001[Music] good afternoon [Music] phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and call this is President Ranken I am now calling the October 9th 2024 regular board meeting to order at 4:22 p.m. this meeting is being recorded we would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the pet sound coish people Miss Wilson Jones Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please director Briggs here director Clark present director hery here director Mahi here vice president sarju present director top here student member Bragg here student member ilas here student member Yun and president Ranken here I will now turn it over to superintendent Jones for his comments thank you president Rankin uh good evening everyone uh it's wonderful to see you here tonight uh first I want to begin with
002a proclamation for indigenous people's day as per our recent tradition can we have our student members please read the [Music] proclamation a proclamation of Seattle schools district number one King County Seattle Washington reaffirming the district's commitment to promote the well-being and growth of every District student especially of Seattle's American Indian Alaska native and Indigenous students whereas the Seattle Public Schools recognizes that the IND indigenous peoples of the land that would later become known as the Americas have occupied these lands since time in Memorial whereas the Seattle Public Schools recognizes the fact that Seattle is built upon the homelands and Villages of the Coast Salish peoples of this region without whom the building of the city would not not have been possible and whereas the Seattle Public Schools values the many contributions made to our community
003Through indigenous people's knowledge labor technology science philosophy arts and a deep cultural contribution that has substantially shape the charter of the city of Seattle and whereas the Seattle public schools has a responsibility to oppose the systemic racism towards indigenous people in the United States which perpetuates high rates of poverty and income inequality exacerbating discrimination in educ in health education and social crisises and whereas the Seattle Public Schools seeks to combat Prejudice and eliminate discrimination stemming from colonization and promote awareness understanding and good relations among indigenous people and all other segments of the district and whereas the Seattle Public Schools promotes educational excellence for indigenous peoples through policies and practices that reflect the experiences of indigenous peoples ensure greater access and opportunity and honor our nation's indigenous Roots history and contributions and whereas s SP 5433
004requires the teaching of the history government and contemporary issues of the 29 federally recognized tribes of Washington state and whereas the School Board of Directors has mandated through policy number 236 2336 required observances to observe the second Monday of October as indigenous people's day therefore all schools are encouraged to support the well-being growth and growth of American Indian Alaskan native and Indigenous students and recognize the contribution of native people on October 14th indigenous people day October 14th 2024 is hereby proclaimed as indigenous people's day and celebrated across Seattle Public Schools thank you so much uh this evening we'll be sharing uh updates with the board on progress monitoring for third grade literacy and seventh grade mathematics a brief update on school closures and mergers as align with any board direction that we have tonight uh
005and we will talk about projects critical to focus on for our upcoming l we talk about uh well resource schools and right sizing I want to begin by sharing where we stand with well resource schools as I shared last meeting I am listening we are listening and we're trying to be responsive and later this evening I will be sharing next steps for moving forward with a significantly smaller number of school consolidations in guiding that decision here are some of what we' heard move at the Speed Of Trust while we recognize that our enrollment numbers do not align with our current number of schools we acknowledge the need for community and board support before pursuing large scale changes family Assurance families are seeking clear assurances regarding the services programs and supports available during transitions at new
006schools expanding successful initiatives their strong Community interest in enhancing effective programs such as dual language immersion and particular special education services we want to collaborate with you to share our successes and attract more families to our schools interconnectedness our school consolidation efforts are closely tied to broader District initiatives aimed at improving academic outcomes and balancing our budget we have not gotten this right yet as I've shared in my message to our community causing anxiety disruption has never been our objective while we are stepping back to do this at a different scale I want to reiterate that the underlying facts that led us to pursue consolidation in the first place have not changed we continue to face declining enrollment in a number of very small elementary schools as we look ahead I understand that questions remain
007about the future of closures as I've said we have we have to proceed at the Speed Of Trust right now we are focused on earning the trust of our community Community to move forward with this plan in a way that minimizes disruption and supports our communities we talk about budget while School consolidation will make us a more efficient system we recognize that closing Five schools still leaves us with significant fiscal CH with a significant fiscal challenge between 90 and $100 million those who have said that closing schools will not solve our entire budget deficit are correct but ignoring the problem will exacerbate the problem for years to come we have been walking the board through possible solutions and next month the board will take action on educational program reduction I see three buckets that we
008need to tap into going forward to close the gap first we need State authorization for greater flexibility on financing our deficit that should support approximately $30 million towards next year's budget second we need about $40 million in support from the state to fund areas of special education transportation and materials and third we have to find about $30 million of internal efficiencies to make some and make some very hard choices require reducing Staffing further efficiencies in program and Central support and run fewer buses and adding a thir B Bell time to reduce Transportation cost this formula will help us going into next year however it will not solve our long-term fiscal challenge I look forward to returning to the board with Solutions and recommendations for how we'll do so I want to Pivot to the levy
009it will take all of the sources of funding we can get to balance our budget we will be sharing more about one particular Source this evening our levies like most school districts in Washington state Seattle Public Schools relies on voter approved levies to fill in the gap between what we receive from the state and federal sources and what is need to fully fund and support our students staff and schools tonight our school board will review recommendations for the renewal of the education programs and operation Levy and building Excellence Capital Levy which are expected to go before voters uh this February next February the February 11th the 20125 while these levies won't solve the district's budget deficit they replace existing levies to continue funding for school operations special education classroom technology safety Improvement to schools as
010well as renovation and repair of school buildings there is no one solution to solving our fiscal challenges this will require our community's ongoing partnership and support it is clear we will need our families to join us in Olympia to advocate for funding and supporting our schools at this critical juncture now Switching gears for a moment October is National principal's appreciation month I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of our principles for their incredible leadership I had the opportunity to spend parts of yesterday with them and I'm continually impressed by their dedication I'm also impressed by such a great start to the school year it has been a very smooth last five weeks and we're making some real achievement together one of our primary goals in SPS is to ensure our students graduate with
011access to Advanced coursework we concluded the 2324 school year on a high note with 16.3% increase in AP exam AP exam participation over 60 6800 students took AP exams and nearly 80% of them scored three four or five Paving their path to college success we are committed to continuous Improvement as a learning organization and over the summer and into the new year we have focused on refining our teacher pra teaching practices and implementing new instructional materials 95% of our Middle School language arts teachers participated in professional development on new curriculum 100% of our algebra geometry Algebra 2 Educators uh 200 in total engaged in professional development on our new math curriculum these efforts are laying a strong foundation for the year ahead ensuring our Educators have the necessary tools and skills to support learning effectively
012some of this is reflected in a progress monitoring that we will see here in a few minutes and other parts of it are either in goals or a critical inputs under the hood of where we want to go so improving results like these requires a sustained partnership with a board and I'm happy and honored to have the opportunity to serve as as superintendent a role I don't take lightly it's a privilege to serve in the school system that has treated myself and my family with tremendous uh opportunities and education in challenging times many school districts across the country struggle and even fracture I want to thank this board for your support thank you for your commitment to our schools and our students and now I want to thank those who have joined us for public
013comments and we are here to continue to listen and we have our un Buzz office here today and we also have an ASL interpreter here to increase our efforts to have inclusion so thank thank you very much and back to you president Ranken oh one more thing I'm sorry this is a big deal Dr David Baker Nobel Prize winner in chemistry is a Garfield high school graduate class of 1980 so we have a Nobel Prize winner coming out of Seattle Public [Applause] Schools that's really cool thank you thank you Dr Jones and um I appreci appreciate the the forthrightness about the challenges ahead um especially due to our budget no no one solution is going to solve our problems yes and we all need to work together for students and um uh make the best
014of it and move forward um slight change to the agenda I'm we're actually going to recess now into executive session um and we come back it will probably be about time for public testimony so we'll rearrange a little bit and do um we'll do public test when when we come back and then do progress monitoring so it is 4:35 the board is immediately recessing into executive session to review the performance of a Public Employee um we anticipate returning uh in 30 minutes at um 55 p.m. [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] hello [Music] he [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] 15 minutes and expected to end at 5:20 [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] hello no I'm saying my stuff okay are we all
015ready okay we will now go to public testimony board procedure 1430 BP provides the rules for testimony and I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules I will summarize some important parts of this procedure first testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from our public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the Schoolboard website and babies are welcome in the in here with their noise only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step forward to the podium and only one person should speak at a time listed speakers May Seed their time to another person when the listed speaker's name is called the total amount of time allowed will not exceed 2 minutes for the combined number of speakers time
016will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list those who do not wish to have time seated to them may Decline and retain their place on the testimony or wait list the majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they've indicated they wish to speak about the board expects the same standard of civilian for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself as board vice president I have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of Civility required by board procedure 1430 BP a speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this
017meeting may be asked to leave the meeting so we're not going to we're not going to have to do that staff will read off staff will now read off the testimony speakers thank you vice president sarju um for today's testimony I want to note a couple notes for those who are here in person and also online I'm going to Endeavor to pronounce your name correctly but please do reintroduce yourself to the board as I will not get all of your pronunciations correct also if you are remote um you should just have had unmute um enabled so that you can unmute when it's time when you hear your name and you'll press star six to unmute on the conference call line we do have um uh in addition to ASL interpretation available on the video stream
018we and here in the room we do have a Spanish interpreter who will be um supporting with testimony tonight for a couple of speakers I do not believe we yet have The Interpreter on the line but I will pivot to them so that they can give instructions when it is time so the first Speaker today is going to be Maro fuet followed by Alice Appleton and then Alexandra boroi so first is Maro oh I'm sorry before I start time one more announcement when you see that the light the red light is shining um that means that your testimony time has already been exhausted rather than an indication that it is running out so okay I'm Mari kof fuja parent from John Stanford international school and it seems there's much misunderstanding of dual language immersion its
019history its function it draw for families I am yon fourth generation Japanese American this makes my children go fifth generation as go say you learn young that your family suffered under Executive Order 9066 which sent Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II you learn of the culture loss due to assimilation especially in the aftermath of This Racist policy for many that culture loss was their language I share this history with you as it is baked into the founding of DLI in Seattle JSI has opened in 2000 with tracks in Japanese and Spanish languages recommended by business Community but the chosen location was significant pre-or Maps show a cluster of Japanese Holdings in the area that is now Wallingford this community was scattered by internment with many families unable to return this the Seattle
020public schools of the '90s enacted a unique form of restorative justice to the Japanese American community in the creation of a Japanese public school in Wallingford this act became more meaningful when it became an option School a decade ago suddenly the scattered Japanese Community had an option to reclaim their language and culture my family lives in South Seattle our only access to DLI is through the option and we are not alone in my daughter's class all but one of the Japanese speakers lives outside the geozone over half the class are of Japanese Heritage and again almost all attend from outside the geozone the first district proposals missed the Mark when you converted option DLI schools to Neighborhood schools you missed that we are able to fill and strengthen DLI by virtue of their accessibility districtwide
021by eliminating the option nature of these schools you would effectively dismantle their DLI programs you would boot out the kids who have a cultural connection to Spanish or Japanese and you would cut off access for the native speakers who make it a strong and viable program in coming months commit to deeper learning of these programs and the community they serve allow families to opt into schools where our cultures are celebrated not erased preserve our option the next speaker is going to be Alice Appleton it will be Alice Appleton but before we go to Alice I'm um we do now have a Spanish interpreter on the line Melissa and I just want to go to Melissa for a moment so that Melissa can give instructions for our speaker um who will be using interpretation so the
022in Melissa we will need the caller to press star six to unmute when they hear their name Melissa do you want to provide those instructions in Spanish well we will try and figure that out perhaps we don't yet quite have our interpreter um let's go to Alice Appleton for Testimony I'm Alice Appleton I feed my time to Susan mesta in the room hi sorry um my son started preschool in the fall of 2020 I dropped him off wearing his backpack that was too big for him and of course he was wearing a mask and a few weeks in we started getting the feed back he can't sit for Circle time he talks Non-Stop and he holds the class up because he um he can't transition program after program made it clear that he didn't have
023the skills to be at school and after we enrolled in our fourth preschool we were advised to have him evaluated at age five we learned that my son has a disability that explains his struggle despite every preschool's best intentions my son was treated like the bad kid there were frequent admonishments warnings timeouts much more than his peer and he started feeling like the bad kid his trust in teachers was low he was uncertain what we were uncertain what school would look like for our son prior to starting kindergarten I met with a team at mcgil to set up his IEP the sorry the principal of the special education teacher Miss stle and his kindergarten teacher Miss P I shared the preschool feedback and my son's diagnosis and they were so warm and unflinching I left
024with hope I didn't have with the help of the team at mcil Gus is thrive he loves school he has made friends and succeeds academically he's he was even chosen as mcil Charter champ one month the letter from the principal is still on our refrigerator and the best part is now he says to me Mom I'm a good kid on our fifth try Gus is finally settled into school at mcil but now we're terrified that SPS could close mcil and how that disruption will set him back there are kids and families at so many of our schools who have worked so hard to set in closing schools harm students could further destabilize enrollment and won't fix the deficit please vote no thank you the next speaker is Alexandra Alexandra [Applause] baroi hi this is Alexander
025Bari uh from the delz room I am seing my time to Cara goar representing Saka Julia hello and good evening my name is Cara gogart and I am an educator at sakaa I didn't realize I was quite this early I am here to tell you tonight that um wasting $4 million by not voting yes to push forward the be Levy would be a a shortsighted poor move sakaja Community is an inclusive School community that serves a lot of students with IEP Services 77 out of our 221 that's 35% that's really high and we know we're a small school we want more students we want a building that supports inclusion the design that was done over the last two years includes things like grade levels together with our intensive services so inclusion can happen not kindergarten
026to fifth grade but with their grade level peers chronologically we planned things like bathrooms where an adult can help a student and Independence can grow please don't waste the $4 million by letting it slide down the sko hill like our current building is and rebuild a school for the future the next 60 years that is needed to be replicated across our district we have early learning we need those spaces that's where we can grow our district and bring it in serve all of our students together every student the next speaker is Rebecca Meredith Rebecca will be followed by Sarah N na and then elas C is Rebecca Meredith in the room she's coming she's here okay excellent hi good evening my name is Becca Meredith and I'm seaing my time to Kevin Bray thank you
027hi my name is Kevin Bray I'm apparent of two Seattle public school students and I'm here today to voice my opposition to the closure of schools and cuts in the classroom school closures will do nothing but harm our students there is a large amount of evidence from studies done around the country that show school closures are detrimental to student learning my daughter is a prime example of students who will be harmed by school closures her name is aie and is enrolled at in the medically fragile class at Orca K through 8 Orie has experienced many challenges in her life starting at Birth she requires around the-clock care for all her needs one of the most important things she needs is an education and therapies that are given to her through school in order for kids
028like my daughter to learn and Thrive they need stability and routine it is absolutely vital for children like her to have that sense of familiarity security and routine in order to excel I could list many examples of times PS has dropped the ball regarding her education during the co pandemic when the school district shifted to remote learning she was promised in-person Services due to her unique medical condition but no matter how much we asked and reminded SPS they never materialized in addition SPS shifted her teachers around on multiple occasions and Consolidated the two medically fragile classrooms at Orca not only did she have to repeatedly get familiar with a new teacher it meant there was now time for all these disruptions caused Orie to miss out on so much and it was quite apparent how
029much she regress during this time due to poor management of SPS having her school clothes would be another blow to her education and ability to thrive this is unacceptable the staff at Orca are amazing and they pour their heart and into they pour their hearts into their work and make sure all the kids in the classroom have every opportunity to succeed but they are being undermined by SPS leadership please do not close any schools thank you [Music] I want to do a quick check to see if we have our Spanish interpreter on the line do we have Spanish interpretation available if you're on the line you may need to press star six to unmute I think we must be still working on getting The Interpreter back on the line um the next speaker on the
030list is Sarah n um Sarah um did you want to provide a testimony now or if you're I'm not sure if you're able to if you're on the line yet but we will can Circle back with an interpret interpreter hi this is s are you can you hear me okay yes we can hear you and I I know that you had indicated that the testimony would be in Spanish but we do not yet have our interpreter um I'm happy to come back later um so the trick is she has her English class at 6 PM so I do not know that that is going to be feasible given uh the timing of the situation um I do have permission from the woman that i' would like to seed my time to to read her testimony
031in English after she is finished if that's okay with the board yes or we can have her give her testimony in Spanish and y'all can try to work through it on your own I think whichever one you would elect um we'll make sure the board receives a a interpretation and or translation as needed to support their understanding okay um okay my name is SAR I'm from seder Park Community and I would like to feed my time to Jessica SE Jessica Sarah since I think you've pretty clearly seated your time on the record we can come back and call Jessica later too oh I sorry you did say that she had to go but we are not hearing her on the line if you want to read the testimony we want to do what we can
032to make sure that the board is able to hear so we can follow up as well sorry I'm trying to translate to her via text at the moment um so it just might take a second she's really passionate and wants to speak and so I really want to give her that opportunity system's working like it's supposed to Sir already I believe we might have an interpreter on the line is this is estani um on the line estefani if you're on the line if you could unmute and introduce yourself for Sarah would you like us to go to the next speaker and then swing back sure if you could do that I just know she has class at 6 and but we'll try to figure it out in the background I appreciate it thank you okay
033I will come back to you after two more speakers um the next speaker then is going to be Elias Cass Elias if you're online please press star six to unmute I'm going to go past um Elias but I will come back and try again Alexander Roose hi my name is Alex Wakeman Rouse um I'm going to seed most of my time but I first want to say thank you to director Clark directly her oped is the leadership that we need really urge you to listen to her vote no on the resolution to close schools don't close schools and I see the rest of my time to Tia from the center School my name is Tia Hiller I am enrolled uh clink and Haida and I'm a cin boy Sue in Grant from Montana and I'm
034CCH and First Nations I'm currently a senior at the center school um I went to lton springs for all of my middle school years and enjoyed my experience there and would have gone to Indian Heritage High School if it weren't closed down um which my late father and many of my aunties and my uncles have gone to indan her as well I feel that Lin spring shouldn't be on any list to be closed down and as and it is now one of the only native focused schools in the Seattle area it should it should be prioritized to stay as the land is spiritually important to indigenous peoples when I went to lton Springs I feel as though it gave me a sense of community that I didn't have at my prior schools I gained connections
035through that community and bonds that I still have now and hold close to me through Lon Springs I found my current organization which has helped me grown a lot through relationships taking on responsibilities and giving me a sense of belonging in community without Lon Springs I don't think I would have I would be the person that I am today nor have the connections or bonds that I do and the last thing that I will say is Bring Back Indian Heritage High School for the benefit of indigenous indigenous youth and non-indigenous youth and as it has benefited many students in the past and if it were reopened it would again give our community what we need thank you the next speaker is Rebecca bins Rebecca bins after Rebecca I will go back to Sarah and um
036to I think it was Jessica but Rebecca bins gram Hill parent former SPS teacher I've been hearing the word Equity thrown around a lot lately and it leaves me with some questions 88% of non-h high poverty schools have smaller class sizes in kindergarten than we have at Graham Hill at 24 and 25 how is that Equitable only 5% of major capital building dollars spent on elementaries and k8s were used in southeast Seattle from 2018 to present how is that Equitable how is the district practicing Equity when they publicize School closure information only electronically in English I spent two weeks frantically translating Flyers into seven languages and distributing them to our families because the district made no effort to ensure our families were informed and many had no idea their school was slated to close Graham
037Hill has 33 fourth graders in a single classroom more than half are multilingual 30% receive special education services and the district told us this week they won't fund another position unless we need two how is that Equitable how is it Equitable to deny giving High poverty Tier 1 and two Equity schools needed teachers when our our enrollment was 21 students higher than projected all other high poverty schools with our enrollment were granted 13 classroom teachers in the spring but enrollment guessed wrong so our students are suffering how is it Equitable to spare the schools who got the most speaking slots at the last school board meeting while slating neighborhood schools for closures because our voices weren't the loudest in the room the mismanagement of funds and the dissonance between the vision and actual practices of
038this District administation need to be addressed please stop using the word Equity until you can show us you understand the meaning of the word as it currently stands you are failing those students for this from educational Justice you are failing Southeast Seattle and you must do better don't close Graham Hill or neighborhood schools and give our students the teachers they deserve I'm going to go back now to Sarah n Sarah are you on the are you on the line um I want to let you know that I know that you only have six minutes before uh the other speaker needs to leave but we have not been able to get uh interpreter back on the line so um I understand that do have the testimony in uh in writing if see I'm sorry I forgot
039the other speaker's name um if Jessica wants to deliver her testimony in Spanish then you could also do it in uh then you could offer the written portion um whatever works for you two we want to make sure this works Ellie can we sorry can we have the the speaker in Spanish and then did Sarah say that she had it written in English can we just yeah read them both um that so I was thinking that the uh testimony could be given in Spanish followed by Sarah reading the written perfect thank you um Sarah is that possible that would be great for me um I think we have I think Jessica should be okay to go Jessica I do not see Jessica unmuted so Jessica will need to press star six I think somebody in
040the crowd helped me out ARA say thank you I'm not seeing Jessica's phone number on the line anymore um I'm not so I really okay go ahead seea Jessica H Jessica Park [Music] um Jess M um okay The Interpreter you can go right ahead thank you okay okay myself what it mean to me and my [Music] family Theater Park I am Jessica mother of Ali in kinden she is five years old she is in Kinder Garten some Guatemala we are from Guatemala we have five month living in this country it's not been easy leaving behind everything we know but since we arrived feeling like uh feeling really weird like a foreigner in everything change for us this is a magnificent school with an excellent administrative team an exceptional teachers with an a a very uh
041strong community and and really friendly everybody here know each other and support one another is the better education can is the best education our our siblings can received our sorry if were to preserve places like this one uh which they which they fulfill the intellectual and the soul of everybody and they up to be better every day um do the best of our family gracias thank [Applause] you thank you for your patience and waiting through that um and also to our interpreter our next speaker is uh Aiden Carroll so I'm going to seed my time after I point out we all got to tell the city and the state to fix the zoning that's causing it unaffordable for Native families others to live here enrollment is down because we haven't legalized town homes and condos
042everywhere so we can all afford to live here again hello my name is Sarah s Wilson I'm ogalala Lota I'm a grandmother of a Seattle public school student here he is right here whan um I'm also chair of the urban native education Alliance and we're here today to stand in support for Indian education lion Springs K8 and husa Indian Ed programs unea has for over 17 years provided guidance consultation volunteer support and resources to improve Indian education throughout the Seattle area unea has been unwavering in our commitment to lift up the voices and the visibility of indigenous students through mentoring Civic engagement culture-based learning we have provided Seattle public school with testimony on our concerns with the mismanagement the misguided and misinformed practices related to services for Native students we urge Seattle public school leadership
043to address the data genocide under counting and the inaccurate data collecting methods are resulting in underfunding for our students unea has repeated ly requested comprehensive reports on Indian education we are well aware that title 6 funding is at alltime low through I mean I've been in Indian Ed doing this work since I was a student myself so many decades So currently this is the lowest it has ever been we um we again remind Seattle public schools that they have a responsibility to work in partnership with our native Community for Access and opportunity to resources specifically for Native students commit to honoring your agreement for lion Springs to fully realize its native identity collaborate with community cbos and tribes to develop a framework for Native Focus instruction curriculum and school culture we call for transparency with
044your Seattle public school board on your appointed native Le Zone what qualifies them who are they what are they doing how are they engaging with Community we are are pro alternative schools we are pro option schools we are here in solidarity with the no school closures and bring back Indian Heritage High School thank you the next speaker is going to be Kate cuber Kate Huber and um we've had a number of people seating testimony to other folks if I call somebody's name who has already had a um testimony spot seated to them please let me know so that we can make sure we go to the next speaker but Kate Huber is next on our list one catch real quick uh love the signs for folks who are joining in the tallest sign blocks the
045camera that black camera in the back I just want to make sure that everybody who's at home can see so just keep that in mind hi I'm Kate and I am seaing my time to ingred norvette my name is ingred I'm a freshman at Ballard High School and I have I attended Katherine blae from kindergarten until last spring I love bla I love the teachers the community awesome principal the short walk from my home but my concern here is not limited to the potential closure of bla closure of bla my concern is illustrated by the proposal to Co Way plane sits in the middle of our neighborhood next to the retail cent center literally in the same building as a community center where before and after school programs are run it shares a property line
046with our community pool and many playfields and Parks it's just down and it's just down the street from the library so you see the location itself is not problem is problematic for a big empty building and it is in direct conflict with the city planning efforts around it being a 15minute city between the new 500 low-income homes and slated at Fort lton and the 133 condos approved across the street from Blaine that's a lot of new families this condo developer is a change maker and convinced the city to allow this building seven Stories the current tallest building in our town center is three more will certainly follow as they have EMB bored Columbus Columbia City and more closing Blain is very shortsighted it is the only proposed closure I can speak to with confidence but
047it really makes me wonder about the Integrity of this right sizing plan last we lastly we cannot allow ourselves to wrap this problem of funding up in a big defe public schools are failing rapper it's unnecessary in a city like Seattle let's aim for vibrancy and thriving not mediocrity and assumed attrition next is Kelly alen Williams Kelly alen Williams I'm Kelly alen Williams Santa slow parent if you want to talk about Equity let's talk about Santa slow Santa slow is made up of 80% students of color and nearly 60% free reduced lunch eligible kids as a Santa slow parent I love my school but I'm fighting not just for my school but for all schools but sometimes telling the story of one school can be helpful so I'm not going to talk broadly about how
048we need to push the state to fully fund all Washington schools we do we must I'm going to ask you to think from one kid's perspective let's say you're a fourth grader at santow your first year of school was a virtual one kindergarten during the pandemic if the October reshuffle hits later this month you will be reassigned a teacher and have to restart settling into the school year let's say you find out in January that your school is closed suddenly you have a big transition ahead to a new place new people and the shock of suddenly going to a school twice as big but get this the next year you have to do it all again the transition to middle school is big enough add the instability of the pandemic the reshuffle the closures how
049do you think kids furthest from educational Justice will handle such instabilities please tell me what you're going to offer that fourth grader tell us what you're going to offer all kids to minimize the inevitable damage these closure will have damage to short and long-term mental health behavioral health and learning outcomes hopefully these students land in well-resourced schools that bring them added benefits once they settle in but in reality the budget shortfall means that impacts will likely affect them even after they land and you're ignoring the very real situation you can't just memory wipe these kids and plop them in a new school as if transition needs no financial and logistical kidf facing support the financial cost of transition support should be factored into your calculations of how much will will actually be saved in the
050event of the closure I truly doubt closing Five schools solves The Impossible problem you face but I know this will create more problems negative impacts on kids neighborhoods businesses enrollment if I could leave you one big ask please be focused on consequences financially socially emotionally educationally and show your work thank you the next speaker is Aaron Colmes Aaron Colmes after Aon will Brian will be Briana Herman brand and then Michelle Campbell hi my name is Aron comes and I'm seeding my time to Landon um I'm Landon these statistics reflect the systemic barriers and challenges experienced by Seattle American Indian students and families a report from native Action Network had a few helpful stats for Seattle Public Schools American Indian Stu American Indian and Alaskan native students from 2021 to 2022 4% of student population 229
051identified as American Indian and Alaskan native low income was 34% and special ed was 17.6 right now there are 2,430 or 483 schoolage American Indian and Alaskan native kids in Seattle across all school grades American Indian and Alaskan native students had lower percent rates to topic of belonging compared to all other students Washington State American Indian and Alaskan native dropout rate is highest of all ethnic groups being 26.6% ongoing data genocide due to the egregious Antiquated data Gathering practices designed to erase American Indian and Alaskan native population and our poverty rate is the highest of all ethnic groups as well being 34% hi I'm Kayla harstad I'm tur M chipa and a senior at the University of Washington I'm an alumni of Ingram high school and a recipient of the Seattle school scholarship but most
052importantly I'm an ant to an indigenous student in Seattle Public School District my nephew's experiences as an indigenous student are limited transactional and are at the longterm satisfaction of the institution it is long past time for Seattle Schoolboard to care for Native education we refuse to be pushed around yet again to fit your needs in your narrative the Seattle School Board is constantly giving performative acknowledgements and efforts but it's time to give a proper acknowledgement to who we are and keep native schools open save lton Springs bring back Indian Heritage and our community deserves better the next speaker is Brianna Herman brand Brianna Herman brand hello my name is Briana I'm a parent of a third grader at santow elementary santow is a vibrant Multicultural Community there's music in the hallways When we arrive in
053the morning there's Double Dutch and Ultimate Frisbee after school in the huge forested playground there's all school movie Nights in the cafeteria where kids bring sleeping bags and popcorn there's walking field trips to the neighborhood park to study spiders it is small that is part of its magic the magic of a school that feels like family where every kid is known and cared for If we're honest we all want a school like that for our kids and yet it is usually only available to White wealthy families santow is one of the most diverse schools in the country it is a violation of our commitment to racial Equity to take away a small school from bipo and immigrant families it is unconscionable that we live in one of the wealthiest places on Earth and yet it
054is students and families being asked to Bear the burden of underfunded schools I believe we can imagine a future beyond the false scarcity of inequitable wealth as a trauma healing and restorative justice leader I want to share three things with you number one disrupting families and Community connections is one of the most har ful things that we can do for the future health and well-being of children number two it is never too late to make things right this is a chance to acknowledge that mistakes have been made and take accountability for changing course and number three the people closest to the problem should be closest to the power to find a solution it is unacceptable that the families served by these schools have not been engaged in a meaningful Equitable process of collaboration on these
055issues that will most directly impact their lives my child B into tears the afternoon I told them that their school was going to be closed they asked me why they asked me who made this decision they asked can we do anything about it I want to be able to tell them that yes of course we can do something about it of course we have a say in their future and the of course the adults running things are listening and willing to change I hope you will help me send this message next is Michelle Campbell Michelle Campbell hello we can hear you Michelle hello this is Michelle can you hear me um yes we can hear you Michelle oh thank you um I'm seating my time to um Sabrina Burr please good evening superintendent Jones and
056School Board directors canera and jera how are the children we are a district we as a district are only as well as the children that we serve well-resourced schools are not buildings and programs they are made up of students their families their teachers vital support staff building leaders Community Partners and the communities our schools serve and that should have been our Focus From the Start family and Community engagement that was established under Dr nylan is almost non-existent why is that we are here to day with engagement because it has been dismantled why last time I spoke about the past contract thank you director sarju and Briggs for seeing our children thank you for your no vote and understanding the current harm that is being done to our students and families we need a clear predictable
057process that is documented tracked and has accountability measures we cannot improve or build capacity around what we do not recognize fear and money make people do things that they should not Mike skurski sat right here in the front row of this room with a harmful bu building leader right next to him students from the world School came to tell their story while ago while the principal and their building leader sat there intimidating them there was a threat for ice being called for their graduation and the principal was re uh investigated and then removed I will go to well resourced schools and I do want to say we have not done a really good job with the alliance Grant there is no performance indicators there is no rubrics there is no accountability we cannot keep taking
058money that has no accountability measures and the work around weal resource schools has not been good I am concerned about the engagement for a strategic plan that will last 5 years please make sure Community voice is involved in the Strat strategic plan and that we do better in representing unrepresented families that we have not reached thank you the next speaker is Michael Grigg Michael Grigg after Michael will be Tracy LAX doall Lee and then Charlotte Casey thank you board for coming here tonight I I've been on the other side there before and uh being a student government vice president and I know how challenging that is thank you so much for your time um I want to urge you uh my name is Michael grig and I'm from viands I have a girl in third
059grade and another girl in kindergarten and Liza Miss Liza Ranken thank you very much for joining our PTA board meeting last night I want to urge the board to slow down and engage with us I believe this because of three reasons one I think the data does not really represent us two that the real needs are parents who are leaving and the reason why enrollment is dropping is not really known yet and third of all I think we haven't really exhausted the work that we could do in securing more of a state budget around this and create more funding for us um I don't think the data represents us well because it's based on the 2020 census now I almost didn't take the 2020 census because my wife is Chinese and I have two multi-racial
060daughters and at that time the previous president was very anti-chinese and we did not want to admit on paper that we are also considered a Chinese family it wasn't it was because of my dad who once served in the state who said you need to fill out that census because that's how the schools will secure a budget for your kids so I did but I was really scared after I did that and I found out later after talking with other people on my block that I was the only person who on the Block who filled out that and we're one family of two there are five families representing 10 kids on that on that block only four of us go to school to the Seattle Public Schools the other six have chosen to go to
061private schools and their parents are paying 20 to 25,000 per year I feel like this is a lost opportunity that we should be engaging you and also engaging to Advocate to the state on our behalf thank you the next speaker is Tracy laxol [Applause] Lee hello my name is Tracy laxol Lee and I'm here to represent a small but important group of kid kids in the community my daughter is a first grader in the medically fragile special education program at Green Lake she is non-verbal and is in a wheelchair she has an IEP which qualifies her for specially designed instruction in accordance with the individuals with disabilities Education Act first passed in 1975 and updated multiple times times since I have two requests for the board in the district keep the medically fragile program running
062as is and keep Green Lake Elementary open here's why not only does Green Lake have a unique medically fragile program 44% of the 355 students are students of color these kids have been historically marginalized will be more impacted by school closures and transitions than their peers and neighboring schools two green lak's medically fragile program has retained exceptional Educators support staff and Specialists teachers physical therapists speech therapists Vision therapist a full-time nurse you couldn't find a better group of Educators anywhere three green link has unique amenities to support these kids a large classroom with an accessible entrance a space that has been transformed to support wheelchairs adaptive equipment a sensory room a medical room for nursing care four Green Lake has an accessible playground and an accessible slide and merry grow round that the PTA and
063the community volunteers built and paid for five our kids get specialized instruction in a dedicated classroom SPS only has three Elementary fragile programs green l L and orca supporting 26 kids the well-resourced program Vision talks about special education inclusion and Equitable Services however we are concerned that SPSS plans to dismantle the medically fragile program would negatively impact these students the program at Green Lake should be emulated as a program as an example for specialized services for specialized population not dismantled homogenized or moved the next speaker is Charlotte [Applause] Casey my name is Charlotte Casey I'm a Catherine blind parents and I seed my time to Michelle Dunlop hi I'm Michelle Dunlop I have two kids uh in Seattle Public Schools um and since the 80s my last 50 years I've heard nothing but problems on
064public schools and it's very sad to see that we're say we're not solving the same problems with this same ineffective answers a lot of parents you lost the their attention through nor we normalize this dysfunction but you have our attention now we're digging in to this these proposals we have the data we've created more Excel spreadsheets than probably do at work we've been Excel sharing Excel spreadsheets we see what's going on we could I could sit here and talk about lack of accountability lack of in ation but as I was listening to everybody talk the one thing that I don't think that we need to do is I don't think we need to vilify each other right we're not going to vilify the board we're not going to vilify the district we are not oh
065you're not going to vilify us we are not overreactive emotional parents I mean we're emotional parents and we are reacting but and we're angry we we don't want to think of you guys as disconnected from what's really going on disconnected from our kids what we want to do is we want to work together you have our attention you have us you need to ask us you need to come to us with Sol to help us come with Solutions the bureaucracy that you have to go through to make this work the what's going on in our state level you have our voices ask us tell us how to help you Advocate to get the funds don't make the same mistakes don't close these schools don't vote for it until we actually have real solutions let us
066help you let us stand with you don't force us to stand against you the next speaker is Jake milstein Jake milstein after Jake will be Dave Ellenwood and then Max Drews hi this Jake bston can you hear me yes we can hear you great I'm GNA seed the time to my daughter Willow hi my name is Willow milstein and I'm a sophomore at Ballard High School and I went to Blaine k through eight at Blaine I had an amazing teacher Kylie kypros she made me love history and it's the reason I'm taking AP World Now history teaches us education is key to a functioning society today America's public schools are threatened in districts across the the country there's no separation of church and state school libraries are losing important books about race and gender in
067Seattle we don't have those problems instead our schools are threatened by our very own District the threat here is within in 11 years in our Public Schools I've seen students leave for private schools when the district made bad decisions we should be trying to get those students back I think we can do it by funding and expanding are K through eights the district has said it sees the values and K through eights and I've seen the value it's not just education as an older student in a k through eight you have little kids watching what you do this means less vaping and less substance abuse districts in Florida and Oregon are switching to k through eight because they've figured out that it actually attracts families so if we go big on K through a it
068will help fix our enrollment problems now that we've all agreed that K throughs have value let's put our money there the be Levy list does not have Blain kr8 on it I urge you to invest in what's working K through eights instead of closing schools let's make our schools better let's open more K throughs Let's Be Remembered in future history classes as the people who created the best public education system in America the next speaker is Dave [Applause] Ellenwood hello I'm Dave Ellenwood and I'm going to seed my time to uh Albert Wong hello my name is Albert Wong I'm a parent at Cascadia and also a Ballard High School graduate I'm here to put an equal sign between the terms well-resourced schools student outcomes focused government and structural racism did you know that an
069original plan in nearly every part of the city the schools of the highest percentage of Asians were targeted for closures or reconfigurations more shockingly in North West Seattle where I live if you target dual language immersion HCC and K8 you actually take out five of the seven schools that actually have less than 50% white students you've targeted the least white schools this as as it's not just Asians there it's actually Black and Hispanic communities I know you know this because I sent you this data September 30th this is a huge disperate impact but none of you talk about it it's nowhere how did this happen for the Asian impact my best guess is when you see an arm like this you think the word white I am not white I am Chinese American Born raised
070and Ballard and the policies we've had in the last few years have targeted my community and me frankly in 40 years of living in Seattle I have never felt as targeted in my life it also apparently targeted Black and Hispanic communities in my area I don't think you understand what redlining does to us your student outcomes Focus governance with its gu lines guide rails whatever you call them has produced the planet with exceptionally desperate impact on these communities where these people do not have their voices coming out of your mouths on AAS that's no access to power that means student outcomes focused government is structurally racist I use these words very specifically and anyone who frankly sits here and Malin these programs of stereotypes option schools and htcs for years and then sees a plan
071where the superintendent who's black actually implements them and then on the Das basically pins the blame on him that's actually structurally racist too it's also interpersonally racist please stop me using the word Equity around me you don't deserve it anymore fix it the next speaker is Max Drews Max Drew Max will be followed by Christa shirt and then Jennifer lovy hi my name is Max Drew and I seed my time to O aall Max is the other speaker on the phone um I believe he should be he may be muted if the other speaker is on the phone please press star sticks to unmute the clock does run when we are seating time Max do you want to provide testimony or do you want to prompt someone yes I I'll read what he wrote um
072my name is a AAL my family has a second grader at thir Good Marshall who previously attended mcgilbra as a family we have kept an open mind on the well-resourced school plan and potential closers we are here today to stand against the closure on any school express our lack of trust in the school superintendent and ask for an end to the chaos students and families are experiencing we have three observations immigrants like us work hard at creating Community this is critical to Our Success at school and in life at the gilra and th Marshall we found meaningful connections where our child could Thrive the opaque well resourced School processes process has given our kid anxiety about the disruption of community and where they will go to school the superintendance team presented a plan that took
073incredibly long to produce and did not stand scrutiny for even a few weeks this has eroded trust in their ability to lead us through this crisis SPS leadership has engaged in performative feedback and continuously set expectations that don't mirror the community's experience and ground reality for example sunsetting the highly capable cohort exposed OES the fact that neighborhood School teachers aren't trained or resourced to meet the needs of advanced Learners in fact we were advised by several teachers to move to an HCC school because they felt the neighborhood HCC program is a farce reinstate HCC to ensure student outcomes for future students including our four-year-old who hopes to join mcgilbra in 2025 in conclusion we have lost trust in the superintendent and his team and invite them to step aside please keep all schools open and
074keep special educ and HCC programs intact thank you for your time the next speaker is Christa sht after Christa will be Jennifer lvy and then Matthew bertes my name is Christa Shir I a multilingual teacher at Dunlap Elementary as a white person I don't like saying this I'm here to speak on behalf of the multilingual families who are so often left out of these spaces due to a lack of access as evidenced by Miss estefani's earlier testimony the vision for a system of well-resourced schools says that it will enhance services for multilingual students my question for the district and the board is how currently multilingual students are treated inequitably across the district Title One schools receive lower student to multilingual teacher ratios than non-title schools this results in less adequate support for students and inequitably
075higher workloads for teachers multilingual students don't become less multilingual in more affluent neighborhoods all multilingual students and teachers in our district deserve Equitable access to support and Staffing furthermore the vision for well-resourced schools States it will ensure strong stable Staffing for multilingual services but in my experience and the experience of multilingual teachers across the district Staffing adjustments are only ever made when multilingual enrollment is lower than projected in October but never when enrollment is over projection multilingual teachers are frequently displaced by these adjustments even when past experience has shown that multilingual students arrive at any point in the year these same teachers are also frequently faced with overloaded case loads for which they receive no extra Staffing this is not strong stable Staffing for our students and cannot continue finally I would like to speak
076to an often overlooked subset of multilingual students newcomers these are students recently arrived in the United States with limited to no English and who have experienced trauma they are placed into full gened classrooms where only English is spoken and there's no guarantee of same language peers all in the name of their civil rights which guarantee them equal access to educational opportunities when a school only has a multilingual teacher 2 to 3 days a week and 50 multilingual students on their case load how are the maybe two to three newcomers in that school receiving equal access to core instruction on a sufficient and consistent basis basis the district has a program for these students known as newcomer sites these spaces are provide scaffolded access to Core Curriculum with a focus on language acquisition by teachers with
077specialized expertise and smaller class sizes that create a stronger sense of safety and Community for a newcomers first few months in the United States I asking the board and the district to do a better job of reaching out to our multilingual families to have a more explicit plan for multilingual students in the system of well resourc schools and to include the newcomer program in these plans thank you next is Jennifer lavali followed by Matthew bernes and then Katherine H hi I'm Jennifer L Valley I wanted to seed my time to a single mom but Child Care fell through that's a common issue at our school there's a lot of single parents there's a lot of people who can't show up and whose voices simply aren't heard I chose the school that I'm sending my son
078to I chose that school for him because we' had previously another kid that lived in in our house that attended there and I got to see how the staff treated him and how they fought for him every day right after the well resource School plan was announced there was going to be the zoom call that the district was going to hold dunlap's PTA planned to they translated all of the documentation we printed out maps of plan a and plan B in different languages we hired interpreters we ordered pizza so that we could watch that meeting and it didn't happen that's all stuff the district should be doing so how we also ask the parents if they had been contacted if anyone had been contacted in their communities nobody has been talked to you don't need
079to talk to me you need to talk to the community that my school is in so how exactly in these plans are you centering Equity you said you were going to give a toolkit in how to do some of this work and the tool that you chose was a jackhammer I'd like to se the rest of the time to Miss Allison hi I'm I go by teacher Allison I'm a fifth grade teacher at Dunlap um y'all talk about stability but uh I worked my butt off to be a teacher I wanted to be a teacher so bad and every year I don't know what grade I'll be teaching or if I'm still going to be at DLB uh and this is year four for me and honestly if if our school closes and you displace
080me from my community from Dunlap I'm not coming back to SPS uh my fifth graders asked what will I do if Dunlap closes and I tell them I'm not sure maybe I'll work at Costco uh and they're shocked they're shocked because they know I should be a teacher kids need St stability and so do I uh don't close schools next is next is Matthew bertes hi uh my name is Matt Burness I'm going to be seating my time shortly um I'm a second grade teacher at Dunlap elementary school and I just wanted to First say um our students are not lab animals you cannot test out school closures on five schools and see how it works with clearly more to come in the future prove to us show us that they're needed and when you
081can't hold to your promise of busing and getting families to Olympia rather than having them do it on their DME like Jen said rptsa paid for interpreters at our meeting rptsa paid for translations that you would not provide no documentation came from you except the website rptsa only receives money from our fundraiser the southeast Seattle schools fundraising Alliance a shared fundraiser involving 17 schools three of them would be gone from the original lists show your work I reive the rest of my time to uh Chrissy hunt [Applause] my name is Chrissy hunt my daughter's in first grade at riew elementary I had the opportunity to volunteer there yesterday during Vision screenings the kids are amazing and the teachers are incredible I asked a teacher how she's doing and she said I'm just okay there isn't
082enough support we're a title one school composed primarily of students farest farthest from educational Justice the needs of these students are not being met I saw no par Educators in the classroom room regardless of size or need the nurse is staffed only one day per week many students in each classroom are multilanguage Learners and there's not space for more Cuts although the new well resource schools proposal will lower the amount of school closures this year we're fully aware that based on parameters Rainer view is still at risk of closure I don't know how a closure will impact every family at Rainer view but neither does the district because they haven't asked I don't know if every family feels the way I do about lack of support but neither does the district because they haven't asked
083I don't fully understand why past teachers have left our school in droves and we have an abysmal teacher retention rate but neither does the district because they haven't asked would consolidation solve the support issues I shared and benefit our families I don't know because the district hasn't told us a promise of well resourced is meaningless without meaningful conversation thank you the next speaker is Katherine hod Catherine will be Megan Lee and then I'll go back to Elias Cass good evening my name is Katherine hottie uh my son is a second grader at John Hay Elementary I am here to address the proposals to close schools as a partial solution to funding problems even though many of our schools are no longer at risk of closure this year we're facing the same issue for next year
084unless we take action our solution right now lies in one place the state legislature must increase funding for Education our next legislative session begins in January the people of Seattle need more funding to be passed not merely introduced not deliberated but enacted and implemented now since 2017 our school districts have been suffocating under the weight of a cap on enrichment l the intention was purportedly to enforce Equity but instead this law disregards our unique and varying needs we should have the right to Levy funds to retain our precious impactful special education programs and the people haven't been allowed to make that call for themselves it's been 7 years and now we're desperate we need to fight to remove this law in January I respectfully request this board pass a formal resolution urging our state legislature
085to remove the restrictive Levy cap that prevents us from meeting our students diverse needs your formal support will show the univi voice of our city as we push for change to my fellow citizens we will never achieve the equity we strive for in this city unless students who need extra support can access it freely through their educ education the time to act is now call your representatives make your voice heard and demand immediate action next is Megan [Applause] Lee hello my name is Megan Lee and I am a first grade teacher at Dunlap Elementary I'm usually okay with telling my students when I don't know something but when they tell me that they're sad that our school is closing it feels wildly inadequate to tell them I don't know if it will no matter how
086many schools you close it will affect every school in our district I've heard questions about seniority and displacement from my fellow teachers we have two amazing young new teachers who are teachers of color in kindergarten this year Miss NE and Miss ton and it would be a huge disservice to our school Community if they were shuffled around in any school closures every school has a Miss knee and Miss ton students deserve to see themselves in their staff and new teachers should not bear the burden of changing schools or grade levels I had to change grade levels three times in four years due to shuffling and people leaving and like teacher Allison and countless teachers in our district I love my school Community I love teaching but I will join her at Costco if I'm displaced
087find a solution that centers our schools and families and supports staff don't close schools thank you the next speaker speaker is Elias Cass uh this is Elias Cass I seed my time to Elias Kiros hello my name isas Heros I'm a father of uh three my kids go to BRB Thompson North Seattle uh I can say exactly what all the the parents and some of the teachers are talking the one thing I can tell you is this the first proposal A and B shows how the school district is disc connect from the community from the teachers the community leaders and the parents and everybody they talk about Equity they don't stand by not even a single person when you look at the communities that is surrounding the schools the what it brings by closing the
088school is a lot more pleasure our kids already behind from the pandemic by failure of the school district looking after this the students education instead of talking about empty words look at our kids not the building look at the kids what are you going to do for the kids how are you going to help the kids the communities how are you going to help the teachers whether you close five schools today two schools next year that's not going to resolve it please don't close the schools that was the 25th and final speaker for tonight thank you um did we did we do I I'm sorry that I missed it did we do student comments okay I I want to ask our ASL interpretator interpreter if you need a hand break yes okay let's let's take
089uh five and then come back and um and continue on with the agenda we'll start with student comments then we'll go to progress monitoring and um and our other business items thank you this [Music] o [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] all righty we back I would say better than ever but I don't think [Music] so um all right we are going to okay I would love that we're going to go now to our student members for their comments um director ilas are you starting off yes yes I am hi my name is Sophia ilas um I'm one of the new 2024 2025 student board members and yeah I'm a student at Franklin High School um yeah uh as a student board member a few things I'm looking forward to working on
090is accommodating to non-traditional Pathways because I am a running start student and as a running start student in the past I felt that I wasn't really included at Franklin so yeah um yeah another issue that seems to be like plaguing our district well not plaguing our district exactly our like country more so is gun violence um and I just really want to do something about it cuz uh I often hear from students that they're worried about it and in fact I know this one student who like is like fully running start because he he's scared of gum violence and it's really a tragedy so um as a district we should do something about [Music] it thank you director ilas do we have other student comments Dr y uh one of the primary goals for the
091student members student board members is to ensure transparency and communication between the board and student body during our weekly check-ins via teams meeting we've been brainstorming ways to keep the student body informed and currently we have two initiatives one of which is already being implemented the first initiative is to utilize social media uh through our student board Instagram account we will be posting either a video or slideshow summarizing the board meetings we'll focus on highlighting the key points for each meeting so that the information will be more accessible to students we are also considered considering creating survey forms or hosting online info sessions where students can address their con concerns or if they have any questions um for our second initiative I think director um you so oh hi so for our second initiative that
092we want to work on uh is directly talking to our students and talking to our communities uh because that's one of the most impactful things uh so we're working to work with both the board right now to talk about uh involvement with ASB um and what they're currently planning and also our involvement with getting into schools and talking to them and educating so good did you have something else and just to add on to what director brag said we want ASB members to sh attend board meetings so that they could stay informed with the board and also uh provide feedback and information to their own School communities so I just wanted to add that part thank you thank you very much um we are will now move to the tables for uh progress monitoring what
093sure VIP okay you're welcome all right we have a progress monitoring session today on our uh goals number one and two um director Briggs will be our facilitator for Progress monitoring director Briggs all right um so because we're transitioning to a new way of doing progress monitoring um the the um official process is that it's a conversation between the school board and the superintendent um and that's what we will have going forward but in the past we've had staff presenting and so as we transition to this new way of doing it we're going to have staff present alongside with Dr Jones this week or this month sorry and going forward it will just be the superintendent and the board um so questions um during the session should be limited to anything that's strategic in nature
094and there's not a hard line around these different categories of questions so we're we're just going to have to do our best here to navigate but like examples of strategic strategic questions are trying to understand how something aligns to the priorities so sort of like big big picture high level stuff um so an example would be looking at the data in table one what's which strategy was most effective with our Target student population um or what is a strategy we deployed that didn't work given the data in table to and what did we learn so those are strategic questions a tactical question um or a technical question would be something that we would have staff answer and not in the Pro and not during our progress monitoring session so staff if you could make a
095note of questions that are technical or tactical in nature and um answer those in a in written form and send them out to the board later in the week um that would be excellent um so a technical question would be trying to understand how something is measured um what is the alignment of the portfolio assessment with the SAT for example how do we know the validity of the portfolio assessment these are just random examples um and a tactical question is a question that's trying to understand how something is done so to whom is the assessment administered which staff have been trained to administer the assessment so like more detail Orient oriented questions would be for staff so with all that said this is learning in public so we're all learning um we will proceed and
096when it gets to the question part we will direct our strategic questions to Dr Jones I will try to field questions that are tactical or Technical and have staff answer those at a later date is that clear enough for us to proceed or does anybody have any questions I'll just add that that overall this is one of our main roles as a board is to let the public know how the school system is doing serving our children yes it's a very important part of our job um oh sorry one last thing um another thing that that is technically part of progress monitoring is voting on whether or not to accept the report at the end um and I sent directors criteria uh via email earlier about what criteria we're looking for um we're not going
097to vote this time because again we're transitioning to doing this the the formal way but going forward there will be a vote on whether or not to accept um the board report or sorry the progress monitoring report I've got a question around the purpose of that like what does that do for us that is a great question I bet Liza could answer itally basically what we're looking for is whether or not reality matches our vision okay um if there's growth towards our vision and if there's a strategy and a plan expressed To Us by the superintendent that we believe will will be sufficient to cause growth towards the vision if we can't see those things we should not accept but I think the question is more around like specifically what what do we gain by
098voting to accept it right because to me it almost feels as though if there's a rubric of a criteria or an understanding of where a specific thing is heading then that doesn't really feel like a vote of opinion um so I'm trying to understand the mechanic behind that and how does that get us as a board closer to holding the system accountable to our goals oh because if it's well here if if the so those three questions does the reality match the vision is there growth towards the vision is there a strategy or plan sufficient to cause growth towards the vision if the answer to all three is yes and we accept it confident that our system is meeting our goals for children if the answer to only one or two is yes we may
099want to table this and ask for more information later if the answer to all three questions is no then we would want to reject the report and decide what steps to take to remedy the um lack of making progress towards thees yeah that answers my question in the short term I think it would be beneficial for us to have a conversation as a board as like what then comes on the other end of that vote um because it feels performative if there's not that would be up to us to say you know bring this goal back next month got it cool I think I think we actually do need official progress monitoring training training which was supposed to happen at our Retreat which got rescheduled so we're yeah okay sounds good thank you okay yes
100thank you director bricks and um I appreciate the flexibility and we will continue to learn together um this is our fifth formal opportunity to review progress monitoring we're making on these two specific areas I'm joined um by three key leaders in this work assistant superintendent of academics Doctor Mike stoski executive director of curriculum assessment and instruction caselle toner and executive director of college and career Readiness Dr Caleb Perkins uh I'll be sharing an executive summary of both the both the goals and then asking Dr stoski to share an overview of our theory of action for both goals uh and before engaging in a deeper discussion of our strategies uh and student outcomes those strategies are producing so we're going to really look at the big picture and then we're going to dive into some various
101specifics um we'll hold questions for the end as director Brigg said and with with that overview of the agenda I will now uh share a few highlights from the executive summaries so first I want to focus on the Raw results uh in the spring of 2024 30% of African-American males scored proficient or higher on the next slide please on the spring of 2024 30% 30% of African-American males score proficient or higher on the ELA portion of the spring 2023 Smarter Balance assessment this is a 1% increase from the prior year and a par with results from before the pandemic in addition 14% of African-American male students achieved accelerated growth and that's on the map the measure of academic progress last year meaning they are on a trajectory to reach proficiency by fifth grade the proportion
102of students of color furthest from educational Justice who scored proficient grew by 1.5% year-over-year from 40.2% to 41.7% the proportion of students with IEPs who scor proficient grew by 2% points year-over-year from 36.8 to 38.7 and the portion of ml students who scor proficient declined by 7even three excuse me 3.7% year-over-year from 30 30% to 26% uh for seventh grade Mass next slide please n 15.3% of African-American male students scored proficient or higher in math on the spring 2024 Smarter Balance assessment representing a 1% decline from Spring 2023 students of color furthest from educational Justice increased by 1.4% compared to 2023 from 28.8% to 30.2% though significantly below pre-pandemic rates rates for special education students remain consistent with pre-pandemic levels while multilingual students decreased by 2.4% next I'd like to add some context to these
103results uh compared to a Statewide trends for African-American students overall both genders SPS is achieving at a higher level than other districts with similar demographics in addition evidence over the last 3 years strongly suggests that African-American male students stud benefited from our targeted efforts uh for third grade reading this same is also true for the seventh grade math uh in our priority schools as well over the last two years so if you take these together these results indicate that SPS is targeted and Universal approaches to K3 early literacy are are showing progress and they're working and they've generated valuable lessons for our next strategic plan the strategies are we are implementing for math are also showing some signs of progress so while our results show we are absolutely not where we need to be yet
104for our students and families I'm confident that we're on the right path to improving student outcomes both in literacy and math we've we've learned lessons along the way we have some root cause analysis that uh we have uh looked in deeply in terms of understanding the why and where where we are we understand our current state versus where we want to be in terms of our desired State and so we have a theory of action that we we have going forward I'm going to ask Dr stoski to talk about the theory of action for third grade reading and the seventh grade math goals to set us up for a deeper discussion of the strategy and and the outcomes that we're trying to achieve Dr stoski please uh thank you superintendent Jones um directors um good
105evening um so uh we're excited to be able to share our theory of action for the third grade and seventh grade uh math goals um if we begin on the right side for our theory of action you'll see that we're looking at the impact of our students um specifically what we're aiming at are what are the things that our teachers our schools um our principes our departments and our entire District would be doing to impact our students at third grade reading and seventh grade math and so if you go from the right uh uh starting excuse me all the way over to the left you can see some common themes um as we're working specifically if you look at teachers that our teachers will be able to do when they're looking at ongoing job embedded
106professional development and professional learning uh that is supported and grounded in student data and so we're making our student data at the center of what it is that we're doing um we're also looking at specifically delivering highquality standards aligned culturally responsive instruction so one of our theories of action clearly in the department of academics is that we believe in highquality equity centered instruction and the leadership that it takes to support such instruction um so that our students can be successful um and our why is so that our students are improving in their outcomes through highquality Equitable tier one instruction so our ongoing professional development if you go to the next slide please um is to be able to make investments in high quality curriculum and assessments which our system has been doing the last few
107years that is also helping us improve our uh limited number of instructional priorities as a focus and so you'll see on this slide on the left side is our foundational block so when we began 5 years ago on this strategic plan specifically in third grade reading we were looking at some uh a different time in our district of what we didn't have that we do have now uh specifically uh an adopted curriculum for ELA uh K5 and K8 a math adoption a math curriculum for Middle School we didn't have curriculum embedded assessments at the time we didn't even have a curriculum um assessment calendar and so now where we are if you look into that middle uh uh spot there that middle column is a targeted approach that our 13 priority schools for third grade
108uh Ela was a strategy that we had of targeting specific supports for our students in those schools specifically we chose our schools for who had the highest percentage of African-American Boys in those schools and our similarly our African-American Boys in Middle School for Math in seventh grade were also Chosen and so we had this targeted approach that Dr Jones and members of the school board have been uh pressing on us to move forward with of going from a targeted approach what is it that we've been learning and what's helpful and moving that to Universal approach to all elementary school students across our system um all uh elementary and middle school students I should say across our system and what you'll notice is the focused instructional priorities that we learned uh our principal Improvement networks that
109we were learning great deal of what targeted professional development for principles that has a coaching model embedded in it um is helpful for improving instruction and targeting uh the types of gains and behaviors that we want to see but the behaviors that we're seeing that you see that are highlighted there um is really how are we providing teacher observation and feedback in coaching Cycles to our teachers from our principles and so one of the things that we know that we thought um just grounded in our data and what we're seeing from our principles and our and hearing from our teachers is that is a really important part of going from a targeted strategy to a universal strategy so we're pulling that over into our Universal strategy and so you'll also see a development of our
110inclusionary practices of uh Universal Design for Learning mtss tier one and our restorative practices and so for our Focus this year is really being able to now that we have curriculum a viable standards curriculum at elementary and middle school being able to press on specifically curriculum embedded assessments as a focus area for our entire system and so for us this year and when I say us central office our principes our schools our teachers is really pressing on curriculum embedded assessments as a way for us to be able to see and answer that essential question how are our students doing right now and how do we know and so uh going to the the next slide is just a an example of some of how our assessments um look in a pyramid and tonight uh we'll
111be sharing some of the data that is really at the very top of the pyramid from map data measures of academic progress which is a benchmark assessment and SBA which is a summi of assessment but all the things that really make a big difference on the daytoday for our students with our teachers is the planning that it takes to be able to do such a high quality teaching and that's at the very bottom of and then we really are calling that the foundation which is the classroom discussions a formative assessment um how that builds up as we use this as an example for a third grade student or an elementary student is that we have end of the units uh uh assessments that be your curriculum embedded assessments we might have a screener but what
112we're looking all the way along the way is can our system adequately track where our students are right now to inform teaching to inform the planning for our students so for our Universal Design for Learning in tier one is the focus for our professional learning with our principles and curriculum embedded assessments is uh what we're doing districtwide this year and into the future and Mike can you um articulate how long have we had all all four excuse me all five of these in place I mean this is this is a rather new development so can you speak to what we had and then what we have uh as of October 2024 yes so so I'd say for uh specifically for the curriculum embedded assessments uh this has been a journey um for us um specifically
113because of uh um disjointed curriculum curriculum that wasn't uh districtwide and so this has been through a journey for I'd say for the last five years a step-by-step process and so we've had SBA for the entire time of throughout this um strategic plan and it was our primary way of of measuring and so along the way what we've been learning is um the things that matter most for the day-to-day for teachers is being able to know who their students are planning for those students doing the teaching meeting with their peers and PLC models talking about what it is that they're learning what's working well for students what's a challenge for students problem solve on the day-to-day so when we're talking for us in this room about the learning it's the learning that's happening at the
114school level a grade level a schoolwide level a regional level and our districtwide so this has been a longtime Journey For The Last 5 Years so um to transition into the third grade reading uh goal um I'd like to uh first just State what our theory of action for K3 raate reading is and it's it's a um remarkable uh Journey that we've been on the last 5 years and if K3 teachers deliver highquality standards aligned and culturally responsive reading instruction based on over 40 years of research so that's that would be the science of reading more students in Seattle Public Schools particularly are African-American males and students furest from students of color furest from educational Justice will achieve third grade English language arts proficiency and with that I would like to introduce and turn it
115over to executive director of curriculum assessment and instruction kelle toner to further explain the details of our strategy hi good evening everybody I'm kelle toner executive director for curriculum assessment and instruction and I've been working uh leading this third grade literacy goal um since 2019 so been working hard uh through lots of different Transitions and challenges um we're at a different point now uh that Dr stoski and Dr Jones were just talking about um you know our district implemented dibles in 2021 that's not that long ago that's a early literacy screener and then we also implemented and required map to be administered twice a year in um school year 2122 and that gives us the opportunity to look at some data that I'm going to show you now but you know if we were to
116rewinded several years ago and I was sitting at this table we really had to kind of focus our conversation around SBA because that was the only um data that was available to us districtwide so we've done lots of work to build out our assessment opportunities and get a different look and we're continuing that work um this year with our curriculum embedded assessment work um okay so if we could go to slide Yep this one looks good I'm going to talk you through this slide it's a little complicated but I think we can do it all right so um if you look on the left part of this uh graphic you're going to see two columns and the top um colum the top bit of those columns shows you the blue color and those are the
117um kids that at um met SBA and then if you have you see the green you'll see the typical growth there with um map and accelerated growth so we weren't really actually able to look at data like this when we didn't um require map to be administered across the district but now we can see that and what's important about that is that you can see the um dark green that means that the kids made accelerated growth and then that light green is the typical growth T um typical growth for map means that kidss are on track to meet um grade level standard by fifth grade so um I just described to you what's happening on the left of that slide now let's look at the right side so those are students of color with the
118same analysis right so third grade kids top part the blue part is the SBA proficiency and then you can look at those two different subgroups with the darker green and then the lighter green and again that lighter green means that kids are on track um to meet standard by the end of fifth grade so as we track our data over time what we want to see the the um picture what we want to see up there is more blue more green and less gray let's move to the next slide okay so you all have been asking um you know how what does that focused work look like at those 13 schools you've been initiating some of your strategy at those particular schools and how does that compare to the rest of the district so let's
119look at that together what you'll see here are three groups of schools the cluster of three bars on the left is the priority schools the cluster of bars in the middle are the group of are a group of comparison schools with demographics that are similar to the 13 schools and then the cluster on the right are all of the other Elementary and K8 schools in the system our research and evaluation team identified the comparison group of schools based on enrollment rates of African-American boys as additional context 100% of our 13 schools are schools that receive Title One funds and about 80% of the comparison schools are schools that receive Title One funds whereas only 20% of the other category of schools receive Title One funds I just gave you a lot of information so I'll
120just slow down a little bit um but that's how we've divided the three groups of schools as represented on the slide looking at each cluster of bars in turn and moving from left to right from the lightest blue to the darkest blue shows us the proportion of third grade African American boys um achieving proficiency on the SBA in each of the 3 years since we've returned from remote instruction what these results show us is that the African-American Boys in our priority schools H held steady after the end of the pandemic and are now on the upswing meanwhile performance among our African-American students in the comparison group of schools has declined and has not yet recovered from pre-pandemic rates you'll notice that both cohorts of schools started at roughly the same place in the year after
121the pandemic the group of all other schools has remained steady at 7 at 47% across all three years we added this group for additional context but given that only about a fifth of this group received Title One funds um you know you can understand that data and interpret it yourself um the point of sharing this information with you is not to um convey a negative comparison but it's try it's an attempt to try to tease out the variation in in our system to better understand the impact of our targeted Investments and while this data it's not um experimental evidence says our research team uh nonetheless we can St uh strongly suggest that our focus and intentional work at our subset of early literacy schools is having an impact on student learning and I just want
122to pause here for a second and remind everybody that the our work is to change the adult behavior in the systems and structures in support of student learning there's nothing wrong with the kids and communities across these groups of schools right the kids are perfectly brilliant it's our job to think about how do we um enhance change refine the structures and support systems in in place at in particular classrooms School communities in service of student learning um yeah I think I'll just pause there let's let's see oh you all you've also been asking for quite a while about lessons we've been learning you know what have we been learning at at our schools that we could consider replicating across the district so let's talk about that for a minute there are a few lessons we've
123learned over the last few years that I'd like to share with you the first is that from the beginning of our strategy it's always been grounded in research folks have wondered how did we arrive at the strategy we have in place why did we um focus on training our teachers around science of reading in because that's actually how kids learn to read and so um giving teachers access to that um uh professional development enhances their skills and then in turn enhances the instruction for kids um the second lesson that we've learned is that we could not have developed um the implementation systems if we'd gone systemwide from the beginning um because we needed to be able to have a narrow Focus to to listen and learn alongside teachers and community and here here are some
124of the implementation lessons that we've learned high quality common curriculum and assessments are foundational for improvement having limited instructional priorities each year allows us to uh teachers to go deeper um with their practice instructional coaching done right should be the rule and not the exception for uh schools that need more support principal instructional leadership brings it all together our principles are key in this work and central office having a strategy and implementation capacity enables consistent coherent implementation so I think I'll I'll pause there and pass back to Dr stoski so what we will do is transition from Ela uh third grade and over to math seventh grade math but you're going to see and here some very common uh themes uh between the two um before we go uh to Dr Perkins I'd like to
125read the theory of action for our mathematics uh goal Seattle Public Schools aims to significantly improve student mouth math outcomes especially for our African-American males by enhancing highquality Equity centered teaching the district's belief is that when students receive rigorous standards aligned instruction particularly th those fur this from educational Justice they will develop stronger math skills leading to increased proficiency on the seven grade smarter balanced assessment Dr Perkins thank you Dr stoski and thank you uh to the board for the opportunity as we transition from third grade literacy to seventh grade math I do want to Echo some of the themes um we're not where we want to be and at the same time we do see progress that we're making I do want to highlight though a difference between literacy and math uh we are
126not returned uh while overall as a district we're returning to pre-pandemic levels we're not returning to pre-pandemic levels for students of color fur educational Justice and African-American male students we have a lot of work to do and so what I'd like to highlight following the same data charts that uh uh executive director toner shared is some of the ways that why where do we see progress and where are the lessons that we're learning to help us address uh this this data that needs to be uh supported and to kelle's excellent point um this is again this is about improving systems to to support students it's not about um uh putting pointing at the students and saying that they're the ones that need to change so with that let's if we can go to the first
127slide that should look familiar and as always I like to dra draft off executive director toner who explained this bottom line the big takeaway here is you know we're we're reducing the gray bar to kelle's point about um on the for students of color furthest from educational Justice we have more larger percentage of students passing the SBA we also have large uh percentage of students achieving growth and accelerated growth so that's encouraging we're not seeing the same uh increase in African-American male students and so there's there's more work to be done if we can go to the next slide similar to what executive director toner shared we wanted to provide a bit of a comparison noting that there's just two groups of schools uh there's the six priority schools which serve 2third of our African-American
128male students and then there's the all other middle and K8 schools that serve uh onethird and the in this case just as executive director toner shared there's uh the you know student schools receiving Title One funding is is much higher in the in the leftand side so that's what uh what is uh part of the difference but one of the things that we wanted to highlight just as we're seeing with literacy uh in a more modest way and remember we're only in year really year three of this implementation last year was the first full year of implementation but in that first full year of implementation we are seeing growth we are seeing growth from those three schools and I'm going to speak a little bit more about where that growth is and why do we
129think that is happening what's working and what do we need to change so I just wanted to call that out and if we can go one one slide further in addition we want to if we zoom out for a second from 7th grade and we think about the implementation of our curriculum our Envision curriculum over multiple years we are seeing some progress uh from fifth and sixth grade for students who have engaged with this curriculum now over multiple years and from K5 transitioning into 68 so we see some encouraging Trends um especially for our students of color Furs from educational Justice and overall all students but as well for fifth graders when it comes to African-American male students so to follow what celle shared what are our lessons learned again this has been a really
130helpful piece from the board push us to really think about where are we continuing if we can go to the next slide bottom line we're seeing cohort schools are improving and um I'll say a little bit more about this uh as we get down to the final bullet but schools that are doing all the pieces that Dr stoski shared having uh regular PD coaching um instructional leadership supports those schools are are more uh correlated with bigger increases for their African-American male students this past year with seventh grade math the semis schools are clearly need of support we are right to invest in them and I give praise to Dr Jones as well as the school board that that decided three years ago to make the shift and to make sure that we were funding and
131and supporting this they're uh well below where we are where were pre pandemic and the support is needed to address the systems that executive director Tona alluded to consistent curriculum helps we believe the fifth and sixth grade encouraging results come for the fact that we have a consist curriculum and that we've been using it for multiple years now consistency takes time and to Echo one of the pieces that we heard about third grade literacy we need to focus on fewer things one of the key pieces is that we need to go deeper as Dr sty said and we think the curriculum embedded assessment piece in particular is one of those few things we should go deeper on and really help our Educators and school leaders focus with all of the other things that they're they're
132managing it's critical that we're we're focused and finally I just want to note that coaching helps the schools that received the most consistent coaching uh last year were the ones that we saw uh the greatest gains and that's why we're confident that we're learning things that we can apply to the entire district and all middle schools to improve math instruction and with that I'll turn it back to Dr Jones so thank you for that presentation Dr Perkins um now we'll transition to questions and discussion I'll turn it over to uh director Briggs to facilitate those thank you so much thank you all for the presentation um any questions can you guys hear me okay um thank you for that presentation I found that to be incredibly informative um I know that you just said um
133oh shoot I was taking notes that um the greatest gains were made in the schools that received coaching um and I'm looking at the slide the previous slide where we see um on the right side in the 515 there you go thank you in the yellow band where um we see the results for African-American males in sixth grade um that the lowest gains were made out of the group um and so just to have Clarity does that mean that the strategy this year that you're deploying is to increase the amount of coaching in those six um for those sixth grade teachers um to help uh see a greater gain in those scores thank you so let me jump on that I I don't think we're going to see necessarily an increase in coaching but a
134consistency in coaching okay and so one of the things that we're seeing that would probably be consistent with all the these gains is uh consistency uh of implementation the board has heard me talk about implementation a lot yeah and and this is some man these are manifestations of that and so the fact that we have a central office is now providing uh relevant and meaningful support to schools and and when they when they need it and how they need it uh it allows them to be consistent for how they apply uh Concepts or interventions like coaching and so that's that's what you'll see that's consistent with all all the growth here okay sorry I have one more question is that okay um okay um and then this is probably a newbie School Board director question
135um but it would appear to me that the priority we're seeing progress with our interventions in the priority schools what is the plan to expand is there an a multi-e expansion plan to extend that to the rest of the district and and what might that be cuz I'm not aware of it thank you you want to take that oh sure I'd love to um so sorry so sorry to interrupt so I know that the we're learning together but so we're going to just have Dr Jones answer the questions and if it's um that that is a strategic question so I think that's that's fair fair game um but any questions that do come to staff we're not going to answer them now during this Pro progress monitoring session we're just writing them down y great
136thank you so so fair enough I I think there's a when we talked about our theory of action repeat your question one more time I just want to make sure I captured this fully H okay um still getting used to that delay priority schools versus other yeah so the priority schools we're seeing Improvement and um and so what what is the plan or timeline um to when will you know that the strategy is working well enough to expand it to other schools and what is the timeline in which um you would do that these aren't numbered but if you can go back to slide six please looks like this so um you all have heard us talk about uh how do we move from targeted to Universal uh some of those some of those pieces
137are around inclusionary practices how are we looking at mtss systems what is our systemwide Focus those are the some of the universal practices that we're going to uh approaches rather that we're going to use particularly inclusionary practices are our ability to differentiate instruction across different skill levels uh the mtss system when we talk about that we're talking about embedding uh uh resource into making tier one instruction the primary place where our students uh get get their instruction and we talk about the systemwide focus on uh curriculum embedded assessments that's that piece that's tremendously important for us to know where our students are uh not just annually but after at the end of a unit we also have the interim assessments that this board approved several years ago to two years ago to make sure that
138we can look at on a quarterly basis where our students in that process so that's what we've been doing uh consistently at our 13 priority schools that are going to come over and we're going to do that consistently at the at um at the remaining schools I I wrote a few things down so the first one is definitely a tactical question so I'm going to just say it so you can provide us later the in the um theory of action some of the activities you know provide schools and principles with training and support there training and support resources aligned to curriculum inst structural Vision I would just love to know more about what that what what that's comprised of what that looks like and also if we have any kind of a feedback loop from
139people in buildings about the feeling of it being um effective or helpful or or just kind of a feedback loop on that that would be great if we have any any information about that um and then um the uh I'm still having a hard time understanding what to what do you credit the difference between the priority schools and the comparison schools what are the what are the different Investments that have been made or different strategies um like how how do you describe what has happened that that yields these or sorry it's not the same slide I'm looking at but that yields the the different outcomes yeah so um caselle and Caleb are a little bit Twitchy because I ask them this all the time around how are we leveraging the 13 priority schools and and
140the six priority schools and really uh what it comes down to are these Lessons Learned and it's it's really about consistency and it's really about uh how we're doing again our curriculum embed curriculum embedded assessments the other piece that I didn't talk about are are the dibles that's that's something that uh we we haven't leveraged but now that we have that pyramid that you see all the different assessments we we can have we have real time understanding of where our students are that's been the power I think of the of the of the 13 schools or excuse me the priority schools and the the focus schools and so uh the consistency is important and I also believe the uh our focus on mtss making sure that we understand where students are tier one tier two
141tier three and we're trying to make sure that we're uh really focused on those tier one practices as the first place we're folks are learn where students are learning um thank you uh so I I mean I have a similar question to director Clark of you know H how can we expand that to the others um uh another technical question Dibbles my understanding is a screener it's not an assessment so I would like to know what is flagged by what happens when a student is is is flagged through the screening of of possibly being a um higher likelihood of being of having dyslexia or some other issue um if we have data about what happens when a student is uh um flagged by the screener and then what's provided what's provided to the teacher what's
142provided to the student um that's very technical well I I would like for caselle to respond to that because I I think Dibbles is a really important piece in uh it's it's part of the the Pyramid of strategies that we're using okay so I can't okay okay so Dibbles is technically an assessment and it is a screener so it's both of those things for our district you know there's a state law you know this all a lot of you know this around a requirement that every District in Washington state has a mechanism to screen kids for um uh Foundation skills gaps sometimes that means that kiddos um may have a higher likelihood to be um a child you would say it has dyslexia or something like that but there's like many gradations before you actually
143get to that point so because there's so many um gradations before you get to that point um Seattle schools implemented a resource called sips that's aligned to our our core literacy instructional tool which is center for the collaborative classroom so in a nutshell um director Ranken if uh when kids participate in that screener we have sort of if then flow uh activities that need to take place so if this is what you're seeing from that screener then this is the um support that we need to put in place for that child if um and then given a bit of time um that if you know depending on what happens next then there's um sort of a decision trait about supports and conversations with family and so on and so forth um I would really like
144us to be able to see if uh there's data about the response to the screener just just in general just okay and if we can identify you know where response is being provided quickly what's working well what's not working well and I would also like um to know what kind of feedback we have from the buildings about accessing those things and having time to provide that support uh my last question is a strategic question the also with the priority School schols you mentioned that um the priority schools represent a higher percentage of students who qualify for Title One funds um trying not to break the question rules uh I'm I'm wondering mostly about the connection between title funds to these strategies if we notice that there are students that need more support that are also
145qualifying for funds that are intended to support their education how we connecting our strategies with with title funding um or using title funding to address the support needed yeah so the mention of uh schools that receive title one fundings was was just a comparison I think your question is is a solid one that I I can't answer at this point around how the title funds have the impact and so uh we The Way We Were representing that was just very similar situated students so the priority schools versus other schools that had again a similar demographic uh and so I think that's a very good question and I I'd like to get back to you on that okay thank you before I ask my question could you give us another reminder between tactical and our other
146question types yes um so technical is trying to understand how something is measured um like how do we know the validity of X assessment right um tactical is trying to understand how something is done so to whom is the assessment administered which staff have been trained to administer the assessment more kind of detail oriented things yeah and then strategic is more high level yeah right yeah and which ones are ger main for us to ask the superintendent which ones will strategic and then any technical or tactical will be tabled for uh later dissemination via memo of written memo okay last one can you please explain strategic on more I just want to make sure that I'm hit it in the right direction absolutely um so trying to understand how something aligns to the priorities so
147looking so for example looking at the data in table imaginary table one which strategy was most effective with our Target student population okay it is it's I it's it's like it's not totally yeah we better at identifying them I'm sure but I'm just making sure that I'm not being self- serving with my questions um the first one and my main one is have y'all done any analysis on other districts that have implemented these types of measures the reason that I asked that question is I'm trying to get an understanding for what growth and what timeline we can expect based on that analysis that that sounds like a tactical question so let's let's get that in writing later maybe Chang you looking for a comparison I'm just so my bigger question is we've had this conversation
148a lot about the fact that our goals are very high as our expectations for our students should be and we are on the precipice of a new strategic plan in which those goals will change my concern is that in that transition given the conversations and feedback that we have received as a board I'm trying to understand how do our expectations with what we're receiving here tonight dovetail with where we're headed um and that's a conversation we can have at a different venue but I think that that's what I'm trying to glean understanding from I'm good for right now well let me just one thing that we as we look at other districts um and how they're uh using strategies we know that um interim assessments have been powerful we know that uh job embedded professional
149learning has been powerful we know that uh one thing that we haven't talked talked about is having an assessment calendar is tremendous in terms of coordinating uh when and how we we do uh check-ins with where where our students are uh the mtss Universal Design for Learning all those things we have studied other districts around are these powerful strategies and finally uh we know that the reading war wars have been won and it's been won by the science of reading and so we we're trying to learn how implementation of that from other districts as well and so I think the overall approach is what we're gleaning from other districts that have been uh somewhat successful um whether they're large districts or small districts we're trying to have this uh comprehensive approach that we're that we're
150learning so we we've had parts of these over time but we haven't had all of these uh strategies working in conjunction uh this is the first time that we've done that and that's clear to me and I just also wanted to say thanks for breaking out the uh 133 priority schools versus um our other buildings I think that's helpful to see you know when implemented in a particular way how uh we can make growth um again I just want to reiterate at whatever venue makes sense I want to know what is a reasonable expectation for growth um I think the other question that I have is that I don't want to skirt over the fact that uh on the blue green Seahawks bar um I don't want to skirt over the fact especially for math
151if we could pop back to that slide uh yeah that's the reading one there's some there's some there there around what students made more stretch growth and I would be curious to know a if all those students are in the same place and B what learning can we take from that accelerated growth because there could be some replicable teaching practices um that would be meaningful to explore as you're moving to a more Universal approach so breaking that out would be interest to me so director hery um we know uh one school in particular that is seeing amazing growth are doing all the things yeah tell me give yeah what what's that school oh you said no one or you said do you know of one we know no we know of one school what what
152school is it I I happen to go to that school so okay cool lit uh the a for example okay they have they have done all of these things in unison with Fidelity and they they've been part of a a learning kind of community and they through these things and so they're they're seeing dark green the dark green yeah the dark green box is where they have seen tremendous growth lit and that's and I don't want to I'm not trying to brag on a specific school there's when it's done with fidelity outcomes okay that doesn't suggest other schools aren't they just they just have refined it okay Dr Perkins is that an accurate characterization yes focusing on seventh grade in particular okay that's got sorry was there more that's got my wheels turning in really
153digging in at aie because I know what you mentioned is Fidelity I think that the prob the hard part is getting from is not necessarily like all the benefit that comes after you've implemented with Fidelity but like what did they do specifically to get from Step Zero to Fidelity having some understanding around that piece uh I think would be really useful in taking this approach to a more Universal thing um and in a different venue it would be cool once yall have kind of of you know gone to the lab and determined what those things are how can we allocate resources to help you do that and I think that you know I'll leave it at that tag on to that I'm wondering is the success at AI connected to the nesom schools I was
154I was going to say they've had years and years of they've been doing this investment uh strong leadership and uh it's been very consistent and so while they have implemented all of these strategies in with Fidelity they've also been almost a lab to understand what works and what what doesn't work and uh they've been beneficiaries as some of our other middle schools for the nest home Grant and other grants that that allow them to really reflect on practice and so they have strong coaching they have uh they have an openness to uh learning and so it's just really they're modeling uh what strong Investments are and and I don't want to Discount the leadership either the leadership has been has been strong over years as well so uh thank you all for for attending Hopefully
155this wasn't too boring for you but this is this is our work y by um yeah I don't know the the NES home Foundation does this end of the year review on the the grant that goes there and they I mean they are really I would say exemplifying these practices in action it's not just about that they that they have money from a grant it's the the investment in the people and the practices and the connection to leadership and that's to me really affirming what you all are talking about and identifying as having been um that you're seeing as successful strategies so to Echo director hery like let's let's do that more yeah and I'm I'm showing a little bit of my naev here so with the NES home Grant is it just a transfer
156of funding or is the NES home Foundation itself participating in they've really developed a whole like that the funding is specific for support and they they work with leadership and it does add some additional bodies into the building I believe on the literacy side but but it's really connected to all of these things that we're talking about coaching um mhm plcs so that to me identifies a couple of key things first The Stick tutiven of it it's it's going to take time um which is why like I have some concerns around um the amount of time that we give these goals to breathe and take um before we swap I think it's a problem in public public education in general and it's like every five years we've got some new fancy priority or X Y
157or Z the other piece is if we know that what they're doing over at the nesom foundation is working what's their fee right like how do we how do we formalize that partnership in a way and use some of those learnings um because it seems like we've got some pretty hard evidence that they they know what they do yeah we I I think we should absolutely interrogate that U I know the nest home additional grants to us were about learning you know what are what are you doing um and they they had uh I think three middle schools that they were working with and they were bringing them together to to really understand how are we advancing uh teaching and learning uh another example is uh West Seattle Elementary School um they've had funding but
158they also have a force of nature as the as their school leader that uh is is about consistency it's about predictability is about um not doing too many things at once but making sure what's essential gets done first and so I think there's some learnings from uh the resources that we're getting uh from our our philanthropic Partners there's also some leadership moves that have been made over years uh and this these to your point these weren't built overnight and so the the success that hockey the success at West Seattle the success at other other schools has been two three 10 years in the making and so uh West Seattle for example people come in and know the West Seattle system they they know this is how we do business at West Seattle Elementary School and
159so uh West Seattle Elementary School uh lead teachers become principls and APS at other other uh Seattle Public Schools um because of the West Seattle Elementary system and so what we need to be doing is studying that it's one of our uh priority schools that we uh really are doing our institutional learning it's a laboratory for yeah that it I think this is a rich conversation so like what I would like to see in addition to the four other things that I said um it would be cool to see AI broken out individually and I think that that will help us as board directors see what type of growth in what timeline it should be expected right because when we set these goals initially we were all new to this process and I think we
160all knew that they were lofty but also on the tail end of a pandemic making 40 points of growth is intense it's a it's an in it's a very high asset put on our system almost like finding a way to balance a $100 million deficit with no Revenue a new Authority shocker I think that what I'm really trying to figure out in my waning days here is is how do we set reasonable goals that still push our system to do what we know is important but don't set our system up for failure because of our own aspirations right so really diving in to see in our own context over the course of however many years it took us to get to a certain place and then using that as our bellweather I think would be
161incredibly helpful for for us in a policy standpoint just want to coign on that um just to just to talk about uh ai's growth you had Dr Mia Williams Jeff Clark Chris Carter who were principles that were in this collaborative this was probably 10 years ago and they were doing all this foundational work to get them to the place where they can be ready to kind of receive all of these type of strategies and so some of the institutional learning we need to do is step back and say how how can we uh replicate that and accelerate that at the same time uh they weren't just doing things by happen stance but they kind of grew together understanding what we need to do and at the time they were kind of leading the our district
162in terms of uh how we were measuring at that time and I I just think there's something about the collaboration that they had the the sharing of resources that they have they were all Nest home schools as well and what can we continue to learn and be reflective around our practice about that so just just wanted to bring that to a close and can you well sorry to open it back up but can can you um give us a little bit more about those names and how that collaboration happened because like are we looking at this as like an internal collaboration I know that's not the case but is it more so like the collaboration not only between Aki and itself but also it's feeder schools X Y and Z yeah can I defer to
163Dr stoski on this because I know you were you were one of the leaders back in that day trying to push that practice I know I know I know I know I know I know but we spend a lot of time talking about a lot of other stuff that we normally do so please if you could humor me I'm really interested in this thank you yes there there is a reach back down to the element Fe Elementary schools and then also I reach back up to um the high schools as well and so there a lot of intentionality of planning with principles looking at the data looking at common issues that they're trying to solve together with some uh additional supports that other schools don't have I'm just going to sneak sneak in that the
164story that you're asking for the case study if you will I think is a great idea and I just I do think it's going to yield there's sort of something old something new about the success it's not just about the the past Network it's about the new resources applying to the structures that they built so look forward to telling that in more Rich detail Evan do we have are there more questions okay it doesn't look like it all right great thanks everybody thank you very much and I'm noticing we have other packets here here we don't have to go back and forth um I'm going to give us five uh for ourselves but also for the um interpreter yeah to give a little rest of her hands are we coming back here so we should
165grab our stuff if we left it up there where going uh what else do we have what can we cut we well we don't need to a lot [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] all right [Music] uh we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda may I have a motion for the consent agenda I don't have okay here we go I move approval of the consent agenda second approval of the consent agenda has been moved by vice president sju and seconded by director uh Briggs do directors have any items to remove from the consent agenda I'd like to remove item number seven please okay uh okay item number seven has been removed um by director Clark may I have a motion for the consent agenda as amended I move approval of the
166consent agenda as amended I second um uh the amended Cent agenda has been moved by director seru seconded by director Briggs um all those in favor of the consent agenda as amended please signify by saying I I I I any opposed all right the consent agenda has been approved um um uh so we have one item that was removed can I please have a motion for item seven from the consent agenda that's not in my notes what am I moving item number seven oh I'm sorry it's right there it is you didn't highlight [Laughter] it oh we is late I move that the school board author authoriz the superintendent to accept the alliance for education grant in the amount of a whopping five H $528,000 immediate action is in the best interest of the district
167I this item has been moved properly moved and seconded by director sju and Briggs um director Clark okay uh so I removed this item because it really lacks Clarity on what this money is going to be spent on in in I understand it's for strategic planning process but I would really like like more information on who the like who like where this money is being spent um and it sounds to me like this is the first um um acceptance of funds that there's a larger pool of funds that we receive for strategic planning and um I would like to know how that money is spent yeah thank you for asking director Clark so uh this is essentially three parts uh one is doing a learning needs analysis uh as we go forward second was a
168resource allocation uh study around how are we Distributing our funds to our our highest priorities and then third is the helpful helping us with the development ultimately of the Strategic plan so as as this board comes up with the goals and guard rails and you in uh you direct me to create the Strategic plan we we need outside support to really help us to to develop this in a in a meaningful and strategic way and so learning needs analysis resource allocation study and the development of the strategic plan and so we asked for this we asked for this money to help us uh last time we did our strategic plan we used a uh a third party to help us to bring that home as well so that's what this These funds are for um
169is it possible to see a breakdown of like a budget breakdown like how much money is spent on each of those items AB absolutely yes and I I can provide that to the board okay thank you are there any other questions on this item um it is an action item so we will need to call for vote director Miss Rahi I vice president seru I director top I director braks I director Clark no uh no director hery I president Ranken I this motion has passed with a vote of uh six to one all right moving on um we have one action item which is also being introduced uh um this action item number one is adoption of resolution 2024 25 D sorry 2024 25-11 directing the superintendent to present preliminary recommendations and supporting analysis in
170October 2024 for up to five school closures for the 25 26 school year to develop a multi-year plan no later than June 2025 to achieve fiscal stability and support of student outcomes and to form a task force to advise the superintendent on implementation of 2025 26 school closures if they are approved by the board and to advise the superintendent on the development of the multi-year recommendations um oh I guess I need a motion I move that the school board adopt resolution number 2024-25 511 as attached to the board Action Report immediate action is in the best interest of the district I second thank you this has been moved by director sarju and seconded by director Briggs um this item itself is sponsored by director top and myself um we want to ensure that the board
171has sufficient analysis to consider any recommendations for closures um and so we recommend that the board Pro uh approve this resolution and provide Direction which includes that um the superintendent will develop a multi-year plan to achieve fiscal stability in suppor of student outcomes and the superintendent will present recommendations with detailed supporting analysis as outlined in the resolution for the 2526 school year and that the superintendent will form a task force that includes members of our community and staff um to advise the superintendent on the implementation of um any consolidation for 26 or 25 26 if they are approved by the board and for the development of the multi-year recommendations director top do you have anything you'd like to add I think the only thing that I will add is that I think we heard Dr
172Jones talk about moving at the speed of trust and I think this is step one in that Speed Of Trust is in rebuilding building sort of trust with community and creating the a task force to help advise you um I think we heard a lot of great input and feedback through this process and I think this is sort of that that step in that process of trust building Dr Mercy yeah so one of the pieces of feedback that uh we received both in public testimony and in um some of the communications that I'm sure went to multiple board directors was Clarity around the fact that we are no longer considering closing many schools um I'm happy to offer an amendment to that effect reading through this I could see why that might be of interest
173to community and frankly at this phase uh considering how you know we have led through this process any any reassurance that we can offer if it doesn't um get in the way of us balancing our budget and and solving our deficit I'm more than willing to be a proponent of so um I am more than happy to do that I think what I would need Miss Wilson Jones or the appropriate person is is is that something that I would need to write down can I articulate it in ay question in the resolution it says analysis for up to five for the 25 26 school year right what you're looking for is is just additional clar Clarity beyond that point that yep that the the 20 are not yeah a consideration for 2526 100% does that
174track with what the ask my fellow board director's understanding of the ask for community in terms of that language yes lit so do I need to write it down or can I just say it we need to know exactly what the amendment right so the amendment to the resolution would add in a line saying that the Seattle School Board is no longer ER considering closing the 20 schools that were previously [Music] proposed in the well resource schools plan at this time at this time well not at the I don't that's why I'm trying to words Smith yeah say again [Music] Sarah for the 2526 school year I believe that that is right does that track cool I just I was wondering if you wanted to add that at the end of your sentence I if
175I I am asking um oh you're asking oh yeah right right right we're doing this in real time I'm wondering can we I don't have it in front of me where it says uh yeah um uh how about where it says therefore be it resolved that the Seattle School Board of Directors directs the superintendent to present preliminary preliminary recommendations for up to five school closures to be implemented for the 2025 six school year in lie of as 20 schools is no longer oh we've got the lawyers on it probably have a better solution you can have mine so reading the first Clause resolve that the school board of or for the therefore after after therefore yeah res School Board of Directors directs the superintendent to present preliminary recommendations for up to school up to five
176School closures but not more than five school closures would be the addition to be implemented for the 2025 26 school year I believe that would satisfy the ask what five is less than 20 objectively does that track so I mean y'all I'm need feedback all right that tracks for me I think that's accurate was it that clear enough for folks or it doesn't need to be on the screen or I don't need it on the screen just repeat it one more time resolved that the Seattle School Board of Directors directs the superintendent to present preliminary recommendations for up to five school closures but not more than five school closures to be implemented for the 25 26 school year and there's also some information that kind of foreshadows that sentiment within the board action report that
177I think also goes to your point Y yep that tracks for me I believe that that is a a fine interpretation all right so we need a motion to approve recognize yeah director offer the amendment all right so director director hery has offered the amendment as read and may I please have a motion for consideration for this amendment as offered by director I move that we consider this amendment as offered by director Cy I second all right all right um do we do do we all in favor do we do a roll call vote roll okay so calling the role on Amendment one two action item one um it was moved by uh vice president sju and seconded by director Briggs okay I'm calling the vote now director M Rahi yes vice president seru yes
178director top yes director braks yes director Clark yes director hery I and president Ranken I and then Greg stop me if this is wrong but I think you now need a motion for action item one as amended by Amendment one y all right I will ask for a motion now to um uh accept the resolution as amended okay I move I move that we accept the resolution as amended I second uh this has been moved by director Serio and seconded by director BRS do directors have any questions before we move for the vote on the item as amended no seeing none the roll call please director top I director breaks I director Clark nay director hery I director Miss Rahi I vice president Serio I president Ranken I the motion is pass with a vote
179of uh 6 to one thank you all right moving on don't boo vote yeah um so moving on to our introduction items um as a reminder uh introduction items are coming to us today we have another month before we take action there is a lot of time for um directors to ask further questions um so in the in the interest well let's see okay so the first item is approval of the progress monitoring calendar is there anything that um um staff or would like to highlight about this um well okay sorry rewind for a second our job as board directors is to prepare for meetings and get the information that we need to to vote um we have a uh a month to do that on these items so unless if there's something that directors
180have a pressing question on now or something that couldn't be acquired later about this about the monitoring calendar are there any questions that directors have now or anything that the superintendent would like to highlight as this is introduced to us director bricks um yeah thank you for providing the monitoring calendar I thought overall it looked good I just was noticing that we didn't have a goal um to monitor for May or July so I'm wondering if we're going to have see seeing that the expectation is that we monitor a goal every single month director Warth uh can you speak to the May July is just an off month but um can you speak to May what was our rationale behind that please uh yes so um for the the May monitoring um there are a
181number of guard rails that are coming before the board and previous guidance from um our coach around progress mon monitoring was not to have more than three items coming before the board uh including interim metrics for Progress monitoring um and so in order to not overload um that progress monitoring session um it is focused on the guard rails um there's also some data availability issues May is right in the middle of when we are doing spring assessments and so there isn't new goal data available at that point in time tomorrow monitor um is it could we um is it possible to spread out the guard rail monitoring so that it's um not all clustered in the month of May and then you know I as far as the data collection issue I mean I think
182um the idea is that there's always some form of data that can be collected if I'm not mistaken so um just wondering if if that's a possibility um so I would need to um go back and and work with the teams on that um there is some tension between the guidance that's provided that goals are monitored four times a year which the calendar does provide for goals to be monitored four times a year um and the the goal monitoring monthly um and so I would need to go back to the teams and see if there is some um additional gold data that that could be provided um something um that may be more of a an input type of data um versus the uh interim output um data that the board is typically presented with
183and director Briggs is your concern that we get off cycle and we take our foot off the gas a bit is that yeah I mean I'm I think I think the the recommendation is that progress monitoring of a goal or interim goal happens every month so I'm just I'm sorry the sound is cutting out a bit could somebody rep oh sorry is it the question is it oh did you hear you didn't hear the question did yeah the question was um am I concerned that we're taking if we don't do it in May that we're taking our foot off the gas a little bit um and and sure you that's one way to put it I think I'm coming from the place of like that this the recommendation is that a a interim goal gets
184measured every month so I'm just looking for the monitoring calendar to comport with that recommendation yeah and um I I think certainly as we are looking at the the new goals the new interim metrics and um the second pancake um as as president Ranken has termed it um we will um be able to meet more of those expectations but we are are still operating in our our first Pancake and with the data that is available um for the the intam metrics and the goals that were set um under the previous strategic plan is that well my my suggestion would be as you know it's been we've we've got a a month so I think it would it be fair to say Julia as you just said you would talk to staff and see if um
185something else can develop all of that and um we will see that when the item comes back yep great thank you does anybody else have any other questions about the calendar all right um the next introduction item is approval of instructional materials committee membership president Ranken if you will oh yes sorry go ahead please okay just uh quickly uh the instructional materials committee is a state required group that uh plays a really critical role in terms of our materials adoptions uh if you recall when you voted on the algebra geometry and Algebra 2 adoption as well as uh the 68 Ela it was actually the instructional materials committee's recommendation that you were voting on it's a formal process and it also aligns with our own values of ensuring that we're following uh and getting approval
186for the timeline the selection criteria for any instructional materials professional development cycle and ultimately the recommendation going to you so why are we here today because you voted on this four years ago the board voted on this four years ago and now the those terms have expired and so we're going out to recruit we want to first thank all those who served the parents and uh Guardians and family members as well as the school leaders who served and there are no current names on the bar for this introduction because we're currently in the process in fact the application is still open until this uh this Sunday uh so if you have know of people who might be interested in this process we as always with recruitment we take it very seriously try to get a
187broad representation from across the city and we're pleased that we already have dozens of applications um and in terms of the criteria we'll make sure that we look across a number of perspectives to make sure our our district is uh well reflected in this group so we'll come back to you on uh November 19th uh for action and you will obviously have the names posted in the updated bar before that so with that I'll take any questions any questions from directors seeing none thank you very much uh next item for introduction is approval of the 2025 State Legislative agenda um I am the sponsor of this item uh briefly every year the board adopts a legislative agenda that guides the district's advocacy during the state legislative session um our our agenda this year continues our
188advocacy for full funding of basic education we along with almost every District across the state are united in um pushing the state to address the sources of greatest deficits for school districts which are special education services transportation and what's known as MSO or Material supplies and operating costs and MSO also includes insurance which has um tripled in the last 3 years um so the agenda also includes other priorities aligned with what we've heard from students and community members including access to Mental Health Resources and um uh culturally responsive educational resources and support we will be voting on this agenda on November 19th and once we vote on it if approved we share it with Seattle legislators posted on the district website um what it does is is it directs it's it's it's rather broad even
189though it covers specific categories because the board approved direction is how our staff and superintendent can go talk to legislators and how we can also say as a member of the Seattle school board our priorities are XYZ um uh it gives us all that combined uh Authority and also um Direction about what what bills were favoring and um different things like that um under Washington state law the school board and staff of the school district are not allowed to direct or request using District resources any advocacy so we can provide information we can say here are our priorities we cannot say you should go vote in favor of you know this Levy or this whatever or hey everybody go go out and tell your legislators you support bill number whatever whatever we're legally not allowed
190to do that um we provide information and um work with Partners to direct advocacy more more explicitly um uh but our our our role is in setting the priorities providing information uh does anybody have any questions oh sorry so my question would be if there are some organizations out there in the city of Seattle that wanted to organize amongst themselves and invite a board director or three to provide information that that would be chill is that right yeah that is absolutely permissible um especially as you know part of the uh importance of having an approved agenda is that those directors could say our agenda says this yeah and provide information and then step aside or listen as other organizations turn to the same people and say hearing that here's what we think we should do
191to allocate yep I wonder if it would also be chill if we were to publicly notice a meeting in Olympia and let folks know what day we were going to be in Olympia so that if they wanted to go they didn't have to go by themselves they would know at least when we were there is that possible or no I don't know that it would have to be a meeting I think we can just go well that would be even better I just figure since you know it would be cool if all seven of us could go on the same day and since we're talking about school board stuff it feels like just to cover our bases you're giving our legal counsel a I'm being legal I'm literally being legal I'm trying to figure out
192the law we just got to publicly publicly notice it right is that wrong we would have to talk about exactly what kind of leing you're contemplating and whether we're noting it as actual special meeting or just to notice a possible Quorum oh that possible Quorum thank you that's why we pay Greg notice a possible quum we're not discuss we're not making decisions amongst ourselves but we are see I knew it was something we just haven't had that word used in a while notice a possible Quorum so if we were to notice a possible Quorum and all go down to Olympia on the same day and then make it super known maybe even on a day that like folks were available or something like a Lobby day or something I don't know uh that's chill is
193that yeah as long as you're not convening and taking votes and stuff yeah or or meeting with more than a quorum in a setting that hasn't been publicly noted but the fact that all seven of you would be there yeah meeting with legislators given the public notice that you're going to be there without it convening as a we just all happen to be in the same place the same time yeah it's like if all Maring parade the same day going to tell people you're all going to be there but you're not gaing together while we're here yeah that sounds good y that answers my question okay thank you any other questions uh not so much a question well maybe this is a question how can we or when we approve this maybe and this is
194sort of to D director Hy's Point uh how can we have a discussion of how we as a board can uh be effective in supporting we are going to have a work session on that at the end of this month perfect I think it will be no I'm serious I'm not joking I think I think it will be as well it'll probably be my favorite work session of the Year yep we'll talk about um yep yep anything else the end of October yeah we have is it scheduled yeah it's scheduled it's already scheduled on Wednesday yes on a Wednesday the 23rd yep okay all right moving on okay so our last three introduction items relate to uh two proposed future levies and one action that we need to take annually for a previously approved Levy
195we have presentations here however um so again our job as board directors is to you know come having done our homework read the stuff and we also rely on the superintendent and staff to provide us with the information we need however that doesn't have to happen in a performance and actually I think that this presentation is really great and appropriate for going out to directly to community not via having access to this board meeting but um uh I know in the past uh when levies are up District staff from the budget office and operation office and capital are out at PTA meetings and out at nursing homes and retirement places and and and informing because again even though these are levies that we need to provide um education we cannot use District resources to say
196you should vote for these levies but we can provide information about what makes the levies so important um I do not believe it is the best use of board time to go through this um and that we need to do our homework and also that this information is really valuable for our broader community and I'm going to ask that um you know how how can we get this out to voters and families and our community to engage with and ask questions um and our role is to affirm that you know that was done uh president Ranken we we have our means to be able to get the information out to community uh Chief redbond will uh make sure that we can get it up posted on the different places for for Community uh if uh
197Chief pester wanted to just make a just a couple introductory comments so that people know high level what this is and then we'll we'll take it and proceed it proceed to post it in but I would sorry I would say not just posting but historically there have been collaboration with schools first who is that arm of we inform they can actually Advocate that is a really important relationship and how is Staff working with them and getting this information out to voters to understand the importance of this funding and also the relationship between capital and operations all all this stuff this is this is stuff that Community needs to know directly from staff and to that end um there are two community meeting informational meetings planned before you take a vote um on the resolutions in
198November and then many many more planned after that vote and before the voters go to the polls so there'll be uh lots of information made available and in terms of introducing this item if we could just look at one slide yeah um maybe two just to explain provide a little bit of context if we could go to a pie chart please I think somehow we skipped the so I just want to make the point that we have two levies um that their resolutions being introduced tonight um a capital Levy and an operations levy on the and we've talked a lot over the last uh few years about our operation budget our general fund budget and the challenge that that we have so I just think what's important about this pie chart is um you know
199a little less than 2third of our funding is State funding and the next biggest funding source is um that uh operations Levy so this is critically important to maintaining service to students um and so that's one Levy and then construction and Technology costs are 99% funded by our our uh Capital levies and so the these are and the levies that we're talking about now are renewals of pre-existing funding sources we're not talking about a new source of Revenue nor a way to resolve necessarily our budget issues this is about at least maintaining um the status quo uh and with some adjustment for inflation and other things the third item that's being introduced tonight is uh are we need to adjust on the operating side um we always adjust uh what our actual Levy Authority is
200based on our legal ability um that is the one item that we may want to talk about when we come back for a vote on on the operating Levy because I think there's a lot of interest amongst other districts and our colleagues in Olympia about how um the operations Levy is capped or potentially capped so we may want to adjust the numbers in the resolution when we come back to make sure we've given ourselves enough headro to utilize whatever Authority we end up having after this legislative session so I think those are the main points I'd want to cover and I'll just add to that that in in the legislative priorities we do have advocating for increased Levy Authority director Clark oh hello okay couple things um just on the pie chart if this is
201going to go out to P the public we might want to just um I think the local taxes band is the levies yes we might want to just say Levy in there just for clarity that's a great suggestion um and then I do have um a list of questions about the beex levy can I email those to you absolutely okay um and uh and again there's a lot of information here we really appreciated the um board's time to give you a sense of how that um planning is done you know the the levy is ends up at was a product of all that planning it's also um we work with uh the board imp panel beex and BTA oversite committee on construction so there is a lot of scrutiny of the levies of the capital
202Levy in particular um with both that oversight committee and our uh Information Technology advisory committee so a lot of people weigh in you've imp paneled many technical experts to help us advise on those priorities and you've given us guiding principles about how we set those priorities so yeah we'd be happy to drill into as many details as you're interested okay thank you and then one last question for clarity for the community engagement sessions that you just mentioned the two were those in reference to are those going to happen before we come back and vote on this or are those going to like happen before the public votes okay two are um and then several more will after you vote um to authorize putting it on the ballot to inform the public before they go to
203the polls and fit okay thanks for clarifying that for me thank you great so that was my Clumsy attempt to deal with all three introduction items if that works for well we mean do any have any question so so we need to compile questions and get those to staff if we have them and if we if we need to call for a information session or two by twos or something like that we can if people need more information before we approve we can do that um and the third one is has to do with the difference between our voters authorize us to collect more than the state allows us to and so we have to then like approve the reconciliation between those two things we recalibrate to what um legal Authority we have in a
204given fiscal year so it's a it's a housekeeping function do have a question about that does that money go back to the voters that we I mean if we're it doesn't get collected oh it doesn't get collected we don't collect more than we're allowed to but we've set ourselves up to have room and here's where we acknowledge what we didn't actually have that okay okay got it that's good news okay but if we were allowed to collect it our voters have given us that approval it's the state that has not allowed that collection does anybody else have any questions thank you very much thank you Fred um all right you quickly and then me quickly right we have a did you want to give an update or is it is the resolution sort of change
205your update CH okay thank you thank you president Ranken I'll be brief and uh given the resolution that uh this board just clarified and gave me direction on uh I just want to uh share two slides with you to talk about where where we are and um essentially we're going to go to the next slide please I want to want you to see the timeline here associated with board policies 6883 school and instructional site closures uh by the end of this month I will release preliminary recommendations to not more than five School sites to create new school communities uh my intent is to release this plan around October 21st having Incorporated what we've heard this evening in the in the coming days uh in a moment I'll speak to the components and guiding principles of
206what we're we're planning uh during this transition the preliminary recommendation uh then we'll sit for a 30-day period of public review from October into November during which time we will engage with the impacted communities to discuss exactly what the proposal would mean for them our goal is to be working side by side with individual communities and where possible individual families during this period we want to be able to share specific transition plans uh with with school communities about the next steps for students staff programs and service uh we're doing this doing this work at a smaller scale uh will allow us to answer in specific and personalized ways uh then we'll proceed with hearings for the public at school sites which we intend to be completed by mid December and after the hearings I will
207aim to present my final recommendation to the board by late December and that will be folding in appropriate adjustments to my preliminary recommendations based on what we hear I would anticipate that the board would reconvene and in January to hold another hearing and then take final action and after this action I will inform I will form an inclusive task force to advise uh me and the district on implementation and next steps I'll speak to more of that shortly uh then in June I will come back to the board with a multi-year outlook on our fiscal picture the plan will update the board on the forecast for stabilization looking across all of our resources and how we are set up to meet our goals and Achieve FIS sustainability there have been some questions around whether additional
208closures will be recommended for the future right now we are focused on getting this right and earning trust uh taking one step forward and supporting families along the way so I want to share some principles for how we do that one is that we want to make sure that we're moving at the speed of trust and we recognize that school consolidation is a journey really built on trust which is going to require us to walk alongside our families we are beginning with the smaller set of schools focusing on the creation of up to five newly merged School communities uh this approach ensures that we have the support of both the community and the board before implementing larger changes so one of the principles is around minimizing disruption we've heard that the families don't just want
209disruption for disruption sake they want to see feel and experience the benefits of change and we have to prove we can provide that starting with five schools our goal is to merge entire communities programs Services ensuring that students and staff remain together that means students can stay with most or all of their friends their colleagues they will see familiar adults in the building and they will be able to access the same services and programs that they had in their previous School building that was not something we could really provide with the larger scale approach second we want to provide assurances to families our families are seeking clear assurances about the services programs and supports available during this transition period And as they integrate during the transition period as they integrate into new school communities they
210want to know what they will get in their new school and what will happen with their old school we will develop comprehensive transition plans to ensure a smooth process for students staff programs and services implementation planning is already well underway we want to make sure we build on strengths uh a couple more points here our Community Values the many programs and services offered by our schools which is a reflection of the tremendous work of our that our staff does every day for our students we've heard how important our dual language emersion program is our special special education programming is for our students and some of the instruction instructional fosy of our option schools we aim to build on this success to attract more families to our schools fourth we want to report on progress we
211have to be very clear about what we are seeking to accomplish while this will help us be more efficient uh effective it exists at the more abstract system level and we have an obligation to explain the benefits of change to our families at at this to our to our families at this level that's why we have to clearly Define our success and track our progress uh we will continue to monitor the academic social and emotional impact of these changes and keep the community informed that might mean that we're looking closely at attendance student survey results listening to qualitative feedback check-ins from adults in the building and of course monitoring our student outcomes we don't want to look at that data alone we want our families to help us make meaning of it by working alongside
212them which leads us to the next Point fifth we want to necessary we want to it's necessary to lead with transparency trust is built on transparency a on board action we will establish a task force to help us guide us in this process this task force will help help us work alongside uh our families to ensure and and determine what to monitor how to monitor it and what lessons we're learning along the way to guide our future actions uh two more points engage locally and often we have to offer our families sufficient insight into how change will impact the experience at their school or in their Community re Regional or districtwide Community engagement does not do the extent that we would like it to do we will engage with individual families and communities to address
213their specific needs and concerns providing personalized support throughout the transition that will mean working with families on Transportation routes connecting them with service and program information helping them to understand what Staffing their child's grade will look like and more and lastly we need to pursue Partnerships we want to make sure we find tremendous value in both the school that we are closing and those that we're going to keep open so in closing I want to thank the community for the for your patience and support that you have shown this is difficult and challenging and we have not always gotten it right but I'm committed to getting it right and I want to thank the board for your partnership in this endeavor so at this point I'd like to open it up for any direction from
214the board uh beyond what I've uh my interpretation uh my next step would be to release a preliminary recommendation with the appropriate analysis and begin working with our communities and initiate the process so uh if there are additional Direction based on my interpretation I'm I'm open to hearing that uh now and later as well can I ask a question um are during um October basically through the rest of the year um are at any point are you going to bring us um more options to close our budget Gap I just want to make sure that in January I'm well informed of what our budgetary options are to make my decision absolutely um you all approved a resolution uh recently for options that we can use for fiscal stabilization we'll be bringing we'll be bringing you
215that in uh January for sure but we're going to be talking with you throughout uh the next several months on those on those and because the resolution that just passed um notes uh preliminary recommendations for closing up to five schools are you going to bring us multiple scenarios and adjust the budget um recommendations based on those scenarios I I plan to bring a single scenario ultimately so one school zero schools to five schools but not a one two three four or five okay thank you I want to ask about the term that I think is newer to this process the the idea of merging communities and just make sure I understand it um that you know unlike maybe the plans that were 17 to 20 schools where because of the scope of that when you
216when a school was closing those kids may have been going to three or four different schools school is based on on where they live that the goal here would be that that when a school is closed that every student or as many as possible are going to one Community to to really keep that continuity that is correct okay staff students programs all come all merge together yes um I I would like to I guess advocate for or understand in the process that when a building is closed or when students move from another building um that we have we have that happen all the time if a if a building's had inter construction we have students in interim location the the the part that's um I think part of what was so disruptive of the The
217Proposal that we saw in September had a lot to do with boundary changes and so I I guess you're asking for advice I would say that that is a conversation that is best informed by the folks who live there and that as much as we can like some people might want to stay all together but as much as we can um I would ask that we focus on allowing families who are moving from a building to to to choose to you know like maybe they're if they're at um you know yes I understand yeah if if there's a if if they would rather like well I can actually walk to this other Elementary School I would rather be able to enroll there than go here as much flexibility I think as we can provide students
218absolutely and staff I think you know displayed staff should probably get first choice in the um teacher pool or you know what what positions might be open as as I think as much as we can um Center on helping people make the choice that's going to work for them as opposed to saying no you're all staying together and you have to go here um and then I would also ask that we think about the the groups of families that may be moving and then that may not be the same assignment as makes sense you know I guess I would like to understand like incoming kindergarteners would they then would there be boundary changes then that that would impact the incoming kindergarteners differently than the families that mhm do you know what I mean y we
219just yeah I think as much as possible um let's not predetermine and you're going to go here and you're going to go there um without really understanding what is going to make the most sense for people in their families a absolutely and I I'm our goal is continuity uh with flexibility and so to the extent that we can uh give give folks choice we we'd like to do that but the goal is to try to keep communities intact anything else all right thank you for that thank um uh the last item that we have is self- evaluation um did folks do scoring I think we can go through this pretty quickly um I think the biggest uh we we missed some stuff at the retreat that had to get cancelled um so when is the
220I guess everybody is exhausted now I think we'll have to figure this out offline but as soon as we can um address like so we're going to have we will have the student need assessment we will have that um we uh we really need to still work on time use um and then one big thing that we missed was uh full board governance training that would have happened uh governance training that would have happened at the retreat that didn't um and so I actually I scored us the same as last quarter did anybody else have anything different I had no change from my scores last quarter what I had no change no change yeah which we anticipated we weren't going to be able to advance much but we missing that Retreat um missed a big
221one but did anybody have anything different um I was actually going to SC score us lower on the vision and goals values and guard rails because we did not do our Retreat or we missed the makeup of that seems like maybe we did a little less for oh I guess I was considering because we we currently do have adopted goals in guardrails is why I kept it the same I I yeah I probably would if we were not in year zero but because we're kind of doing two things at once we're both using what we have and creating something new it seems like a piece of what of that was missing for me so what did you have for um 20 and three okay do anybody else have anything different or the same what okay
222uh uh because it's very late and I am not yeah um I'm going to ask uh everyone to look over what we think we can what we think we can tackle in the next quarter and make recommendations and we'll try to get um uh another training put into the calendar somehow as soon as we can does that seem like a good approach yeah okay there being no further B business on the agenda this meeting stands adjourned at 9:16 p.m.