cleveland High School Cleveland is about 87% minority enrollment and around7 school is economic disant while still maintaining highest graduation rate in the district by not closing these prish schools taking conclude your remarks Miss Wilson Jones would you please Mo the next speaker is J Le jile Lee after J will be Crystal Lee and then Matt sesman love love you if anybody does have um handouts for

067our school board you can place them at the door that is near the entry to the auditorium and we will ensure that they are picked up and provided in hard copy and electronically to directors at any point you can put them there and we will collect them and provide them to the board hi uh this is Jay L I will be seeding my time to B Matt Beres good evening uh my name is Matt Burnes and I'm a second grade teacher at Dunlap Elementary where I've been teaching since 2011 I want to first start by stating my appreciation for all the families here tonight and at prior Schoolboard meetings who are making their voices heard about options choices and advancement however I'm here tonight not to speak for but to speak up about our immigrant

068students and families who despite plenty of lip service from the district continue to be unsupported in SPS one year ago I spoke at a school board meeting about how the district was choosing to silently shutter the boc program if you're asking yourself what's boc you're not alone as it's another option program that the district has supported in words but not in actions Bo stands for bilingual orientation Center and is now generally referred to as the newcomer program they are supposed to serve students predominantly immigrant students with limited to non-existent English in small class size and with in small class sizes with individualized instruction to build skills in order to eventually move to the general education classroom there are three sites Across The District Hawthorne James Baldwin and my school Dunlap however the problem however is

069that the district has not sent us any students for our newcomer program despite having two boc teachers on staff and they will only assign students to these teachers when their class size hits a minimum of five kids it is unclear how thoroughly the previously mentioned options are explained to families especially um the options being uh attend their neighborhood school or go to a newcomer program it is unclear how thoroughly the previously mentioned options are explained to families especially with language barriers it is clear that families here tonight know how to and feel comfortable advocating for their own children however it feels like our immigrant families are being duped and not truly given a choice or option this is another example of students and families being turned away from option school programs now ad midst budget

070season our newcomer staff members are being given a choice with their zero assigned students either self- displace themselves by this Friday and join the hiring pool losing their right to return or wait around until June to find out if the district will actually send us students stands these students who might know only a handful of words in English or less are being placed in already overcrowed classrooms without support for them our next speaker is uh Crystal Lee I'm I'm going to interrupt really quickly we have a lot of speakers tonight we want to give everyone an opportunity uh to say their piece so please try to stick to your two minutes and be respectful of others thank you all right good evening my name is Crystal Lee I'm a teacher at Cleveland stem High School

071just want to note that there are also 30ish other folks in the lobby that you can't see in support of our students here as well I'm deferring my time to Liz bergston bu hello I derive very little pleasure from being alarmist it is a favorite pasttime of mine to make fun of middle-aged men on Twitter and YouTube with Roman statues as profile pictures who fume is at images of women with dyed hair holding up proes signs and wearing hats and call it the downfall of Western Civilization but there's a difference between being alarmist and melodramatic and pointing out the many ways in which the government publicly and transparently does things that will harm the population America America is currently led by one of one of if not the most openly and obnoxiously bigoted self-serving and

072corrupt oval offices in the history of the country and is progressively becoming less and less habitable for all minorities we are living in a country in which a Filipino individual born in New York has a non-zero chance of being detained by ice without due process and deported to El Salvador because how else are xenophobic conservatives going to be able to avoid having to look at all that pesky brown skin trans women across ameran America have had their passports simply taken away with no sufficient explanation don't say gay laws plague schools in red States based on the very sane and logical belief that teaching adults in college about something will indoctrinate them into trying to be that thing the more hostile a country becomes the more support is needed to keep minority individuals safe especially minority

073students the decision of whether or not schools should continue to provide classes that support and validate minority students is crucial it can mean the difference between students seeking out support in school from dedicated caring staff members or in unsupervised congregations with their peers afraid to be open about their identity outside of those interactions it is now more important ever more important than ever for schools to be supportive of students who are becoming more and more oppressed with each signature president Donald Trump pens some of the things that I've said today may seem shocking insensitive or in poor taste but if you can't bring yourself to say the same thing about the current presidential Administration you need to take a deep breath and look around being American is not a set of rules that schools are

074made to teach is intrinsic trait of those born conclude your remarks thank you the next speaker is Matt sesman Matt sesman Matt will be followed by Jessica Chong and then Stephanie [Applause] goian gonna seed my time to David Evans hi I'm David Evans I teach at Hamilton and I want to talk about the HC program um my thoughts are based on the fact that I work with most of the accelerated math students at our school and I teach all of the advanced math students when I first began at Hamilton 9 years ago we had six sections of geometry we had one section of Algebra 2 all those kids were qualified for those classes they wanted to do incredible things in stem subjects in high school and college we now have one section of geometry Algebra

0752 disappeared 5 years ago what we are doing in Seattle Public Schools is we're disappearing our top students in math math is the least age specific subject kids will take I have taught third graders calculus I've struggled to teach seniors algebra we have to decide to get out of the way of kids we have to let kids be able to advocate for themselves and realize their dreams mathematically right now s Public Schools is not serving middle school kids the only kids that are in my geometry class now are kids from Cascadia which basically says that the only intelligent math students who are above grade level all go to Cascadia statistically that's impossible and Seattle public schools has to be in the business of allowing kids to realize their dreams I believe that it we should

076not be ashamed of the HCC program we should bring it back give it more parity make it clearer who qualifies and allow the kids to achieve at the level that they're most capable of achieving at I have very strong beliefs on this I feel out the vast majority of private school applications and I see our best kids every year Walts away to Lakeside SAS Bush you name it they're leaving because we don't serve their needs and I really believe that we can serve the needs of kids mathematically and it's not based on their grade thank you the next speaker is Jessica Chong I'll be discussing research on this flyer here in the back on the effects of Highly capable cohort based acceleration on students students furthest from educational Justice ffj that have come to light

077in the years since the prior board's vote to end the highcap cohort we already know from Decades of research in over 53,000 highcap students that access to enrichment combined with above grade level acceleration is better for most high cap students academically socially and psychologically students from disadvantaged backgrounds have been less likely to be identified for services but use of non-verbal cognitive test group level norms and Universal screening can improve Equity as these changes have been adopted more widely it's become possible to learn about the effects of high cap services including acceleration on students ffj including a 2020 study showed that Boston public schools program which includes above grade acceleration in elementary school cohorts increased ontime High School graduation rates for Black and Latino highcap students by 65% in 2024 Nobel Prize winner David card and

078colleague studied students eligible for free or reduced lunch in another large Urban District boys who receive free reduced lunch and were in the high kep cohort graduated high school on time and entered College 25% more often which closed the graduation Gap with girls the proportion of boys who finish algra by 8th grade increased from 42% to 72% and they took double the number of AP classes suspension rates also decreased importantly two prior studies of this same district showed there were no negative effects on nine highcap students in summary new research in districts using more Equitable identification practices show that cohort Services reduce educational inequities with the largest gain for Black and Latino students boys and students receiving free reduced lunch these studies consistently show that students ffj fur this from educational Justice have the most

079to gain from access and the Le most to lose without it please reverse the districtwide ban and above grade acceleration so a neighborhood models possible work with us on transparent objective analysis to assess its outcomes and reconsider closure of the cohort given this research thank you next is Stephanie Goen who will be followed by Laura Rose Murphy and Ari Eng Les thank you I'm Stephanie goian I'm the parent of a second grader at Cascadia in the recent enrollment survey over 40% of currently enrolled families across demographic groups considered changes to the highly capable programs to be reasons to consider leaving the district that's four times the number of families that are directly affected by these programs I am thankful that you have heard their concerns and that you have decided to continue the cofort model

080for now while reassessing how to move forward but this simple pause is not enough there is much more work to be done for example currently each school is responsible for Designing their own highly capable program their cips vary dramatically and there is no system to assess whether each plan uses best practices and meets legal requirements including acceleration neither have we seen a system to evaluate implementation and what support schools need as they progress we have not seen the criteria that must be met to define a functioning neighborhood highly capable program is sufficient to meet the academic and social needs of all of its students while those being developed there remain no back stop for communities without access to cohort schools whether due to Geography Special Education needs or other barriers and those students in schools

081need to receive prioritized support to ensure availability of Legally mandated services to which they still do not have access while the district continues to improve its screening processes it also cannot leave it to each classroom teacher to determine who will get tier 2 Services as as is as is implied by the letters that went home explaining that newly identified highcap students would by default receive only tier one services this entirely negates all benefits of universal screening finally information about highly capable Services needs to be clear and available to all parents at all schools every year but especially now the newly identif when the newly identified families have missed appeals deadlines thinking there would be no cohorts and many believe that they have also missed the enrollment window parents have been asking for this transparency for

082years whether it is about highly capable programs school closures option schools or many of the other things you're hearing about tonight a pause is simply not enough please conclude your remarks I'm asking you to do better this next time around thank you the next speaker is Laura Rose Murphy Laura Rose Murphy thank you for this opportunity I've never done this before my student is at a neighborhood Elementary School with a lot going for it he has extended resource fed services in the gened room he also does not write yet due to his disability and I got a letter saying he qualifies for advanced learning his teacher is great but she says she has zero support from The District in how to help my son access appropriate level learning no resources no training no funding and

083they don't even tell her who has qualified or how they qualify neither her nor the principal could tell me anything about which level was appropriate for my son or accessible despite the required math scores for HC and the advanced learning Department avoided my questions until the time to appeal had closed the district has not replaced h CC Elementary Advanced learning is paltry and not fully accessible volunteering with the PTA the number one thing I hear from all parents is my qualified child isn't receiving Advanced learning in the classroom the district is throwing the teachers under the bus my child isn't academically challenged he spends his days reading in the corner or pacing the hall my the teachers do not have the resources or training to educate 2E kids the udl is not adequate for him

084to access the material the weighted Staffing model is in direct opposition to to inclusion resulting in the more sped the more larger the class sizes making it even harder for unsupported teachers to meet diverse Learners needs this is not inclusion this is not an education this is daycare there are many kids left behind at the intersection of moderate to severe support and advanced learning needs I talk to their parents all the time we must make sure Advanced learning is actually inclusive of diverse Learners and that the udl provides access to Advanced learning and highly capable for students who need extra support students with disabilities are some of the most vulnerable kids in our communities it is a legal Duty and a moral obligation to protect them with a free and appropriate public education thank you

085for your time our next speaker is Ari Eng Les Ari Engles AR will be followed by Rebecca bins and then Eric feny could he was that was that Miss Wilson Jones could you repeat the name Eng Les hi I'm Ari I get that you want to consolidate underfilled neighborhood schools logistically speaking I even support this I don't think anybody's going to pull their kids out of the school system because their new school is a little farther away but then you talk about closing option schools you play Shenanigans with option School enrollment where you won't take any out of geozone students from the waiting list despite the fact that the option schools are under enrolled despite the fact that the classrooms in the option schools are underfilled I think this is a mistake options schools offer

086a different educational approach versus neighborhood schools parents apply to option schools because the neighborhood schools aren't filling their kids' needs so what I'm saying is by closing option schools and playing Shenanigans with option School enrollment you're actively kissing you're actively pushing kids out of SPS which leads to Greater inequity and lower enrollment which in turn leads to later leads to lower budget I get that you can make many of these arguments about Advan Advanced learning programs and I agree and I make those arguments as well however while Advanced learning programs will take additional investment the option schools already exist use them open up the wait list it's practically free for you right now save your enrol e account save your budget go ahead and consolidate the neighborhood schools if you have to but give us

087the choice to send our kids to option schools rather than taking them out of SPS thanks the next speaker is Rebecca bins Rebecca bins Rebecca bins uh Graham Hill parent former SPS teacher thank you for being here projecting enrollment and Staffing schools appropriately is challenging especially in the low-income schools where enrollment fluctuates throughout the year knowing all of this the district should have a responsive Staffing model last October I testified here that we had 33 students in a single fourth grade classroom now it's up to 40 we sought help from director Katrina hunt Dr Jones fa Manu Fred podesta all of you they did not respond at all or cited a new policy that schools must be owed to teachers to receive October adjustments this new policy and action looks like 40 to 60 students

088that schools struggle to accommodate with zero financial support from SPS or staff our district gets money from the state on a per pupil basis where is the money for the 38 unaccounted for students at Graham Hill this year at Graham Hill the class ratios should range from 18 to1 for kindergarten my son's class is 26 to 28 to1 for fifth grade why can't the money that SPS gets for these 38 students go to paying for a classroom teacher as of February Graham Hill has owed two teachers we were staffed for 244 now we have 282 students and the purple book for next year shows the district repeating the same mistake projecting 23 fewer students than we have now Graham Hill is far from alone with this massively overcrowded classrooms the number one reason cited by

089the s360 enrollment study was that families left SPS because of class size with 40 students in a class and nobody at the district willing to help they make a good point this happens every year and its effects are exacerbated by this new policy policies can change you can fix this you can direct Dr Jones to change this policy we shouldn't have to fight for teachers they are the foundation of our children's education the next speaker is Eric feny after Eric will be McKenna Gant and then lur from Marie Rivera um hello my name is Eric FY and I'll be speaking on academic excellence and autonomy uh it is my understanding and observation that for about the last 10 years SBS has been operating on a teach to the standard policy while the idea of getting

090everybody above a minimum is a fine concept it becomes a problem when that becomes the stopping point both in terms of hierarchical guidance and in terms of programming we seem to be pursuing Equity by having a singular low expectation this was overwhelmingly echoed in the survey data from February and the HC drama the public is telling you to increase academic rigor I strongly urge you to interpret academic Excellence for all as your primary goal I know the goals are set at this point uh but this is a school system intended to educate how is the best possible education for all not the number one goal we should be the Envy of the country instead you have many families committed due to philosophical obligation or financial constraints like a Loveless marriage side note let's bring back

09130 to 60 Minutes of homework in K through e self-study is an important skill make it optional what are we doing that's making us the best if the schools can't even be inspired how are we inspiring students to be their best take the bureaucratic shackles off your individual schools let those with the means and ambition lead the way then help the others to follow if a school wants to do language immersion let them if a school wants a stem theme let them if a school wants to bring back walk to math let them if families want to enroll in a school that has space let them when people are doing what they love and are excited about that's where Excellence comes from lift people up don't hold them back next is McKenna Gant and then

092Laura Marie Rea do we have McKenna in the room okay if we could make sure our next few speakers are also moving into the room that's going to be next after the me will be Laura Marie Rivera Rivera Talia uh tile Fitz isara Jimenez Guera and then Sarah Chad hello my name is McKenna Gant I'm a special education teacher at Cleveland High School I seed my time to Isaiah [Applause] hi my name is Isaiah I am a queer student at Cleveland and I am here to make sure my fellow students are safe and cared for by non insuring funding and mix Crystal's position in the district you are taking away our protection and our resources we should be able to feel safe in our schools be who and be who we are without resources to

093help wait we are sorry without resources to get help if we need it where does that lead us this could be detrimental to students especially students who don't have any other supports or very little resources so I would like to ask the district could if that the district could pay for the lgbtq plus program coordinator instead of our Ling on govern on a government grant so we don't have to worry about this happening again I my what I saved my time to Nova okay hi you want to say hi hi I'm Fox uh I feel that Seattle is a really accepting City we have a lot of feelings of unity and when I joined the GSA at Cleveland I was hoping for more of this and that was exactly what I got I made some

094of the first friends I have in high school here and there's just a really tight-knit community that couldn't have happened without sou Sam Crystal they set an example for me of what my future as a queer person can look like seeing adults that I can see myself self in is vital I feel to my future oh okay okay um Sam works with I think every school in the district and one of their most important jobs is preventing suicide of the kids here the kids in this room half of trans and non-binary kids consider suicide we are four times more likely to consider it than any other kid or I think just person in general one person commits every what is this 45 seconds that's their job they're keeping this from happening we will see more

095dead kids next year if they are fired uh that's about it thank you the next speaker is Laura Marie Rivera who'll be followed by Italia and then [Applause] isara my heart is heavy as things look more and more Grim at the national level and the global thinking becomes blurry I thank everyone here for coming together to act locally Advocates are disappearing from their homes but for this meeting we're focusing on our children the future of our society to that end I want to talk about excellence and education what is it where is it it's written on the side of this building Dr Jones you promised us 180 days of Excellence when you accepted this role I want that Excellence I want it for my kids and for all of the kids of Seattle what does

096it even look like to start each and every student deser deserves a safe and welcoming environment from there what we are doing to acknowledge and include the many many many sometimes competing needs of our students are our goals good enough are they excellent I don't believe they are I want each of our students to be able to learn and grow to their fullest potential and to recognize that there are many paths to success when they graduate our kids can't vote yet but they're the reason we're here so what will they need to succeed what does Excellence look like for them is it social justice the Arts Sports multiple languages learning in your neighborhood stretching for opportunities advanced math technical skills or options the truth is that the goals needs wants of individual students are just

097that individual and how does it look to truly include the marginalized students and differently abled Learners despite the SPs commitment to those furthest from educational Justice you removed the website Pages for Dei and aama someone thought that was okay the pages were quietly added back but those actions speak volumes Seattle special education PTSA recently sent an unanswered letter to express the Deep hurt by The District's lack of care for students with disabilities highlighted by the unmentioned shooting at Bridges and now the devastation at Washington Middle School we talk a lot about student outcomes but what are we even doing we need trust we need communication we need safety and we need opportunity for our children I don't think that's too much to ask next is Talia tile [Applause] Fitz my name is Talia tile Fitz

098and I have a son in fourth grade at an HCC school and a daughter identified as an advanced Learner in first grade at our neighborhood title onek to8 school we love our neighborhood school so when my son was identified as HC in second grade we were conflicted his teacher did everything she could to challenge him but she didn't have the resources to offer more unfortunately this is a story we heard over and over again from our families at our school the opportunities your child receives depend entirely on how much you are able to advocate for them and in many cases our HC students have received no support materials or instruction compared to schools who describe Advanced learning services in detail our school's most recent CIP only states that advanced learning services are in progress what

099does this mean for families like ours it means nothing concrete has changed our school still lacks a coordinated Al program there are no clear standards no meaningful strategy IES and no real support in place to help our children succeed at their level especially in cases where kids are identified as HC in only one subject our neighborhood teachers are working tirelessly in a diverse multilingual and highly stratified environment and they are not given the Staffing materials of professional development to make HC and Al learning a reality our HC students might be handed worksheets or they might be told to watch an extra video in the corner of a classroom this is not Advanced learning or instruction this is a m opportunity I'm not here to criticize our school I'm here to advocate for the resources our

100school desperately needs to ensure kids are taught accelerated learning and enhanced instruction a system where students educational experience hinges on who their parents know or how much advocacy they can muster is deeply inequitable the future of HC and Al in neighborhood schools should not be decided behind closed doors it should be transparent coordinated and accessible so that schools like ours are fully staffed fully resourced and fully supported highly capable and advanced learner students regardless of their background or resources should not be excluded from instruction thank you next is assara Jimenez Guera will be followed by Sarah Chad and then Aiden Roberts hello I would like to seed my time to Young from rer Beach High School I am young a student at rer Beach High School Filipino Club in apar the save our schools campaign

101as a youth activist I am here today again because me and my community have not seen any improve improvement with our education crisis which is actually worsening Filipinos in in Beach have witnessed and experienced countless issues that that deeply affect how they able to learn in our school bullying stuff persists with no little to no protection especially among migrant youth but migrants are not just getting attacked by their classmates but the state the current guidance to wait for their judicial warrant from Ice does not protect our students from further endangers them and their families we demand the district to keep ice and federal agencies off LPS schools the budget the budget cuts limits resources for career students and limit where migrant students can learn their history the only Filipino history class in in Cleveland may

102get cut we don't get to learn our his our our history of resistance leading to the Filipino people to have no hope when in reality is it is a state that is all corrupt under this District we are forced into a system where students will be doomed to fail and have to rely on Military recruitment to save their lives if this is how our school operates our students are we clearly calling this a safe and secure education Filipinos and armor Beach demand you to provide more funding for cultureal Relevant education such as Filipino classes to prioritize quality education versus military Recruitment and to advocate for our safety and protection amidst attacks on our rights students and families staff are human beings that should be protected and served under this District especially in smaller local areas

103stop putting effort in sugar coating Solutions but when instead you can actually advocate for them next speaker is Sarah Chad Sarah if you're online you'll need to press star sticks to unmute on the line Sarah I can see that you're unmuted so we should be able to hear you if you want to start providing your testimony oh it looks like you're muted again if you could press star six to unmute on the line and ensure you're unmuted on your device looks like you're unmuted but we're not hearing you yet Sarah I'm going to go to the next speaker if you want to kind of work on sorting out the tech maybe leave and come back um the next speaker is Aiden Roberts I will um call your name again Sarah hi everybody my name is

104Aiden Roberts I am a special education teacher at uh Cleveland High School and I see my time to uh a student Janelle morera hello everyone my name is Janelle morera I attend Cleveland High School I here to talk to you about a topic us students care deeply about which are the budget for our school School my experience as a student at Cleveland well I'm so sorry facts Cleveland has capacity for 900 students but the district is only projecting us to have 660 students which is about 75% of our capacity at at our school empty every year many students are applying and having to be weight listed and they are not being let in even though we have space for student for more students um effects staff members are affected because of this under enrollment we

105are projecting to lose 3.5 FTE for our school next year it will potentially lead to blocking certain Humanity classes my experience as a student at Cleveland have been very good teachers and IAS have given me a lot of support as I navigate through school which I appreciate it sucks that teachers will have to be cut off from our school if teachers are fired due to limited funding students will lose someone they trust that created a safe space for them um many of my peers have been concerned learned that firing teachers could lead to a larger class size which would lead to burnout for teachers because of the increased workload there will be less one inone individualized learning for students a fewer there will be also fewer classes to choose from because there are limited teachers

106to teach the class students are feeling worried and stressed out due to the uncertainty of how their learning environment will change students who have IPS and learning accommodations will have less support with their learning which will affects their academic process greatly before I finish I would like to read this behalf of my friend UCS Sher off I would like to talk about funding funding is important because there is a huge gap within the district the money is just being used to pro proct the superintendent the supporters of the superintendent will say otherwise but where is the leader that is supposed to be in charge and advocating for us money should be used to fund the schools particularly in the particularly in the South End the South End needs more money because we don't get the

107same opportunities as a lot of other students for example we have lower parent involvement because our parents don't know what is going on due to language barriers or them being at work they're working 12 to 13 hours per day at Cleveland Humanities currently is at risk of being cut that would mean there would be less teachers in overcrowded classrooms this means no support for students which means we can't learn how to read or how to write this is problematic because it's the most important thing in life we need to learn history because it is important to learn about our past in order to fix the present and future if we cut funding we will lose a lot of teachers it's important to keep teachers because they're the backbones of the school they try to do

108their best to help a lot of students but given the resources it's hard for them sorry for that to happen a lot of students are suffering there are not enough teachers that can help them if if we start helping the teachers and have accountability within the District of where funding goes we will be a better District too often we dismiss dismiss the voices of our youth but they're the ones who will carry on our future and the Next Generation I'd like to have an actual conversation with you all and if you can't give me your time today then I don't know what this outcome will be thank you for your time and listening I'm going to go back to Sarah Chad Sarah it looks you're like you are unmuted on the line oh now you're

109muted again if you can press star six to unmute there we go hey can you hear me this time we can yes you can go ahead oh my gosh I am so sorry guys I don't know what happened there um so yes I'm s Chad I'm the parent of a current sixth grader at Madison Middle School um and first want to thank the district and board for recognizing the value of the highly cohort highly capable cohort model and the need for additional time to success for all within our neighborhood schools if we transition from that um so in my case my son was in the last bont Park Elementary High cohort uh the cohort was somewhat unofficial in our time there and did require us compromising on some of that MTH acceleration you'd see in

110other HCC schools uh so we got one year ahead instead of two years ahead however um the bus ride that it would have taken for him to get over to F Good Marshall was just prohibitively long and I've heard the same from many other parents so just did not work for our family but unfortunately for the last several years newly identified highly capable students in our region in southwest region have not had any cohort options this cburg and Marshall many of our families are staying in our neighborhood schools not because we're fully satisfied with the highly capable Services provided there but because the available option is just geographically impractical that said there is significant inequity and accessible options for highly capable families in the southwest region of the district the overall rate of Highly capable

111identified students in Southwest is comparable to the other regions at about 18% per 2023 2024 school year data yet Southwest Elementary students account for only 1.7% of total HCC enrollment contast that with nearly 18% in Central Schools nearly 25% in each of the other regions Northeast Northwest and and uh Southeast excuse me Southwest is severely under repesentative under repes presented in highly capable cohorts presenting a significant equity and your issue the south region has been neglected as the district District's highly capable strategy has evolved and students are being left behind please ensure that this inequity is accounted for in future planning the South schools must be provided Equitable and accountable High the capable support by the 2025 26 school year and at minimum please revert to allowing acceleration at least in now I agree with

112the previous uh speaker who said this is ask you to your remarks regardless a great level thank Youk the next speaker is Gordon McDougall hello we can hear we can hear you in the room is that Gordon hi sorry for the mix up on the unmuting I'm Gordon McDougle of urban native education Alliance and I would like to se my time to John Romero one of our elders um there's a little difficulty with him getting on so I'm not sure he will come on um John if you're there please unmute by pushing star six um if I we don't hear you then I will continue St okay I think he's um having a little bit of issue with technology I will continue as Miss Wilson indicated earlier our students our interns our wonderful children who've

113been working so hard our youth to um learn so much about their own culture and learn about some of the horrific episodes in it the Indian boarding schools was the focus that they chose to to um use to um spread recognition of difficulties that native peoples have had across this country across this continent the boarding schools were horrific experiences um strong native peoples everywhere survived them many died there at them many lost family members many are still buried there in Anonymous Graves and people should know about this the students work very hard on this resolution which youve heard or have before you and we highly recommend that you give it a lot of thought and work this into your curriculum We Stand ready and willing and happy to Aid in that effort many of us

114are highly knowledgeable about this topic and others and we hope and know that you will support us and all of our students native students and those who need to learn about this unspoken thing this hor horrific tragedy that happened up until to's can in 1970 when children were um carried away basically to schools to cut their hair to rip out their language to rip out their culture please um work with us to ratify and rectify this terrible terrible Injustice and ask you to please conclude your remarks and we we appreciate your help and I'm sure we'll be in contact soon thank you so much thank you our next speaker is Hans Kell Hans Kell what happened good evening Hans kale father of two SPS kids I was going to speak today about transferring my youngest

115to a district next year with a highly capable program that works I wanted to put a face to the results presented in the enrollment survey but yesterday's email on hybrid HC Services changed my comment first thank you for listening and extending cohort schools for three years second with Dr Torres we seem to finally have someone senior responsible who has common sense and cares about the program and his kids I hope he finds a director of advanced learning who shares that mindset third Dr Tores has a mess to clean up and I hope the board and Community give him and Dr Jones the space to do so there's damage to undo uncertainty to clarify and Trust to rebuild much of this mess was manufactured by previous board directors it'll take time but at least the first

116step preserving the only existing HC services in SPS has been taken questions remain will students who start in the cohort in the next three years be guaranteed to graduate from it this would effectively extend the cohort out for six years will above grade level acceleration continue to be offered in the cohort and just as importantly will it be allowed for HC students in neighborhood schools many neighborhood principles believe it is forbidden by District policy is it Dr Jones why do HC Services Fade Out in middle school and vanish in high school when will we prioritize socioeconomically disadvantaged students for HC services and provide norming and support for them once they enter why is there only one cohort School in the large geography of the South and Southwest does the district understand mtss in the context

117of the highly capable offering tier one servic serves udl and equity and inclusion and calling it a highly capable program is not nearly good enough we want stability impr proven approaches we need equity and inclusion without sacrificing legally mandated accelerated learning we need Advanced learning leaders who believe in giftedness and advocate for it not those who see acceleration as a harm to others I don't know if my kid will stay but with Dr Tes leading and listening I'm more optimistic thank you the next speaker will be cat baren do we have cat with us hear me yes we can hear you hello can you hear me yes we can hear you cat hi my name is cat Baron I'm speaking you today today as a queer person and a parent of an SPS student also

118as a teacher at Maple Elementary on Beacon Hill I'm just worried about the future of District lgbtq supports in the face of recent Federal funding Cuts I know that the SPs health education office has received a federal CDC grant for the last 30 years that specifically funds a full-time lgbtq plus program coordinator staff position if this CDC Grant gets cut it'll have a major negative impact on our schools we'll lose important staff training Family Outreach health and wellness supports to students teacher supports and all this at a time when queer and trans rights are directly under attack by the federal government I'm asking the board today to take a preemptive approach to this situation and to make a plan with SPS leadership to use District funds to ensure lasting lgbtq plus supports across our district

119every two weeks when I gather with the 30 plus students at Maples Rainbow Club I see students who are hungry for a space where they can truly be themselves where they can show up for their friends in a welcoming safe and inclusive environment where they can speak about their fears and their hopes for the lives that they deserve to live a place where they can name the pain they feel when their identities are made fun of or questioned or misunderstood these children need teachers and schools that will ensure that they grow up feeling safe and knowing that they belong as a board you all have the opportunity to align your values for welcoming an inclusive schools with the real need to plan for adequate funding for lgbtq plus supports thank you so much for being

120Fearless in your advocacy for lgbtq plus youth on this issue they all need us to stand with them and for them now and always so thank you [Music] all president top that was our 25th and final speaker for Testimony that concludes our public testimony for this meeting I really appreciate everyone coming out here including all of our students it's really wonderful to hear from students um we are going to move back to the TBL for Progress monitoring um we're going to I'll hand it back to director hery we're going to finish up our progress monitoring and then we will take a quick break I have a real time legislative update which is that Senate Bill uh 5263 unanimously passed out of the Senate this is the bill that would fund special education and would yield

121about $25 million at the current level passed by the senate for SPS so that's really good news and a huge thank you to Senator Peterson who championed that and I heard gave a knockout speech on the [Applause] floor thank you for that update director anen all right director hery I think since we have a tied agenda and a packed agenda and we have our coaches waiting I would would be nice if we started and then uh we will take a break after yeah so everybody in the room I am so thankful that y'all came out tonight and we uh have a little bit of extra business we need to do so if you are interested in continuing a conversation we have plenty of space on the other side of the door I am so sorry

122but we just want to make sure that we are able to hear thank you so much all right so uh with that we'll pass it over to our coach is um to proceed with the training AJ are you with us and if we could uh make sure that those doors are closed just to block as much of the sound as possible we'd really appreciate it yeah yes are you able to hear me yes sir you're a little soft but if you can't fix it no problem I we scoot a little bit closer um so we've already heard from uh the superintendent uh go over some the monitoring report um if you all will have that handy we'll use some of that in our conversations uh but to frame it up uh my cousin um has

123a pizza oven and he has spent literally hundreds of hours perfecting his pizza dough game now if you gave me the exact same ingredients like I I could take those but he knows the exact order to put the ingredients together and how to work the dough and how to rest the dough and all of those sort of things um even if we're using the exact same ingredients what he would create at the end of that would be amazing and what I would create none of us would really want to eat uh effective monitoring is a lot like that that there are the ingredients for Effective monitoring most of which you all are familiar with you already have the pre-reading the handout that I provided you but then there's how you use the ingredients how you

124combine them how you work them together and so I want to spend time on both of the this evening a little bit of time on the ingredients cuz ideally you already know much of that but then more time uh just opening up the floor for some discussion around how do you use these in a way that makes sense for you all um because you have to come up with a dough that creates the pizza that works for Seattle Public Schools um and that's going to have to be done collectively so we'll try to spend most of our time there this evening uh that being said I do first want to just cover some of the basic ingredients of effective goal monitoring um so I'd first just ask board members um what are the benefits why

125do we bother monitoring to begin with what what are the what are the intended benefits of monitoring progress towards your goals so that we can know how children are doing uh are you looking for a one sentence or just like yeah any anyone just chime in yeah so how we can know uh how our students are doing if if there are any changes that need to be made um or if we need to direct the superintendent to adjust course in any way um we have a regular look into what our progress is yeah anyone else what's the purpose what what are the benefits why do you bother monitoring at all it allows us to reflect for our community how our school system is doing uh for our kids certainly anyone else let me ask the

126opposite question what are examples of things that are not the purpose of monitoring what do you not trying to accomplish by monitoring progress towards your goals could you ask that question once again yeah I'm essentially asking the opposite question the first question I ask is what is the purpose what are you trying to create yep but I also find that it is often helpful when a board has had some experience with this as you all had to ask a harder question what are some examples of things that you're not trying to accomplish what is what is the non-purpose of monitoring if the purpose of monitoring is around uh checking progress you know for our students that they're learning that they're receiving the blessing we intend uh that we're trying to find that out early enough

127that um we can get an understanding of what pivots the superintendent intends to make if those are the purpose what are examples of non-purpose what are we not trying to accomplish with monitoring we are not trying to have gotta moments or setups for the superintendent to utilize whatever apathy or negative feelings we might have to get those out during progress monitoring if that makes that's a perfect example of a of a non-purpose for monitoring is it's not designed to be a gotcha moment uh to beat up on the staff um when I when I think of that example I think of professional learning communities where ideally educators are coming together to have tough conversations about the data and what their response to the data will be but the intention of a PLC isn't to beat

128up on Educators it's to really support folks as they're supporting children and so I'd say that's the same thing here that it is not the purpose to beat up on your Educators your superintendent um it's quite the opposite uh anyone else what is another example of a non-purpose of monitoring um a non-purpose would be to ask seven elective Community representatives to offer suggestions about how to um make progress that is 100% not the purpose of monitoring absolutely this isn't a we'll all show up and give our best examples of what we think should be happening instead um it's really to get a deep understanding of what is the superintendent understand and what's the superintendent's beliefs about what should be done because if we're talking about realistically what's going to drive the staff's behavior the day

129after the board meeting isn't the set of board member opinions it's really going to be what are the beliefs of the staff and so the board you have a vested interest in knowing what those beliefs are and monitoring is the opportunity to learn what those beliefs are not tell them what you think they should be which they'll listen to and if they agree with them then they'll hold on to them if they disagree with them they'll probably have forgotten them by the time they wake up um and so that's definitely example of a non-purpose for monitoring so I just wanted to ground the conversation in what's the purpose and what's the non-purpose and because that then explains why some of the ingredients are so important um one of the first ingredients for Effective monitoring is

130you need monitoring reports and in the pre-reading that we provided you and it's in your documents attached to the agenda this evening um we talk about the four key elements that have to be present uh for monitoring reports another key element of effective monitoring is the monitoring calendar this is is a really important ingredient um an ingredient that after some visits with you all it sounds like there are some adjustments that need to be made uh ideally in the monitoring calendar you're finding ways to make sure that each month you're doing some amount of monitoring of whatever the most recent data is recognizing that sometimes it'll be uh a little in a rears uh that it you know may be you know 30 to 60 days uh old but it's still appropriate to be monitoring

131it um and the monitor calendar helps organize all of that so that you're not trying to monitor too many things because this is really about going deep not wide but so that also it's not a gotcha game that it's really clear up front each month which slice of our goals we're going to be paying attention to so the monitoring report is a key ingredient the monitoring uh calendar is a key ingredient let me pause for a second what questions or concerns do you have about either of those ingredients to effective go mon in any questions or comments about either of those key ingredients the monitoring report or the monitoring calendar I have a question about the monitoring calendar yeah yeah um oh by the way hi AJ this is Liza talking I don't know if

132you can see us we just can't see you good evening um hi um the monitoring calendar um I've seen other districts do out you know the whole life of the goal of of the goals so five years of a strategic plan when we're looking at you know ideally we have something to monitor every month but I think we may have focused on there has to be monitoring every month um and not what is important to look at every month if that makes sense um so as we are moving forward in this process and being at some point presented with a monitoring calendar what what what should we be looking for when we're asked to approve it so part of the reason behind encouraging a board to monitor every month is to really um create habits

133that are at the level of automaticity that we we just automatically every month we are dialed into what is the reality for our students and then that is an absolute pivotal Focus for the board month after month after month and one key way of accomplishing that is to actually strengthen that muscle every single month and so that's the intention behind the recommendation to monitor progress every month and to have scheduled that monitoring out for the full uh length of the goal so if the goals are 5 years long to scheduled that monitoring out for the next 5 years if it's if they're 3 years long schedul out for the next 3 years um sometimes s reality intervenes and the data set that you have to work with doesn't make that practical um that though however

134has been relatively rare um but if that's the case and certainly as a coaching team we can work with you to try to figure out how to navigate that but most of the time it's not a function of whether or not districts have access to the data for monitoring though sometimes it is most of the time it's just a matter of organizing it and spacing it out so for example if you're monitoring three of your interim goals every month you're probably going to run out of data and so you'll have four or five months left where you don't have anything to Monitor and so what we recommend instead is space those out and the trade-off there is like I said sometimes you'll be looking a monitoring report where the data is 30 to 60 days

135old um but I would generally encourage you to work with slightly older data that the upside is you'll have a little bit better analysis from your staff because they will have seen what the results are by then um but that it' be better to work with slightly older data and just have that monthly unbroken habit than to load yourself up with a bunch of monitoring reports in a month looking at the freshest most immediate data but at the cost of not having consistent practice every month and at the cost of going shallow in into multiple monitoring reports rather than deep in just one or maybe two is that responsive to your inquiry yes very thank you that's super helpful other questions or Reflections about these two main ingredients for Effective goal monitoring of your monitoring

136reports and what should be in them and your monitoring calendars and what should be in them all right and just know that as questions come up we can go back so those are some of the uh key ingredients that the superintendent and their team really have to produce the key ingredient that the board produces are the questions that you bring um and those questions tend to fall in three different flavors and again this is all material that's attached in your agenda uh so anybody else can if you want to follow along go look in the agenda for that information but the questions that you ask about these tend to fall into three major categories are they questions that are technical in nature that they're really looking at how are things measured are they tactical in

137nature they're really looking at who's doing which actions or are they strategic in nature are they really trying to evaluate the relationship uh between where we are right now what we're doing um and and where we are right now with between what we're doing and where we are right now with the goals um and so all three of these types of questions tactical uh Technical and strategic are appropriate questions for board members to ask but what we do recommend is that just like with my cousin and him inserting different ingredients at different times in the process that there are different times when you want to insert these questions that all three types of these questions are perfectly reasonable to be asked before the board meeting so that you can be better prepared to have a

138really deep generative dialogue amongst each other and with a superintendent at the board meeting but at the board meeting we really encourage board members to focus on strategic questions again to really push for a deep generative dialogue that is dialed into what are the high level strategies we're pursuing and what is their relationship to accomplishing the goals that the boards adopted and so all of the questions that you have to ask are always going to be appropriate if anyone tells you well you can't ask those questions they they probably have a misunderstanding of this key ingredient uh the questions the board members ask um but there certainly is a season at which adding them into the recipe gives you better results um and the best time to add Technical and tactical questions in is before

139the board meeting the best time uh as well as strategic but definitely the best time uh to have the Deep strategic conversation is at the board meeting so let me pause there what questions do you have about about this key ingredient that the board brings to the recipe uh the questions that it asks whether technical tactical or strategic what questions or comments do you have about this ingredient the board members questions all right and again at anytime feel free to jump in um and we can go deeper into anything that you're curious about I guess AJ sorry just I it's more of a confirmation question um you know that that any question at any time is a or any any qu any of these questions is a question that's you know we can and should

140ask um so the the Tactical and Technical questions should be ahead of the meeting and then shared with all board directors in preparation of the meeting yes absolutely but not only shared with the board members it's also valuable for the community to have insight into what is the nature of the conversation that its representatives are engaged in and so our coaching is certainly to share both the questions and the responses to those questions as a Q&A document that is attached to the agenda so that community members can be a breast of uh the questions of of essentially the work being done by their representatives on their behalf and so yes it should definitely be made available to all board members but it's also wise to to bolster the transparency of your work to make it

141available to your community as well thank you any other questions or Reflections about this key ingredient the questions uh the board members ask as part of monitoring um yeah I have a question AJ this is Evan um so I guess I get sometimes I get a little bit uh in the weeds around like submitting questions in advance um versus T discussing it in real time at the board meeting like so theoretically what if we all submitted all of our tactical Technical and strategic questions in advance of the board meeting and then got answers back from staff then like what are we talking about during progress monitoring does that make sense um yeah it makes perfect sense and so thank you so first and foremost it is definitely appropriate as board members if you want to

142submit all of those questions in advance you're welcome to do so uh it should allow the superintendent to be even better prepared to have the conversation uh when they have an understanding of the directionality that the board wants to go in that conversation and so it's certainly appropriate to submit all those in advance that being said even if you receive um answers to strategic questions in advance um which um you won't always receive those um frequently as we're visiting with superintendent I definitely get all the technical and tactical questions answered uh but it's perfectly appropriate uh to say we are spending our time and and this is a strategic question that was submitted in advance and we are working on that and we'll be uh prepared to uh answer this question um at the board

143meeting it's a perfectly appropriate approach for the staff to take and so it signals to the board thank you for letting us know so we can be prepared and we will in fact be prepared or the superintendent could in fact answer those questions in advance either way it's still appropriate for board members to ask any strategic questions they want to ask at the day is whether um they've shared it in advance or not and whether they've received an answer to it in advance or not most often what happens is when board members receive answers to their strategic questions in advance that often Jiggles loose for the board member uh some additional adjacent strategic questions and in which case our encouragement would be no need to recover U ground that's already been covered ask whatever the

144next questions are but if there are questions of a strategic nature that you feel are valuable to surface for the full board even if they've already been answered it's still appropriate to ask those that is not the same case with the technical and tactical the point of answering those in advance is so that you don't have to cover that ground at the board meeting um and ideally even when you ask strategic questions in advance and they're answered in advance that helps Propel you to the next level of depth of the conversation in person uh but to the point of your question where worst case scenario you ask a strategic question you get an answer um if you still want to ask it at the day you're perfectly within your rights to do so is that

145responsive to your inquiry yes indeed thank you other questions about this key ingredient that the board brings to monitoring uh the questions that it asks all right and so those the those are the kind of really the the most important ingredients that you have to work with uh the superintendent brings some to the table uh they'll put together a monitoring report though the adoption of that belongs to the board not the superintendent but the superintendent knows when data is available so that's why they bring that to the table the superintendent brings the monitoring reports to the table and then the board shows up with questions and these and the the the interplay and the blending of these are the key ingredients you need for Effective monitoring so I want to spend the rest of our

146limited time together um just opening up the floor to have conversation about not merely what the ingredients are but how we com buy and how we use the ingredients uh because there have been some concerns uh that some of you have surfaced for me um and so I just want to make sure that there is a space for people to get their questions answered and create some shared understanding so for the first part of kind of the how of monitoring I actually want to go back to a comment that was made earlier uh which is this is not intended to be a gotcha uh opportunity uh to beat up on staff uh whether it be the superintendent or anyone else that's part of the reason that the monitoring conversation is in fact intended to be

147between the board and the superintendent I understand that uh you all are kind of wrestling uh with this my watching of your board meetings leads me to think and this is my interpretation so if you disagree you're you're welcome to your opinion but my view of watching your board is that there is a reluctance to have the superintendent U really own the entirety of the monitoring conversation uh for fear that uh the monitoring conversation may be weaponized and Ed the opportunity to uh kind of beat up on the superintendent that is certainly a non-purpose of monitoring and and so I think there are a few things that can be done to manage that what I see happening in boards where that energy has kind of come into it um is that then there is a

148reluctance to spend time on monitoring period because it feels like it's injecting toxicity um rather than being what a effective PLC is and really injecting possibility um or I see boards still doing monitoring but shying away from having the superintendent um in in the firing range and instead bringing other staff in um and so I think it's a decision that you all have to make um I think the most uh healthy recipe involves this being a conversation between the board and the superintendent uh but that only works uh when there is a feeling of um of safety around the conversation um the moment that it feels like it is just a shooting gallery then you don't get most of the benefits of monitoring at that point I think it's a reasonable though suboptimal decision um

149of the board to either not to do less monitoring I don't think that's a good plan but I see folks pull the superintendent back and pull more staff in kind of um spread the assault across multiple people and hopefully minimize the assault on the superintendent um I I see that as a reasonable adaptation um but but it is an adaptation it is not uh it's not the it's not the best recipe um but I can understand how you can get there if that's necessary I see that as speaking to a failure of the board to create um the optimal conditions for monitoring to be effective so some things that you all can consider doing um where that's the case um one uh as board members it's very appropriate uh to reach out to us as

150coaches and have a conversation before the board meeting particularly if you've ever felt like um one of your questions has landed the wrong way landed a way that you didn't intend I strongly encourage you to reach out to us and we can work with you on workshopping some of that in advance so that's that's one thing that you as individual board members can do this isn't for us to censor you or to tell you what to ask or not to ask that's that's not our role but certainly if you want to make sure that you show up in the way that you intend U then that's that's something that we can support you in and would be you know absolutely delighted to do so uh we have other boards across the country where literally you

151know coaches will meet with board bers um a few weeks before the board meeting just to go through their questions and make sure that they increase the likelihood that they'll be received the way they intend um another important way that you can handle this in addition to reaching out to your coaches is frankly a lot of This falls on the shoulders of the board chair to Simply pause questions or conversations that in the board chairs judgment so this is purely a judgment call that in the board chairs judgment are not actually contributing to understanding the reality for our students and understanding what are the strategies uh that are working and not working what we've learned from and what we're going to do next but that go into evaluation of uh the superintendent as an individual

152employ employee um and so when we start to have conversation that looks like it's trying to reflect on the character of the superintendent rather than the performance of the system uh it if that is happening in the board chair's judgment our coaching would be that the board chair has an obligation as the role of the chair uh to pause that because that is inconsistent with what you all have said that you would do monitoring is not um a time to um off for critiques on the performance of the superintendent as an individual contributor it is a time to really evaluate the performance of the system as a whole so let me pause for a second I've offered two ideas about how the ingredients are used uh let me pause for a second and here just

153any Reflections or any questions uh about either my analysis of what I've seen from your board meetings or these two ideas I've offered of strategies that you all could use to strengthen the quality of your monitoring uh what questions or Reflections do you have about this I'll offer a reflection um I think that like the struggle that I have looking back like especially over the past year given that there's just been so much going on is that like it feels as though we spent a lot of our time uh doing that like and by that I mean uh utilizing progress monitoring to express our frustrations with other things and so that to me is just like time that we could have used like really diving in deep and and spending um more of our energy

154in limited time together focused on children right and I think where I am curious and I guess what my question would be is um I I know you haven't looked at a lot of the past board meetings but I think this will probably be a good opportunity for us as a board to replay the tape um and and really go into our next monitoring sessions with a more cleare eyed objective focused on students and so whenever our next border Retreat is or whenever we have another study session I think it really would be good to take a look at some of our past monitoring sessions and see specifically where could we have improved our questioning so that we don't fall into the same pitfalls and if that's out of order or out of line AJ

155let me know but I am looking for um something that we can look back to to point directly to and say like hey like this is a part of this that we need to own and this is like an example of how we could do things differently moving forward um but you tell me if that's not a good idea yeah so we we actually big fans of people replaying the video it's kind of like a you know effective coach going in back and watching the game tape after the game's over just looking for where opportunities for continuous Improvement it's not about what do we do right or wrong or good or bad it's not about any of that casting judgment or aspersions it's really about where are opportunities for me as an individual contributor as

156a board member uh to really step up my game and be more effective at representing the vision of values of my community um so to that end uh a few things yes I think it's definitely valuable to go back and look one of the things that I've done for you all in the past is I have coded some of your uh monitoring conversations I've I've literally written down the questions you've asked and then coded them uh using the instrument that you all again have in your agenda packet uh that looks at how smart is each question and then provided that back to you um and so we can continue to do that cuz that's the reason we provide that to you is so that you can have a way of looking back with a with

157a tool that helps you reflect on okay I see where I could have improved this question um or I see some other examples of some really great questions now that gives me some idea of how to frame the inquiries that I have and so that idea of going back um and replaying the video and us helping provide uh some coding of your questions uh I think those are excellent strategies I know from having previously coded your meetings um you all in the past and this is a previous incarnation of the board I don't think I've coded one of the monitoring meetings for this incarnation of the board but the previous incarnation of the board you all were definitely extraordinarily verbose um and so trying to get to how do we be just really dialed into

158what is it we want to ask so for example I remember one of the meetings that I coded um earlier last year and what would happen is you'd wind up there'd be a 3 minute statement and then a question and then another three minute statement and then two more questions and then the staff would only ask the very last question and the board member would get frustrated because they never got an answer to that first question I don't actually fault the staff for that that is just poor question asking on the part of the board and so it's things like that that when you go back and replay the video I think become a little bit more obvious uh when you look at us coding your meetings it becomes a little bit more obvious and

159that can be an opportunity for you to improve so I would strongly strongly encourage that as a strategy for folks U my commitment that I'll make on part of our team is we will code your next um your next uh monitoring conversation uh not necessarily tonight but in in the future one we'll code that and then provide that for you and if any of you want to have a one-on-one with a member of your coaching team you've got Lia you've got Carol you have myself um to go over those questions we'll happily do so with you other questions Reflections about you the the ingredient that you all bring to the table and how you uh of questioning and how you can do so in a way that lifts up the intention of monitoring where it's

160not um where it is a very aggressive interrogation of the performance of the system uh but isn't um necessarily a um tearing down of the performance of any individual um uh within that system uh any other questions Reflections I just have a quick reflection I say I I would I appreciate the tools in the tool box given tonight to be able to try to make sure that monitoring stays um about the strategy and how we're moving forward I I think those are both very helpful yeah one thing I would add to that is what a number of districts doing this work will often do is they all rotate who the facilitator for uh the monitoring conversations is I know that you all have done that in the past I don't know if it's still a

161practice you're doing we'd certainly encourage that if you do it there is a real challenge for the facilitator whichever board member is facilitating that particular U boring conversation and the challenge is that if there are questions that seem inconsistent with the tone and intention of monitoring it's really on you as a facilitator to call that out earlier I mentioned the board chair's responsibility if there are questions that are actually not relevant to this this agenda item it is the board's chair's job to call it out and this is not this agenda item monitoring isn't evaluating the individual uh contributions of the board of the superintendent alone it's really looking at the performance of the system as a whole which is itself a reflection on the superintendent performance but it's different than looking at did the

162superintendent personally do x to the superintend personally do why that's not actually the intention of monitoring and so that is an important thing for the board to do but that's just not related to this agenda item so if board members are asking questions that are not related to this agenda item the board share needs to really call it out and to say actually we need to stay focused on this agenda item however if during the monitoring conversation whoever the facilitator is here's a question that uh sounds like it is related to this agenda item it is about the monitoring report but that it is um the the the kind of the tone or the intention of it um really are creating more of a kind of a hostile conversation rather than a curious conversation that

163the facilitator it is in fact your duty to call that out and say hold on hold on um let's Workshop right quick what are you trying to understand so we can make sure that we ask that in a way that you actually get an answer to your question and that is an appro that is absolutely an appropriate role for whoever is facilitating that particular monitoring conversation other questions or Reflections on this before we switch to one more topic I know we're short on time so I don't want to uh keep you all all night but I do want to try to be responsive to the issues that you all have surfaced with me um I have a question about what you were just talking about uh I I really like the idea of rotating the

164facilitator um especially if there's concern about something feeling personal um if it's just a a different board member um um we have the opportunity to kind of take Collective ownership over that what would what would be the best I mean is the best way to build that muscle for each of us who may be doing that just to do it or is there some is there something you'd recommend um is that a conversation that we have as a board and and make some kind of a uh agreement for ourselves about how we want to do progress monitoring or um is that just a sort of you know Mutual commitment way of being on the board that will'll support each other in developing that muscle and and um yeah you know listen yeah this is definitely

165a scenario where I recommend that you build a road by walking um and so just sign up and do it now certainly um I would encourage board leadership to lead by example um and step forward first um just to demonstrate what what the expectation is um and so that means they have to make sure that they're doing the work to level up their skills um if you do rotate facilitators know that you can reach out to your coaching team and whoever the facilitator for the following month is we will gladly meet with you and walk through the monitoring report and walk through the process to help prepare you so that you were set up for Success um so this isn't something you just have to kind of muscle through on your own like you we'll

166provide scaffolding um but yes there there's not going to be a point where you ever perfectly prepared um you just got to step up and do it what I've seen probably there's a bunch of ways you can do it my favorite approach I saw a board chair uh she just put everybody's name on a list and she and fair enough she put her own name on the list first and she put her Vice chair's name on the list second and then asked who feels most prepared to go next and you'll be three months out and who's most prepared after that you'll be four months out and then they once they got through all seven board members and they just started over again and just a constant rotation um and so I really enjoyed that um

167um but however you get there I think it's perf ly fine but I I do think it will help you build muscle when you are having to listen to the questions with the air for is this helping us accomplish the purposes of monitoring while avoiding the non-p purposes of monitoring when you have to listen with that ear the following month when it's not your job to do that I almost guarantee you will be more effective as a participant uh for having had to facilitate other other questions or Reflections before we pivot to one more topic okay so um one other thing that's really important and I heard I've heard several of you bring this forward before um and and this really starts to look you back at you superintendent you and your team um but

168part of the thinking behind monitoring is that ideally reality matches the vision and that's to say that student current student performance matches the goals uh that the board have said that represent the VIS community's Vision but if that's not the case that's only problematic if there's also no growth so if we aren't at proficiency that's not a cause to raise the red flag in a monitoring conversation because the next thing you have to look for is do we at least have growth that is moving us into direction of proficiency and if you don't have growth that's still not necessarily a reason to raise the red flag in a monitoring conversation if there is a strategy that's sufficiently aggressive to cause the growth to get us back on track to proficiency if the answer to all

169three of those questions is no then we have a real challenge that the board is definitely in its rights to push back on and in that moment uh our coaching would be definitely uh do not not accept that monitoring report U either table it and tell superintendent to uh kind of Step that up and bring it back or simply vote it down just simply vote not to accept it and then move on but you have put the superintendent on notice that this this was not acceptable because it doesn't demonstrate that there's growth that there's proficiency it doesn't demonstrate that there's growth and it doesn't demonstrate that there's a plan sufficiently aggressive to get us back to growth um and that is a compelling reason to either postpone it or to Simply vote it down and

170say we're voting not to accept this um and that is relevant towards the superintendent's annual evaluation because the annual evaluation is essentially the amalgam of all of the monthly monitoring that you're doing and so if you get to the end of the year and half of the monitoring reports were accepted and half of them won't the superintendent shouldn't be surprised that their annual evaluation is less than Rosy um and so it it is Meaningful for the board uh to be clear with the superintendent when expectations are not met and again the expectation shouldn't be are we 100% proficient uh I I would love for that to be the expectation uh but that's that's not that's not always going to be realistic I mean the whole point of your goals is you picked areas where you

171really need to make significant progress where there's a high degree of difficulty um and it's and it's not even necessarily problematic That You Don't See growth yet but if if you don't see a strategy sufficient to move the needle to cause growth then that is red flag territory and so this is a shout out to the superintendent their staff as well as board members is that one of the other parts of effective monitoring is to tease out that last mile of that conversation is are the strategies present in this monitoring report sufficiently aggressive to cause growth that will get us back on track if the answer in and this is a judgment call this isn't um a series of seven education experts on the day no this is this is a judgment call and it's

172a superintendent's job to make the case that our strategies are sufficiently aggressive to begin to bridge the gap on behalf of our children to to help them gain lost ground it's that that is on the superintendent it's not on the board to assume that the strategies are sufficiently aggressive it's on the superintendent to to make that argument to make that case and to demonstrate that um and if the superintendent uh fails to do so then the board one of their two options is to vote that down and then bring that forward again at the annual um evaluation of the superintendent and so that this is a really important part because because both the board and the superintendent have to play your parts and it's a tricky part on the part of the superintendent you've got

173to have clear alignment of strategies with the interim goals and the moment that they're not sufficiently aligned expect the board to shoot it down if you come with an unending bucket of uh things you know like a magpie building its nest out of every shiny thing expect the board to shoot that down like well we have 50 different strategies we're doing okay expect the board to shoot that down like you have to be clear you have to have evidence of alignment between the strategies and the interim goals on the board side there is a reasonableness test here it's not and the question isn't do I like the strategies do I agree with the strategies are these the strategies I would pick that's not the standard the standard is has a superintendent made a reasonable case

174that there is alignment have they provided reasonable evidence that there is alignment between the set of strategies that have identified um and that if those strategies executed will that those will result in movement of the interm goals that we're monitoring um and so there's a reasonable standard again it's not about do I like the strategy do I aged the strategy is the strategy I would pick but it is about has a superintendent made the case that there is alignment between this strategy and accomplishment of the interims such that if we execute on this that this will this will cause growth in our students that will help us get back on track so let me pause for a second I know I've thrown a lot at you but this is this is kind of where the

175rubber meets the road and so I want to make sure that you all have a chance to reflect reflect on this uh certainly uh superintendent if you want to jump in but boor like what questions or comments do you have about kind of this last mile of monitoring conversations which is about the alignment uh of the strategy with the interims and do we have evidence that the strategies are sufficiently aggressive to cause growth to get us back toward um to get us back on track to accomplish the goals uh board member superintendent what questions or comments do you have about this AJ this is Brent um I the term that really resonates with me is sufficiently aggressive uh I like that term and uh what I also appreciate is kind of the uh I think

176you mentioned the squishiness of it and uh I'd like to go there with trying to Define uh that term a little more than uh I think I understand what that is but I think as we have about eight people around this table right now we may have eight different definitions of sufficiently aggressive and so that is correct if you could speak a little bit to just scaffolding a bit of the sufficiently aggressive term that'd be great or if it's if you say nope that's for you all to figure out that's understandable as well so the the first thing to be clear about is by the time you get here it is purely a judgment call um and so the best coaching is don't get to the point where you're not showing any growth and you're

177completely off track of accomplishing the goals the best answer is be on track for your goals and if you're not uh demonstrate that the growth that you're making will get you on track to your goals um those are purely objective but if the objective evidence does not suggest that you're on track then it does become a subjective conversation about are the strategies that the superintendent is putting in place sufficiently aggressive so let let me give you so while I can't give you a stronger definition because this we've literally gone from an objective standard we miss that an objective standard we miss that and so this third tier is legitimately a subjective standard so I can't give you much stronger definition for that I can give you some examples so I'm thinking of one particular uh

178District where the superintendent brought forward essentially we're going to do the same thing we've been doing but we're going to try to do it better did the board vote that up or vote that down bur what do you think I think originally they voted it up but after they had some coaching they probably voted it down yeah they absolutely um because essentially the at that point the board was like uh wait a minut but this is the exact same thing that we've always done and it hasn't worked out for the last 20 years there's not compelling evidence it's going to work now um and so so in that situation the board was really either expecting the superintendent to show some radical breakthrough in implementation hey we've been imp here's the evidence that we've been implementing

179this at 15% um Effectiveness and here's my strategy to implement this at 85% Effectiveness so either the superintendent brings that or the superintendent acknowledges these strategies haven't worked uh at any level of Effectiveness and so we're bringing a different set of strategies in here's what those are so that's one example uh where the superintendent was not uh effective at convincing the board uh that they were taking adequately aggressive uh approach to this another example of superintendent brought forward a monitoring report and it said here are here is the data and they actually provided a chart that shows students at who perform this well on this indicator they all seem to hit the goal but students who perform a little bit lower on this indicator they all seem to miss the goal just barely and students

180who perform super low on this indicator they just completely aren't anywhere close to the goal and so we're all our strategies are focused on moving this particular indicator because as students perform better on this indicator that our evidence shows that they're going to be that they're going to make progress on the goal on their own and we just haven't put much energy into this particular indicator that's what the superintendent put in her monitoring report and the board um and the board accepted that that that's an example of monitoring board monitoring report the board accepted because what what she did as a superintendent she showed here's a what I as your superintendent believe is a straight line between this particular behavior of the district and this performance of our students and so this is the behavior

181that that as a superintendent I'm going to attack and here's the evidence and and by the way I personally I strongly disagreed with that superintendent's um uh interpretation but what she brought forth was absolutely compelling and even though some of the board members were like he like I don't know about that that doesn't meet what the way my brain sees this problem I think she did meet the standard of being able to make her case that she was taking sufficiently aggressive action on something that she had clear data was aligned to moving the needle on the interims and so even though I personally disagreed had I been on that board I also would have voted to accept that monitoring report because it wasn't about do I agree or disagree is it the strategies that I

182would pick it's did she did she demonstrate that she was taking sufficiently aggressive action and in this case she absolutely she did make that case but part of the way she made it is she brought she brought receipts she brought evidence to show here's exactly that if we nail this we will move the needle for children our evidence clearly shows that so that's why we're you know tin toes down on this particular strategy right here and so those are two examples one where the superintendent uh got it you know sent back to him and the other where the superintendent in a really equally tough situation actually managed to convinced the board and and they accepted it and so I I hope those are helpful the other thing I would say to you Brent is our

183our team is fully available and ecstatic uh to work with you all just as an outside set of eyes like we certainly are not in a position to replace your wisdom with our own that is not our job that's not our intention uh you you'll have to pick the strategies but we can certainly provide an external set of eyes that can be a barometer that can say yeah that actually makes sense to us or as an outsider looking in what you're saying doesn't make any sense to me maybe I just Laing context uh but I I don't know if the board that make sense to the board either like that kind of just third party gut check just know that we are definitely happy to make time to provide that if that would be of

184value thank you for your response and thank you for the making the resource available thank you uh board members thoughts on this uh we're going to give direct step last moment yep yeah I um really appreciate this this last part has helped me get some better Clarity around um the acceptance we we have struggled to uh I guess a agree or be willing to vote to accept or not some because of oh it's not legally required by the state but it's not legally required because it's our board governance business which the state doesn't tell us what we can and can't vote on for our own work the state tells us items that we have to vote we have to has to come before the board for Action in terms of implementation and operational things that

185have been delegated to the superintendent so um I appreciate and am going to I guess encourage us to take this next step in our progress monitoring Journey that has gone through now three board chairs third board chair to to um add that we do vote to accept the monitoring report um I think it offer a level of clarity excuse me Clarity and also is uh for us as board members a way for the community to hold us accountable to doing our job um if they can really see not just did certain board members ask certain questions but did did the board find this to be um acceptable progress yes or no um so a technical question is I think we just if it's on the agenda as a potential item for board action that covers

186the legal challenges or not challenges but legal issues that have been argued at least were argued to me to not accept it we can vote on anything we want as long as it's noticed to the public that it is an item that the board will vote on um so the the question though is if oh sorry go ahead please ask a question oh just the accepting or not accepting if it's not accepted we don't expect that like it's corrected and returned to us right it's just sort of a hey that one didn't didn't hit the mark and we'll come back to it later okay if if you if you want to pause and give the superintendent a chance to bring something back then we would recommend that you table it and then that will trigger

187the superintendent coming back at the next regularly scheduled meeting and bringing a revision on it uh but if the board is prepared to effectively render judgment to either accept or not accept then someone would make a motion to accept someone was second and either that motion passes in which case it's accepted or that motion fails in which case it's not accepted at the end of the year as part of the superintendent's annual evaluation the sum of all monitoring reports accepted and non-accepted are the key evidence of the board is using for its evaluation of the superintendent um and so there is meaningfulness in accept or not accepting which is why we recommend that you do vote that's really helpful thank you other questions or Reflections before uh before we round out yeah well I would

188just like to think about this concept more about voting on progress monitoring I think the thing that I struggle with is I think we as a board will struggle to vote to accept data that is not bad data but data that is that is reflecting a bad scenario right that if we are down by 5% in a certain metric and that puts us not even like we're moving toward our goal but we're actually further away from our goal uh yes right uh but but but that the other criteria is met right that there that that the superintendent understands exactly why that's happening and has a killer strategy to get out of it uh and articulates it well and we all buy into it it would still be I think challenging yep we accept this it

189just it looks really bad you know it's it feels bad and so I I want to think about like how that would how that would play out uh I understand the point of doing it uh but it seems challenging to me yeah you are absolutely correct so thank you for surfacing that because that will seem odd certainly to you all but also to your community at times um but yes the part of the reason that you're doing this is to definitively affirm for the superintendent and and I want to clarify for this you the board as a whole not any of you individually but the board as a whole is the superintendent supervisor and the superintendent does have a right like any other employee in your school system to have clear feedback from their supervisor

190so the moment you all don't provide that you are setting your superintendent up to fail by not providing them clear feedback and so that's the intention of this are there other ways you could do it that aren't this certainly um but that is what the intention of this is is to provide clear feedback and so if you aren't going to do this then you've got to start asking yourself a question what is the process so each month we're providing clear feedback to our superintendent I I can't think of anything else you all do that even approximates that and so that's why we'd recommend since you are already doing this that you would use this in that way but it is awkward and so part of what you as board members will have to make sure

191that you're constantly communicating is that the acceptance isn't to suggest so if a monitoring report says we're not where we need to be and we're not showing growth but to your words the supernet has a killer strategy to get us back on track to grow to get us back on track for proficiency then that is in fact what you would be accepting that yes we accept that the superintendent has a strategy to get us where we need to be we are not accepting we're not saying that we agree or that we are okay with or endorse being off track for our students but we are accepting that we are holding the superintendent accountable for having a a powerful enough strategy to serve the needs of our students where they're at right now or to say

192definitively that that's not happening because the voting down a mon the acceptance of a monitoring report only has Authority in so much as you voted up other monitoring reports um and so it it is it is awkward to explain to folks because there's a three-part standard that you're working with is are we on track with the uh goal if not are we making growth if not is their strategy sufficiently aggressive to get us where we need to be um but communicating that doesn't really fit on a bumper sticker and and so that's that is a struggle that is normal for you to have other questions or Reflections before we transition I think that's it thank you so much AJ we appreciate it yeah I I just want to uh Express you know gratitude um for

193you just having us be a part of your journey and again I I I can't reiterate it enough whenever any of you individually are struggling reach out to us um again Alicia or Carol and myself would be happy to make time oneon-one to visit with you um we have many of our board members across the country where we literally have scheduled standing time every single month uh there's a um I'm thinking of several boards that are a couple states to the south of you where we just have standing monthly meetings with individual board members to just help them be the best version of themselves on behalf of the community they serve and so just know that you think it is wise for your teachers to have coaches and for them to tap into that as

194a resource to help them serve children you probably think it's wise for your principles to have coaches I hope you think it's wise for your superintendent to have a coach it's wise for you to have that to be the best version of yourself on behalf of your children as well and so taking advantage of that speaks to your willingness uh to be in a constant state of continuous Improvement the same as you'd expect for all of your staff um and so for allowing us to be a part of that Journey uh thank you madam chair director hery does that wrap up progress monitoring it does for me appreciate it all right then we are going to just take a 8 minute break we're going to come back together at it's now seven minute break we're

195going to come back together at 710 to continue business we'll be back at the dis [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] I'm going to call board directors back to the dis [Music] is that where you want it [Music] this Wilson Jones can you see [Music] where got a quorum so we are going to proceed we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda uh may I have a motion for the consent agenda yes I move approval of the consent agenda second okay approval of the consent agenda has been moved by vice president Briggs and seconded by director Mahi to director have any items they'd like to be removed from the agenda seeing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying I I I those opposed the consent agenda has passed unanimously

196um we're going to now move to the introduced items on today's agenda uh the first item is the annual approval of schools per wack 18 06 220 and I'm going to turn it over to Chief accountability officer Ted Howard who will be presenting this item good afternoon Dr Jones and board directors this is our annual approval uh per the whack 18016 220 to acknowledge that all our schools have cips and this is an acknowledgement from the board that we have done that and two things that we want to add to uh the feedback that you gave us was a comprehensive needs assessment that we've put in along with the root cause analysis into the cips call on directors ask questions oh director Rankin sorry okay um you're saying root root cause analysis and comprehensive needs

197assessment comprehensive needs assessment so is you said those are added in does that mean that every CIP has that indicated yes okay um so I have a since this is an introduction item it's just something to think that we all can think about um we have over the last decade probably moved from this kind of funny check yep there's something on the website even if it says even if it's just like a placeholder on the website that yes everybody has a CIP um so can you well I guess either either you or superintendent Jones if we between now and action were to like wander around and look at one of the 106 ceps what um what should we look for to sort of prove the data driven and promoting positive impact what if you can

198recommend anything um yeah director Rank and I think there's kind of two pieces to it uh one is just as you mentioned 10 years ago just the evolution of the CIP being actually a tool that we use for continuous Improvement a and it's even directing some of our strategies so we we did have it perhaps as a check box and and you were part of the uh the group that pushed us staff to make sure that the CIP was something real but I I would hope that you would see in any CIP some some direct alignment uh what was the term that AJ use that's sufficiently aggressive uh around some of the key things that are unique to those schools and so each one of each one of our 106 buildings should have some evidence

199of something that is uh critical specific to that school and tied back to uh the the the the goals so goal one two or three or goal one two and three um so I think that's what we would see so uh Ted if you could add on to that if you need to or if you think that's sufficient then then we can keep moving yes what you'll see is growth data uh number one and then you will also see uh the impact of evidence-based practices in those CS it's like an architectural plan that is flexible and will continue to grow each month as buildings decide what they need what they need to shift what they need to change along with their budgets as they work throughout the year so it should be in real time

200making those shifts and adjustments and we'll be able to see that in the future thank you so much I have one other thing that I wanted to just offer that I know um isqua does which is they affirm uh the annual approval of schools as required they also use it as an opportunity to um meet together uh and you know they'll they'll alternate and it's a much smaller District but maybe we could do something regionally or something but they alternate between um one year all the high schools high school leaders will come and bring their cips and actually present them to the board and talk about what's working and what's not working in their building and have the opportunity to Talk Amongst each other as high school leaders oh hey that's really awesome how is

201that working at your school we'd like to Implement something like that how did you get started what you know whatever it might be um and then the the second year they would meet in uh feeder patterns for neighborhood schools so like the elementary middle and all the the elementary and middle schools that go to one high school in their feeder patterns the second year would come and meet together to talk about their cips so that the high schools can kind of hear maybe what what needs might be coming their way or what's been success and just kind of like pre get to know student needs and um and just also align and support each other and then they they they do it they they alternate every year um I'm not going to suggest that in

202the midst of all of that's going on that we start doing that right now but I think it's a um it's a great practice that we might want to think about uh for for the board to have an understanding of not just check their RC sips but what do they mean how do they how are they as a tool um for building leaders to have the opportunity to collaborate in that way and then of course if it's a board meeting to also reflect to the public um what's going on so thank you so uh director Rankin if I if I'm mistaken please correct me uh T Ted we had uh yesterday principles came together talking about cips regarding evaluation criteria three and uh they were looking at how some of these key elements are manifested

203in their cips and they were they were uh it was a big PLC for for principles is that is that accurate and as what uh director Rankin talking about happening already here in in some form or fashion yes it is the only difference is doesn't the board is not a part of that but yes they do this um and their small plc's with their Ed directors as well as doing it differently where they come together down here on Tuesday so uh that is small then it gets to a bigger level where they are looking at uh consistent practices and how they can engage and support one another that's great thank you other board directors okay then we're going to move on the second item is the review and approval of the 2425 Career and Technical

204education CTA annual plan per per board policy number 217 executive director of College and Career Readiness Dr Kayla Perkins will be presenting this item um I just want to say earlier this year I got to see our students developing uh through CTE during a visit to the Microsoft campus with Cleveland and Le Lincoln High School students and their robotics teams but I will pass it to Dr Perkins now to share more about this year's annual plan thank you president top uh thrilled to come here as we do annually per policy 2170 to submit the district plan for providing CTE we do this every year to really highlight the goals and outcomes and we're particularly excited this year because of the connection to the new life ready goal that the board approved in January we are

205already working on specific aspects of the CT plan so that it's aligned fully to some of the aspects of developing a plan and implementing that plan for students and highlighting work-based learning experiences as well as the CT and stem pieces that President top was just alluding to for the remainder of this short introduction I just want to turn it over to Brian day our CTE stem director if you do not know Brian he was the CTE director for Everett for many many years until we woed him here to Seattle to take on a bigger challenge he's incredibly skillful at and at methodically building strong programs he gets rave reviews from everybody from school leaders to the special ed PTSA and many more even as we heard in the public comment so I just want to

206give him a chance to share a few highlights and I'll pass it over to Brian Day thank you Dr Perkins and thank you Dr Jones and board of members for allowing me to speak very briefly tonight our annual plan this year has meant to be a community accessible document filled with images of our students engaging in career focused activities though it contains a wealth of information I'll highlight a very few guiding principles first we aim to build a K through2 in demand career pipeline as we strongly believe that the earlier we can introduce students to potential career opportunities the better prepared they will be for their futures for example and president top you pointed out our robotics teams that I believe were at Lincoln and at Cleveland and Microsoft these groups have been part of

207Seattle schools for a while they represent great opportunities for our students our aim is to ensure that these opportunities are accessible for every student in our district so we need to spread these opportunities by including more high schools more middle schools and more elementary schools as as part of this specific effort we've launched a coordinated Elementary robotics program and we're proud to have 23 new robotics teams this year our goal for the following year next year is to have every single Elementary School have a robotics team and at least two teams at each School in the year after that we hope that students stay interested in robotics and computer science continuing through middle school and through High School we know that there are many computer science and software engineering careers in this area is actually

208the number one career field strong research shows that students decide very on if they're interested in stem careers so we might we have to take advantage of this the earlier the better so with this guiding principle in mind we need to introduce computer science at starting very early in the grades we so for computer science specifically we started an elementary program just like the robotics program aiming to train teacher leaders at each building to incorporate computer science into the regular curriculum this partnership is with Amazon and has already shown great success another important guiding principle is the removal of barriers to ensure greater accessibility for our students we have a strong and growing internship program called Career quest with different versions like career Quest technology career Quest science and career request Finance these are very

209exciting opportunities a crucial part of increasing accessibility is addressing barriers like the number of hours needed to earn internship credit the state requirement of 180 Day hours can be a significant barrier for our students in Industry next month there will be a policy proposal to allow Mastery based credit for internships if passed this will greatly increase participation for all our students as we we truly believe that each student should have the opportunity to gain real world work experience before they graduate every single one our program is growing and PS for even greater growth with your continued support we can ensure this growth translates into meaningful opportunities for all students the report is designed to make data both accessible and visible sparking curiosity and engagement I'd like to remind the board and everybody listing that we

210live live in the Seattle pug Sound area home to many in demand careers that pay very well and are still growing people from all over the world come here to find employment in these areas there's no reason why our students shouldn't have these jobs we should demand it thank you again for your time and support qu questions from board directors or comments director inant thank you um thank you so much uh I I don't have a a question my question is are you ever considering leaving us and if so can we convince you not to um at any point that would be uh because everywhere I go and engage with community members involved in either the trades or they have students in these I say you know if somebody says oh you're on the school

211board we have this program you know blah blah blah blah blah I'll say well you know you need to talk to Brian day and they're like I've already talked to him he's so great um so I just wanted to publicly thank you thank you for the work that you do to bring these opportunities to our students and um uh Partnerships and um it's really exciting and and even kids that don't go into these careers this Hands-On learning and spatial building spatial relationships and just having the opportunity to play and explore is um uh super important and I also think that CTE right now is what is keeping my son in in school and has actually made him get on time to school most days now because he has a CTE class in the radio station

212so you're keeping kids in school and giving them Pathways to succeed and I just really can't thank you enough for um working for us and our kids in our city I highly appreciate that Seattle is a great place we have all these opportunities around and it's challenging to figure out how we can incorporate them into our classrooms and not just for a few students but for every single student so we really need to take advantage of that thank you other directors right thank you so much I appreciate it and uh reading the CTE annual plan is probably one of my favorite parts of of of the year it's very cool to see all the things that we are doing in our schools so thank you no thank you then pictures are very good as well

213yes um we're going to move to the tables One Last Time board directors we're going to stay there till adjournment um and hopefully move through the next items quickly [Music] so it's going to be a goal of mine before my term as president is over that I work on how many times we move back and forth in a meeting um but we are now going to move into interim metrics for goals um what um in January the board established new District goals for student outcomes our next step is receipt of the superintendent draft inter metrics to support our goals and tonight's task is really to make sure to review for an alignment of these interm metrics um it's not our job to say what the interm metric should be it's the superintendent to tell us

214and see if they are in alignment so I'm going to pass it to superintendent Jones now to begin this present ation of those inm metrics which um yeah go for it Dr Jones thank you um this was uh this is a great opportunity for us to talk about these uh interim measures uh the these goals were have been uh thrashed through pretty pretty vociferously by our our team and to today I have Ira celle Mike Caleb and and Dr Anderson we're all here to uh just try to give some insight as to to what we've tried to do with these goals and so we'll be uh reviewing the goals that you approved and sharing our interpretation of those goals and then we'll uh we'll after going over our interpretation I'll ask you to respond to

215two essential questions what in the superintendent interpretation resonates with you and what would you adjust and so I want you all to kind of feel free to give that feedback and then uh I also ask Will these metrics allow you to Monitor and assess progress toward the goal if not what information is missing and so with that I'll turn it over to Dr Stasi to orient you to the role of our in our inner measures play in helping us meet our overall goals Dr stoski thank you Dr Jones um so for everyone in the room and those who are listening and watching what we want to make sure is that we're not just assuming that everyone knows what we're talking about when we say Topline and interims and so our first slide is really to

216just Define what a Topline measurement is and it's a final summi of assessment that evaluates progress towards a goal and typically this is conducted at the end of a school year so when we're talking about a Topline measurement we'll be talking about things that happen at the end of of the school year the end of a term and typically those would be State uh test scores graduation rates and districtwide uh achievement benchmarks and interim measure which we are focusing on tonight is a progress check um conducted at regular intervals so either quarterly mid quarterly but it's something that's happening inside of the Topline measure um and for us that is uh the opportunity for us to be able to guide our strategies to make adjustments based on what it is that we're seeing um with

217our interim measures in service of the Topline measure so uh next slide please thank you um so when we're looking at uh a basic understanding of Topline versus interim that a Top Line has an end point of success um an interim is periodic it's leading up to a specific point um directly connected to that Topline measure the purpose of the Topline is to measure overall success the purpose of an interim is to inform strategy and implementation which we've uh spent a good uh amount of time tonight learning and discussing uh this evening and the scope of a Topline is Broad and final and the interim is more detailed and Diagnostic and so you can see that reflected in some of the things that we shared earlier this evening so the Topline and interim measures are

218both essential because they are datadriven and it helps us inform our decision- making so for us what it's connected to the things that uh we've been spending a lot of time uh in teamwork uh with you and our staff is what does that mean for Seattle public school students we had the theme of an uh a strong start and a stronger finish and for us uh at the Elementary grades it's confident early readers so that's our early literacy goal we're also moving on towards strong mathematicians so that's our middle school math goal and then uh ending with our life ready goal which is our graduation personalized Pathways so the connection that second grade uh Top Line sixth grade Top Line and then our our school link um which we'll be hearing more about in the

219coming days um uh in the future so our theory of action connected to all of this is that if we select interim metrics focused on adult actions so we're focused on the actions of adults and are predictive of our Top Line goals then we the adults in our system will ensure staff across Seattle public schools are working in a coordinated way to improve student outcomes in early literacy middle school math an on-time graduation with personalized Pathways so with that what we wanted to make sure is that we're clear um discussing some of our assessments and I will hand that off to our future uh Dr Jackson here thank you Dr soski so we have selected this pyramid to illustrate um the assessments that are used within the Seattle public schools and how each assessment builds

220upon each other from daily classroom interactions to state level summative exams for the purposes of tonight's discussion we're going to focus on three types of Assessments starting with the middle blue tier I would like to acclimate us with a couple of common definitions screeners are quick assessment checks that can be administered at Large Scale to identify students who may need additional instruction or intervention continuing up the pyramid are Benchmark and growth assessments which are administered two to three times a year this T type of assessment is curriculum agnostic and enables the system to monitor students as they progress towards grade level academic standards and summative assessments as Dr stoski mentioned is the assessment that we administer once a year usually in the spring to provide accountability to the state and federal level while simultaneously helping

221us assess our system Effectiveness superintendent Jones and our team are recommending the following interim measures as a framework to support the new strategic goals for the early literacy goal we are recommending the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills also known as Dibbles as one of two measures to monitor the early literacy goal as a screener the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy assesses students across five foundational literacy domains in a short time frame this assessment is administered in September January and may of each year to students in grades K1 and two the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills has been successfully implemented districtwide since fall 2021 the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills is also Rec recommended by the office of the superintendent of public Public Instruction as a screener for weaknesses

222associated with dyslexia after the publisher added the rapid automatized naming component this addition um this addition enhances the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills assessment by identifying potential weaknesses associated with dyslexia while also sustaining its original Fame framework as a strong tool for assessing foundational literacy schools and student growth over time can we can we go back to the pyramid slide thank you I'm going to be here for a moment sorry um for this okay the second measure we are recommending is the measure of academic progress as a growth Benchmark assessment this measure is being recommended for as an interim for the early literacy goal and for the sixth grade math goal in 2022 Seattle Public Schools expanded the measure of academic progress districtwide to provide critical insights into student progress the measures of

223academic progress is a nationally normed assessment with a database of over 3 million students allowing us to use its Predictive Analytics to assess students growth and future performance the measures of academic progress is comp is a computer adaptive assessment adjusting the difficulty of questions in real time based on each individual students responses for younger students it includes accommodations such as audio Direction and developmentally appropriate visuals currently the measures of academic progress growth reading is administered to all K5 students in the fall and spring and to all K8 students in math in fall and spring the final measure is the smarter balanced assessment as Dr soski mentioned the Topline measure um of our SEC is our second recommended interim measure for our sixth grade math goal this assessment is developed and SU sustained by a Consortium

224of states that ensures validity reliability and bias resistance through continuous review and educator involvement the smarter balance assessment is required at both the state and federal levels since the pandemic the smarter balance assessment has been streamlined to reduce testing time while maintaining rigor it includes a computer adaptive component adjusting questions based on student responses and a performance task where students engag Eng with Prim with primary and secondary sources to reduce synthesized responses in literacy and math together these assessments provide actionable data to guide instruction support achievement and drive continuous improvement over across our system while these assessments are integral to our system they do not represent the entirety of our approach they work in concert with the daily teaching and learning which is the foundation of our system I will now turn it over to

225our executive director kelle toner so thank you okay so hi everybody let's shift to the next slide um yep okay so let's check in how and do some sense making about what era just described for the um various assessments we're proposing and see how they relate to one of the goals so um we'll talk about the early literacy goal first goal one States the percentage of students in second grade that meet or exceed key grade level standards for foundational literacy skills will increase 10 percentage points by June 2023 uh 2030 sorry focusing on second grade will strengthen the work the district has been doing over the last 5 years in kindergarten through third grade and help ensure that students enter third grade with strong reading foundational skills goal one will be measured by the proportion

226of students who achieve the measure of academic progress's RIT score that is predictive of students success on SBA and third grade the first year the students take that assessment this will ensure that our new Topline goal is anchored in the full complement of reading skills that are predicted predictive of meeting standard let's move on to the next slide okay so this slide I'm just going to walk you through what the interims are and I just want to call your attention to the different well it's a little hard to see here but what maybe in your packet you might be able to see it a little bit better there are two there are a couple features happening on this slide so you'll see proficiency and growth um indicated in the first um interim and then in

227the second interim you'll see proficiency and the third profic um interim is also um focused on proficiency so that's an important thing to realize and then I'm going to walk you through each one of those intrs and then talk to you about how they all work together so with a Topline goal in mind we developed three interm assessments to track multiple dimensions of student progress ac across kindergarten through second grade grade student achievement at the end of second grade reflects learning this kind of obvious but from grades kindergarten and first grade as as well as the progress made in second grade itself so when you look at these metrics um we're UND we're want to monitor our progress from kindergarten and first and then think about how that connects to second grade um so inim

228one uses the measure of academic progress to measure student proficiency and growth at the end of first grade the proficiency metric identifies how many students meet grade level reading standards and how we're progressing toward the Topline goal um the following year the growth metric captures Improvement among students who have not yet met proficiency since students start at different levels this help us this helps us assess whether we're our our system is on track and if we're um moving toward um uh improving the Topline metric uh in terms 2 and three Dibbles to measure the proportion of students proficient at foundational literacy skills um together the ma the measure of academic Pro uh together the measures of academic progress which assesses comprehensive reading skills and the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy or Dibbles which focuses

229on foundational skills provide insight into uh into which aspects of literacy instruction are working and whether future attention is needed so um I'm just going to kind of summarize how we see these working if you work from the bottom of that slide and go up first we're thinking about K kindergart and Dibbles and then that feeds into first grade map and Dibbles and then that then supports the Topline measure of second grade spring map so we'd now like to pause and turn it back over to D um to the directors um so that you can share with us any feedback um in response to these two questions let's see I think the questions are on the next slide yep what is this uh what is the superintendent's interpretation and does it resonate with you what

230would you adjust will these metrics allow you to monitor progress towards the goal and if not what information is missing director breaks um I just have a just a quick clarifying question um and also just thank you for walking us through it's really helpful to hear um your thinking and just walking us through these goals I really appreciate getting to to do this with all of you um so is the reason that we only have growth um in addition to Prof Proficiency in interm one it because of the starting at first grade and coming in at different levels so that it doesn't make sense as much sense I guess to measure growth for subsequent years yeah so um somebody take the lead in kind of talking about how we balance growth and proficiency and and

231give some insight into that to that dialogue and I'm I'm looking at you caselle but if Dr Anderson has something to add please do sure so we had a long discussion about that and how to situate you know how many metrics to bring forward how many should be balanced with growth or proficiency how how to you know present that to all of you and I thinking was that um having the second grade growth and proficiency will give us some really interesting information to help us um you know make course Corrections along the way and help us understand if we're on target um and we did try to narrow just a little bit with proficiency at the other you know in kindergarten first understanding the developmental component of it and then also thinking about you know

232H wanting to have a focused conversation around a few data metrics not too many not too few um and so that's where we landed having about you know uh 2/3 proficiency one3 growth component um to bring forward to it doesn't limit Us in any way to to think that that's the only data we'll be paying attention to um but we did land on that um composition of 1/3 2/3 to focus our conversations at the board level did my colleagues did I summarize that okay hi I'll just add Eric Anderson director of research and evaluation that you know to the conversation you had earlier with AJ to help us understand you know are we either reaching the goal or are we making growth towards the goal and then also importantly do we have the strategies and

233do we have an understanding of what strategy should be to make that Improvement growth is really important as an analytic to help us understand our own efficacy as a system it also helps us understand why and under what circumstances kids may be making progress and not making progress so having that additional analysis is really helpful to ser our interpretation of the progress that we're making as well as being able to consider the students that maybe they're not there yet but we also care about their progress director Mahi yeah first of all I want to Echo what director Briggs said I appreciate the walking us through it it's it's super helpful um the question I have is we didn't really have time to dig into the progress monitoring but it looked like one of the recommendations

234on that was to improve the use of curriculum embedded assessments so I'm curious why we're not building those into our our goals for this interim measure uh anybody take that on it it is part of it but it's not on our uh publicly facing if you will on the interims but a strategy that we're using AR right you want to take that yes sorry okay thank you it's not help okay there we go um we are we they're new they're literally 6 months old at this moment and so I think it would be um a little too enthusiastic to say that this is going to be a measure that we really understand the data and therefore can explain it to you that is not to say that they're not incredibly important and everybody's talking about

235them and using that information and it's helping inform classroom instruction I think we're still just trying to get our heads around how do we aggregate this and provide to you versus how a vendor might do it through their report I don't know if we might if what that will look like a year or two now from now from now but right now I would say we're just trying to be give you good data versus just fast data um and um who knows this time next year okay um I'll just quickly add that to to build on as Dr Jackson's Point Dibbles has been well established by research as a strongly predictive and reliable you know as all the psychometric properties of a reliable assessment even though it is a formative assessment as well as map

236that same those same analytics or analysis has not been done for these types of Assessments and they really are formative and meant to be for teachers Dibbles of course is a teacher tool as well but it we're just not sure that it has the type of data to produce to be sharing at the system level that will be meaningful but understanding the de behaviors around the use of that assessment of course will be really important to the discussions and just to be clear our commitment to improving our use and um uh with our Educators about curriculum assessments embedded assessments is unwavering it's just premature right now so we have other better measur me better measurements at this moment for the interims cut it I think that all make sense yeah more thing the the shared

237interest it sounded like the board had was really around the foundational literacy skills and Dibbles answers that question for us it really helps us understand how kids are progressing um across the Continuum of foundational literacy skills and then how that relates to map which then is also predictive of SBA so I feel like that that shared interest around foundational literacy skills is um Dibbles would be the assessment to use for that yeah director Ranken thank you um so the the first prompt is uh what resonates with you what you what would you adjust I in looking at the interpretation of this goal compared to the interpretation of the other goals for some reason and maybe it's just the way I'm reading it it it feels like it's jumping suddenly to something very technical as opposed

238to and I I think you know this so I'm not concerned that this is something that's not not being interpreted but that um our intent is that students develop early strong early literacy skills to be to be readers and to be Learners into the future so for for some reason that this interpretation is feels like it's jumping a step much more technically than some of the others um uh so I I don't know if any if that's um it it doesn't feel to me like a direct interpretation of the goal which is that we want students to be strong leaders which is it's not necessarily yeah and it's just jumps to a little bit of a technical thing in a way that the other interpretations sort of describe here's what we think the board thinks

239is important about this so I don't know if that is manifesting here but um something about the interims the the growth one for me is the is the strongest um because what I'm looking for is I don't think we don't want you to just give us data because there's data to be collected we want to know do you believe that monitoring these things and changing adult Behavior related to these things is going to help students be successful and the growth one is the one where I can really see that it was identified my interpretation of this is that it was identified that um a barrier to achieving the Topline goal of early literacy skill um seen growth in that measure was that students for this of uh students of color furthest from educational Justice in

240grade one may that you have seen may need to make more growth than one grade level and so that identification of um that specific student popul the specific time frame and that what you're looking for is not just it's it's not just a this assessment that assessment but it's actually saying to me we staff are going to be making sure that we are providing leadership and resources to see that growth in this student group that um is is a focus for closing that Gap um meeting proficiency that will then uh increase the level of proficiency overall um and so I guess yeah so generally what I am looking at is are these measures that you've provided ones that you are using for decision making and I can see that most strongly in the growth one

241as opposed to the board wants some data here's some data um but I appreciate that uh the distinction that you made caselle about um or maybe somebody on that end the table um that uh what are tools that are already being used in the classroom CU what we definitely don't want is just well let's figure out something to measure throw some new assessment in there that nobody's actually using and um so I guess my my question attached to that is for the the three proficiency goals how will the data collected on those measures imp decision- making and instructional leadership um when you receive that data before you share it to us um anybody want to take that one on gelle and and before you take that on uh know that these questions are open for

242you all to respond to not just tonight some of us need to sit back and kind of marinate on what these what these are so as you think of things we'll leave this open it it for at least a week or so so that you all can reflect on this so if we don't answer all the things right now but we're we're interested in your all's reaction to these questions soelle please y the first thing that that makes me think about would be looking at the data of you know kindergarten see how this fits together right goes kindergarten proficiency on dibles then it goes first grade proficiency with Dibbles and then we get a little more dimensional at the second grade there F at first grade also looking at map proficiency and growth what I

243think will help decision making first of all is being much more explicit about um how these goals fit together and then what professional development might we consider for our system in order to um help folks understand how important these um progressions are for Learners and how you know kids that aren't necessarily on track what do we need to do as a system in order to respond and and adjust right so I think that the professional development question is a decision-making point that first comes to mind and then also um I'm curious to learn um how we can get a little tighter around the interaction between map and Dibbles because initially when I've looked at that data you you can have students that are at that are proficient on Dibbles but there's a map Gap if

244you will interesting so I would like to learn about that and explore that with all of you and also um with our with our Educators I really appreciate that point because you know our goal isn't for students to do well on tests our goal is for students to be able to demonstrate that they have learned um and that they are learning so I appreciate that that um distinction there superintendent Jones you want to keep going all right transitioning to the next slide and looking at the sixth grade math goal so obviously the top part is what you approved the percentage of sixth graders prepared to succeed in grade level math coursework in seventh grade as measured by the sixth grade SBA our interpretation as it says is that you really wanted to make sure there

245was students who were having a strong foundation in math in the Elementary grades and TR transitioning the well once they get into middle school so that that sixth grade year is a critical one to ensure that they have access in seventh grade and Beyond to more advanced and other opportunities related to Stem and math so that's how we interpreted it and that very much shaped what we looked at when it came to the interims so I'll go straight to the interims next slide so uh celle did the heavy lifting in terms of scoping this out but you'll see there's a similar pattern we tried to have basically uh you know mainly proficiency but some growth and you'll see that we're looking at the elementary grade which is new uh looking at grade four grade five

246and then obviously the grade six one at the end is similar to what we're doing now in terms of looking at the fall to director Rankin's question earlier that's going to give us data to to respond to in the fall so that we can begin to plan the year but the other data points would be helping us think about how to support our Elementary grades and what uh is going well in the Elementary grades what supports do students need as they transition into uh middle school so the specific uh back to soon to be Dr Jackson's presentation and helpful orientation that we're looking really at the smarter balanced assessment and the map assessments those are our two main metrics to director Mah's point that doesn't mean we'll we won't be looking at ceas and lots

247of other things but these are the Topline these are the things we're going to set formal targets to these are the things that we think will be most predictive of the Topline measure and will drive adult action so I'll pause there and we'll go to the next slide and revisit our questions Direct directors director Ranken thanks I'll make it quick because I have a similar wonder about what these things tell you um as you're doing your work and also appreciate the the growth for the um specific student group yeah I think uh there is more work to be done I think that your question is a good one in terms of how we're going to couple looking at things like the curriculum embedded assessment data work coupled with what we see in the spring and

248what we see in the fall um but nearly in in each each of these cases what I think the the push from the board that's been so helpful is thinking about our students leaving Elementary grades ready to to succeed in sixth grade so one of the things that I think this schol enables to do uh say interim one on even on proficiency is to understand what does the incoming fifth grade class look like we've done some of that but this will push us to do more more of it um so that that those sixth grade educators are more informed and ready to support those students can I just add because I think it's it because you're kind of asking what questions are we going to be asking ourselves when we're looking at this data right

249and and I think what you guys did to set this goal at sixth grade is really helps us focus on that transition not just from elementary middle but also just the the learning expectations the instructional shifts the content shifts that occur from Upper Elementary to middle school math you start to get into different types of abstract thinking and things like that that really aren't as present and so I think our inquiry by looking at fourth and fifth grade will really be like is is that preparation occurring where are the gaps occurring and it'll discipline ourselves hopefully to really understand that trajectory in a way that we weren't didn't necessarily Focus as much on when we were doing the seventh grade goal so I think that's our hope can we are oh I just have one

250more thing to add to that if that's okay um I am wondering given conversation this evening and and this week and forever about Advanced learning um and maybe we don't know this right now because I'm fully owning that this is a diversion from what we're actually talking about um but I wonder if the grade four if we're using that already as an interim measure what noticings we might have about what then the feeder midle middle schools should think about their course offerings depending on the proficiency of students in fourth grade might that tell us better how many sections of geometry there might need to be how you know whatever um that may be for for students who are uh achieving ahead of grade level to continue on their their journey in the in the course

251that's right for them anybody want to take a shot at talking about credit bearing opportunities that could be yield yielded from this well certainly there's an you know a national conversation a Seattle conversation about for example accessing algebra there was comments and obviously in public testimony about accessing geometry in Algebra 2 but really the the thing that we are have been pushing for a while and had made some success is the idea of accessing algebra which gives High School Credit by the end of 8th grade to be able to do that you need to be able to succeed well enough in sixth grade math to the point so that you can take math 78 compacted in the current iteration there there are other variations to that but if we want to talk about the overwhelming

252majority of Seattle public school students the overwhelming majority it's really about teeing them up for success in math 6 so that they can succeed in this math compacted class called math 78 so much more to say but um yeah was that responsive to your it was and as Dr Perkin says there's a lot more to say and I'm going to reserve that for when we are talking about accessing math courses rather than this thank you goal three okay uh with your permission we'll move on to the third goal life ready um gets the record for the most words in the goal but anyway it's got a lot to unpack uh this is the obviously the goal that you approved in January for Life ready uh but the big takeaway I think has been really helpful

253from the conversation is that you want to make sure students are engaging in a meaningful personalized planning process and then taking steps to actually be able to implement that plan so that's what we're really going to focus on in the interims the ability to develop a plan that's meaningful that's connected to their interests and the ability the skills the course taking what have you that enable them to be able to be successful including things like work-based learning uh and applying to post-secondary programs so that's that's our interpretation that you really want those two elements and so as you'll see when we go to the interims in the next slide that's how we've organized the interims go to the next slide dramatic pause there we go so the first uh set of interims and uh I

254think again back to director aning Point how is this driving adult action we're trying to pick thinking about different grade points different milestones in a student's experiences so those top two are really about the details of uh completing the high school and Beyond plan and how we're going to make it more meaningful so by the end of 8th grade you're supposed to be already thinking about possible educational and career goals we don't want to lock anybody in at eighth grade of course but so they can begin developing their their fouryear plan that's a required part of this uh from the state and one that we think we can make a lot more meaningful as we're transitioning to this new tool called School links then at 11th grade there's another set of Milestones that are critical

255on the Plan Building uh where you get sharper on your career and educational goals and you begin to connect it to specific post-secondary programs so that's the developing the plan part on the implementing the plan part what we heard from you and what we think is important is that we want to set up students to be able to pursue multiple Pathways and maybe even change their mind and maybe even think about different Pathways so we want and are excited to share with you data across content areas in at by the 10th grade similar to what we're doing right now with our top line but what's different is by the 11th grade we'd like to give you a clear sense of how many students are really on track to meet a math pathway an Ela Humanities

256pathway and a CTE pathway with the goal that pretty much nearly all of our students should have access to all three so once again the idea is that there's two main sets of interims developing the plan and being able to implement the plan and with that we'll go back to your questions in your discussion directors director Ranken thank you um is there well so so the the other three goals have or other two goals have three interims and this one has two is that just a I mean because of the goal really is the completion of the plan and there are so many different things com that are embedded in the plan that another like it the plan itself only almost contains in terms of its own it's true and so there's a lot of

257metrics to look at in the Topline measure we're excited about that you know fasta completion work-based learning completion we we expect that we'll be reporting to the board on the all of those components I will share for what it's worth there's four bullets within the two oh there yes which is the same thing as the literacy and math uh we actually tried to get it down to three but um we just thought this this level of data was important so this is actually almost four interims is what you're saying there's really four interims here that's not bad okay um and then so the roll out of the state tool you know what I'm going to ask I think uh originally we were slated to not be brought into that until 2026 did I am I

258to understand correctly that we get to have it and start using it this fall is that what we are in intense conversations uh about with the plans to do just that yes uh that's fantastic I won't exaggerate that it was inspired by the fact that the life ready goal is centered on high school and Beyond planning and also that we heard very loudly and clearly from our counselors and a number of Educators who have started to look at the new tool and say said we would like to move faster that's awesome is there anything the board can do is there is there encouragement or uh persuasion to be made from the board to Opi or is or is this just a technical we'll see if we can get added to it kind of thing we're

259all set with in terms of OPI I think there's there's a lift um yeah if I'm again thank you for the question I'll just say that helping our community there was a lot of conversation before we implemented Naviance um some of you may recall some of those back and forth to the extent that you can help uh with that level of communicating with your community members about what's what's the exciting part about this and we can obviously help that that's what I think would be helpful I I think that's it's an extremely exciting opportunity for you all to be able to talk about with Community how to use it a new tool how it's going to support kids um that's I'm really excited that we're able to access that the first year of this and

260not have to wait yes and not to dampen your excitement however uh we will be kind of first to Market on this and so it's we will be kind of the ones who are working The Kinks out so yeah uh I think we have to be very deliberate and and not be Hast hastily rolled this out we need to be connected with our Educators connected with the students around what their needs are we need to be doing a lot of Engagement with those who are going to be stewarding this and so I just wanted to make make sure that we I'm kind of talking to us actually uh we're not too eager but we take the requisite steps to do our own formative assessment along the way so that we're implementing this with Fidelity so

261thank you for yeah I I guess I'm not I'm not saying I expect that we're ready to hit the hit the ground and everything is rolled out um but just to Echo that I think being transparent like hey this is a new goal this is also a new tool from the state and we're going to work with our families and staff and students to Lear learn how best to use it and how best it can support our students I think is actually a really great opportunity all right so we're going to move on to the next part our highly capable services update I don't know if we want to reorganize if we're all staying up here or switching up board stays staff will switch thank you thank you all you can have it or you

262can't have it beautiful it prints quick got it all right okay so we are now going to do a brief update on uh highly capable Services we had a uh long conversation last month uh we've heard a lot of testimony I think emails uh the Dr Taurus Morales I think you sent out an email yesterday to our SPS Community with an update um but this kind of closes the loop in that Con in the ation that we started so I'm going to pass it to superintendent Jones now for the update thank you president top that was a really good lead in and I know we are uh coming close to the close of this meeting so we I'll I'll be brief yes please and if we go to the next slide uh just want to

263say this clearly the objective of this recommendation for Service delivery is to provide students and families with reassurance of access to highly capable services and so as we look at how we move forward um what Dr Torres Morales is going to talk about it's with this reassurance that we're trying to provide so without further Ado Dr Tores Morales good evening board I'm here to provide an update for highly capable programming as we continue to move through the next few years um in our servicing for students so next slide please this slide just details the components of the highly capable program as you recall in our last meeting there was a commitment to have a report available for the board and the public by April 1st we are still on target to do that the elements

264of the plan will include the number of students um The District's plan to identify and place students a description of the program goals a description of the services the program will offer the instructional program description description of the ongoing professional development program of uh evaluation and fiscal report and assurances that the district is legally compliant and this is in compliance with uh both state law and our school district policy next slide please so we are making a commitment to expanding access and inclusion I want to note that as a school district we have made significant strides in increasing access to highly capable students V the number of students that are qualified for services through our Universal screening process additionally every school has a structured uh plan to support HD students through their continuous School Improvement

265plans alongside H expansion we are actively integrating inclusion strategies to support all students ensuring they receive appropriate enrichment uh and resources this is driven by the inclusion initiative that's embedded in policy 0010 which is the instructional policy for the school district next slide please so our recommendation for the next three years is to continue in a hybrid model that would be that we have the neighborhood School model and we also have the cohort model available so students will continue to be identified through the universal screening process in grades 1 through eight via a holistic evaluation of the students existing and available data information and assessments families of students in grades 2 through five will be given the choice to decide if they would like their student to receive their services via the cohort model or

266in their neighborhood School services will include different instruction accelerated learning enrichment opportunities Etc the hybrid model provides both centralized and neighborhood-based opportunities addressing diverse student and family needs next slide please in terms of the professional development neighborhood and cohort schools essentially all schools in Seattle Public Schools will participate in professional development aligned with the inclusion initiative during the 2025 2026 school year some of this includes uh Prof special development accelerated learning the Universal Design for Learning multi-tiered Systems of support or mtss and restorative practices also known as RP Advanced learning teachers from the central office are available to work directly with schools on how to provide services for HC eligible students these teachers also receive additional trainings in the Universal Design for Learning to engage to address how to engage students in accelerated curriculum using

267the elements of udl additionally all School leaders receive training during summer 2023 and summer 2024 via our school leader Institute on the Universal Design for Learning multi-tiered Systems of support and restorative practices next slide please in terms of potential policy implications want to note that we are in process of Consulting with our legal department on the 2190 policy to see if there are any potential changes needed at this time we do not believe so but we want to confirm that and we're still looking at reporting on the plan that is written in 2190 by April the 1st in terms of superintendent procedures there will need to be updates to superintendent procedure 2190 and 3130 as there are languages uh there's language included in there on the cohort phase out and we need to update that

268language to capture this recommendation next slide please in terms of our goals and guard rails which we were discussing earlier this evening we wanted to provide an alignment for how a decision as this and how we're going to move forward in our highly capable programming align with the established goals and guardrails so when we were looking at this we feel that this aligns to guardrails 1 3 and five in terms of guardrail one there's ongoing consistency and access to the cohort model to provide reassurance to families the plan the plan provides time to reduce variation and Fidelity of services in neighborhood School model in terms of guard rail 3 there is ongoing screening practices to increase Iden ification of students and access to the program and in terms of guard R 5 the enhanced Universal

269screening the investment in professional development and there's going to be a strengthening of the math acceleration so by Spring 2026 resources will be realigned to increase access to accelerated math to all students as [Applause] needed next slide please in terms of our goal alignment when we think about second grade reading the focus that we're going to put on MTS mtss implementation will directly should directly align with increases for second grade reading as we're going to be looking at um data driven practices for sixth grade math getting more access to highly capable Services should push academic growth particularly for our highly capable students but access to accelerated learning will do that for all students and we think about life ready goals the ability to have some acceleration in math should push on our indicator that we

270have for algebra that we want that to be taken by the end of n9th grade next slide please here we have just a draft of what the rollout is going to look like post recommendation so right now we are in year Zero review of current resource allocation through resource and strategy analysis next year is uh HC service and math acceleration delivery initiatives incorporated into the strap plan so we're working through that now then there's going to be the three years so years 1 2 and three so I want to be clear that in when we say year one that means next school year so that is 2526 year 2 is 2627 year 3 is 2728 so what we're going to be doing at that time is running the hybrid model meaning parents will get choice

271if they want their students to remain in their neighborhood school to access their services or go to a Cort model to access their services what we're going to be looking at at the district level is the smarter balance assessment results for highly capable qualified students that are accessing both versions of the model looking at the map growth results for their students that are accessing both versions of the model and also looking at the safe and welcoming results for those uh highly capable students that are accessing both Services of the model the purpose of this is for us to really get an understanding of where what's really happening where are we seeing the the best portions of our investment so for example the SBA in general what we find is that our students who are qualified

272as highly capable will be on standard or above consistently but this is a gut check for us to say is that happening in both models yes or no the second measure the growth measure looks at for the individual student are they making a year or more of growth from where they started from so that shows us is this really getting the students the acceleration that is necessary for them to make their academic growth in needs and finally the safe and welcoming survey results is partly related to some of the feedback we've received from community that a lot of our students when they do access the neighborhood schools feel othered and that is part of the reason why some of our families are accessing cohort models because the students feel more safe and welcome in those

273spaces and so this is a way for us to check are we living up to policy 0010 and making sure that our kids feel safe and welcome in all environments at all times when we hit year four this is the time for us to do the data implementation or do the data analysis and then really strengthen our implementation based on what we find out what are we doing where are we going H how are we doing this and are we doing this as well this will give us the data and the runway to be able to really make a determination on that and then post that will be just to continually improve and iterate on what we are doing next slide please there are some operational considerations to this recommendation so for example Student Assignment

274there is some work that will need to be done with our operations team around that budget implications in terms of resourcing Staffing Etc Staffing is noted Communications and engagement I have made a commitment and we will continue to do so to one we will be hiring a director of advanced learning this spring and two at a minimum we will have a Cadence out of what these engagement sessions will look like for highly capable families across the city before the end of this school year this spring and finally just a planning and Cadence of how all of this is going to roll will be shared as we continue to move and I thank you and questions I'm going to encourage us to try to keep our questions focused here as and so we can move along

275but do director Mahi it's get doctor so you know not so far um okay one somewhat technical question uh Mr Evans who by the way is my daughter is math teacher not for geometry brought up this point about um only students that have gone through the cohort model are able to access the higher level math in middle school so as we grow out the neighborhood model will will the highly capable students who go through that neighborh Hood program be able to go into the I guess it's geometry right geometry in middle school and do that level of math if they haven't gone through the cohort program part of this recommendation involves us engaging with our curriculum academics and instruction team to review the policies around our math acceleration so that we have a clearer understanding

276of what that looks like not only for our HC eligible students but for all students in the school district who has access to this who does not and how are we moving through those progressions so that's part of the discussion that is going to take place as part of this recommendation that uh Second question well first of all I just want to say I also appreciate the implementation and monitoring I think it's clear that we're not kicking the can down the road on highly cap but actually trying to like figure out what's working best how we can improve the neighborhood program because I think we heard from a lot of people that they like the cohort model but they also want robust highly capable education in their in their neighborhood schools uh the question though

277on Staffing do you have any anticip I mean I know uh inclusionary practices to be successful take more Staffing so like what is your anticipation on what those staffing needs might be we're in that analysis at this time we are not 100% clear just yet but we do know that it potentially would take more Staffing a lot of the work we're going to do is around the professional development of what this looks like and we don't have a clear answer on that just yet but we will be sure to share that with the board when we know more director Ranken I just want to say thank you I know um Rocky and I have been working on this and for two years two something years um and he was greatly missed when he was um

278on leave and it's it's really exciting to see something tangible um so uh my I guess question or comment is that from the so those are basically our commitments as a district your commitments as staff to how we serve students I want to kind of Honor that that we have a commitment to make two which is part of the importance of this policy update that we approved uh in September about uh the things required by state law being provided to the board that that gives that will give us the opportunity to see from you how how those numbers are changing um where students are being served uh how they are or aren't accessing services and what they are a description of the services the program will offer so I will expect to see in you

279know in next year the description would be here's what's at neighborhood schools here's what's in the cohort and as you um make adjustments I would expect that annually we would we would see some different information um based on how things are evolving and so that will also allow let's see if we're talking about 3 years it's potential potentially no at this table will be here in 3 years so that will off also offer whoever comes next the opportunity to continue to Monitor and provide to the community what is and isn't happening instead of 3 years from now people having to restart this whole conversation so I just want to say thank you for the work that went into it um I know I've heard from Families how much they appreciate the commitment to connect and

280listen to them um from you all and um and I'm excited just to keep this going and and we'll hear more about it in April I appreciate the time thank you I appreciate hear the clarity we have to families on how we are moving forward and that we have the understanding that you know we like this like what's happening in some of the neighborhood models where we are implementing this and implementing it well and we're seeing some really awesome and interesting results that I I want to keep tracking but also sort of a realization that maybe we have not fully implemented it in all neighborhood school is the way we have and so this hybrid really provides a a a strong way to move forward I also really like how the data collection the three

281things you know are they at level the growth is the growth happening and this sense of belonging I really appreciate those three and I think they're really thought out so thank you for your work and for helping provide our our community Clarity on on where we're going here with highly capable services so um board uh this was labeled as a recommend um with your concurrence I'd like to take the recommendation off and say this is this is how we're moving uh this is also going to be deeply embedded in our strategic plan so it's not going to be a separate initiative it's going to be supported uh structurally as we move forward so um with with with your concurrence we're going to start to move on this and um I think we're with Dr Torres

282Morales at the helm I feel we're it's going to be in good stewardship all right I think that is a perfect segue into the last item on our agenda this will be a monthly occurrence uh we're going to receive an update on the strategic planning process this is uh uh superintend this is going to be included on our agenda monthly so the board can stay updated throughout this work but it's super a superintendent is responsible for coming up with the uh strategic plan that aligns with our District's goals um and our guard rails so I'm going to pass it again to Dr Jones uh to now share more about where you are in the process I'm joined uh by Deputy Chief of Staff Eric gersy here who's going to help me with this presentation uh

283but really we want to give as as director top mentioned um the first of several updates on our strategic planning process and as a board youve all have established goals and guard rails um a critical governance tool and what we have done with those we're we're planning on doing an internal analysis reviewing data outlining uh the initial year one of the Strategic plan uh this plan has been the planning to get to this point has been strong so far but we have a even greater opportunity to bring a comprehensive Five-Year Plan to to the board uh that will drive our academic progress and so um with that said I'd like to go on to the next slide please so we are uh we started with Strate with Seattle Excellence a strategic plan and and that

284was frankly uh Innovative groundbreaking something that had never been seen before some people even came to Seattle Seattle Public Schools to work because of our our Unapologetic focus on targeted universalism in that plan we named African-American males as the as the group that the system needed to improve uh outcomes for and since that time we brought forward student outcome Focus governance to really solidify our commitment to not just a set of activities but to a set of outcomes and so uh we move now to where we currently are year zero and this is the the year of stabilization uh we took this Gap year if you will between Seattle excellence and our new strategic plan to do a diagnostic around what are the operational academic initiatives that we need to look at to shore up

285so that we can uh launch into the next strategic plan with with Fidelity and intentionality and so um this uh period of time that we're in is is in during the Strategic development uh and we're really uh trying to make sure that we're assessing the current state of the school district we're establishing a Clear Vision for the future we're outlining specific goals and action steps to achieve that vision and we're and we're prioritizing key areas for improvement and so with that said next slide please we are looking at uh these reasons uh for uh moving forward with a thorough robust process we want to make sure uh from the outset in this plan that we are ensuring meaning meaningful community and stakeholder engagement uh we know that schools are at the heart of our community

286and that the Strategic plan should reflect the voices of students families Educators and local stakeholders and we want to uh stand up a very deliberate process for us to gather broad input ensuring that communities priorities and concerns are addressed in the final plan uh this approach will will ideally strengthen trust and build longterm support for what we're trying to do as we go across this this Continuum we want to make sure we're develop Ving well re well researched sustainable initiatives uh as we move into this process we're we've done a learning needs analysis we will be uh having a the benefit of a resource allocation analysis uh and we're told that what the process that we're engaging in early on is one of the best in class in terms of how we're approaching this and

287so our strategic plan will be better informed by data research Community needs and this will be reducing our risk of having a reactive or short-term decision- making so as we go forward we're going to enhance collaboration across departments and schools uh some people have labeled us as having silos and this will help us break down some of those silos we're going to make sure that we're we're having a back and forth or interative conversation with those who are actually on the front lines of providing Educational Service delivery and those who are working at the system level as well uh and as we go through this process we're going to be trying to make sure sure that we're strengthening implementation and accountability it's going to make us uh Stronger as we go go forward uh this

288transparency that we'll have about this process will help us to have again a robust process uh and then we want to make sure at the end of the day we're building a more adaptable and Future Ready District uh we want to make sure that the what we're pushing forward is going to be uh forward thinking it's going to be Innovative it's going to get us ready for those things that we talk about colle and career ready not just at the point of uh high school but when students start their first day at Seattle Public Schools we need to be thinking about how are we having a a uh an adaptable Future Ready District so with that said I'm going to hand it off to Eric to kind of talk about some of the specifics around

289how we're realizing our opportunities through this planning process thanks Dr Jones if we could go to the next slide see this one got you great okay great on the next slide we can see that we're going to be walking through a four-phased strategic planning process um over the next over the that'll take us through the end of the calendar year and we've tried to be super intentional about sequencing the process in a way that will allow us to have a robust uh strategic plan that will be both concrete that will be sequen that will have metrics and that will hopefully integrate our academic strategy with our financial um with our Financial strategy because we're at a point in the district where we know that we can't afford for those bodies of work to live in

290isolation anymore but we need to bring together what we're doing from a teaching and learning standpoint with what we're doing to attach necessary resources to fund the initiatives so just walking from left to right we're currently um in the goals and guardrails development the G the board has adopted Topline goals and guardrails and we're currently in the process of setting interim goals and guard rails we went through that just earlier um with the previous presentation and we're supposed to wrap that up in the next uh several months here as we come to you with uh draft guard rails next month and then we wrap up with final goals and guard rails um in April or May we're currently undergoing a resource and strategy analysis to First pain a comprehensive picture of where our resource and

291strategy set broadly defined lives across the district meaning how equitably are our people time and money distributed currently and we're also going to be conducting what we're calling a system strategy return on investment to take a really close look at our current initiatives to understand what's our theory of action for driving change and outcomes and how are we seeking to get there from there we're going to be bringing the board an initial set of uh strategies that we're going to pursue during year one and we're going to begin to really bring the community along in that process and then we're going to deepen that work going into the fall um with a with a more detailed set of multi-year implementation metrics and a very clear instructional vision and plan for the work um there's sort

292of three guiding sort of buckets philosophical buckets that are driving the four particular phases that we've laid out here the first is that we want to make sure that we're Gathering feedback from the community in an authentic way that brings them along that we're not just asking the community the vision and values you've done that work as a board but that we're coming to them understanding what we've learned learned from our resource and strategy analysis coming to them with draft ideas coming to them with possible strategies that they can react to so that the community is really shaping our plan and that we're tapping into their Ingenuity and we're tapping into their Innovation um and then secondly we know that we're approaching next year rapidly and we need to be super intentional about making sure

293that we're getting off to a strong start next year and then taking the time we need during the summer and into the early fall to to look out and forecast for the following four years so that by the by sort of late fall we have a really Clear Vision of where we're going to be going over the next 5 years the other thing that we've heard um one of the things that we've done is conducted some initial engagement with our school leaders we've held two uh listening sessions and school leaders have told us that while they have a very clear vision for the work at their building central office needs to come alongside them with a very clear vision and we need the time to merge the visions that we have at the school level

294with the Visions we have at central office so we're all singing from the same song sheet we're all rolling in the same direction if we can move to the next slide this is just a very brief overview of the work that we've already accomplished you know that we've conducted a student needs assessment I don't want it to get lost on us that we have a we're starting from a place of strength that Dr Hart told us we have a lot of great work that we can build on as a district we also recognize that we need to accelerate our our progress and that coming out of the pandemic uh we we haven't necessarily caught up in our two goals in third grade literacy and seventh grade math from before the pandemic and we need to

295not only catch up but surge ahead um so that's that's the first body of work is the goals and guardrails uh development um secondly we're in the midst of conducting a very thorough and robust resource and strategy analysis and what we're doing is we're combining uh student level data School level data employee level data and finance data to understand a through line between what's budgeted in our in our spreadsheets and what's actually going on in the classroom so we can understand how our resources are distributed across the system and we're going to be able to ask questions like where are most experienced and highest performing teachers which students have access to those teachers in our school system that's not a question we're really asking right now um what student what classes are students taking are

296students who have uh similar levels of performance having inequitable access to rigorous coursework we heard a lot about mathematics tonight um how can we ensure and and what sort of sequencing uh shifts might we need to make so we're currently undergoing that work and the big sort of headline that I want us to walk away from this slide with is that we're taking the time to do things in the right order a lot of last time we our last strategic plan we launched a strategic plan and then we kind of retrofitted goals and guard rails into the Strategic plan a lot of districts will sort of develop a set of strategies and then say wait how are we going to pay for all this we're first understanding where are resources distributed across the system and

297then understanding starting from that place with a really clear picture of our resources how can we make shifts in our resources shifts in our strategies based on um where we are today so if we can go to the next slide we want the board obviously to come alongside Us in this process this is what you can expect um this is what you can expect very drafty but this is what you can expect through the end of the calendar year um again at the next meeting we anticipate coming before you with some additional information about um just how our school funding Equity looks across the district an initial snapshot um and then we're going to update you on our thorough plan for Community engagement as sort of a preview we anticipate at least a three-pillar plan

298that includes um multilingual translated survey information that's distributed in many ways meeting families where they are targeted focus groups including with community- based organizations that we know our trusted Messengers with our community so that they're out there including with families students other organizations and then um larger Town Hall style Focus you know opportunities for families throughout the city of Seattle and then this will come alongside coming into early summer what you can expect to see is a really clear theory of action for how we're going to achieve uh the goals within the constraints of the guardrail so what are sort of the big strategies that we're going to be pursuing over the next number of years and then we're going to be breaking down those strategies with a set of key actions and those are

299going to get more and more specific going into early fall on the next slide you can see that we have a series of overlapping work streams that are going to come together to form um a comprehensive plan but again in early summer what you're going to see is really strong initial actions for year one we're going to bring that back out to the community multiple touch points so that then coming into late fall we can refine the plan having a very clear Revenue picture in hand making some initial shifts and and the board has talked a lot about we want what what's the budget going to look like to a the goals what you can expect to see is an initial down payment in year one with some initial shifts and then going into the

300next four years increased alignment year-over-year um with the budget so that we can achieve a more coherent school system on behalf of our students back to Dr Jones so so we threw a lot at you here and uh but this is this is a snapshot of where we're going it's pretty comprehensive you can see it's integrated we're trying to make sure that all the pieces are um aligned and that we are are moving intentionally so want to see if there's any reactions responses wants wishes desires of the board as we move forward what will be good for you what will be good next time we come come before you with this um but this is our first uh opportunity to talk about this is the vision for the Strategic plan or the development of the

301process so we're open to questions thoughts ideas guidance uh given your tolerance for time at this point and know it's late will hopefully make the questions somewhat brief but I appreciate this I appreciate the information I appreciate the fact that we will have an a regular update to see progress and see the progress you're making because I think you are doing a lot of work to align all of these pieces and that the Strategic plan really pulls all of the the goals the guard rails the budgets all into into one so thank you and I really like the and I'm excited for the engagement port and the the multiple iterations of here here's the plan what's the feedback we may not be able to incorporate all the feedback but we've gone out there and said

302please provide your feedback here here's what we could and could not incorporate to try to to try to address concerns that we hear but I know D director Ranken thank you yeah I want to really really thank you for this this timeline that it's okay if it changes it's okay if things don't go exactly to plan but I think uh something we really struggled with in our and I I'm kind of guessing this is maybe a learning from last year is that we kind of didn't know when we should expect things to happen and what information when and how to really um oversee the the the process of looking at um reigning our our budget and facilities and whatnot so I think this is great I hope that we will continue to be getting this

303type of information even if it's an information item of you know we are here um uh I have the two two questions that I have are uh with the engagement I think it's going to be exciting for people to engage on learning strategies it's going to be difficult to have to talk through things like budget tradeoffs like changes to Transportation potential changes to buildings so I guess I'm I'm asking slashing encouraging where where in this does that sort of go along with it that um again learning from last year when we heard tonight let you know uh let let the wait lists go and fill our schools well that's going to drain already almost empty elementary schools so there's just trade-offs to all of these things so how can we help or I guess how

304can you all how do you plan to help support the community in understanding understanding that the Strategic plan is not aspirational it's actually how we're going to do these things for our students and the choices that we have to make to get there um so and and I think the earlier that those those conversations can can be had with Community how they will be impacted um what input they might have um the better and also an opportunity to get them excited about this is hard but we're going to be able to do this um and then the second question is I noticed that respond oh yeah yeah please yeah so uh one of the elements that we didn't mention is we will have an advisory task force guiding us along the way so when we

305get those um huge issues kind of thrust upon us that we need to respond to we can probably stress test those with the advisory uh committee or the task force to help us to Center how we would have those conversations with communi so that I just want to mention that that was something that we didn't mention but it's part of the engagement that's going to be guiding us as we go forward thank you that's great thank you so much um and the second one's really quick uh I noticed that the timeline um and I had my interview with the research firm so I understand that that they're seeing the scope of work is they anticipate taking till December so if we're looking at December technically we're sort of looking at our goals and guard rails

306going into effect in terms of monitoring in September so would do we plan to still start the monitoring on the new goals in September at the beginning of the school year um uh based on strategies that are maybe already being implemented even though we won't have approved the final strategic plan I think that's I think that's a tremendous question but Eric if you have a a solid answer to that go for it but I I think we we need to work that a little bit it might be a question for our June Retreat yeah I I don't know how solid it is but we've begun so what you're going to see in June and part of the reason we've kind of broken it into two pieces the year one and then the sort of extended

307plan is that we're making we are making some initial strategic shifts how are we backing up to make sure we're building Educators capacity in K to one K1 to to meet the early literacy goal what's it looking like in Middle School you heard Dr Perkins talk about some of the initial secondary shifts that we're going to be making what does it look like to fortify the work around the high school and Beyond planning in school so those initial shifts are going to be coming um and this goes back to earlier question director ranking one of the things we're going to have access to as a National Database of other what other districts are spending in particular area so we may way over way under in certain places and that can allow us to make shifts

308to liberate resources initially but it's really again we're looking at an initial down payment and then ongoing alignment great I think June junor treat totally makes sense so that every we're all clear what when we're going to start monitoring and how it relates to um evaluations and everything so that's it thank you maybe staff can make not of that um all right thank you so much Dr Jones thank you um uh just one last reminder our monthly engagement session is coming up on March 26th I hope since everyone stayed here so long hopefully folks will feel like they want to join us um as we sort of flex our muscles and and get better and better at at our engagment but there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting

309is now adjourned at 8:47 have a good evening everyone thank you