001[Music] an executive session and the special meeting of morning [Music] good evening we'll Now call the meeting to order momentarily and SPS TV will begin broadcasting the January 22nd 2025 regular board meeting is now called to order at 5:02 uh we would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people Miss Wilson Jones please call the role vice president Briggs here director Clark director hery here director mahi it looks like we don't yet have director mrai director Ranken present director sarju pres present director MRA he has uh entered the auditorium uh director brag here director ilas and president top here yeah so it is 503 we're going to uh we're going to have a few I'll open this meeting here real fast with
002a few comments we'll go to superintendent comments and then we're going to jump right into testimony here so folks don't have to wait um just tonight tonight we're going to open our meeting with our uh some monitoring our goals um we are also sh sharpening our focus and underscoring our commitments through a development of a plan a work plan to improve and fulfill our governance responsibilities this is something we worked on at our Retreat um so if you haven't checked out our work plan for the year please take a look at it it's supposed to help us know what we want to accomplish and are trying to accomplish this year but also provide transparency to community on what we are going to accomplish so you see overall our goals and trying to re to build
003some of this trust with Community um we're also going to be uh looking at our draft goals and guard rails and set and setting our new District goals and guard rails which we will discuss tonight and will end through a self-reflection during our quarterly evaluations um before we go to the superintendent comments I want to highlight two more things for our community uh first we want to recognize the passing of former School Board director Janice kumaki late last year Jan served two terms on the school board from 1997 to 2005 she was a graduate of our schools and a champion for our students and I would invite our community in reading more about about her leadership and the other thing I want to highlight is our upcoming special election and remind our community to please
004vote the Seattle school is asking voters to consider renewing two levies uh these levies provide continued funding for Education safety and well-being of our students ballots are due by election day which is February 11th and more information about their levies is on our website that I'll give it over to uh Dr Jones all right thank you um president top uh thank you for everyone for participating today uh welcome to 2025 this is our first board meeting of of the new year um and congratulations to president top for being president and vice president Briggs for being vice president and member at large Miss Rahi for uh stepping up into those roles uh as president top mentioned today our board will discuss uh goals and guard rails for the next strategic plan the process that we have
005is that our board determines the ends and the superintendent comes up with the means to achieve the goals our board has engaged with the community and the development of these goals and are incorporating the feedback uh that they get into a final set of goals and guard rails after that my team will be working to develop interim goals in guardrails so that so that we can align and stay focused and make strategic plans along the way so that we can be accountable uh in so doing we have progress monitoring and we do this progress monitoring monthly uh and this month's progress monitoring is on College and Career Readiness and our graduation rates I'm proud of the progress that we've made over the last five years for all students including African-American males and students of color
006furthest from educational Justice what we'll also be um presenting today is some preliminary budget recommendations and in this session we will be giving an overview of the current state and make it clear that what will be be on the table for the budget that the board will ultimately Pro approve in July between now and July we are working to ensure that we have a balanced budget and ensure that we have a down payment of resources set aside for funding our goal work within the forthcoming strategic plan part of us making sure our budget is stable is the legislative session has begun and we are counting on our state leaders to come through for us in key areas we we been coordinated and precis in our efforts to emphasize our needs and what is helpful this
007session is that other districts are really aligned along uh along with us in terms of requests and needs and we are hopeful and banking on really positive outcomes uh last weekend we attended the wasda and was Wasa legislative conference um to learn about how we can be in a best position to strongly advocate for the resources that we need to to fund and resource our schools and as recent as today uh I testified on several bills around special education uh our IMO which are materials supplies and operating cost just to ensure that we're having a presence at the legislature uh as president top mentioned we have uh critical levies on February 11th we have the epno levy which is the educational programs and operations Levy uh that's that provides student safety and support such as
008school security special education multilingual and support staff supports student services and programs such as healthy student meals and student transportation and also fund student opportunities Athletics Arts music and drama for a few examples we also have the capital Levy renewal which is really focused on Replacements re renovation and repairs Safety and Security improvements are included in that heating and ventilation energy and conservation to say just to say a few this is about 16% of our total budgets uh ballots Dro in the mail today and we are hopeful that everyone votes also we are uh coming up around the corner to Black lives matter at schools week and this week uh we joined schools Across the Nation and recognizing black lives matter at school week of action this is a time for us to reflect on
009the importance of educational Justice it's about affirming the value of black students families and Educators while committing to create a school environment where everyone feels seen heard and supported you should be clapping about that because that's a really important piece um this encourages to engage in meaningful conversations hold diverse perspectives and work together to build build a better future I'd like to pass it over to our student board members to read a proclamation into the record for black lives at matter school week please a proclamation of Seattle School District number one King County Seattle Washington declaring the lives of black student matter black students matter and recognizing and encouraging participation districtwide in the National 2020 black lives matter at school week of action February 3rd through 7th 2025 in year of purpose 2024 through 2025
010whereas the black lives matter at school movement began in Seattle in Fall of 2016 through the leadership of Educators and whereas the Seattle school board has repeatedly recognized and encouraged participation in Black lives matter at school week of action and the year of purpose and whereas the Seattle school board has also recognized that throughout our nation's history institutional and structural racism and injustices have led to deepening racial disparities across all sectors of our society and have lasting negative consequences for our communities City and nation and whereas as a public school district we are facilitators of the Limitless growth potential of human beings with a charge to guide Our Youth and finding and achieving their purpose with a belief that every human being deserves to live with dignity whereas in board policy number 0030 ensuring educational
011and educ educational and racial Equity Seattle Public Schools makes a commitment to success of every student in each of our schools in charge of our District staff in charge our District staff administrators instructions communities and family in this broadly shared resp responsibility and whereas in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and countless black named and unnamed victims the Seattle School Board adopted resolution number 20 number 2019 through 2038 to affirm Seattle Public Schools is committed to the safety of black students and revolves resolves that black lives don't just matter they are worthy beloved and needed and therefore Seattle public schools declares that the lives of black students matter and hereby proclaims February 3rd through 7th 2025 as black lives at school week of action and encourages participation districtwide throughout discussion in
012classrooms and in home throughout this week of action and the 2025 year of purpose thank you thank you and to further express our uh commitment to creating environments that are safe and healthy let me let's be reminded that school districts educate school age residents regardless of the immigration status of students and their families to that end to that end state law directs districts to limit immigration enforcement to the fullest extent possible consistent with federal and state law and we are currently reviewing our relevant policies and procedures to that end to ensure they continue to provide we continue to provide clear information for students their families and SPS staff back to you president top thank you thank you so much Dr Jones really appreciate those updates and thank you to the student board members for the
013wonderful reading of the Proclamation um we're going to move into public testimony right now uh we've reached the portion of testimony um board procedure 1430 BP provides our rules for Testimony the board expects the same standard of Civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself as board president I have the right to and I will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standards 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'll now pass it to staff to summarize a few additional points and read off the testimony speakers Miss Wilson Jones Thank You president uh top the board will take testimony today from
014those on the testimony list and we'll go to the waiting list if we are missing speakers please wait until call to approach the podium or unmute um and only one person may speak at a time the board's procedure provides that most of your time should be spent on the topic you signed up to speak about speakers may see their time to another person but this must be done when the listed speaker is called time isn't restarted and the total time remains 2 minutes the timer at the podium will indicate the time remaining for speakers here in person when the light is red and a beep sounds it means that your time has been exhausted and the next speaker will be called for those joining by phone the beep will be the indication that time has
015been exhausted moving into our list now for those joining by phone please press star six to unmute on the conference call line when your name is called for everyone please also reintroduce yourself when called as I may Miss um some pronunciations as we move through today's list the first Speaker today is Yana Sabo Hutchinson who will be followed by Christy dang and then hermela mamamo wait just a sec we'll get the microphone working we are not this is not part of your two minutes I'll res it for sure all right go ahead when you're ready hi my name is Jonna Sab Hutchinson and I'm representing West Seattle High School appreciation for Library resource and desire to see them funded in the future it has come to my attention in August 2024 you Pro proceeded defunding
016my school library I understand that schools in my education are undef funded in general meaning you must cut something I understand that this is a hard choice for you to make but I hope you know that over 200 people who sign my petition deeply care about our library and Librarians and Library access one person on my survey said the library is so important to helping students take control of their educ ation and be independent it's a safe place for many and having a library encourages kids to read in a society with constantly decreasing literacy rates by cutting the library funding you would be breaking your promise to ensure me and my peers a decent education Librarians are essential to our schools as we can rely on them from not just books but a study space
017technology help meeting spaces games drawing and refuge in a stressful day our school is already overpopulated so taking important space from active Learners will become harder to students to get back into their academic mindset another person I surveyed said students need a place to explore new ideas new Authors create and form opinions about current events and that's what Librarians and libraries bank it's unbelievable defunding is even being considered we understand that something in uh something in Seattle Public Schools needs to be cut but we ask you please not to cut the jobs and resources that directly interact with students on a day byday basis once again I'm just a student up here but I hope today you know I represent the student body wasle schools as well as SP SPS students who are fighting for
018space atmosphere a place for New Opportunities or a place just to hang out with peers thank you the next speaker is Christy dong after Christy will be hermela and then uh Jasmine hello my name is Christy Yung I'm a student and member of the Washington NAACP youth Council ethnic studies has been a consistent Community demand for years and continues to be a demand from Educators youth families and organizations like the ones here today as the black lives matter at school's resolution passed today we need to keep in mind that one of the demands is to mandate ethnic studies a demand for the superintendent is to make sure that ethnic studies is one of the priorities for developing the strategies to achieve the goals for the next strategic plan without ethnic studies students don't have access
019to instruction that is diverse meaningful and shows the truth and roots of our communities of color studies is Our Truth healing and Medicine in your proposal guard rails it states the superintendent will not allow adult behavior in school buildings and classrooms that are misaligned with the anti-racist values of SPS in order to teach in an ethnic studies framework there must be a requirement to have anti-racist training anti-racist training pushes our Educators to challenge the system and also helps them recognize their biases and gives them the tools to re to teach and understand ethnic studies with ethnic studies in every classroom it allows youth to feel that they can be themselves and see themselves in their curriculum this benefits everybody ethnic studies helps our students learn and grow in ways that inspires us to make change
020in our local communities all of our demands shared today go hand inand and represent the change we did we want to see in our education thank you the next speaker is herela Mamo hi my name is herel Mamo I'm a student and member of the NAACP youth Council I'm here today to also remind you of all of the importance of ethnic studies as not only an elective class or a class you can merely opt out of but implemented into all educational curricula ethnic study helps students find points of views that correlate to their personal lives it brings students of of color to understand something beyond their IDE identities and understand how we can create a change and recognize issues within our communities when listening about continuous stories and lessons taught to us that often villainize
021our bipo communities it's hard to recognize the truth and roots of our histories these stories are being taken away from us in disregard our educational rights which is why ethnic studies is so important and needs to be valued not only by students but by our Educators this points out the need to hire and retain black Educators which is one of the demands for the black lives matters at school there are students like myself who had never had a teacher that looked like them never had a teacher that understood them or even a teacher that they could look up to so it's important to have support not only of students but teachers and community members for ethnic studies because ethnic studies should be priority thank you next speaker is Jasmine or Jasmine Azam after after Jasmine
022will be Rowan Harper and then Michelle Campbell hello my name is jasine naam my pronouncer she her and I'm the president of the Washington State npu Council I'm here today to speak about the black lives betterer at school demand solidarity with Palestine no genocide and scolastici it is so important now more than ever that Seattle Public Schools takes a Firm Stance against the genocide scholas side happening in Palestine our schools hold the responsibility to prepare students with the knowledge to engage the world critically and ethically and that begins with naming and addressing addressing Injustice where we see it on a global scale the deliberate destruction of schools and Sy and systematic denial of Palestinian children's right to an education are huge violations of human rights the United Nations reported that over 80% of 80% of
023schools in Gaza were destroyed and thousands of students and hundreds of teachers have been killed this information and Palestinian stories need to be taught to our own students it also ties into our goal of implementing ethnic studies into the education of Seattle public school students ethnic studies courses aim to Foster Global awareness and understanding by ing the stories of marginalized communities teaching about Palestine teaches students more about global justice as well as how it connects to our own communities SPS classrooms should incorporate lessons and discussions about the current and historical cont context of Palestine Educators could include literature and poetry written by Palestinian authors and could facilitate open discussions about global human rights issues so I am recently graduated from Seattle public high school just this past June my younger sister and many members of
024the naacc youth Council are still attending Seattle public schools throughout the district as members of this community we recognize the profound role education plays in fostering positive change and Equity thank you the next speaker is Rowan Harper after Rowan is Michelle Campbell and Manuel slay hi everyone my name is Ron Harper and I'm currently a junior at Ballard High School I'm speaking on behalf of my book club and as well as the 1600 students that currently access our school library we love our school library out of curiosity how many of you had utilized your local library or School library when you around my age well whatever it may be your answer reflects on where you stand right now in this debate here I have with me a petition that ran Sanders and I had started
025last week as you can see it is a big stack of papers and just so you know this this is just from our school let alone there are a total of 104 schools in this district and thousands of students Within These schools aren't your goals as the SPs board to provide um resources to students prioritize these students mental health and create a safe space for them our outgoing Surgeon General Dr VC Murthy has recently emphasized his concern over the US's mental health his main recommendation for how Americans can cultivate health happiness and fulfillment is by building a strong community that is what a school library means to me and the other students in this District Libraries provide a safe space for students libraries also provide free math tutoring access to printers free school supplies a
026quiet place to focus security and more these are all crucial components of the SPs board's motto if you cut our Librarians hours and a half you're basically taking these opportunities straight out of the hands of your students right in front of them I can't believe I'm standing here along with many others making this point in front of you that I as a student have to advocate for resources that you would have been outraged to lose for my own education for others education for your children's education that is who I'm currently representing as I stand up here I hope you know that the futures of the SPs students and the next generation are in your hands so in the eyes of an SPS student how would you feel if the adults on your side are taking
027away the hours of such a crucial reliable community resource thank you so much for your time the next speaker is Michelle Campbell and I misspoke earlier um after Michelle will'll be Chris jackins and then we'll get to Manuel as Li hello we can hear you hello can you hear me yes we can hear you hi um good evening superintendent Jones and School Board directors my name is Michelle Campbell and I'm a parent of a third grader in SPS and co- Secretary of Seattle Council PTSA um from Senate bill 5180 which was in public hearing just yesterday I quote the legislature finds that Washington state has long been at the Forefront of recognizing that Student Success is dependent on providing every student with a safe and inclusive learning environment free of harassment and discrimination in all
028forms here in Seattle we too espouse the importance of a safe and inclusive learning envir free of harassment and discrimination in all forms and we see this reflected in the goals and guard rails which will be voted on tonight despite our good intentions students across our district continue to share with us that they are not safe that their environment is not inclusive and that they experience harassment and discrimination in conversations with students across the district we encounter enthusiastic children who want to learn but see disparities in their treatment and in their access to education in the Leading Edge advisor uh School counseling study um think presented at an audit meeting in December Elementary School attendance shows increasing disparities by race ethnicity attendance drops in Middle School disparities by race ethnicities persist attendance rates plummet in
029high school disparities by race and ethnicity persist discipline data shows disparities by race and ethnicity across school all School levels at Sandpoint Elementary 44% of third grade students are proficient in ela but 0% of third grade africanamerican males are proficient at Hazel wolf Ka 77% of seventh grade students are proficient in ela but 0% of seventh grade African-American males are proficient at Roosevelt High School 81% of 10th grade students exed please conclude your remarks yes but only 35% of African American males are proficient these are critical important numbers and they are unacceptable I applaud you for commissioning the study and we look forward um to as the study suggests trust building through transparent and open dialogue about these findings um we should be looking at these numbers with everything that we do in the next
0305 years um they should be front and center thank you the next speaker is Chris jackins after Chris will be Manuela slay and then Laura Marie Rivera my excuse me my name is is Chris jackins box 8 Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on the $744,000 construction change order for Raina Beach High School and on the viands building commissioning report two points number one the fundamental documents were not timely provided number two I contacted multiple District staff about the documents one suggestion was to do a public records request please vote no on my opposition to proposition two the capital levy on the February 11th ballot more Mega schools mean more school closures Four Points number one I attended District presentations on Prop two number two at Kimble a recent parent at the school noted that she would
031never have approved making the school into a mega siiz School number three parents from Graham Hill asserted that repairs to schools made more sense than spending over $148 million each on two proposed Mega schools number four more Mega schools mean more school closures the public should vote no on the adoption of ghouls and guard rails the board is the Public's elected voice the board's failure to properly exercise this power makes the goals in guard rails Hollow please vote no on the November 2024 financial report on page two of the report States general fund cash at November 2024 is 199.95 million this seems to be a typo thank you very much the next speaker is milis Le you can go ahead Manuela thank you this is Mana Sly and I S my time to Liber is
032Liz in the room or online hi can you hear me we can hear you Liz thank you good evening I'm Liz Barry a longtime SPS du language teacher at Denny as well as a current Concord parent I am asking to explore our enrollment processes and specifically weight lists to ensure that they are transparent for all students families and staff this is imperative for all students to receive the best education dual language programs DL must be accessible to all MLL and Heritage and native speakers who want to participate Denny has room in its program to expand last year there were multiple students who went through the Open Enrollment process and the DL evaluation they were put on the wait list which never moved families were frustrated with the lack of responses from enrollment they moved children
033to private school and to the Highline dual language programs as long as Denny is under enrolled students who qualify and want to a language should be admitted Whenever there is space second the district wait list and the enrollment process impact school budgets and Staffing these are directly tied to student outcomes as they lead to teacher displacements and program reduction third as a parent of a kindergartener I went through the enrollment process last year like many children in single parent families my children lives have unique complications which limits where they can attend school during open enrollment I request that she be at Concord with her brother in April 2024 there were seven students on the wait list for Kindergarten at Concord five of them had had older siblings at Concord the staff and administration expected students
034from the wait list to be admitted and this expectation was passed along to fam several families contacted enrollment and receiv received no or little response some were denied upon appeal by the time school started and despite concord's projected enrollment being down the only two that were admitted were children of SPS employees in the pathway in conclusion I am asking you to one determine if there are policies of enrollment that are preventing students from being admitted from the weight list two ensure that there is transparency for families and school-based staff around how weight lists be treated clear explanations of how how students are admitted and communication that is both respectful and accessible for families three for the benefit of our students in schools insist on District enrollment processes that ensure that the maximum number of students
035are enrolled in the schools they've requested thank you for your time the next speaker is Laura Marie Rivera Laura Marie will be followed by Amy V vaton and then Robert uh Fano perfect and before Laura Marie Rivera I just want to remind folks we're going to try to keep it to two minutes please so we can get through everyone and be respectful through this process thank you good afternoon I'm Laura Marie Rivera I think the proposed goals are attainable but I know that our Seattle students are capable of so much more than learning to read and satisfying those graduation requirements we need to give them the best possible public education and ensure that they have the tools they'll need to succeed in the future I find the proposed guardrails are frustratingly vague only saying what
036the superintendent will not do but I'm hopeful that my generous read on them will will prove to be the case number one for example should mean that we will increase educational opportunities for all Seattle students including access to Transportation special educ ation Advanced learning dual language immersion and much more we need to make sure these programs are offered and available for students from all over the district especially in the areas that have been historically underserved but there's a more pressing need and it pertains to guard rail number two of course I share the SPs commitment of a safe and welcoming environment for Seattle students as we look to what has sadly become the national agenda our most vulnerable groups are being targeted we must protect our students receiving special education services as the White House
037removes accessibility statement we must protect our lgbtqia plus children especially trans students as the administration attempts to deny their existence we must protect our children that are new to the country the promise of a safe and welcoming environment extends to all of our students regardless of where they were born individually and collectively we must stand with our marginalized students in the words of our new governor Bob Ferguson quote it's important for all of us no matter what role we have as an individual to make sure we're doing everything we can to ensure that folks are treated with dignity and respect I'm calling on our district leaders and all of our community members to recommit their efforts to not only serving those students furthest from educational justice but protecting our most vulnerable students and giving all
038of our Seattle students their best chance at a successful future to quote the Bishop from the other Washington we must demonstrate quote the strength and courage to honor the Dignity of every human being speak the truth in love and walk humbly with one another thank you the next speaker is Amy vaton after Amy will be Robert Fano and then Skyler trap hi I would like to seed my time to Lee pixton a student at West Seattle high school thank you growing up I found my love of reading in the diverse shelves of the public library my father used to take me there whenever he needed a new CD so we were constantly in the library before I was even in grade school I had found my place among the shelves of books in the library
039when I went to grade school it was like getting my own personal Library hang on sorry that's the wrong document um it was so much closer than the one my father and I went to and it was much Cozier as well the school library was decorated differently for each season and it even had bean bag chairs and string lights so as an Avid Reader I would consistently go there and swap out books each week learning new words Concepts and ideas the library was a magical place with Book Fairs and my favorite librarian then I went to middle school it was intimidating to say the least Not only was I going to a new school but this was the first time I had gone to school in months because of covid-19 during classes everyone had masks
040on and their voices were muffled we had to sit away from each other everyone's intense but that year the Madison Library became My Sanctuary with a much more extensive library and books at higher reading levels than the ones in grade school I was ecstatic in seventh grade I became a library ta I had a whole hour every day to walk along gliding my fingers over the plastic book covers like I was walking through a maze oh no okay um now as a high school I seem to go more than ever I can't go a day without winding up in the library either because of the constant issues I face with school laptops or as an escape from the rest of the noisy school when everything just feels like it's too much I use the library
041to print essential documents from my classes and I often do this during lunch however if the library is only open a few days a week that time might conflict with my busy schedule and I might not be able to print these documents at all though the libraries may only be closed for a few days a week I am scared three days may become four I am scared we will forget just how important the library is and that a group of first graders will see that the place that used to stay open all the time is now open less and less they might think that this is because library is not important that reading must not be that important after all I'm worried the magic I found when I was young will be lost on them
042and then there are the studies so many studies that show the statistics but I'll give you an example the napan literacy study showed that schools that spent less money on their libraries had lower literacy rates to put it bluntly one final thought yes thank you um if School libraries are no longer convenient then there will be less people going to them less bright young readers will have access to the tools they need and the ability to further their education thank you the next speaker is Robert followed by Skyler and then Maro fuja good evening my name is Robert Fano and I was a first second grade teacher for 30 years with this District imagine a teacher testifying in September that they're okay with one out of every three students not being able to read on
043grain level by June not acceptable right so why is the board setting such low expectations as itself in my final 3 years of teaching the district began using the map computerized tests to measure reading progress in each of those years despite 70% of my students qualifying for free lunch the classroom average reading growth more than doubled the district's average your dashboard will show that no student of mine ever scored less than a Year's growth including elll and special needs children it's a simple fact I've proven over and over if a child can speak they can be taught to read the science of reading tells us the key to success is twofold the teacher a needs to understand how speech and print are interconnected via phonics and then B how to systematically and effectively lay that
044out so students have the foundation to become fluent readers furthermore this can be accom accomplished in a cognitively engaging manner with little money and no special textbooks as I can show you I've written three books and taught classes through Seattle Pacific University on beginning reading methods this is not the first time I've offered training to the district without charge but each time I'm told the district is making satisfactory progress nonetheless I offer my assistance again for free because if a student can speak there's no reason they can't learn to read 100% of the time thank you the next speaker is Skyler trap followed by Maro fija and then Caroline Shelton scar Skyler if you're online please press star six to unmute on the conference line doesn't look like we have Skyler with us yet moving
045to the next speaker Maro fet do we have Maro in person I'm going to go to the next speaker I will come back and call names again at the end she's walking up oh thank you hello hello I Sav my time to Crystal prior my name is Crystal prior my older daughter attends John Stanford international elementary school and my younger daughter is in the Seattle public preschool program my mother is from the countryside in M Japan growing up she didn't teach me Japanese even though I'd expressed interest from an early age this was the 1980s bilingualism was wasn't really valued and my mother was concerned that my American father wouldn't be able to understand our conversations so my sophomore year of high school I elected I elected to go to an option public high school
046that offered Japanese continued in college studied abroad my junior year and ultimately moved to Japan for intensive language study I completed a masters in Japanese politics at the University of Tokyo with a scholarship from the Japanese government and worked at the US Embassy in Tokyo before returning to the United States many US Japan focused organizations invested in my education and supported my ability to reconnect with my Heritage a major factor in choosing Seattle for my family was the connection to Japan at the University of washhington and in Seattle I wish I could have learned Japanese as a child so it's important to me that my daughters have this opportunity SPS is unique in the country in having two option elementary schools offering Japanese language immersion we've lived in San Diego and Honolulu and even there
047they don't have public Japanese language programs you have to be a native or Heritage speaker to attend the programs they do have which are private and not affordable to a single mother of two just across the bridge in bellev they're expanding their DLI programs because their superintendent understands that while neighborhood schools are valuable more options are needed to respond to today's challenges they have made their popular programs such as DLI more accessible districtwide and enrollment has increased to the point where they will not need to close any more schools I hope SPS will similarly support families options and that my children will grow and thrive in environments that support their connection to Japanese language and culture thank you NE next is Caroline Shelton hi I'm the parent of a first grader in the Japanese language
048cohort at John Stanford International School last fall the district proposed eliminating option schools a change that would have greatly limited who has access to our school and fundamentally changed the Dual language immersion program model we became concerned that the two Japanese DLI programs which are attended by families throughout the city are at risk so a few of us wrote a letter about what this program means to us and why it's important for the community and future generations to preserve it over 500 people signed our letter including hundreds of parents some who benefit directly from these programs and many other parents who do not leaders of state and local organizations signed this letter including Japan America Society of Washington Japanese community and culture Center of Western Washington Deno Japanese American citizens League niss vets and many
049other organizations I un unfortunately don't have time to name Educators from 40 organizations within Washington and across the country signed faculty from 20 higher ed institutions also signed this letter as you can see this letter resonated with many and we hope it will speak to you as well we also come so I have the letter we also come bringing a gift for you these 1,00 CR and one cranes here's one um were made by parents and children of John Stamford International School the whole school including members of our Spanish language cohort came together and learned how to make origami cranes to bring to you cranes symbolize peace unity and healing in this new year we offer uh them to you as a gesture of renewed partnership in working together with District leaders to make our
050schools stronger for every kid and every family in Seattle uh we believe that programs like ours can serve uh as a model and are part of the solution we hope that our DLI option schools can serve as a model for the expansion of new programs the parents of jsis stand ready to partner with you thank you the next speaker is Alexander [Applause] [Music] Feldman hi my name is Alex Feldman I'm a parent of two highcap students in seatt public schools I'd like to make a brief statement about Advanced learning services and have shared a more detailed version with board members and the superintendent with handouts and email expanding Advanced learning to Neighborhood schools is a great goal but until that program is ready the highly capable cohort program sunsetting should be paused today the neighborhood
051School recommendation of in-class differentiation has no curriculum and for this year's first graders we've replaced a full-fledged program with what amounts to best intentions our kids cannot afford to wait for a program to be devised while their learning needs are not met so please consider reopening Cascadia and other HDC schools to highcap students while developing a scalable program for neighborhood schools thank you next is David [Applause] Ferman after David will be Jana Parker and then Ashley gross hi y'all um my name is David Ferman I'm a special education teacher at Ballard High School and I'm here with a library cohort there's more than a few of us here um I'm here I want to talk about kind of two parts of why the library is so important first uh I actually started a book club
052with my group uh with my students um a queer Pride Book Club right when Co shut us down because we had students who were so excited for their first Pride ever like they were thrilled they knew they had just come out they were going to Pride and all of a sudden everything was cancelled they needed to be seen they needed Community they needed to have a group to come together so we with our Librarians with our teachers put something together and that only happens with libr liian our pride book CP still exists we've had probably hundred students more than that over the years we've been doing it we have books and our books that we bring in are now being read in ela classes for choice for Choice reading so our students whether they're in
053the quer trans Community or not have an opportunity to see into the windows of each other's lives and have more empathy for our students who struggle on a daily basis because they don't get seen by their other peers the other part I want to talk about is as a teacher of students with intellectual disability our library is is a safe place and a place that we can practice Community we can practice Community Access we can practice going up and checking a book out we can practice just going around and being in a place safely and our libraries offer that and they only offer that if they're open if students are available and If the LI teachers are available uh the Librarians available sorry uh I can get there uh but our Librarians available and people
054can support them every single day I bring students to the library because it's so important that they get that opportunity to see a place like that where they may feel scared may not feel welcome cuz maybe they can't read all that well but our library welcomes them in and they need to feel that safety and that welcome in community so thank you very much the next speaker is Jana [Applause] Parker good evening before I begin my testimony I would like to request that we put on close captioning because the meeting is inaccessible as of now thank you good evening my name is Tiana Parker and I am the President of Seattle special education PTSA I'm here to share concerns about systemic challenges faced by students with disabilities that should be considered as you adopt the
055new guard rails and goals and the new strategic plan families frequently report low quality special education evaluations late identifications of needs early exits from services and dismissal of needs issues often affecting lowincome families disabled or narod Divergent bipo students key data such as absenteeism and parent input are often excluded contributing from from evaluations contributing to low graduation rates students dropping out and families leaving Public Schools Direct Services like speech and occupational therapy are increasingly increasingly replaced by staff consultations or observations which fails to teach students needed skills parents are often unaware Services aren't provided until they request records which they often don't know to do and many face barriers to participation including lack of transparency and respect for their for the parental input the district's practices of filing due process lawsuits against parents particularly those
056without resources who request independent educational evaluations also called iees recreate that creates additional burden one recent example involved a native student who was prematurely exited from services with the district suing a single parent to avoid covering an i OSBI data shows that self-representing families rarely succeed in due process when this parent requested short extension to submit their closing brief due to a medical emergency the district's publicly funded private attorney said that the district disagreed with the extension imagine how the parent was feeling Kos to the judge for allowing the extension anyway we propose and AP apologies for the extended time but we propose following Solutions number one develop a policy granting iees to low-income students upon request to prevent inequity increase Staffing for therapy providers and prioritize Direct Services and based on student needs point
057and you can yeah this the last one actually require standardized training for administrators on special educ ation laws and practices including building principles so that we don't hear we don't see what you see parents thank you for your time the next speaker is Ashley gross after Ashley will be Helen londell and then Sabrina Burr hello Schoolboard and superintendent Jones uh my name is Ashley gross I'm the mother of two high schoolers one's at the center school and one's at Nova High School and I've watched with a lot of interest that some schools in the district like Hamilton and uh Robert Eagle staff have adopted a way for the day cell phone cell phone policies um this is something that the Surgeon General Vet Murthy recommended last year when he issued his advisory on uh the
058detrimental effects of social media on adolescent mental health um but I've been frustrated to see Seattle only implement this on a school by school basis um my kids schools do not have um policies requiring that phones be put away and I just don't think it's fair that some kids are learning a distraction free environment and other kids are not um more than 600 of us have signed a change.org uh petition urging Seattle to restrict cell phones in uh classrooms um this is happening across the country schools and districts have been doing this and they're seeing benefits um North clackmas uh School District in Oregon OPB reports they're seeing fewer fights fewer discipline issues better concentration and better social interaction and one great thing about that is I think North North Clackamus has restricted phones during
059lunch as well these kids have grown up in the pandemic and they need as many opportunities to develop friends and um social skills as possible um my friend Shin Chung Shen who wrote the petition she says we're at a moment like we were with uh cigarettes in 1965 when the Surgeon General put the warning labels on on cigarettes just like tobacco social media media smartphones they're addictive and we need to protect kids' brains and do what we can to protect their mental health I encourage SPS to support HB 1122 in the in Olympia which would put in place a a requirement for school districts across the state to have policies by 2026 um but I think Seattle as the largest District in the state has to show leadership and Implement a policy restricting cell phones
060and classes by the Fall thank you the next speaker is Helen LEL Helen [Applause] LEL can you hear me we can hear you perfect hi I'm Helen londelle I'm a parent of two kids at Cascadia and I want to ask the board also to pause the sun setting of The highly capable cohorts programs for highly capable students are a legally mandated part of basic education for a reason they are necessary next year SPSS HC cohorts are being rolled up with schools like Cascadia set to serve only third grade and up next year and fourth grade and up the year after and so on for Cascadia this is a problem it's not yet being refilled by neighborhood students because the boundary changes the plan was based on never happened so if this plan continues we'll see
061a new high capacity building grow ever emptier with teachers displaced and a community uncertain about its future but the more fundamental issue is that the highly capable khawk cohort was meant to be replaced with programs in neighborhood schools I support any plan that develops meaningful differentiation with neighborhood schools but we're not hearing any evidence that this is actually happening what we are hearing is that the burden of moving highly capable programming into neighborhood schools will be put on individual teachers with little or no additional training or resources we are hearing that some neighborhood schools are able to plug the Gap with money and time from their Community While others aren't we are hearing lots of families saying that they now feel like they have to leave the district or would leave the district if they
062could and we are hearing superintendent Jones admitting that the concerns about a gap in implementation at neighborhood schools are Justified the cohorts are being dismantled because they offered inequitable access to the program Universal screening was a step in the right direction but there's no doubt that there's still a lot of work to be done but closing highly capable cohorts with no viable alternative and leaving only those with ample resources to fill the void that feels like a step in the wrong direction so I ask you again pause the sunsetting of the cohorts for a year or even better as long as it takes to come up with a real plan for what happens next thank you the next speaker is Sabrina [Applause] Burr after Sabrina will be Samantha fog John Parker and Tuesday [Music] Chambers
063good evening superintendent and School Board directors as you know I am Sabrina Burr the co-president of Seattle Council PTSA a child's future should not be a matter of luck it is our moral responsibility to be about their safety with wellbeing Educational Foundation for each student who enters this District regardless of their zip code Identity or how they learn and what they need to be academically solid to be able to read write and comp compute and to be critical thinkers we must tell the truth about where we are we must be honest about the students and families we have failed generationally we must partner with these families communities in Partnership and for Solutions if you have not read the leading Ed's report by the audit committee you need to do so immediately how do we have
064students with no job and no degree six years yes six years after graduating from Seattle Public Schools it's unacceptable in 2016 when I was Seattle Council PTSA president the John mure sexual assault case from a substitute who taught in southeast schools was something that was very hard for our community we failed families we learn from them and with them we put practices in place and here we are in 2025 and there are no defined procedures or practices to keep students safe how to work with school communities once we learn harm has happened to a child the John mure case is back in the public as the law firm is looking for victims from the 2010s who were harmed by this individual who was arrested in 2018 I want to say despite your efforts for engagement
065around the guard rails there are far too many communities that we have missed and I believe that you need to go back to those communities and hear from them before you put together guard rails for the next 5 years and we have to have high expectations and high supports because what is happening to students in Seattle Public Schools especially black brown native is unacceptable and we can do better the next speaker is Samantha fog you'll need to press star six to unmute on the line oh looks like you're unmuted superintendent Jones and members of the board my name is Samantha ful recently representative stonier shared quote when kids don't feel safe at school they aren't focusing on the book in front of them or the lesson being taught in the classroom they're focused on what
066they're feeling fear anxiety and loneliness that come from discrimination harassment bullying and abuse end quote in December I had a conversation with a black male student where he expressed that in his experience the majority of the teachers at his high school cannot teach about Dr Martin Luther King Jr without causing harm he expressed that good intentions were not matched with necessary skills at this student High School in the 2223 school year 33% of the 10th graders at this school were proficient in math but only 3% of the African-American males were proficient the discomfort of students with the teachers and the way they're being taught has an impact on their academic outcome as we wrap up first semester I am hearing from multiple students who are on weight list to take black studies but who cannot
067get into the class because it is full there is no remote option being offered and for many of these students no other social studies class is being offered life activities walking is not an acceptable substitute for taking black studies it is not unusual for students to be denied access to a World Language and I have even heard from a high school student who was put on a late wait list for math class several years ago I was told that due to anticipated declines in enrollment in order to serve students Seattle Public Schools was planning to align high school schedules so that classes could be taught in a hybrid format by Seattle Public Schools teachers who were skilled with students at multiple schools interacting at once this would allow students at all of our high schools
068to continue to access a wide range of classes what happened to that strategy what has replaced it why are we telling high school students that they cannot access social studies as you look at budget cuts and changes I implore you Center the needs of students both academic and civil rights and to recognize that we have central office staff who are working to protect student civil rights and support students we need to look at our cuts and align them outcomes that we need we will need to move on to the next speaker thank you the next speaker is John Parker can you hear me we can hear you can you hear me yes yes we can hear you good evening yeah good evening directors my name is John Parker I have new two Nur Divergent highly
069capable Sons with multiple disabilities each parents need to be a part of a child's Education team and need to have a say in their child's educational placement one of our sons graduated last year in spite of the district's impact on his mental health and their failure to appropriately And Timely identify his needs and teach him the basic skills that he needs to be ready in life After High School my youngest son is in the e8th grade and he's heading to high school in the fall the same school psychologist who was involved in our eldest years ago has predetermined that our son does not meet the criteria for special education he based his Ed his decision not to qualify him on an atrocious re-evaluation he did not administer any testing because our son refused to engag
070with him the district would not disclose what they were using as eligibility criteria keeping us his parents in the dark this school psychologist has a history of refusing accommodations to my wife and has tried to manipulate outcomes by saying that she could not participate because her she had English as a second language before the revealing the evaluation we asked uh before the re-evaluation we asked for another school psychologist who would not be biased against our family and the district refused we pointed out that we cannot sign informed consent evaluations without knowing what the evaluation procedures are the district refused to provide any of this information and threaten to sue us if we didn't sign to consent coercing families to consent to evaluation is illegal the district sued us to bully us uh to bully their
071way into us saying we have a right to decide what works for your child ignoring the trauma that my family experienced at the hands of the psychologist and his supervisor as a result these staff members have predetermined that our son is not eligible Ida idea requires that parent thank you for your marks you we will need to move on to the next speaker thank you special education decisions need to be a team decision and parents are a part of that team um according to the the psychologist the school district didn't consider please conclude your remarks Miss Wilson Jones can we move on to the next speaker here the next speaker is to the law the next speaker is Tuesday Chambers folks I want to please remind you just to stay to the two-minute uh time
072limit we are trying to be fair and consistent with everyone so I'm sorry that I'm cutting folks off but just trying to make sure that we are consistent folks my name is Tuesday Chambers I'm the Ballard High School librarian I'm here regarding well-resourced schools and specifically how that includes Librarians I am not here on a rumor you have a waiting Staffing standards committee that prioritized budget cuts those cuts need to be shared I seed my time to Ryan hello I'm Ryan sander I spoke at the previous board meeting about saving our libraries at the time I spoke as a singular voice representing my library as a TA that is not the same today today I come to you unified backed by hundreds of Ballard students who support me when I say we need our libraries
073my fellow speaker Rowan Harper and I created a petition titled save our libraries with this petition we gathered signatures from over half the student body Ballard has 1,600 students meaning over 800 signed our their names in support of our libraries in support of its resources and in support of its created safe space I'm the voice of these Collective students who speak the same message our libraries matter the fact that I even have to make this point is baffling libraries culminate so many resources into one space printers and computers free math and science tutors art supplies and textbooks a safe space to study and eat this access opens so many educational opportunities for under resource students removing libraries removes equal access and equal opportunity my fellow peers stand Where I Stood where I stand now and
074reiterated how important our libraries are the question is if you will choose to listen and if you still cannot see the value of our libraries from your desk I ask that you step out from behind it I ask you to come to Ballard in fact I invite you I invite you to enter our library to put yourself in a student shoes and to see our library through a student's eyes I invite you to look upon the space that you plan to remove to see why students are fighting so hard to protect it let us show you why we care as a student I am asking you not to disrupt the ecosystem of Ballard I don't often get the chance to speak to people in power or to say words that will perhaps influence their decisions
075but I have this chance today and I hope that you will listen I hope you will listen to the hundreds of students I am representing the students who are directly impacted by your actions as a board My Generation has the power to shape the future but cannot do so if you take away the resources that Foster our education please do not cut our libraries the next speaker will be Claire Scott followed by Sarah [Applause] fellows thank you so much for doing the work that you do especially in creating these robust go goals and guard rails to ensure Equitable education in SPS to make sure that we do not depend on wealthy neighborhoods to fund resources like libraries in some schools and not others many students families staff and community members have come together here and
076recently to celebrate their school libraries their Central role as the heart of a school Community a refuge where students can bring their whole selves without leaving things behind at the door recognizing the librarian as an instructional partner in the curriculum across all content areas their role is teachers of information and media literacy something that could not be more important in our current media and political climate I was thrilled to hear from our school board directors last month and at the community listening session last week that cuts to libraries have not yet been proposed yay that's a huge relief for students staff and families especially as reducing secondary Librarians to halftime was specifically listed on the board's budget study session slideshow from August 28th given that I would ask the board and superintendent to share the
077current recommended priority list for cuts and Staffing standards from the weighted Staffing standards committee scenario one in the superintendent's presentation today mentions 0 to 28 $28 million in Staffing reductions that is quite a range um without supporting documentation detailing what those cuts May entail finally I have heard from board members that you also prioritize the safe space's Vital Information literacy learning and opportunities for exercising deep active intellectual Freedom that libraries provide and Librarians provide I respectfully ask if the board would be willing to put those priorities and commitments in writing thanks to all of you for your deep commitment to our students the next speaker is Sarah [Applause] fellows do we have Sarah fellows in the room yes my name is Sarah fellows and I am a single parent of a first grader in the
078Japanese dual language immersion program at John Stanford International School I'm here to talk about why these programs are so important and why they need to remain option programs my daughter and I live in an apartment that is not in the jsis geozone like many families we can't afford to move to Wallingford if jsis was converted to a neighborhood school as was proposed earlier this year my child would have never had the opportunity to attend this incredible program we are not alone the majority of her classmates including many Japanese Heritage families do not live in the neighborhood and only had this opportunity because it was an option school over the past year I've heard a lot of comments from District staff framing dual language immersion programs as programs for multilingual Learners of course DLI programs have
079amazing benefits for multilingual learners but I fear we're losing the big picture when we talk about them only in this context the literature is clear that all students in DLI programs both multilingual Learners and native English speakers outperform their non- DLI peers on standardized tests and they do this while also learning another language from a young age jsis is one of the highest performing elementary schools in the state but beyond these academic benefits my daughter is learning to value and respect other languages and cultures something our world needs more of all students should have the opportunity to attend these programs and making them neighborhood schools where only a tiny percentage of families who live in a particular neighborhood can access them is not Equitable dual language programs are also incredibly popular the long wait lists
080at jsis tell only part of the story I can't tell you how many parents I have spoken to who did not even apply because they didn't think there was any chance of getting in we need to expand these programs to more schools both to expand access but also to attract more families back to the district schools don't need to be just a neighborhood school or just an option School in many other districts option programs exist side by side with regular neighborhood classrooms in the same school please look at the list of under enrolled schools you were considering for closure earlier this year and add a dual language option program at some of those sites we can increase enrollment in our district by offering programs that families value and that should be our goal and our
081focus at in these challenging times thank you I want to do one more check to make sure we don't have Skyler trap with us in the room Skyler in the room okay I'm going to go to the wait list we've already heard from a couple folks so we'll go to stacea Bell I think you may be on the line oh maybe I made that up maybe you're in the room I [Music] am all right my name is staa Bell and I'm the librarian at Madison Middle School in West Seattle today you've heard from several SPS students about the devastating impact that closing Library doors would have on our youth and how much they rely on open doors each and every day for books technology resources and above all community Community today I'd like to focus
082on those students who rely on the library as a safe haven the school library is not just a place for books it is a sanctuary for some it's the only space during the school day where they feel at ease and free to be themselves every morning around students choose to start their school day in our Madison Library and every day at lunch we are filled with students why because it's become their smaller safer Community within a very large a thousand plus student School a decision to reduce Librarians to part-time would effectively close the doors to this safe haven for 2.5 days every week cutting off thousands of Seattle public school students from the opportunities to learn connect and find refuge in these nurturing spaces I recently received an email from a forign parent that from
083a former parent that illustrates this impact her twin daughters both now thriving post College were exceptional and creative students during their time at Madison but socially they struggled they endured Relentless bullying and isolation challenges that could have derailed their academic and personal growth but as their mother wrote to me it was the library that saved them quote I just want you to know how important the library was to both of my girls having you on their side and providing them a place to seek Refuge during the school day helped them to survive their two years at Madison I honestly do not know how my two would have survived let alone thrived without a couple of caring adults like you who accepted them for exactly who they were and let them be exactly who they needed
084to be fourth through eighth grades were really quite traumatic for them socially with bullying and exclusion and hum humiliations that were never addressed properly by schools without safe harbors like you provided I think they could have easily gone down a very different path stories like this remind me why I do this work it's not just about books or technology it's about creating a safe space where every student can feel seen supported and valued as you are making decisions around Staffing for next year I urge you to maintain full-time secondary librarian positions by making Librarians part-time you're not just cutting hours you're closing doors on student growth safety and potential our students deserved well-resourced schools with open doors not just in classrooms but in the spaces where they find refuge and belonging thank you thank you
085president top that was our 25th um speaker to conclude testimony today perfect thank thank you so much and thank you to everyone who gave their time this evening uh we had a I I think a record number at least of my time on the board of students speaking tonight about 30% which was really amazing to see so I appreciate that them all coming and and hearing from them um we are going to now move into student board member comments as well so uh uh student board members joining us for a comment tonight do director ilas director brg either of you have nope NOP all right perfect it's all right um well then we will move right on to our uh board committee and liaison report uh do board director chairs or lisons have any board
086reports for this evening uh director Ranken thank you um I have a update as legislatively is on there's uh it's attached to the meeting materials as an information item um sorry I'm trying to open my so yes I encourage you to read it and um trying to save time by putting it in writing instead of having to read all of it um but uh legislative session has started and it's it's just there's no easing into it it just it just starts um and so I've included in this memo uh the um items that Dr Jones spoke on our behalf in support of uh executive director Trisha luach of wda Washington state school board or Washington State School director Association um who also represents us also spoke in favor as did a number of other uh
087superintendent and community members um those high high priority school funding bills that Dr Jones mentioned also um are aligned with what some people call the big three uh that a lot of districts are aligning around that address the three largest sources of school district deficits across the state which is transportation special education and MSO uh that stands for Material supplies and operating costs um for our district special education is the largest deficit um source of deficit student transportation is second and then MSO for a lot of other districts across the state MSO is the bigger deficit and transportation um is less of an issue for them but they're they're collectively are kind of big three across across the state um the rest of what I included here is um uh compilation of rights and protections
088that we have in place for lgbtq plus students and for immigrant students um uh as one of our speakers said and and Dr Jones noted these are um two student populations that are likely to and already have been um had their their safety security identity and access to education threatened and so um uh I pulled together some data about students and our existing uh rights protections and policies that we have for uh gender inclusive schools um including the information that uh the WIA gender diverse Youth Sports inclusivity toolkit is supported by every major professional support sports team in our area and has been in place since 2007 in that time there has only there have only been uh there were have been fewer than 10 complaints regarding transgender athletes and almost all of them were
089resol d as being unfounded or inaccurate um which is to say we don't we don't need to speculate whether or not having transgender students playing sports that align with their gender identity harms other students we know that it doesn't we already know that um and in fact not allowing those students to participate as they identify does harm them so uh there's more that you can find on our website more that we've already said in policy uh a little bit more um we also signed in supporting two bills that pertain to protections and rights including gender divers gender diversity um and you can find more out about about that the uh regarding immigrant students we have a policy already in existence that if a law enforcement officer um comes to the school they need to contact
090the principal and um unless there is an exigent or emergency circumstance a Judicial warrant is required and must be reviewed by legal council SPS legal council before an immigration agent is permitted to access a district school um OPI we're waiting for an updated uh updated statement and guidance from OPI um to support further protections and further adjustments that we need to make based on the that things may change but in in this moment in time and I know that our values and commitments are aligned with maintaining those rights and protections for students in Washington state and in Seattle Public Schools so more about that in that um update and uh I'm also going to send um a version of this to our legislators so as different bills come to them they can speak specifically on
091behalf of Seattle school students and that is my update thank thank you director Ranken and thank you for your work in this legislative session is critical as we uh try to get funding to for our students uh other directors have reports uh board or committee committee reports or liaison reports director Clark um yeah so um as the liaison for um the city of Seattle King County and the fat Levy I just wanted to let the board know um that the first meeting is tomorrow um that I'm attending not of the committee they've been meeting for a while um and and so um I'll have I'll have updates for you um next month thanks thank you so much director Clark looking at other directors all right we are going to move to the tables please bring
092your microphones to do our progress monitoring um and then after progress monitoring we'll take a quick recess and break e know all right uh well uh director hery is going to be our progress monitoring lead and will facilitate this portion but I will pass it over to superintendent Jones now to begin um in collaboration with director hery all right thank you um we're moving into progress monitoring this is something we do monthly uh we're talking about College and Career Readiness and I have have uh DRS Caleb Perkins and Dr Mike stovsky here uh as my co-pilots in this journey and uh I'm really pleased to talk about College and Career Readiness as something that uh we've been very intentional about as we move through uh our current uh goals and this is one that we're
093we're seeing some good progress on so um I'd like to uh talk about this as our seventh formal opportunity to review student outcomes and um and I'm and to during tonight's presentation I want to summarize our theory of action for both uh for the goals as and and also share results and then I'll review what data that the data is telling us particularly in the areas of graduation Advanced coursework and waivers and how it's informing the strategies that we are taking slide two please tonight for the class of 2024 we will be reporting on the progress that we've made made with the 4-year graduation rate the Topline measure which is the percentage of students who graduate on time and complete at least one Advanced course the percentage of students who passed at least one Advanced
094Ela course and the percentage of students who passed at least one advanced math course you all received memos last week and as a result I'm going to proceed with outlining our theory of action for helping students graduate college career and life ready before before highlighting the executive summary and sharing the data and discussing what we are seeing slide three please so let me start by reading our theory of action for helping students graduate college and career life ready if Seattle public school central office staff School leaders and Educators provide highquality tier one instruction remove systemic barriers and leverage Seattle's many assets then African-American boys and teens will experience improved access access to and succeed success in core courses Advanced courses and graduation Pathways this will increase their likelihood of success in a variety of post-secondary
095Pathways and careers after graduating from SPS more recently we have focused on the following specific levers to improve College and Career related student outcomes within five broad areas inclusionary practices curriculum embedded assessment the use of CCR College and Career Readiness data continuous School Improvement plans or as we refer to them as cips that are aligned with school strategies and Grading for Equity these five areas are directly connected to the advanced coursework and graduation data in this memo particularly with respect to improving tier one instructions in these grades and will be the focus of the analysis for this progress monitoring update there is a excuse me there is a direct connect between the work being done in our schools in these five areas and our Topline measure so in the aggregate we believe that these are
096working and we track these specific levers through inputs outputs and outcome data I will now quickly review the executive summary uh before sharing data and discussing what we are seeing one we are we are focused on graduation data and advanced coursework completion the two components of our Topline measure and giv given their correlation with postre postsecondary success so we believe the graduation data combined with Advanced course work completion has impact on postsecondary Readiness in looking at SPS data for our Topline measure we've exceeded the Strategic plan's 5-year Target for African-American male students for students of color further from educational Justice we have missed the five year Target by 1.1 1.1% the data also indicates that African-American male students have had more success in accessing and completing Advanced coursework I think that's important to talk about
097not just access but also completion in both Ela and math for math in particular African-American male students and students of color furthest from educational Justice have increased their percentage of completion uh completing Advanced courses by 4.3% and 1.2 respectively from 2023 to 2024 given this tremendous progress I want to pause and thank all of the school leaders Educators and staff community members and families who have uh helped put our students on on the path to this tremendous progress I think this is something that we don't do at Seattle Public Schools too often too often is celebrate progress even if it's incremental at the same time our average overall graduation rate for the class of 2024 decreased bless you decreased by 1.5% when compared to the graduation rate for the class of 2023 though there was
098a small increase for African-American students this is at least in part due to the welcome reduction in the use of State waivers for the class of 2024 when compared to the class of 2023 uh we will share more about that in later slides next slide please let's look more closely at the trend over the past 5 years in our Topline measure ontime graduation having completed at least one Advanced course this chart uh while it's not legible from from where we're s sitting hopefully you have those at your desk this chart ill illustrates the progress that we have that we've made over the last uh 5 years and shows that we've exceeded the Strategic PL 5-year Target for African-American students African-American male students the slight decline in students meaning graduation and advanced coursework the um key
099performance indicators from the class of 2023 to the class of 2024 is largely largely due to the decreases in students meeting the ontime graduation requirement than changes in students taking Advanced courses next slide please so most impressively we've made huge progress in students access and success in advanced math over the past 5 years this increase has a number of positive effects for students including that they are much more likely and able to enroll directly in college bearing math courses when they start college and thus will be more likely to compete in their degrees uh just a a note on that many of our students enter into the community college system taking uh not college level courses but more remedial courses and so them taking college level courses when they enter is is very important so
100based on the previous analyses the increase in math advanced coursework in math is largely due to an increase in the number of students who met the math pathway through college and high school coursework including business math and pre-calculus one more next slide please so looking at slide seven we shared a preview of this graduation data at our November 19th board meeting to reiterate our overall graduation rate for the class of 2024 decreased by 1.5% when compared to the graduation rate of the class for 2023 comparing 2024 to 2023 in other areas there was A8 increase for African-American male students a point a 2.5 decrease for students of color for this educational Justice and a 0.5 decrease for students with IEPs and a 3.7 decrease for multilingual Learners the trend in graduation rates for SPS students
101reme resembles that of other large urban districts who we compare ourselves to in other states this rate has gone up over the last several years but has shown some recent declines moreover as we see in the next slides the slight decreases are closely connected to a positive Trend uh that SPS students are relying Less on state waivers implemented during covid uh before we look at waiver data I I'd like to make uh I'd like to make it a point for everyone to including our community members who have tuned in on the role of waivers when it comes to students graduating from high school I like Dr Perkins to kind of speak more about that please thank you very much Dr Jones uh really grateful for the opportunity to given that there's been a number of
102uh comments and references to waivers over the last couple board meetings and I thought it would be helpful to provide this orientation so most notably waving graduation requirements has been something that's been available for decades for our high schools usually in very specific narrow circumstances emergencies or logistical challenges and we've obviously tried to limit those waivers over the years to try to ensure that students Readiness is not being affected for post-secondary opportunities but just to give you a quick example if a student transfers into Seattle public schools and did not follow the exact Seattle public school scope and sequence for science uh they might wave the the very specific classes that we have because they've met the state requirements taking other science classes meaning that they're still ready for post-secondary opportunities they just haven't followed
103those specific pieces that said I this chart really tries to highlight the use of waivers in the past few years which have changed and will change again very soon uh given the the changes that from the state that are happening right now the first two rows I'd like to draw your your attention to these are the ones the waivers that were implemented during the pandemic when the state decided to provide the option of having students have some core requirements and the new graduation Pathways to be waved it should be noted that we as a system could not just hand these out we had to go through a very formal process in particular documenting that these students had the opportunity to meet these requirements so there there was a high bar already at the same time
104I want to also note that these first two waivers uh are no longer available the class of 2024 was the last group to access these which is important as we think obviously about the goals you're considering tonight finally I just want to share regardless of whether these are available we should not rely on these going forward even if they are given our our Collective concern about readiness we want students to complete core requirements as well as the graduation pathway that's why we've labeled that connection to Readiness in terms of high and red in in terms of something we want to make sure going forward we do not rely on the next row is also about State waivers but it's related to elective credits this is the challenge of having students meet 24 credits when in
105most of our schools they only have 24 credit earning opportunities we also want to limit these waivers they're not as concerning as the top two rows but still concerning but it's because it's important for students to have success in both their electives and core requirements other waivers we attest are less connected to Readiness they're more about like that science example I gave where students are transferring in from all other uh districts or states and we enable them to meet the State graduation requirements without meeting some specific local requirements and finally I'll note there is the service learning require uh waiver that has been heavily relied on since the start of uh covid and has continued over the last couple years this expanded significantly given the the challenge in providing service learning opportunities I do believe
106it warrants as some board members have said in the past a longer conversation that's not the focus tonight but I think it's a healthy conversation for future uh board board meetings so with that I would like to turn to the actual data so hopefully this orientation is helpful in terms of there's a basic sense of some kinds of waivers are perfectly uh appropriate and not connected to Readiness and others that we really want to make sure we limit as we especially as we think forward to the future goals uh with your permission Dr Jones I'll continue and so here's enormous along with meeting our Topline measure if we can go to the next Slide the really encouraging thing that we're seeing from the class of 2023 which is really kind of a high water mark
107in terms of relying on waivers to the class of 2024 is schools are already adjusting they're adjusting to the fact that they know waivers are going away that the state is making them more uh restrictive for the class of 2024 and you can see this significant drop so this is just for Pathways the graduation Pathways which as a reminder that's either passing Ela and math test or getting advanced cours workk in those two areas or CTE or things like the ASVAB military test and we see schools across our district who uh made sure that the class of 2024 had many more opportunities they improve their scheduling uh in part because of the fact the focus from the board but and also their their own work so you see that like just as an example overall
108for African-American male students 21.7% of African-American male students who graduated in the class of 2023 got a pathway waiver and that dropped significantly to 7.8% and it will it will need need to fall to 0% uh for the class of 2025 and if I could just take a moment I'll share just in one of uh my uh reviews and visits to schools I had a great conversation with principal Morales and Rachel Evans at um Chief South High School and they are already well ahead of the game in terms of making sure that the class of 2025 uh has many more opportunities so that these waivers are not necessary so with that uh I think there's a lot more work to be done we have to keep an eye on this as these waivers go away
109we're going to have to double down on the strategies if we go to the final slide take I'll take it and so uh since our last progress monitoring update we want to share some of the latest Lessons Learned with different strategic levers that are in use first being inclusionary practices so not surprisingly schools who have moved to an inclusive approach to Advanced course scheduling have shown significant increases in advanced cour work completion a couple of examples IB at IB for all at Ingram with Chiefs Health what Dr Perkins just talked about and rineer Beach second is the implementation of curriculum embedded assessments you've heard us talk about that and we've really tried to push into that this has given us the ability to collect more State more excuse me systemwide data on how students are
110doing an algebra geometry Algebra 2 and chemistry courses uh given the regular district-wide administration of curriculum edas assessments this data will enable us to better support students in completing these credits third as a part of our CIP align School strategies our schools are successfully using tutoring mentoring and other additional supports to encourage students to take Advanced courses and support them in completing those courses finally Atlas data usage reports uh illustrate that school staff rely heavily on these reports to ensure students are on track to graduate particularly during second semester so before I transition to uh director hery for discussion and questions I want to conclude by thanking the board for providing a framework in which we can formally monitor how our students are doing uh by establishing a robust assessment portfolio of measures and implementing
111curriculum embedded assessments our system is able to do do better and have better understanding of student learning which helps to inform us around what type of supports we need to provide so now I'll transition to director hery to facilitate some questions and discussions thank you so much all right thank you superintendent Jones and Senior staff uh board members you know the protocol if you would just turn your name placard uh upward if you have a question and I will be more than happy to acknowledge you director Miss R you mentioned on slide seven that the slight dip in the overall graduation data was in line with um similar districts and I'm wondering about if that is also true of the more successful data on page six and page five if we're seeing a national Trend
112or if we're really setting the trend with with with the success so uh I think we're seeing some districts have better success but I think that's unique to us in terms of the trends um so Dr Perkins if you can add some color to that I think there's uh some specific things that we're doing that other districts aren't and that's why we're seeing some of that some of that success but correct me if I'm wrong there yeah spot on so uh in terms of the graduation rate it's a slight dip that we're seeing ACR like the graduation rates have been going up across urban districts what what is uh unique for Seattle is that our increase in access to Advanced coursework significantly outpaces our comparable districts I mean the statistic that we went from about
1137 I think it's about 17% of African-American male students six years ago to now about 51% who take can pass advanced math classes that's that's well beyond most of our comparable districts and I think that combination of take and pass is something also unique to Seattle we we've PRI we pride oursel even when I was a honor student to take the courses but we didn't necessarily have that intentionality we not be behind completing those courses and I think that's a really important element that we're doing that's uh not necessarily unique to Seattle but it's rare thank you uh director rham thank you yeah I appreciate that distinction too it's not just having access but being prepared to take advantage of the access and and getting to the end of it to get that the benefit
114of that learning is really important um I this is a question I'm sure we probably addressed at some point and I have just forgotten what what the answer is and I um asked it ahead of time but I didn't see it so forgive me if I missed it when we're looking at these um the percentage of students who graduate on time are we looking at the percentage of students who start their senior year and complete that year or are we looking at them starting their ninth grade year and graduating on time or something else I feel like that's something I should already know but I just realized I I either don't know or can't remember and that seems important I don't know the answer to that question and I want Dr per is to address
115it but I say somebody here knows but but I also want to ask a provocative question around what is it that we value about ontime graduation that was going to be my you my mind that's something I think is a is a question that we want to start to ask internally uh why are we holding that as so valuable on time we understand we want students to persist but I think they through Community College we to call them 2-year institutions now they're not 2-year because most students take more than two years uh even uh the traditional fouryear institutions if you have if you're an adult student coming back to school you're probably going to take longer because of other obligations I don't know if that applies to us but it's some it's a question it's
116a kind of a policy question that we might want to start asking but regarding the specific start date and stop date from when we're talking about the four years if you have data on that please share that yeah and it's so precise thank you Dr Jones Thank You director Rankin I'm going to read straight from our business intelligence team who has the the the definition that was actually uh developed I think during the Obama Administration if uh Dr Dr Anderson might know this to be standardized because of all the frankly game planning beforehand around how do we calculate so here it is graduation rate is based on a cohort of students the cohort is made up of all students who start 9th grade together students who transfer into or out of a school are added
117or removed from the co cohort if students stop attending school they're counted as dropouts if students have met graduation requirements they were counted as graduates if students don't graduate but are still attending they're considered continuing anyway I won't read all of them but that it's a very precise definition that we have to follow uh per the feds so just to reflect back to make sure that I get tracking so the TW the you know um what is the top 80 86.5% that's the number of students who graduated on time their senior Year from the cohort that started with them in 9th grade so that would uh that number the number of students who didn't graduate on time would Encompass students who are no who left school before finishing and students who may not have finished
118uh graduation requirements are continuing okay thank you thank you um and to follow up with what um Dr Jones brought up that was going to be my next question is on time graduation what that means on time according to who especially with um I know uh I'm particularly interested in what that means for students with disabilities who have um Services extending past um what what on time means for them and what we still provide and even what graduation means for them um and and whether or not those students are included that may just be an out loud wonder about our next goal we don't currently have on time in there and I think that's probably good um but also what are I guess maybe this is more applicable to the goals conversation um but uh
119you know we do ex the the kind of standard expectation is four years before before you turn 19 I think so we don't want to penalize students who are going to take longer but what impacts also would that have on funding and services for different groups of students so how do we yeah I guess I'm seconding your what does on time mean and is that um but I'm particularly interested in students with disabilities who have um who are in I think right now there's a a learning certificate instead of a diploma which I I find I really is a problem um but what graduation standards do we have for those students when do we expect on time to mean for them how do we ensure that they have met a standard um of graduation and
120then how do we kind of mesh the there's there's legislation now to um require services to continue to be provided for students with disabilities the to the end of the school year if they turn 22 during the school year so that's maybe that's I'm way out of our protocol on this but that's sort of all what this is bringing up is what what do we mean by on time and then if we're going to consider something different for the next or we already don't have on time um all those different factors so apologies I've tooken a far field um if I may I I I think that's extraordinarily appropriate for what we're talking about um in light of the conversation we're going to have about goals and when we started talking about College and Career
121Readiness it's tremendously important that we understand what that means if we have artificial time barriers to get our our students ready did we create those or is there something behind that when we start talking about W waivers I think we have used waivers in order to meet that 4-year commitment but maybe our students didn't get we didn't serve them fully along the way so I think this is uh something that we can continue to think about I think it's provocative I think it's something that uh we can be a leader in I know our our partners down south and and Kent they created a school called the igrad school for that purpose for kind of capturing students when their their needs uh haven't been met fully by by the Kent School District in that case
122and so I applaud them for having that foresight and they did that about 10 years ago and they they've seen good good results from that so we can learn from our neighbors director m r yeah so looking at the first uh strategic lever the inclusionary practices I think you were speaking to this earlier with the success we've had of students not just enrolling but passing and it makes sense that if you brought in the access to rigorous course load that we're going to see an increase in numbers the way that that's worded the schools who have moved to an inclusive approach implies to me that schools that haven't yet and I'm wondering if there's a plan to broaden that out to other schools since it is seemingly successful and and I think the implication that
123some schools are more committed to others may have been maybe misstated but there are mechanisms such as IB college and a high school that that um high schools have taken on that are yielding that that it's synonymous with commitment to a to a different path uh others high schools are absolutely committed to this but these these schools actually have mechanisms for students Pathways for them to get on that track and so I think that's really what we're talking about in terms of commitment and so uh I also believe that there's uh um all of our high schools have this commitment for students to uh persist for them to matriculate but again those who have these uh unique special Progressive programs are seeing we're seeing the best outcomes do you have something that just say that
124the the danger of the EG is that it it makes that implication that's not accurate nearly every one of our other high schools is also shown a dramatic increase just through college in the high school or advanced placement not IB director Clark hello um um so I just um on page three of um the memo um and I guess looking at the also the data on slide is it two um looking at the interim goals I was just curious if you could say a little bit more about why you chose the status of yellow um uh which says interim metrics indicate conflicting evidence regarding whether results will be delivered um thank you it's just being a bit cautious in the sense that we met we actually exceeded the Target by 12% for African-American male students
125we we missed it by 1.1% for students of color for this from educational justice so perhaps we were too conservative there uh so fair and yeah that's also okay oh but what about for the interim measures yeah the the interim measures we based on the November update we shared with you were uh a little below our targets so that's also what contributes to the that's right okay thank you for reminding me [Music] yeah director m r you have okay any other questions for the superintendent okay seeing none we may proceed all right we are going to take a 7 minute recess we'll reconvene at 7:00 back up on the dis so you will need to bring your microphone back up and reconvene at 7 thank you [Music] than [Music] it is 7:03 and the board
126is reconvened um we have now reached the consent portion of our agenda may I have a motion for the consent agenda I move approval of the consent agenda second approval of the consent agenda has been moved by vice president Briggs and seconded by director Mahi direct do directors have any items they'd like to remove from the consent agenda all right seeing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying I I I I uh those opposed the consent agenda has passed unanimously thank you um we are uh going to now move back to the tables with our microphones to go do the go goals and guard rails our evaluation and everything else for this evening so uh one more move and then and we will be we'll stay down there e all
127right uh we will now move into the action item on today's agenda the adoption of board policy number 0020 goals for the district and 0025 guard rails for the district and an amendment to board policy number 1010 oversight and progress monitoring can I have a motion for this item oh boy hold on um I I don't know what I'm supposed to say but I'm just going to say I move to oh there we go okay I move that the school board adopt board policy numbers 0020 and 0025 setting new goals and guard rails for the district and amend board policy number 1010 as attached to the board Action Report second right uh thank you director or vice president Briggs for the motion and for director Mahi for the second um last year we worked through
128a sort of a multimon uh process to hear from Community about the vision for our students and the values for our district that serves them uh director Ranken helped set that up and really LED that Pro that engage that deep engagement process um and we heard really about you know a strong start the need to prioritize Equitable access to high quality instruction the importance of social emotional learning and social justice and preparing our students to be Global Citizens achieve their goals um we then kicked off our work to develop our goals and guard rails reflective of what we heard from the community and this all this work accumulated into director Rank and sponsorship of the board Action Report that is before us um with two proposed uh District goals and five proposed guard rails um
129we reviewed these at our at for introduction at our December meeting and then from there we conducted an additional engagement this engagement included um it was very fast and it wasn't as perfect as I think we all would have preferred um we tried to reach back out to the uh organizations that we' previously uh reached out out we had a few uh misit misfires there but trying to make up for some of that um uh we put an online survey out there for 10 days um that had a a surprising number of feedback as well as three engagement sessions two in person one in the north one in the South and uh one online session um the themes from these engagement sessions were pulled together uh by staff and cated and uh sent out to
130board directors and they've also been posted online as part of the uh board Action Report um uh and some of the sort of themes that that that we heard again was this strong start strong finish a little bit about targets being more ambitious um community members were also largely supportive of the guard rails but maybe concerned about some of the V language um how the uh guard rail for equable Access might be inter interpreted in uh by about interpreted to reduce programming opportunities I think there was some um concern about what what happened to the the math goal a range of things um and in order for us to try to show that we are doing authentic engagement and listening to what we and reflecting upon what we heard um I hope that tonight we
131will have a discussion more on refining our goals and guard rails based on this most recent engagement um and that while we don't do not have formal amendments before us tonight um we work through some of this language and get to a place where we feel comfortable and then I will intend to call a special meeting next week to finalize our goals and guard rails based on tonight's discussion and proposed changes um to that end I'm going to plan that at the at the end of tonight's discussion we make a vote and a motion to propose postpone action on this item to a board special meeting to be scheduled for January 29th 2025 um with that I want to kind of start going through our discussion we have staff here to help us with some
132of the technical questions that that we may have and I'm just going to go in order um with Goal one goal two any additional goals that we may want to discuss and then we'll go to the guard rails um so with that I let's start with go president top sorry I have a procedural question if I may that may have already been addressed and I just missed it or um because we have to consider a motion we have to you know motion the action item and second it would it be appropriate to make a motion to table the vote right now and kind of close that and then have the discussion or doesit don't need to we don't need to table it so what we will do at the end here is I'm looking for
133my language um we we don't need to table it we we need to postpone it so at the end of our discussion I will ask for a motion to postpone um the action item okay and second and we will vote then perfect got it thank you so with that uh I let's move to the goal one our second grade literacy goal um some of the things that we heard were were about were really about the clarification and or really was was 10% ambitious enough and director Ranken this was uh something that you really heard and brought up and I I'm wondering if you will speak to the to to this potential change yes thank you I'd be happy to um i h i uh would like us to consider um and I know director Briggs
134had the same uh uh um consideration that uh 10% um um in reflection with what our community said is not ambitious enough and would that 10% I I would argue that the 10% would not push the changes to our system that we that we want to see and that our community is asking for and that a 15% goal would be um more appropriate I would actually argue for higher than that but I I want it to be reachable um I also in looking at the breakdown of um it did a little Excel spreadsheet analysis on what it would look like across different student groups for a 10% increase across all student groups consistently uh making significant changes and a 10% um 10% growth across um students fur from educational Justice first um or what what
135would happen if we had 10% growth and it um reached the groups the groups of students who tend to be already Meeting those goals first before reach other students and from that uh kind of um came to the conclusion that a 10% goal could be met without significant change to students of color and students in poverty and that if we want to see our system make this shift towards closing that Gap a 15% goal would um push push more change um to to improve outcomes for all groups but to make sure that we're not excluding groups um So based on on that plus just what we heard from community of like our kids really need us to to make big changes to support them um uh I I I feel like 15 is the is
136the minimum we should expect at the end of five years um for yeah do folks have comments or thoughts on that director Briggs um I asked yeah this is a question I actually submitted that didn't get answered but um and I mean it might sound crazy but it it actually Echoes what somebody one of the commenters tonight one of the test uh public testimony speakers said um which was that the one who was like a 30-year first grade teacher um and he said all kids can learn how to read and so would we accept would it be acceptable for a classroom teacher to say oh a third of my class can't read um I really I really feel like that number should be like closer to 95% frankly and if if if it's not a
137shortcoming of the students which we know it's not then it means it's a we're not allocating resources to provide that level of instruction that would get us to that level so I I'm I'm asking like what would a budget look like that made it a priority to ensure that all ele second and third grade kids knew how to read um and and it's sort of hypothetical but also not really I mean it's I'm saying it's hypothetical because it's an extreme jump from what we're talking about but I actually I I'm having a hard time accepting the the lower bar director brick just to clarify do is that a a question you want staff to to address yeah and and I don't mean like what are the line item you know budget I understand that's not
138practical right now and that that's not the stage of Bud budget planning that we're at but like I would love high level to know what would need to shift in our budget to allocate enough resources such that we were ensuring Literacy for something like 95% of kids in our system Dr Jones that's a world peace question but I'm going to ask uh Dr Anderson to kind of speak to it from a statistical perspective and what's kind of what how we came up with 2% per year uh and then uh ultimately Dr Bulman will kind of speak to some of the tradeoffs that we'll need to make uh not now not now I was thinking in the budget presentation part uh but if you like him to speak now that's fine too but uh Dr Anderson
139kind of speak to director briggs' uh statement uh Dr Anderson really quickly sorry before we do that is there any way we could put the text of the proposed goal up on the screen uh Miss Wilson Jones is that at all possible yes looks like we're going to have it here shortly please y can you guys hear me okay uh Eric Anderson director of research and evaluation good to be here uh so I think the first key point to recognize is that the goal or the target is not the vision the vision is we want all or 95% 100% of our students to be successful in early literacy Etc the goal is how much progress are going to make towards that Vision over the next 5 years right and so that's one way to to
140take the edge off of this feeling like wait a minute this is all we can do and I think one of the things that I thought personally resonated with me a lot having been in the school district for about 15 years and never seeing us really reach when we've made some progress in certain areas so don't get me wrong but um but really like hit it out of the park with something is that you guys said one of the reasons why we want one goal or two goals is we want to really prove that we can be successful and being successful means you have to set something that's ambitious but also realistic and so obviously it's your job to balance that and that's what this discussion is before but I think keeping those things in
141mind can maybe help you get to a a place of um understanding that this is not the end all of where we're going this is a journey um Dr Jones often says um and with your permission I'd just like to speak just a little bit to the analysis um that was provided by director rank because was super helpful so thank you for doing that and she put together some data um from OPI around our students in grad three through through 8 in the LA and basically look through a couple scenarios where how targets might play out assuming like different thresholds um so and it it based on the way you did it it kind of says well this doesn't seem to be playing out very well but I think there is one something you guys
142want to want to consider that would be maybe consistent with how sometimes this is done is you have a a universal goal for all students and it might be 10 points but then you have differential targets for other student groups based on their starting point and so actually if you play this out it might be it turns out just using the data that you you gave us um I think it was a 64% Baseline for all students could sorry could we actually make it available for I don't know if it matters for people to see what we're talking about so it doesn't sound like there's some secret document that I sent you yeah I don't know that it'll help to visualize cuz there a lot of numbers but let me just see if boil it
143down quickly and then we can provide it to board directors after and include it in our meeting minutes so um I think the Baseline for all students in the in the example you you had was 64% so a 10-point gain over 5 years would be 74% right but then you looked at what what if we set targets for low-income free and reduced lunch students versus nonl students right if you had a different approach first well first of all the Baseline for non-fl students is already 86% it's above the what the 5-year Target would be so it might be reasonable to say we want all students to grow but do we need those students to grow by 10 points by two points every year it might be reasonable to say we want them to at least
144grow one point a year and make it to close to 90% right and that would be a pretty high percentage it turns out mathematically if you said what if they only grew by 5% how much would the frl students need to grow over the same period it turns out mathematically they'd have to grow by 20% and so that all of a sudden seems like okay what didn't seem very ambitious through the lens of all students but really the target is we need to grow by 20 points which is four points consistently every year compounded with our Target group and so that was really how we approached because I I've looked at data for years I know that moving the numbers with all students is really hard it is also hard with targeted groups but to
145close the gap which is we want all students to improve but we also want to close the gap and that way you're all kids are improving but you're also knowing the point it turns out that if we did hit that Target a 20 point target for frl and a fivepoint target for nonl we would close the gap from 43 points to 28 points and both groups would improve the the other thing we have to remember is that it's new students every year so you're not looking at the kids who are in third grade making that growth every year you're looking at a new group or second grade excuse me a new group of second graders but what I think is important is basically what do we how do we need to say it in the
146goal to make sure that we're clear that it's about the it's about all students and it's about students it's about that the Gap and then so because what what we want to do is drive change in Services supports and and the experience of students in kindergarten and first grade so that you know 3 years from now that group of second graders closes the Gap because they've had the benefit of whatever is being provided in kindergarten first grade so I guess the question would be does just does changing it from 10% to 15% help with that or not does staff have a response and then I want to get to director hery go ahead I mean again from through the lens of the goals the targets you're setting um I played that out if it du
14715% it might be that we would go for a 10o target for frl and then mathematically that would equate you need a 25 point target for I'm sorry 10 points for nonl and 25 points that's five points every year that's that's pretty significant Improvement um you've seen how those numbers have you know changed over the The Last 5 Years with our current goal even though we're putting some significant Investments so again these are the things you need to again do is it about saying what our aspirations are is it about trying to set a goal that we can achieve and then it's up to these guys to tell you not my job what we're going to do and how we're going to do it director hery go ahead go ahead so I wanted to also
148just touch on the how much it's going to cost scenario and I want Dr stoski to speak to that and and then please so this is just speaking generally um for a 5% in increase we would be increasing the amount of instructional coaching that we would uh be having uh for our teachers we would have uh to scale the infrastructure to be able to do just now just this 5% I'm just talking going from 10 to 15% um dibles expansion um uh also a curriculum adoption um after school learning uh personalized learning for our students not yet at standard um high dosage uh Kinder tutoring so just having an expansive taking what we're trying to do at the second grade already what we've already shared um for potential investment this would cost between $16 to
149$23 million just to do this expansion not not let alone getting to 20 25% so when we're looking at um the amount of investment that it would take that's impacting infrastructure professional development curriculum um is what we we projected out and we have some of that a little bit detailed um for you right now as we were sitting here today I appreciate that and I think that puts real numbers around what that additional 5% will cost us as we look at our budget director hery yeah in a lot of what I was going to share was uh pretty well articulated in the conversation but I just want folks to keep a couple of things in mind is to like a like a 5% increase doesn't increase doesn't exist exclusively in a vacuum of this conversation
150right and when we're thinking about what it looks like for us to attain a goal like we know full well that our students are very capable of really great and amazing growth as a second grade teacher I've seen students make a year and a half of growth over the course of 6 months it depends on who the teacher is what I want folks to know though is that when we are looking at this this isn't really a goal for our students as much as it is a goal for our systems and the way that we deliver education and the way that we are tracking how the strategies that we are utilizing are actually being implemented in the classroom where I really want us to stay focused is that it is very easy to uh receive
151the feedback and I and I am you know subject to this as well like like we should be going farther we our kids deserve better they 100% do they also deserve for us to be able to meet our goals in a capacity that we say that we're going to do them and I don't I'm not certain that before especially not before suud outcomes Focus governance but for the time that I've been involved with the district that that we have done that and we have been able to say like very clearly that uh the programs and the strategies that we've been putting in place have worked on a systemwide level so again I am and I know that this is probably not a shared sentiment but I am really in the camp of figuring out because
152in my mind we have committed to the structure of student outcomes focused governance we are now in a place to where if we are going to do this we need to see in terms of the infrastructure that we build around it how do we get from point A to B in as we learned from the goals that we set back in 2021 that were incredibly lost and yet we are still making progress too in some ways but are still very much so not making progress in others and in fact we're we're retreating from where we need to be it it really brings me pause to see that like okay we have experts that have done a lot of study and a lot of um thought around what does it look like for our system to
153go from where we are now to a reasonable and realistic goal to now because of you know a conversation that we are having we are pushing back and like raising that goal I think that if we are in that position we also as a board need to be really courageous because we have had several conversations with our coaches from the uh Council of great City schools that have quite frankly said the best way to uh reach a goal in a specific grade is to reduce resources in another so and what I mean by that is that it has been suggested that like okay if you want to increase your reading uh comprehension scores or whatever the case may be in second grade that means that the top end of the scale 12th and 11th grade
154or whatever grade you are going to have to pull resources from somewhere I don't know what that looks like I don't know what that means uh or like how that would actually show up in a conversation that we would need to be having but what I'm saying is it's like it's almost like receiving an unfunded mandate from you know everybody's favorite branch of government here in Washington you can't just say oh you have to do X but then we're not going to actually make the move in um allocating additional resources to that so I just want to be super clear that I am all for increasing um a a specific goal that we have set out I think we also like need to be really clear on like does our board and our community and
155our community have the courage necessary to like double down on this cuz like what I don't want to be is in a situation to where we have pushed the goal so high or to a point to where now we are in a situation to where we are not going to meet this goal right that we' have set that is higher than what we anticipated and our system is not changing in a at a pace necessary to even get close to it I would much rather look at this as an opportunity to submit our structures to really dig into like what does it mean to implement and succeed in a goal in a specific timeline because quite frankly we don't have a lot of like good track recording experience in doing that so I just want
156to offer that as you know as a person who has spent a considerable amount of my career in the classroom anecdotally yes students can make growth 30 40 50% and and sometimes even greater than that over the course of a year a massive $ 1.5 billion system with a lot of adults that have their own opinions and their own paces and how they do things when you're looking at a systems of that scale seeing that type of growth is rare it is incredibly rare and I I can't think of a good example of a district that's been able to do that thank you director hery before director Briggs are ranking directors who we haven't heard from anything direct director Mahi yeah um Dr Anderson what you were saying about the differentiation is that something that
157you think could or should be spelled out in a goal or do you think that if we were to set a target of of 10% or 15% that that would be implicit in how you all would be receiving Direction on how to achieve that goal it probably could be done either way but I think given where we are and if you would give us the latitude we would come back with you this is how we're planning to report our progress and this is how we plan to differentiate those those targets but you guys would would formally approve the the Topline all students goal and we would build from there but it's a question for you whether you want to add that structure to the goal itself that's your call probably I mean I think we
158want to do it we want to replicate that in parallel with the interims so however we're approaching the poline we would do it similarly and one thing I would just so that was my question I think uh director hery I think that I I agree with what you were saying around you know I think it's hard for us to look at each other look at Community think about ourselves as like we want to set this goal that doesn't get to where we think students deserve to be however I think we also need something that we can you were saying it from a positive standpoint of something that we can achieve I'll I agree with that but I'll also F from the negative something that we can hold ourselves accountable to because if your goal is
159too ambitious makes it impossible for us to say we didn't meet it because they say well we didn't meet it but we always knew that we couldn't meet this anyway it was an aspirational goal I want something that we can achieve and then also that if we we don't achieve it we can say well what the heck happened right not agree director Clark um so I'm just generally I'm really on the fence right now I'm hearing both good um arguments um from and good comments from everybody around the table um one thing that you said director hery that kind of gave me pause um was just um you know talking about the length of time that you've been serving in the role that you have and that you know we H we still haven't narrowed
160down on really getting an understanding of what are the interventions that we're doing that are actually working um and that you know that we need like it's our responsibility to do that um narrowing down on those targets that's how we're going to help increase student outcomes is by understanding what those exact interventions are um I don't have I I don't have a um um a good sense of whether or not increasing the um keeping the um percentage for uh the same or increasing it is going to um uh impede our ability to be able to hone in on the on on what um what strategies are working what strategies aren't working um but I just wanted to to share my thoughts on that direct director Ranken um thanks I uh well let's see we know
161that I'm not here to be liked um we haven't been brave enough like flat out we haven't made progress cuz we haven't held anybody accountable to making progress we have we adopted sofg 3 years ago but we didn't start we didn't start doing regular progress monitoring until last year we didn't start asking the questions about what's working and what's not and what do we need to do to move to move the needle we didn't start doing that 3 years ago we've just gotten in the practice of that we also had a ver um uh a board that was totally misaligned and even agreeing what the role of board governance was much less actually adhering to the commitments in the framework that we've adopted so we haven't succeeded because we haven't been doing it we're in
162a place a much better place now where we're actually doing it and I do want to know what would it take to improve the students by this percentage and then we can talk about if we're willing to give those things up how much did we think we could get by closing and consolidating however many schools 20 whatever million dollars that's a lot of second grade reading and we didn't do it we didn't have the real conversation about the tradeoffs about smaller number of schools larger number of schools that whole conversation was not to close the budget Gap that was to free up resources for children and we blew it so when I don't care if it's 10% or 15% I want to know what does it take to meet the needs of students and what
163changes are we willing to make as a system to give kids the access to the education that they deserve and how do we do that within the budget that we have whether it's whether we get money from the legislature or Not Our obligation to kids doesn't change but right now what we've done is not actually talked about it increased class sizes in secondary way way overcrowded in secondary kids don't have access to electives and all this stuff because we sort of shuffled numbers around to balance a budget without thinking about the impact of students and the student outcomes so 10% 15% it you know it doesn't matter what matters is that we're actually holding ourselves to a standard of making the changes we need to make to yield changes in student outcomes because if we
164do everything the same way we've always done it we're going to have the same results all right I see lots of cards we this is we're only on goal one so I want yeah okay there's two we we yeah but you two will say something and more cards will pop up um but I do I both want you to I want to give you both an opportunity to speak but I want to then as we move through these other goals we are not taking a rem reminding folks we're not taking action tonight this is discussion we will take action in about a week so and and have an opportunity to kind of vote on on some amendments here to some language so with that director breaks thank you um I I mostly the majority of
165what I wanted to say was already stated by Liza um I think the point I just really want to drill down on is that this conversation is so important because where we put our resources is where we will see change and that's really what I'm driving at right now so we need to know yes we do need to know what are the strategies that we're doing that are working that are having an impact we can get there faster if we put more resources toward figuring that out and we do need to have concrete numbers so that community and us can know what is the trade-off because I am under no delusion that there won't be major trade-offs involved because we have finite resources um but we still need to know what does that actually look
166like if we want to if we want to move the needle this much then what does that cost us and what do we have to sacrifice and that that is exactly the conversation that this is that is exactly what this conversation is and it is so critical that we know exactly what we're talking about here because again where we put our resources is where we will see change director hery yeah really quickly and with love I just want to push back a little bit on um the last part of what you were sharing Liza because it's like I think that's where we got into trouble last time or at least where I'm holding myself accountable um is that like it to me it does matter on whether it's like 10 or 15% because like again
167this conversation just cannot exist in a vacuum of the boardroom right like there as we just heard is a massive Financial difference between having a goal of 10% and 15% and so that's what I just want us as a board and really to like lift up Evans point it's like the this conversation is critical and I just don't want it to be like oh like you know yes you are right we we are not pushing our system far enough to get the outcomes that we need to get for students because it's just it's much more complicated than that especially when you're taking into consideration how uh implementing systems year-over-year compound for the instructional uh for the instructional quality that a student receives depending on the grade level like I I just want us to be
168really cognizant about like what that fivepoint difference is over the course of 5 years and what that actually looks like in terms of resource allocation for the system and also like do we have any examples of districts in our financial situation with our current data like size with the same or similar numbers of free and reduced lunch of districts that have made that type of growth do we have a model that we can look to to potentially replicate or at least use as a guide for how we need to get there what steps need to happen in any particular year is just as much more complicated than raising a goal from and I'm not saying that anybody is minimizing this but just I want to put it on the table that it's much more complicated
169than raising a goal from 10% to 15% for a system of this size director hery is that a question for staff that staff wants no no okay um I know I put another thing up but it'll be really quick so the next the next one we're going to talk about is very similar so maybe you could go say it next or is it specific to it's it's specific to what director hery just said which is not to say that I don't think it matters if we have ten I just wanted to clarify I'm not saying I don't think it matters I get that there have different implications the reason that I'm proposing a change is not because I feel very strongly about 15% over 10% it's because I feel very strongly about a meaningful Target
170that's going to allow us to hold the system accountable for the change that we want to see if we think we can do that with 10% fine if we need 15% to push us a little more and really what we're looking for is not Perfection but progress when we do progress monitoring is to see growth so we're not going to give everybody an F if we don't hit the target but we're all going to have failed if we can't make changes to make progress so just to just to to clarify the 10 or 15 to to me is I want to know what the right target is for us to move the needle in a meaningful way all right thank you so we're going to move on to goal two which is the life ready
171goal and some some of the themes we heard from Community again is around the the percentage change you know is is 10% enough should we for this one move to 15 and I think Liza again this is this is a suggestion that you've brought forward so I I will give you the opportunity to speak to it thank you um yeah kind of similar H how do we make sure that we're we're actually going to push the system to make changes for the students for whom we want to see the growth um I am I have other questions about this too I actually proposed well if we were going to vote tonight it would have been proposed as an amendment but since uh wait wait let's are we that will be so I I have questions
172about that I'll wait for that have to do with depending on what our Baseline is going to be whether or not 10% or 15% um feels right but but kind of I was getting at the same thing is does 10% push us enough or would 15% be uh more more more meaningful and progress does anyone have any additional comments they want to add to this sort of percentage here in the Life ready then then why don't you talk to this your second proposal director inen thank you is there a way to put the amendment link the suggested language up on the board so people can see it as well as the the qu so I'll while we're looking at that maybe the question that I had was in dece and it was addressed a little
173bit during progress monitoring but in December the conversation we had or where we had arrived at was that it seemed as though by the time we got the the version that was introduced at offic you know officially introduction um we all seem to align around the fact that what we're looking for is not just that you graduate but that students are prepared and that we were all kind of in agreement or shared understanding that um specifying without waivers would help us make that distinction between simply graduating or actually being prepared um but then we learned more about waivers both in our Bard Retreat and again tonight and so the qu I'm not suggesting that we change what the goal is but what I really want to understand because I want to again make sure that
174we are asking the question in the right way to drive the change that we want is um waivers don't seem to the the waiver that's being used the most is the um Service Learning waiver and I definitely wouldn't want to put in something that would keep students from graduating I don't want to say like they have to graduate without waivers and then for for the unintended you know consequence to that be we're not allowing waivers for the service learning and now a third of kids are not going to graduate if they haven't done 60 community service hours so um that and then also uh the high school and Beyond plan has a whole bunch of measures built into it and a Statewide uh tool is being rolled out and paid for by the state that
175we don't have access to now but we will um and so would the way that the high in your in the in the opinion of the professionals who work with these things every day um is does having the consistent with the high school and Beyond plan already build in the Readiness portion that we're looking for and maybe did waivers become sort of a distraction like how do we want to make sure that kids are ready and if waivers isn't the right thing to do that I don't want to have it in there I want to make sure that we have the right measure for how do we know that students are ready um know what they want to do next and are prepared to take steps can I paraphrase the question for staff just a
176little please do so I think the question is from what we've learned from waivers which I think has been extremely helpful um we I think the wording in our current goal is not quite what we want it to be what would your professional recommendation be knowing that what we want to measure is you know is a student ready yes I do and it's obviously an important question and a challenging one for what it's worth just to just by put putting in waivers we're not preventing anybody from graduating just like our Topline measure said graduation and having completed an advanced course we we didn't block anybody from graduating if they didn't get an advanced course just just to clarify that we yeah but that said I I hear your point um I will say that the
177state changes its mind almost every year in terms of how things are so I think having uh moving away from waivers is a generally healthy thing but let me say two points about the high school meon plan and then how you think about because what I've heard very clearly from our conversations is that you want students not only to meet the graduation requirements of course but to have a plan and to start implementing it meaning to show that they're actually ready those three things and so in terms of the second just to orient everybody the high school Beyond plan requires you have to have students identify career goals and interests post-secondary Education and Training goals an academic plan to do that um a knowledge of financial aid and a resume so do we want all
178of our students to be able to do those things and would it be helpful to have that be part of a Topline goal I think so have we fully leveraged the power of that absolutely not and could this could this really Galvanize that I think so I if you're asking I think it would be great to include the high school and Beyond plan and those really very specific components and do a better job of ensuring given our our student board members who talked the last time about how didn't even hear about it right so so how do we um the the the additional piece that I'll just put out there is what do you want to look for to see a student is already showing that they're ready to start doing it and is that
179coursework completion in a particular area is that a work-based learning experience is that a post-secondary application all of those are measurable all those are doable and those are the options I think you have in terms of whether you want to add that component something that they do something specific to show that they're actually starting to implement that plan and so that that part is or isn't already kind of baked into the high school and Beyond plan in my estimation is not is that you by by simply identifying your career interest identifying your plans you're not necessarily starting to implement those plans it's it would be an additional step so updated language would look like those components of the high school and Beyond plan plus implementation in one of these three measurable ways well I think
180if we I mean if the high school and beond I'm sorry can if the high school and Beyond plan is already already in there we don't need to yeah list out the bullets my question is really the high school and Beyond plan the measures that are contained in that all ready is that sufficient to demonstrate Readiness or do we need something else and then similar to the waivers cuz we seems like we could either leave it as it is or remove the waiver part unless we're just so far off but I would love to hear what a student has to say too about that let's do staff and then we'll go to students here real fast um so just I asked Dr Perkins to say what those four elements again are so we can hear
181it again are these kind of Readiness Criterion so please so identif identification of career goals identification of postsecondary plans and a cour taking plan for the time they're in middle and high school knowledge of financial aid and a resume the only thing in there that's actually doing pieces is the is the resume component um so good that's IT director brag yeah I immediately heard that and went I don't think it does I don't think that currently especially being a student who lives dayto day and he's goes into mentorship class and it's like we're going on Naviance today um I don't think currently the action is being taken like I feel like there's a lot that is said in the high school and writing this plan which is really good for like the prep but actually
182saying that students are ready to go into that I don't think is with contained within the high school and beon plan director a law is said in that plan but none of it is actually followed through with um I remember I did this internship this summer with a ton of private school kids and I just remember them telling me about how their schools set them up with the you know jobs and like companies after graduation or during the summer or during the school year and I just feel like we need that resource and we need something to write on our resumés I mean there's res reses but what do we write on the resumes if you guys don't give us opportunities fa Point director Ranken one last time yeah so I mean I'm the parent
183of a 10th grader and a seventh grader neither of whom have any idea what I'm talking about when I say high school and Beyond plan um I know sorry Caleb um so the other question is is it an implementation I get okay if we think the high school and Beyond plan were it to be implemented consistently would provide us the information about student Readiness it feels to me like we don't need to add anything else that that's an implementation issue now if the my my Wonder is if what's in there is the right question to ask to to know if students 5 years from now will be more ready for life after graduation than students today Dr Perkins could you list off your the four implementation things that you had again not yes um so
184the high school plan on plan being the plan the the the initial list of proposed ways to showing a student is actually able to start complet implementing the plan is taking dual credit work I.E college level Credit in the area of their interest a formal work-based learning experience like the internship the student board member just referenced uh FAFSA wafa application completion um or a post-secondary program application completion which could include college or work so that would give us more information about steps actually being taken to get to their so be school beyond plus this Readiness step in goal would that apply would there is there something in one of those four things that could apply to any student maybe if they don't have college aspirations or I mean well there's the work there's yeah there's
185two one is a work-based learning experience um which Brian De aree of CT and stem is making a more formal set of recordkeeping about that and then there's the applying to a work-based program as opposed to a college I really like that sounds like diploma plus but without the name but that's what we wanted so that's fine but it's less complicated no no this is this is this is all right I'm wondering if we can move on to the next one oh sorry sorry director Elis um yeah there's all these like steps and all but um you know being in high school and seeing um you know my peers being well all of us are pretty much discouraged from taking dual credits or doing CTE or Pathways which sucks and um a lot of students
186find it quite daunting so I wish there was like more support to help these students go into you know so this plan you know eventually works and students know what they want to do app all right so the next topic for discussion really focuses around some of the feedback we got about the concern that we've gone down to from three goals to two goals and that we uh need to somehow add a a math goal back in and I'm going to let director Clark speak to this one a little bit um okay um well I just felt like this was a theme that we heard pretty loud and clear from the community that they want a math goal um and you know we live in an area um where we have so much innovation in
187our backyard and I personally feel like it's our responsibility to prepare our students to take advantage of those opportunities to increase um their quality of life um and I don't see how we can do that if we're not focusing on math which is really a core part of um these industries of the future that are here now I'm thinking about AI life science um um all different kinds of opportunities um and you know when uh uh thinking about our needs assessment that we we received last fall um I definitely noticed and I think I brought up the drop in the math scores that we saw from fifth grade going into sixth grade um and so um I wanted to bring up uh for consideration um actually a a fourth grade math goal um that um
188the percentage of fourth graders scoring proficient or above in math on the SBA assessment would um increase from whatever our spring 2025 Baseline is um plus um 10 or 15 percentage points um by June 230 start discussion here I don't I don't know who there we go I don't know who put up their card first but director hery um yes so I am not opposed to a math goal my inclination though and I would be really curious if we could get some information about this is why did the math scores go down what did you mention fifth and sixth I have a hunt that it probably is linked to word problems and being able to understand what a lot of the tests are asking them or at least that's what I've seen as a teacher
189um because even when we went through this the first time the reason another reason that we had the third grade goal leading to the seventh grade um math goal was because or at least what I know from my experience is that it becomes more difficult in math specifically because the instruction sets and problem sets get more difficult in terms of how they are presented to the child and so I would just like to know before like committing to it and again I am not opposed to it I think having a math goal is great I think I share the same concerns as like adding 5% on top of the 10% if it is going to be a resource drain on the district if we can improve potentially our math goal through really doubling down on
190reading that would be my preference personally um but I don't have enough information to know why we saw a dip in math in those grades so that would help me be a stronger advocate for adding an additional goal if I could see some information or some insights into why that happened so so the third grade literacy 7th grade math College and Career Readiness was all was and is all connected and we believe early literacy connected to being able to do math at 7th grade and it's get those are getting us ready for uh to be able to take those Advanced courses to be able to be College and Career ready so Dr Perkins you have a capture on what happened at fifth grade um and I want you to be able to speak to that
191pursuant to director her's uh comments or question yeah I'll do my best to to kind of Channel our our math manager and please just talk about the difference between a fourth grade math goal and a seventh grade math goal what what's the fundamental difference so I think the rationale why we brought the recommended seventh grade math goal was very much to director Clark your point about how are we setting kids up for being able to access stem uh careers if they're if they so choose if they want to and so where we see the unfortunate um gatekeeping if you will happens so much more in middle school we see the we see the the scores dropping at the middle school level most precipitously students accessing their you know in students of color first education Justice
192accessing Advanced coursework uh they're less likely to if they don't succeed in middle school that is the the Lynch pit now I think I know there's interest from the board to to potentially revisit and think about it in a new way um but to your point director hery there there are definitely things getting more complex more word problems more and that's to Dr Jones's connection between the reading and math piece but if if I were to say where is that Lynch pin it's the it's the middle school math experience that ends up correlating highly with how well they're going to do in in high school and Beyond in math director Mahi so I just want to um double down on the point that I feel like what we heard in the community feedback was around
193having a middle grade math goal I think that um you know when we were originally discussing this and decided to go go down from three goals to two goals I like the idea of being more focused in what we are progress monitoring uh I also felt like somewhat swayed by the argument that if in order to meet goal two we would have to have interm goals that measured uh Middle School mathematics I would say though that I mean if we're talking about like actually engaging in authentic Community engagement when we kind of in the conversation gave that explanation people were like yeah but we still want a middle school math schol I think people want to see it written out and some of that is just good communication from the district that people want to
194see that this is something that we are valuing and they want to see it as a goal so I feel like I would be inclined to add it I would also be inclined to defer to uh the experts on when we should be measuring it but I think that we should have have that math goal back in director [Music] Briggs uh yeah I just I mean I I under I really understand wanting the math goal and um that all makes sense and I and my concern is really around spreading ourselves too thin and having an inability to focus our our efforts and in the spirit of reverse engineering the career and college readiness goal like would it be possible to have an interim goal that that tracked middle school math um so that there was
195some accountability around uh specifically how kids are doing in middle school as they head into high school um without making it a standalone goal so I'm just throwing that out I'm I don't know you know what what the experts think about that idea but um it seems like a way to codify that priority while also not um overextending ourselves in the goal realm um I mean absolutely that that's another option and um just to show how consequential your conversations are director Clark and others made that reference I think in the prior meeting in uh earlier in January and so we've already been brainstorming with lots of help uh potential Middle School interims that focus on math whether it be completion of algebra whether it be the SBA scores anyway we've had a lot of robust
196conversations with the with the same thinking that you're sharing that it's a critical component about determining Readiness um so it would be a very logical interim as well as align to what you're hearing from the community um director Ranken thank you um I uh you know when we first decided to go down to two from three the idea being do you know the board that focuses on everything focuses on nothing and the fewer goals you have the more likely you are to achieve those goals I think if you have I can't remember what it is but basically once you get above five you're you're not going to be any which is different than three but um but I I think what I heard about the math goal that I just wanted to sort of point
197out the the missing of the math goal I think is may actually be uh um desire for just increased transparency around just how students are doing which we can do in ways like setting the goals is our way of saying here's how we're going to evaluate the success of the district not here are the only things that we're paying attention to and we do there are required assessments at various times um we should still be talking about those and and looking at how how are students doing how are hey these these results of these assessments came in this is how kids are doing here board here public this is you know this is where things are at um that was kind of my interpretation of what I was hearing from Community was they just really
198wanted to know more how are kids doing in math what is the result of that and are we going in one direction or the other um and so I'm not going to be helpful because I could go I could kind of go either way at it or not um but uh I also do think it's you know this is monitoring math is not a brand new is not really adding this whole new body of work we haven't just said decided that a new goal should be that every kid has their scuba license for open water and deep water like we're we're doing math so monitoring it there's not a lot downsides to it um yeah like I said not helpful so I I'm going to concur with director Mahi that through this engagement process folks
199made it very clear to me at least that they would like to see a math goal and I would like to try to be responsive to some of the feedback that we are we are hearing I'm also through our monitoring sessions really curious why all of a sudden we're seeing a big jump in our math scores and wondering what what what the underlying what what we are doing or what was the change that got us there so interested in just kind of continuing to track that though uh uh open to a different grade level um and I know we will still track things but to be here in front of the board and see that I think it would be really interesting um anything else oh director hery did you put your card back up
200on just really quickly so two light questions so was there a specific reason that uh you opted for like a fourth or fifth grade goal um yeah um I was discussing it with um director Ranken and I think there was uh some concern that by the time students get to Middle School like that they're already behind got it got it that makes a ton of sense to me um so with that I'm also interested uh to see like what caused a significant jump in our seventh grade scores and then maybe there is a compromise somewhere in there to like either pay attention to the grade immediately before or after seventh grade whether it it's more do yall think impactful to focus in on Sixth or eighth to uh support the transition into high school which
201would then essentially be like okay if we can replicate what we did in seventh can we do it in eighth and just continue to track that same like cohort of students for a little bit maybe there's some value there I don't know but I think like making a big jump to the fourth grade would probably be almost a reinvention of the wheel and I think we could probably use a lot of the learning that we got from the great outcomes that we got in math more effectively in a sixth or an eighth grade goal so if y'all could give us some information or or Clarity around whether that would be useful that would be that' be great turn to staff here so something uh to consider is the building on the investment that's already happened
202in seventh grade math um is the opportunity if we were going to go to fourth grade the focus areas that we would be going on in our measurements and our behaviors that we would be looking for and supporting for our adults may be similar but they may be different so different theory of action the opportunity for us um if we were to go with seventh grade uh still uh can take into account the sixth grade transition and the eighth grade transition into high school as being a clear theory of action um so I think the opportunity for us is to build on what's already the investment that's already been made and then also to build on some of the strategies that look and appear to be promising at seventh grade which is why um uh
203in it's in our our past um uh documents that we sent to you advocating for for seventh grade math any director Ranken wait I don't understand sorry are you saying that you sorry are you saying that you would want to continue tracking sth grade uh like as just like a reinstatement of that goal going forward or are you saying that you would want to see a sixth or eighth grade cool the the first part the seventh grade so just continue what we're doing continue that as a focused priority goal okay and maybe continuing the things that are or not maybe continue to do the things that are working that are promising okay and then try on new things that we want to uh expand on the goal to get better at are we meeting are
204we meeting our seventh grade goal for the most we had a huge jump in our last progress mon was oh so we're trying to see if that's a fluke or not okay cool got it got it cool it was like a seven or 8% jump I believe that was uh not what I was expecting in our progress monitoring so we director Sergeant I'm I'm trying to remember the H the presentation but that seventh grade jump was that data disaggregated or was it all students and I believe it was just our current goal which is on um black mail okay that that was the question um so we don't know why we don't know if that's going to be SU stainable um I think if we're going to add a third goal um and I'm just
205I have been thinking about everything that's been said and I I you know this idea of I I I struggle waiting until seventh grade um because then we're in intervention mode which is why we landed on second grade instead of third grade um the people who suffer the most from Intervention are are black indigenous and other students of color historically like not just 2023 or 2022 or 20 we're talking decades it's a catchup game that we lose at no that that kids lose at and so if we're going to add a third goal I want it to be promotion and prevention focused not intervention um by the time a kid gets to seventh grade if they're not doing well in math um it's critical it it we're we're not setting them up for success with
206an intervention strategy and so you know I'm not excited about a third goal but I could get behind a third goal that is promotion and prevention focused which means an earlier measurement not a later measurement so any goal that we we have should always be focused on the quality of the tier one instruction that's happening that we're not starting off at a deficit mindset or deficit space with our students it's what what are this the adults going to be doing differently um or continue to be doing because it's working for students students um so if we um choose to use this goal and we've done it in the past it would be about the quality of the teaching that is happening the planning that it takes to do such highquality teaching and the leading that
207it takes to support that teaching um that is responsive and uh quickly gives students authentic feedback on how well they're doing in math and many of our students are doing very well some of our students are struggling but part of that plan has to be um tier one interventions um for our students it's what our teachers are expected to do and we want to support them in doing that so we will always start off on these goals as being about supporting high quality tier one instruction um in the content area that we're choosing to focus on and report back out to you whether it's a Topline measure or it's an interim director Ranken um what was the what year did we adopt the current K5 math curriculum I think it was four years ago I
208think it was four years ago so yeah yeah 2021 oh it was okay I just would would theorize that having a uh common curriculum in elementary school has contributed to the jump in seventh grade uh because prior to that we had kids getting to sixth grade and sixth grade math teachers having to figure out like who whoa where did you know where was everybody at and different schools were doing you know just you know some kids were coming in not knowing fractions and some kids were coming in ready for division and and and all kinds of stuff so I I don't I don't know if you've if there is a correlation there but I would um feel pretty strongly placing a little bit of on the fact that the common curriculum created that jump strongly
209agree um and so I wouldn't expect that we would see repeated jump but that will sustain if if that's the contributing factor that will Su kind of sustain that that level of growth um so I I I mean I think that's a pretty significant and meaningful shift that was made that we won't continue to make um if that makes sense uh if we do have um add back a third goal I would in echoing what um director Clark and director SGU said be really interested in seeing it at the fourth or fifth grade level um moving from elementary school I mean looking at some other districts and some of what we're doing too the idea of kindergarteners taking kindergarten math first graders taking first grade math but when you move into middle school and you're
210already taking you know have the opportunity for different schedules there is a lot more opportunity to not expect one teacher to do everything and to to make sure that kids are prepared to take math at their level and kids who want to go more and um you know do more can but we want to make sure that all kids have the preparedness and opportunity to do that and that we're not um limiting access to Advanced learning by what elementary school you went to um and I I I feel like looking at fourth or fifth grade would give us a better idea of the level of preparedness for kids and also maybe help identify too um is it is it reading that's interfering with the math Readiness or is it really just the foundational math skills
211um it seems like looking at that earlier I I think would be I would support okay Dr Jones and then I want to wrap up the go conversation and move to guard rails cuz it's getting L right so I just want to kind of Express this to to my team the the board started uh This original set of goals with a a notion of a strong start and a strong finish with some reassurances at the front end that things were shorted up so that by the time they got to middle school and high school they had that such a strong solid start that they could get there so when you hear them talking about well let's let's let's start that math goal in fourth grade or let's let's have the literacy goal in second grade
212instead of third grade it is the desire and you all correct me if I'm wrong to have some reassurance at the front end that everything's in place so the the creativity that we're hearing from the board around second grade fourth grade is that desire correct me if I'm wrong that desire to have some some some Ironclad reassurance that no one's falling through the cracks the system is robust enough at the at the in the first couple of grades is that is that correct so to to meet that need and desire of of the board can we still achieve that at the fourth grade seventh I mean at um fourth grade math second grade can we work that around so that we can give reassurances or is there another way to give reassurances early on that
213I think that's the essential question that cuz I remember director Briggs and Clark and top we were all on the same team and we were talking about maybe we need one goal but then the other team was talking about well there's we need an early goal we were saying no it's just should be College and Career Readiness and they said no we have have a fast start Strong finish and some reassurances if if that's incorrect correct me if I'm wrong but I'm just kind of posing that to the team how do we achieve that or how what can we advise and recommend so so that they can get that reassurance I don't know if that's possible to construct that tonight but I just wanted to plant that can I just I'm so I'm so sorry
214this is a very specific technical question um I'm wondering Dr Perkins what you like so you're saying that seventh or middle school is when people kind of get almost get tracked in a way like math or not and I mean that was my experience for sure but um so I'm wondering do you do you have a concern that if we are monitoring this at fourth grade that it actually won't be predictive of that that somebody could could students could test well in fourth grade and then still experience derailment in middle school I guess that's that's my concern in brief yes is is fourth grade super important of course um but that's just looking at the data which I realized that you need to probably propose language tonight but if there was any opportunity to share
215some the additional data of what why the the concern really comes in and maybe it's sixth grade to the point maybe it's a little earlier in Middle School to director Rankin's point before students start going down these different roads of math they have a common they should have a common sixth grade experience anyway but that's that's why because the data show that that's where we see the bigger drop all right I want to move to guard rails now unless anyone has any burning la last minute desire to talk about uh something in the goals all right uh moving to the guard rails so um one of the things that I heard we I think we heard in the themes was sort of spec that the uh guard rails were a little vague um I think
216that one of the things that happens next with these guard rails is they get interm guard rails from from the superintendent which are the the more specific things that we actually measure that help us lead to some of these these Topline goals um and that's part of the hard part here with these guard rails um but um I think that there was some feedback that uh I do want to follow up on from just on a vagueness or interpretation standpoint which would be on guard rail one the Equitable access to high quality opportunities and instruction um I think does this language need to be modified to clarify that Equity will be achieved by increasing access not removing it is essentially the question I I think that um director Ranken you Pro proposed this so I
217want to let you speak to it moment yeah so we uh you know in looking at this and in hearing feedback from Community about this I remembered a time at some point in the drafting where we talked about um not Li limiting opportunity and um I just wanted to make sure that that we were very clear that you could you a way to not allow inequitable access access to high quality educational opportunities is to make sure that nobody has them so which is definitely not what we're trying to get at um so it's Equitable nobody has it um that's but that that's definitely not what Our intention was as a board and it's definitely not what we heard from our community and so um uh the the L uh let's see is it in writing
218somewhere here um I mean I I feel like we also have opportunity when we get interims if if one of the interim goals is there will be no no unique or Advanced programs we'd be like oh no no that's not what we meant um so I'll read the language I think that clarifies it the superintendent will not allow a student's School assignment family income race or ethnicity need or identity to determine access to high quality standards rigorous programming high quality teaching and supports I think that clarifies language so that's a that's a recommended revisiting of that first one that also I think hearkens back to August when we were talking about school assignment not determining access and what what we're really trying to get at is that we don't say to any kid oh you
219love this thing and our really good at it sorry we don't have that at your school which doesn't mean everything has to be exactly the same but how do we provide the same opportunity and access to kids and not predetermine the quality of Education that they will have by the attendance area they happen to live in any comments all right any comments on any of the other guard rails right so then reminding folks that we're not taking action tonight or hopefully not if I can get a motion to propose postpone this action item until uh January 29th 2025 you sure can okay um I'm oh I move that the school board postpone action on action item number one until January 29th 2025 second right vice president Briggs makes a motion director Mahi seconds um uh
220do uh Dr Wilson uh do Miss Wilson Jones will you please call the role yes I will um director Miss Rahi hi director Ranken I director seru I uh vice president braks I director Clark I director hery time I president top I this motion is passed unanimously great I really appreciate this discussion I think this was a very indepth and good discussion and provided some clarity and I appreciate staff all the work you've done to answer the questions today and help us uh move forward in this conversation I'm really proud of this work um we are going to move to a budget study session um if you don't you should have a big packet with you I brought mine back up to the Das I'm going to grab mine real fast as we I think
221transition a little bit of Staff here but we're not going into recess we're going to keep going here I need water Lily this is super low St conversation wor PR oh director br all right Dr Jones I'm going to pass it over to you for our budget study session okay thank you um is the board's desire to hit all 43 of these slides uh and do you want us to do you want us to kind of pick and choose I can truncate the first part to to truncate I'm I was asking do we do you want us to hit all 43 slides or if we have opportunity just to truncate I think the items that we've covered previously like the snake I think we can pass over um but I do think there are some
222important slides in here director hery is looking at me like yes hurry up but uh all right let's let's let's Jump Right In without uh preview and jump right into s number five and we're going we're GNA get get cracking with this I'm gonna go yeah Dr buttl please so here's an opportunity to truncate if we would like so this is the review of the annual report the annual financial report that's required by board policy I've been presenting annual Financial reports to boards like you for more than 20 years and their first question after my presentation of 15 minutes or 20 minutes is what are the key takeaways so we could advance to slide 17 and get to the key takeaways if you'd like where I can go through all this information your choice do
223do directors want to see the information or do little guy really hard I I I support key takeaways cuz I think it's part of our obligation to read the information that we've been provided yeah and there's a more comprehensive report that's part of the packet so the key takeaways and this is for the operations that ended August 31st of 2024 um are here on the screen the first is the teaching and teaching sport has increased as a total as a percentage of the total spending of sale Public Schools so consistent with the discussions earlier around trying to invest more the limited resources into student outcomes um I think it's goes without saying that teaching and teaching support are key to Student outcomes and so the percentage of increase over the last 3 years has gone
224up on that that item um as we all know again has been discussed multiple times at this table and at most every board table across the state of Washington State under funding continues to remain a significant issue Financial issue for seal public schools and other school districts um our fund balance which has been relied on heavily the last few years in order to produce um budgets that balance technically continues to decrease um I want to provide a little more explanation on this because it will become relevant in the proposals that we're going to share in a little bit um at the end of last year there was a there's typically a little bit of extra money that's left of carry forward is what it's called and we had been projecting that to be around $30
225million to carry forward and to help balancing the 2526 budget or to replay repaying the uh rainy day fund or or returning the the funds to the capital fund that $30 million is $42 million when the books close and there's a few sort of major drivers of that one of them is there's a a hiring freeze of sorts here in the district office and so departments like myself and others held off on refilling positions and there were some accumulated vacancy savings that hadn't sort of been anticipated at the beginning of the year that accounts for some of that the state provided some funding in the legislative session last year that was retroactive so it wasn't um anticipated to help the 23 24 budget and so that funding just sort of showed up and wasn't is
226for things that had already transpired that year interest rates were higher than anticipated so the the cash that the district invents invests with the county treasure earned a higher rate of interest than typically or was anticipated and then the enrollment drop wasn't as significant as um was budgeted in the February projection of that year those are some of the main things most of those are one-time unique items but wanted to explain why that $30 million that we've been projecting had increased a little bit because they said it will become relevant in the proposals going forward the other part that I want to just highlight there is there was some Esser funding so last year was the last year of Esser funding and the district expended all of that that funding is now gone so that
227was another contributor to that onetime bump in the the carry forward amount another key takeaway student and family needs have increased if you look at the detail in the financial information you see that a lot in the special education spending at sale Public Schools again another place that's underfunded needs are increasing it's causing a part a large part of the structural problem um inflation continues to be a problem insurance rates things like that come out in the details of the report and then there's discussion around central Administration so one of the places that the district has been intention about trying to cut is Central Administration so the folks that work in this building to support schools do the operational things in this building and the percentage of spending of that has gone down over the
228last three years so those are kind of the the key takeaways from the report um like I said the the detailed information is available on the website um one of the other things I want to highlight before we move on is the district has been pretty intentional about trying to provide more transparent financial information especially in light of the the budget conversations that have have taken place over the last few years and so we've created a website where all this information is contained so that stakeholders the public everybody can access it in one place rather than trying to find it on Opa opi's website or find it in different places in board meeting minutes and things like that any questions on the financial report before we move on to the budget development for 2526 thank
229you okay so uh now we're going to transition to an update on the budget development process for 2526 not the longterm but short term just this next year we're going to provide some some background information um if we turn to slide 21 please so uh our current budget situation you obviously we all know the structural deficits still exists this means our anticipated expenditures exceed our anticipated revenues Revenue uh the deficit is projected to be more than $94 million for 25 26 uh for 23 24 we use our rainy day fund to help balance the budget for 2425 we borrowed 20 27 million from our Capital fund to bridge the gap for 2526 our one-time options are further limited so uh our general fund financial situation remains uh uh unsustainable unless further reductions are made and
230or other revenue is provided by our state so there's not a way forward essentially without some uh support some significant support from the state and passing our levies next slide please so the summary of the 2324 changes here uh Kurt if you can walk through these this is something that the board is familiar with so hit on the high point on this and then we'll keep going until we get to what we're going to do in 25 26 the high points you touched on utilization of the rainy day Reserve fund the board has a current um resolution in place to start to repay that in the coming year so again that'll become relevant in the proposals um we maximized what we could in terms of capital and grants so moved appropriate expenses over to Capital
231funds and grants funding in 23 24 um reductions at the Stanford center in um staff and non-staff items there were some school Staffing changes in that year um there was reductions in unnecessary or um not sort of mission critical contracted Services um that was the year I think the first or second year of the Furlow for the non-represented staff at the Stanford center and that year there were Transportation changes at I think 12 schools where bell times or other um shuttle services were discontinued so just sort of resetting the reminding people of the history of how that that year transpired we can go to the next slide which is 2425 so this is the year we're currently in there was $104 million um challenge ahead of the board and the superintendent and this is the
232year the $27 million fund uh loan from the capital fund was executed um board chose to delay the first repayment of the rainy day fund additional reductions in Stanford center staff reductions at the schools and custodial Services discretionary funding some increases in secondary class sizes um there additional Transportation reductions mainly around Skill Center Transportation um the contingencies were reduced further um this just sort of part of why we're here today is there's less of a margin for for air or experimentation around the the margins anymore um we implemented convenience fees last year so people using a credit card to pay school dist District charges they're charging the the fee directly and voluntary athletic fees were implemented we've collected about $145,000 this year um much shorter than the million dollars that we would were anticipating and
233then we utilize some Capital fund interest um for school supplies that was a $2 million solution for that all right that gets us to Baseline and one of our sources for Revenue so to speak is around enrollment so I'm going ask uh Chief podesta to speak to our enrollment study update I'll just give a quick update of the status of the work um you'll recall that in the last session of the legislature appropriated funds to allow us to do a structured study the district long had a practice of um doing kind of exit interview work where we studied um opinions of folks who had unenrolled from the district so the study that uh had two parts really our internal team um looked at the structure of enrollment patterns over uh over a period since 2012
234and really found that um uh students unenrolling from the district during the course of their career has remained flat in all that period that our net decline enrollment is really about attracting fewer students not losing students that who unenroll so that informed kind of the structure of the survey there was representative survey of more than 1,400 uh caretakers of schoolage children in three populations um uh caretakers of children who are currently enrolled caretakers of children who were formally enrolled but are still School AED and caretakers of children that never uh contacted the district or enrolled um the kind of key findings um one big thing to note is currently families with currently enrolled students um indicated a satisfaction rate with Seattle public schools of 86% um uh which uh uh working with our survey professionals
235is is high for an Enterprise um and they cited uh the kind of sense of community and belonging and many of the attributes that we think about with neighborhood schools um group uh obviously the satisfaction rate of uh formally enrolled students is much lower uh uh more at the 32% level and in both groups whether they're currently enrolled or unenrolled that is really inative to this discussion is concerns about uh class sizes funding and educational quality were the biggest concerns of anyone who's considered unenrolling or students or caretakers of students who have left so um we've uh given a original quick briefing to the sponsor of the legislation we're going to um uh brief uh the our delegation next week um because that's part of the funding was that we need to report back to
236the legislature and I think president top has asked for an in-depth briefing at a study session in the coming month um there's still some technical work to do to correlate um demographics to uh programs and services so there's still some work massaging the data but um we really appreciate this funding it allowed us to go much deeper than the district has ever gone on this subject will you say the current family satisfaction number again 8 6% 86% so so uh director Rankin will you say will you ask that question one more time just CU I we could hear he wants it really on the I just really wanted to kind of make note that I I you know usually we're here as as Dr Jones has pointed out a lot of times talking about things
237that are not going well and that it's very easy and tempting well it's it's honestly it's a local Pastime to bash on Seattle Public Schools I'll just but it that actually really hurts our children you um and so just to kind of cut through that this was analysis done by an outside firm this wasn't a uh you know um stacked finding that current families the majority of current families are what was the description I don't know is it is it satisfactory or had positive feelings or what is it there was uh was about 55% were uh um satis Saied and then another 30% on top of that was very satisfying and I think we saw that too even through the The Angst of last year how much people care about their schools and how um
238much there are as much as we want to see improvements for some populations we have a lot of students and families that are very happy with these questions were asked both in an open-ended in a structured way and the Really the positive feedback spoke to kind of the institu of schools and the relationships and the community building that schools do so we'll go into this in much more detail we have we have time in our February agenda that we will be able to have a discussion on this and and actually dig into the results a little bit and share with Community yeah keep going just one last Point what's really relative to this discussion is uh class sizes um came up as a as an element and as you proceed through this presentation that subject
239is going to come up again so that's probably the main reason to talk about this here I'm getting the IE from but 86% I know I'm getting an eye from president top my first meeting we're going to go past nine it's not a great we're going to lose a quorum first that's the problem we can get it we can get it done before nine so done uh slide 25 P please uh preliminary budget proposal then we're moving into that space uh the board uh next Slide the board gave direction through through uh policy 00660 the educational program resolution uh this was approved in December uh four main elements uh the budget proposal has to have ongoing solutions that support student improving student outcomes needs to align with how we're going to support the our goals
240and guard rails achievement of the goals and guard rails needed to have a balanced budget proposal presented to the board around uh January 22nd today and then the preliminary balanced budget proposal shall include a scenario in which the district receives no additional funding from the legislature in a in a sign in a scenario where we do have funding from the legislature so here in you'll see some of those next pieces uh the next slide please the also uh the superintendent is directed to continue to Advocate with the board and collaborate on with our legislative Partners uh the superintendent also Direct ired to align recommendations with a task force that is being uh conceived now and the superintendent prior to introduction of the 2526 operating budget in a regular Bo meeting of the board will update
241the board on any significant variations and necessary program reductions so you you'll see some of these things in uh the next couple of slides and those being developed further uh as we get to uh the final budget so with with that said uh want to just focus quickly on the next slide um you all have heard this concept of year zero this is the the time that we're taking to do our analysis to do the studies that uh such one as the enrollment study to really good a good Baseline on where are our gaps um next slide please so uh Dr Bulman if you can kind of speak to these budget development variables these are all things are kind of pending right now that are kind of up in the air that are that are
242ultimately going to impact our our budget Dr bman please yeah I want to spend some time on the slide this is I think the meat of sort of the foundation we're trying to lay in I want to give a shout out to Jody and my office who put this together in a way that I think is understandable um so this is the most important variables that are sort of in play this year in developing the budget for 25 26 and Beyond and I'm going to stress that and on so much of this work is foundational to achieve the goals of the Strategic plan that you all have been discussing tonight so there's a legislative session it's significant K12 was in the spotlight um the colors aren't showing up there but the the timing of that
243is January through April so that's ongoing right now we're getting information consistently from legislature on where where those discussions are going um our Capital levies are on the ballot um ballots will drop tomorrow our EPO Levy and capital levies are on the ballot so another huge significant piece of information for sale Public Schools it's about 16% of the budget um we get our enrollment projections in February um to help inform the budget decisions um for the 25 six year and Beyond um we'll get some economic forecast information the legislature has been pretty gloomy and doomy around their forecast we'll get an update on that hopefully in March that informs some of the costs of Labor here at the district um we get to the real exciting stuff next which is strategic plan so once the
244board sort of sets the direction for the superintendent and staff to proceed on the Strategic plan putting together those initiatives tying the budget decisions to those directly going forward in future years over the course of those five years is work that I think we're all here for um two mechanical things are happening between January and April the Stanford center budget process kicked off a couple weeks ago starting to have decisions and conversations with budget managers here and then school budget process which is a very complex process feed fed by lots of information really gets underway in March once the February enrollment forecast is put forward um the last three I think are things that are intend the two of the last three are intended to inform that long-term budget for the Seattle Public Schools um
245the street strategy and resource analysis a consultant has been hired um through funding from the alliance to help the district make sure that it's using its resources most aligned with its strategic plan goals and so that work is underway they're Gathering data now they're meeting with people they'll have some recommendations around that later this spring that will really inform the next sort of five years of budget decisions and how do we get to where we all want to be um at that point in parallel with that and sort of being using their expertise and the the help from that consulting firm there's a robust review of the weighted Staffing standards model um typically the weighted Staffing standards group just make some tweaks around the edges and the margins and this is the year that we're
246going to try and take advantage of the new strategic plan the New Direction make sure that weighted Staffing standards model is in line with with the goals of the the the organization going forward and then last but not least there's some significant labor negotiations on The Horizon um preparation for that is beginning um anticipating those to um wrap up by the end of the August when the the contracts expire on those are there any questions on this I just don't want to move along from this one too quick there's a nearly everything of significance that impacts the budget at a school district is in play right now at Seattle Public Schools um so I just want to this is this is a time for um some significant action to happen um to move the district
247forward I think so it's an exciting time in spite of the deficit and all the problems this is an exciting time this this is an exciting slide any any variables that you think we left out that are significant uh we think this is a pretty good capture but you might be seeing something that that we missed but these are uh this is our rendering of what's out there the only only flag I would make and I made this flag last year is that the school budget process happened and decisions were made before the board got to make some of the decisions on things so want to flag that want to make sure that that doesn't happen again this year indeed and to that point uh if we're moving too fast um or we're missing those
248opportunities that is absolutely not our intent so we want to make sure that uh last year we had 13 budget sessions this year we had have I think 10 or 11 uh anytime we want to you know pause for a minute to make sure that you all are getting good information good data we're we're open to that let's keep going I can interject just directly responsive to that question and to provide a little more background on um the concerns brought forward by the librarian so part of the formative process of developing recommendations for the budget around the school I convene uh or by board policy I'm the facilitator of the weighted Staffing standards group and this year and in many years they talk about what sort of changes might happen in terms of that model
249and how it would allocate resources to schools and so this year again constraints lots of challenges for the budget we did an exercise to try and help inform these conversations for the superintendent and the board where members of that group anonymously took a survey what are the things that you think would be the least impactful for student outcomes among class size increases reductions in school Staffing assistant principles Librarians and so there was this formative exercise that we undertook um drafted memo to the superintendent per board policy shared it with our the group members of that group the principles and sea members who are part of that group and so there's a memo out there that talks about this topic and we're trying to solicit feedback from those group those leaders in the schools and the
250sca members to help inform those conversations to your point around once decisions are made but there has been no proposal on any of this this is just part of the formative process trying to gather information from stakeholders most close to the action sorry I do have a question now go go for it aligned with that which is and and I submitted some of these ahead of the meeting um there's always a little bit of a tail wagging the dog scenario that happens where um I'm not going to say it's a not a good idea to ask people what they think about that but that's a budget exercise we need to know what are the what are based on the vision and values we have for our students based on our obligations to kids what the
251recommended Investments would be and then talk about um the changes might be made I'm and and I've been through this enough times in SPS to know that stuff does get decided before it's decided and then it comes to the end and everybody's kind of stuck with what already got decided because school budgets have been set and whatnot so although I in December said you know we haven't made a proposal to reduce Librarians and nobody's asked us to approve reduction to Librarians I 100% understand why people would be concerned that that might happen and then at and then at some point people will say well this is this is what the budget is so now the board has to approve it and um we just really need to not do that which is easier easier said
252than done but but part of having all of these different meetings and like I would like to see much more concrete numbers about the scenarios of the two different things not like I understand that the scenarios are we might get funding from the state or we might not I need to know what those actually mean for us the choices that would have to be made um and so I'm I'm not going to ask that tonight because we don't have this information but when we come back to the next thing on the snake in February I I need a a much better you know the reduction in Staffing being you know between 12 1286 million I need a lot more information about what Staffing that means what that would look like the options are and what
253we can provide as feedback now as representatives of the community before it starts getting into building budgets bargaining and all of these things because then it's a done deal and that's that's sort of what we want to we want to start with what our kids need how could we do that within our resources and now that Circle up with with other folks and make sure that you know labor protections are in place and it's going to it's going to work but we have to start with the kids and we're still starting with the adults and that's just we're going to have a hard time voting yes on a budget that looks like that in June if we don't find a way to flip that around a little bit so president Rank and we we recognize
254that and we're I'm sorry president Meritus uh director ranking we uh we recognize that and that's kind of why we're showing these variables stuff isn't set in stone yet this is really helpful yeah yeah but I I I get what you and president top have said around don't get too ahead far ahead of ourselves let's let's have the data out in front and so we've been talking internally around how can we give you all some more reassurance that we're not just talking in these general terms but when we when we start to get more solid on what actually is going to happen we can put put that in front of you but I'm making a commitment that we're not going to move before you all get a chance to to weigh in so that's our
255that's our commitment to this board um so uh let's keep moving and we're going to move into the preliminary budget proposal uh this first one that we're going to talk about is one with no additional legislative funding uh and this is the one where uh director Rankin was talking about I want to see more specificity here so we're going to talk in in probably uncomfortable general terms and then we'll start to draw down at our next sessions together uh so Kurt can you walk us through this please yeah um briefly the one-time Solutions section we've talked about um those of you who are here when I first started these are the Legos the red Legos that we don't like um so that fund balance I was talking about so it could be a potential solution
256to balance the 256 budget the $42 million and then if the board chooses is to defer the repayment that we've already sort of made to the cap the rainy day fund per the standing resolution and then defer another one that's another $14 million um the bullet point there and there's sort of two changes between between this and the other scenario you'll see um this assumes no legislative funding and so the central office Central Administration reductions like I said this is an ongoing process right now um budget managers are meeting with their supervisors and with the budget team to come up with um what the impact of further reductions would be and what those reductions would be should we choose to to go forward with them and the the way those are being framed is what
257would be the impact on students and families so trying to tie all the central Administration reductions directly to how that would impact students and families um strategic plan refinement so currently the district spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 million on the targeted strategies for the current strategic plan so the idea here is with new goals revisit that um see whether those strategies should persist or what if there new strategies that should come forward and if there's any savings that occur out of that um transportation changes I don't know if Fred wants to touch on some of that over seat but things such as three bell times um different ways of providing Transportation there were other examples recently where um transportation services were truncated for a certain number of schools Skills Center those 12 schools
258I mentioned earlier read anything more to add on that um only the to get to the upper end of the range that's expressed on the slide that would include a three-tier belt schedule and then athletic fees is something we've talked about multiple times the voluntary athletic fee is not collecting the million dollars that we had hoped for and to have a non-voluntary athletic fee for families who can afford it we estimate could the crew up to $2 million for the budget and then the the thing there on the bottom is these reductions in school Staffing and that would be um Librarians increases in class size assistance in the office assistant principals discretionary funding if you harken back to the fork in the road slide that we had probably more than a year ago now around
259school consolidations and school Staffing adjustments this is the the other side of that equation so those are the items that would um become necessary should there be no legislative funding we can go to the next slide and it is an outline of some potential pros and cons of this scenario and Dr Jones do you want me to cover this or do you want to lean into this so pros of this doesn't rely on the legislature to to do anything for Seattle public schools um those School Staffing reductions would be ongoing so it's the next bullet there is it's kind of in line with this longterm planning um so those are Pros that we've identified um the cons are the significant part of this equation um School Staffing reductions would further destabilize schools and would have
260a negative impact on student learning outcomes so that item at the bottom the school Staffing reductions um significant con obviously and it also doesn't meet the board's policiy so you'll see it meets one side of the board policy on the pros this longer term planning doesn't meet the board's policy around um making sure all reductions serve students um this one and the other scenario will provide doesn't provide adequate contingency funding going forward they both continue to erode the ability of the district office to provide adequate supports for students um as Fred mentioned diluting resources directly in schools could and probably would have potential negative impacts on sale Public Schools future enrollment and then both scenarios contemplate the transportation impacts and athletic fees are there questions on that we'll go to scenario two which is the
261superintendent's recommendation you want to cover that or you want me to run through it please Kurt so again the two one-time Solutions are consistent in both this one does contemplate some legislative funding between 30 and $60 million and you'll see at the bottom that negates the need for those reductions in school Staffing um this also continues to contemplate those reductions at central office strategic plan refinements changes to transportation and athletic fees so the major change there is the school Staffing um and the legislative investment in s of public schools and if we go to the pros so bottom line with legislative action we're not looking at reductions at at school Staffing that's that's the that's the fundamental difference between and I imagine this is this is something that if we're on the lower end of
262the legis action there may be some requirement is that right that you know if we're more in the 30 million range of legislative action then you may need to dip into some of that adjustment I think you're talking about scenario 1.5 yeah exactly these scenarios aren't like the only two possible things that could happen correct yeah and some of those other items could be at the top end of their ranges instead of yes so we're just trying to collect all the options now so anticipating what the legislature will do director Ranken um so here this is what I'm trying to get at or what I asked over email is you know I also recommend scenario 2 where we do receive money from the legislature but that's not up to us necessarily we don't we don't
263know and the most likely outcome is somewhere in between no funding and some funding so what I want to understand is what recommendations would be made to continue to meet the needs of students and make progress on our goals should we not I think we need to have I mean I don't want you know side by side every detail but we really need to understand what the options are and what choices will be made and we also really need to see that regardless of the level of our budget we need to see a direct line towards living our values and and still focusing on our obligations to students and so that that's kind of when we get to February um we I mean it is I'll just and I would love nothing everybody knows I
264love to be right I would love nothing more than to be wrong about this we're not going to get the money that we need we're not going to get the full amount to close the deficit it's not going to happen love to be wrong but it is extremely unlikely that the legislature is going to provide the the full I mean they're trying trying to they're facing their own deficit and trying to reduce costs and so I mean we we should have a plan for how we would you know have a budget that had all the money that we needed but more realistically we need have a plan for how we continue to serve students if we don't have that money and I would argue too that even if we do get all the money for
265me that doesn't mean fantastic no changes are needed because as we've seen we still have progress that we want to make and changes we want to make for kids so we still have to have a conversation about no matter how much the universe of dollars is how to equitably serve students within whatever that might be and so that's I'm just I also prefer scenario 2 it's not necessarily going to be up to us we have to have a plan for what we're going to do under a scenario with the funding that we need to not make changes and with the fun ing where we're forced to make changes director sju um one of my concerns with this presentation is that it can lead the community to believe that there's going to be an infusion of
266cash you know when you look at 30 to 60 million and I guess um I am I am trying to understand why there's optimism on behalf of the staff that we might get 30 to 60 million particularly when in my day job what I'm hearing is that there's no money and no money for much of anything um so when I see this I I mean first of all a range of 0 to 28 million like that's that's not really a real range and it's not like zero to it's there's there's some number between some number not not zero and so when I see 0 to 11 or if I were just a Community member I'd be like oh well maybe it'll be zero like that's like a hope and a prayer that's not going to
267happen and so while I understand there isn't specificity I'm really struggling to understand this belief that that we might even get 30 million like where is that do we want to skip to the legislative update here to answer that and we can move on does that work that's yeah the next slide here that might be helpful yeah so uh good call President top um so uh Bev can you kind of walk us through where we are with the with the proposals thank you bud yes thank you uh talking about proposed optimism and why um I believe we all can see and have heard that there is increased attention on K12 that is spreading I would like to believe that some of that is due to a lot of the advocacy that has come out of
268this city and to our current delegation as you know that both of both Governor Ensley and Governor Ferguson now have proposed budgets that highly feature education we're also in the proposal seasons for both sides of the legislature we're expecting those budget proposals to come through in March we have in between this time we've actively worked with our delegation so that they understand uh we always do but incredibly so this time to make sure that they fully understand exactly what we need and certainly partnering and making sure that we join in with other districts as much as possible to make sure that at education continues to be lifted highly at the legislative body and of course you know that by the end of April specifically April 27th that the legislature will come through with its budget
269uh you've heard it all repeated several times tonight what are we looking for The Big Three Special Education Transportation materials supplies operating costs I suppose we could get more into special education but if there's increased funding there that could offset costs and other things that we open up opportunities in other ways also looking to support uh student learning and wellbeing and then accessing capital and Levy funding um why be optimistic we have been so pessimistic our kids deserve it yes so we're going to push as hard as we possibly can our legis ative delegation asked us to put some faith in them that they're carrying our message we're absolutely doing that yes we we are pushing harder than we ever have before again coupled with our Levy all of those things count everything matters uh
27030 million to 60 million we welcome it yes we're going to be optimistic being on the other side of that and I'm not saying that you're not bringing forth some realism but we've got to move people and moving them with a dose of realism and that optimism we hope that's going to be that winning formula just a little hard numbers to that in 23 24 there was legislation primarily around special education Seattle Public Schools netted $24 million out of the legislative session in ongoing funding so the number 30 is not out of the realm of possibility 24 was a couple years ago in one in the the major session that was a record for the state though yeah 41 was the McClary year um but 24 was that year and so there's it's not just
271made up from nowhere the the district netted at $24 million a couple years ago that was the point I was going to make is that range it's well taken the point that um the state is facing its own budget deficit but they're beyond the big three agenda items there does seem to be a lot of interest in raising um operating Levy caps um and for us just that 30 to 60 range could be accomplished with that so the uh scenario 2 with that range of infusion doesn't necessarily even need stay State funding it could be local funding um not necessarily sustainable solution for everything but we are talking about um the 2526 budget in the midst of a lot of uncertainty and transition so we're trying to work on a scenario that might be feasible
272to while all the other things in uh Dr bulman's colorful chart kind of play out and we know where we're Landing director hery and then I'll ask staff to maybe wrap us up yeah can we go back to Dr bulman's magic chart is that possible with all the pretty colors great um okay so it would be cool to see something similar to this that tracks any of the fiscal bills that pertain to us in the legislature so as we are moving through these sessions we can know what's in play and what's not um I think a lot of folks who are doing their advocacy down in Olympia since we can't direct them would also really benefit from having a ual Aid to see what is in play and what's not um so if that's something
273that our legislative liaison could work on with staff I think that wouldn't just be a useful resource to the board but also to community director Ren oh I was just going to say well no never mind uh there are a ton of organizations that have that available um yeah bring it bring it to the meeting if it already exists don't do double work but I'm just saying like you're good uh What director Rankin said okay there you go she's got another one go for it I was just going to say um you know my I periodically send send those those things in updates to you all and when I can remember to include them in the in the meeting minutes also but um to your point uh the district can provide information much more quickly
274and readily through different channels than uh than I can and also um we can't direct advocacy but we can share information yeah I mean that's all fighing good I think again the main point is just to see like as we are going through it in pertaining to the budget conversation if we could get a visual a to see like all right if we are assuming that there is a potential of $120 million based on all these different pieces of legislation and then next week after cut off whatever yeah that's a hypothetical now there's $8 million that are available to us I think that a lot of people would find that helpful [Music] yep so let's let's jump to just over one slide of 41 and talk about the next steps and uh I don't have
275a speech I want to just go ahead and close with uh you all seeing uh what's what's on the horizon uh we have the inter we have the internal technical budget process um then we have the Strategic plan task force advisory work that we're going to stand up that I mentioned to you now we're working on the preliminary budget proposals uh to director Rankin's uh advice and directive here we're going to add more detail for February and in February obviously we have our uh levies on the ballot April legislators legislature adopts their 2527 banal budget may we have a budget session to study the uh superintendent's budget recommendation pending the outcome of the ledge session so how will that it may change uh we're hoping for scenario two obviously the top end of that and
276in June and July school board's scheduled to review the final budget recommendation and June is scheduled to vote um for uh a final dispensation on July so uh any Direction questions thoughts as we go forth and continue to develop and refine this um I think I have a good capture of uh some of the things through the questions that you all ask but are there are there more things that we can do to mature this make it stronger more alignment more integration I see a lot of cards director Serio director hery oh direct rank uh uh I was just gon to is going to say that um a reminder SL request that you know we hold these meetings in public but they're not meetings for the public they're meetings for the board so a request
277SL reminder to provide this information also in a community-friendly public facing way that doesn't rely on them watching a board meeting there should be continual communication and education out to the community about where we are in our budget timeline what it means how we'll impact them um that I would really like to to see happen to just and again and I'm I'm not trying to be super negative and pessimistic but we also need to be realistic and honest about where we are and to Brandon's point you know helping people understand when they can Advocate what they like why should we care that there's a why should why should anybody care that about the impact of $23 million in that range well it's a huge difference when you're talking to A legislature legislator to say we
278really need this $20 million than it is to say my understanding is if this $20 million doesn't doesn't get received my child school will lose their librarian or lose their or class whatever giving giving the information to families that they need to not only understand more transparently what happens in the district but also it gives them the information to put their own personal connection to it to then go and Advocate with and that is um makes advocacy that's just extremely effective to have board and superintendent giving that high level to legislators and have families tell their personal stories they can't do that as well if if they're not getting the information and updates from from SPS we are aligned perfect okay good I thought we might be um thank you and uh I just repeat
279you know the legislative session is going on this is a huge legislative session there's a uh they are talking about education and so we need to continue pushing and and not put take our foot off the gas there thank you staff for this presentation we're going to move into our last budget item um which is our evaluation our self- evaluation um I texted many of the boards some of who've left to already a section of the evaluation for them to do um I think uh director hery has vision and goals director Mahi has values and guard rails uh director Ranken has monitoring and accountability and then I have now communication and collaboration unity and trust and continuous Improvement uh so we're going to do the we're going to fill this chart out uh staff is
280putting the rubric up on the screen um so this is our quarterly self- evaluation directors have taken a look at various sections of the evaluation in preparation for our discussion we're going to work through that now and then once it's completed it will be on our consent next consent agenda we are also having uh hard copies passed out um and then what I would like directors to just highlight as they go through and uh score their section we we can all look at but point out which item is the reason why we are not moving up and then any specific items that you really see that are in the section that we need to focus on that are about time use because that is the one area we said we were going to be focusing
281on and tracking closely and working towards our goals so with that I'm going to turn it over to uh director hery for vision and goals yeah so for the vision and goals I gave us a 25 in coordinates with uh last quarter um just because we haven't done any we're still utilizing the same um uh goals and guard rails but I really do think like I did a little preemptive uh study based on the process that director Ranken put together for our new goals and guard rails and the process that we're going through now I I I feel pretty confident that in January March we're going to have a 35 um so I'm excited to improve in that metric but again for this quarter I gave us another 25 any uh vision and goals any
282disagreement all right uh it's being track it up here this is just for screen up here and there right there all right um then we will move on to uh values and guard rails director Mahi and I hadn't actually I hadn't actually seen the previous yes um numbers I wasn't trying to do this but I had given us a five uh mostly because we're still in process on this next round of guard rails and I similarly Brandon think that when and you know a lot of things we couldn't score higher on because we haven't done the interm guard rails for our new guard rails I think once we do we've done a good job on the community uh engagement and uh in the development process so I think once we're there I think we're gonna
283Skyrock it up next time but we're out of five any comments all right agre uh director Rankin on monitoring and accountability all right oh shoot I took some where did I write this down well I very sadly gave us a zero um because Let's see we we well we have adop we have currently adopted goals we're about to adopt the new ones so I think technically we could say we met that because we do have currently adopted ones um each goal is monitored at least four times per year we have uh guard rails um monitored once we have adopted a monit monitoring calendar the the we have achieved interim goals in the last 12 months the two things that made me think maybe we're not quite ready to move up is um the tracking time
284use mainly because we have been in we identified that we were inconsistent uh and my understanding is that um new board office staff will receive training in doing the time time tracking for us yes and they were don't have it today but they will have it in our next meeting sweet so I kind of was hard on us and didn't give us a pass for that even though we have tracked the time just because we we've identified inconsistencies and are restarting that and then um I would say I don't know that we are 100% able to consistently demonstrate um customer versus owner issues we're getting a lot better I think we're still working on that so um but I do think we will be able to move to a 10 move up fairly quickly as
285as kind of what we what we thought we may could do any comments so I guess it's a zero all right I mean we're here at 9 yeah 9:30 doing this I feel like at Le get us a point uh so back to so then on to uh communication and collaboration and we're so close to a one I think we hit everything except the board did not receive the final version of materials to be voted on at least three calendar days before the board authorized public meeting during which the materials would be considered we haven't I would love to hit that but we oh because agendas are being updated still yeah within within three days yeah that we're voting on yeah yeah you're right yeah so what's the score zero and the next one is
286uh which is down we were at one so that is down um then the next one is unity and Trust we were previously at a zero I think we are still at a zero um be because we haven't met all the items in Number One which mainly was hang on oh the board reviews all policies governing board operating procedures at least once during every length of time equal to the board member's term of office it's the only one I think we're missing and I look forward to our ad hoc policy committee creating that calendar and Cadence so we can hit that one um and then continuous Improvement uh we are we let me just remember what I said I'm so sorry this one was director Briggs I I would you want me to jump in
287here sure I would say it's a zero because we do not um track the average annual cost of Staff time invested in governance yep all right all right we zero all right so we're roughly we're one down from where we were last time but I heard a lot of positivity about where we would be next time so with that I think that there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 9:25 thank you all for staying so late