Seattle Schools Board Meeting June 26, 2024

001[Music] all right um good afternoon everyone the board meeting will be called to order in just a minute and SPS TV will be begin broadcasting for those joining by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called this is President Ranken I am now calling the June 26th 2024 regular board meeting to order at 4:26 p.m. this meeting is being recorded we would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound co- Salish people today and every day Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please director Briggs uh director Briggs has let us know that she will be coming from another engagement director Clark pres director hery director mrai present vice president sarju present director top here and president Ranken here I will

002turn it over now to superintendent Jones for comments thank you president thank you president Rank and board members and audience here today um I want to thank you all for being here tonight as we close this school year I want to express my gratitude to Educators and School staff uh their hard work and dedication Have Been instrumental in shaping a successful school year and I deeply appreciate all that you do if you're watching I also want to extend a thanks to the 2324 cohort of our student board members iush Luna and Lola whose voices have grounded us in our conversations around student perspectives and student needs uh tonight the board will be voting to usher in the 2425 new student board members and we're excited to welcome this new group forward I'm also proud to

003share that 27 of our schools have received State recognition this year for their achievement and this was from the Washington School recognition program this honor highlights the significant strides in closing opportunity gaps uh impressive growth and academic achievement for our students this also is a testament of our hard the hard work and dedication and collaborative efforts of our Educators students families and Community Partners together we are creating an equitable and thriving educational environment for all of our Learners and this group that uh recognized our students or schools rather OSP It's a combination of OPI the State Board of Education and the educational opportunity Gap oversight accountability committee and so 27 of our schools have received that recognition tonight we will also discuss uh budget resolution which represents the culmination of a year-long process with many

004con ations the proposed budget is designed to drive us towards greater sustainability stability and ensuring we can continue to provide high quality education for all of our students we will also discuss our well-resourced schools planning this evening uh we went out and heard from Community families and staff want to understand our planning process and react to our proposals tonight we will share criteria of our decision- making such as budget enroll data building condition assessments program consideration and the community input that we've received simply put we are trying to ensure our student outcomes are met we will take the time and bring the expertise in internally and externally to ensure that is the result we are still grieving and healing from the loss of Amar at Garfield High School and as we look ahead to the

005next school year I want to reiterate our unwavering commitment to Safety and Security in our schools it is a top priority to create safe environments where our students can focus on learning we are expanding plans to include gun violence prevention in our high schools and increase mental health support for all grades $2 million is being allocated to improve School building exteriors and campus security and throughout the summer I will be in conversations with our regional and our building leaders about the needs of their school communities our campus safety also depends on our community reporting safety concerns to our district app and our hotline and I encourage you all to visit our website for more information thank you for your all continued support and partnership and making our schools a safer and nurturing place for our

006students to learn and grow in closing I know we have a full agenda this evening I'm looking forward to a productive conversation thank you all for your commitment and participation and for those of you listen have a wonderful summer thank you so much back to you president Rankin thank you I I want to give a special shout out to one of the schools on that 27 list which was so exciting to to click on that link and see such a a large number of our Seattle Public Schools getting recognition um Wedgewood Elementary the mighty mouths of Wedgwood Elementary are one of the schools on that list and I um happen to have run into a very special special education teacher from Wedgewood and learned that um after some um challenges that we eventually were successful

007in navigating with my son they have identified other students who would benefit from the same type of support that he received and their short hand for it is is named after him in the building so that's just an example of then they were W was recognized for closing gaps um which was really exciting and um you know I don't have as personal connection as to other schools but it's the type of work that exemplifies what we want to support and uplift the most in Seattle Public Schools is when our our Educators and staff recognize that students have different things that they need to be successful and are willing to do what it takes to to provide it to them so that they can be successful and that's that's what that list represents and it's really

008great yeah 27 that's pretty awesome all right um so this is the board comments section of the agenda we do have a lengthy um agenda ahead of us but I want to briefly address some action items that we will be getting to um uh one thing is something we've gotten a few questions about as we close out our current year of board meetings we have to set the regular meeting dates for next year which you'll see is on the consent agenda um state law provides for two types of meetings for for bodies covered by the open open public meetings act which includes school boards um regular meetings and special meetings under our under state law and our policy the full board sets our regular meeting dates which are our regular legislative meetings like this one

009um and that is the dates we are being asked or that um superintendent Jones and I are presenting to be approved tonight special meetings work sessions engagement anything else that's not this uh format this very kind of formalized structure um can be called and set by the board president the full board doesn't need to vote on those we set the regular board meetings first so that we have that kind of foundation for the year um and then we add in more meetings um so we do uh by our um own recommendations from our ad hoc governance committee uh aim to have two full meetings of the board per month but one of those will be a regular board meeting which is this one and the other one will be um work session engagement other types

010of meetings so we just don't have to approve those as a full board ahead of time so I'm uh designating that we're not um we're not going to only meet once a month it's just that that legal definition of a regular board meeting is once a month um and so uh yes so yeah Special meetings can include executive sessions meetings of the audit committee or any other ad hoc committees board Retreats working sessions and engagement that takes place with a quorum of directors um we had two of those just in the last couple weeks for example um our board also participates in uh sessions and opportunities for training and cross state and cross country collaboration with Washington State School Directors Association and the Council of great City Schools so our regular meeting schedule reflects allowance

011for um not overlapping with those things so uh directors I will ask you to continue to hold your Wednesdays open for Schoolboard business for the next year while we work to confirm the rest of our calendaring but the only ones that we're approving tonight are those regular meetings anybody have any questions okay cool I I do is it possible for those of us who need to schedule way in advance for us to get the other dates on the calendar as soon as possible or is there a time frame in which we can say we can commit to getting those additional dates on the calendar yes the the um my uh proposal would be that we um plan out what we want to what we want to do at a retreat in August Instead at least

012through the fall and even forecast into the next year but just we didn't set so we had a really interesting start to the year and and spring um so we didn't set our our targeted work plan that would have extended through December so if we do that then we can add in the dates yeah because what what I'm concerned about for me who is looking for to fill fine child care for these times but also to folks who want to come to these meetings is to have them pop up in an O ad hoc manner or late in the game without a lot of advanced notice you know I if it comes up the month before even sometimes I can't find childcare and I can't be here okay yeah totally understood yeah and I know

013people have work schedules and all kinds of stuff um uh so after our consent agenda tonight we also have several addition action items including selection of our school board members for 2425 do we have them here okay if if they were here here we would have asked some of our um selection committee to to come say a few words if they would like um but uh even though they're not here I can still say thank you so much to the student selection committee um for their work this year in vetting a record 88 applicants which is pretty astounding and exciting um and thank you to all the applicants uh through the depths of the applications it is abundantly clear that we have a lot of talent and leadership in our student body which we already

014knew um so we will uh we will be appointing the student member positions by a formal vote of the board this evening and of course when when they take oath of office in August or August September in August um we will have more time to hear from them and provide that time and recognition but um just for right now it is pretty exciting that they got through process and um I had the opportunity to sort of accidentally meet one of them at one of our board engagements um and uh if there are any indication we have a great a great another group to follow an already great group so thank you so much again to the selection committee um some logistical notes after comments we were going to move down from the dis to the

015U uh for the well resource schools update from the superintendent Tes is scheduled to begin at or after 5: so I will pre-apologize if you're aiming for us to start right at 5: we will not we will never start before the posted time since people might not be here um but uh it's we're going to take the time that we need for the presentation that the board and a lot of the public really wants to see so we may not be able to start right at 5 but thank you for your patience um let's see we have a budget public hearing scheduled for after the regular board meeting um which is an annual thing it's separate from public testimony it's specific to the 2425 school year budget which we have been working through in sessions

016all year um we need to do final approval on that and so we have a hearing prior to that um it gets noticed in a different way than the regular board meetings so that's also we have to pick pick a very specific time not knowing exactly how long the regular board meeting will be so if we get to 8:00 p.m. and we're still in regular board meeting we will recess have the hearing and return to the regular meeting if we uh finish our regular board M Min excuse me regular board business prior to 8:00 pm we will adjourn the regular board meeting and we will not start the budget hearing early we need to start it at 8: p.m as that's when it was legally noticed yes okay um so this the public hearing signups

017are done differently than public testimony um for the public hearing that is strictly limited only to the budget for 2425 and the sign up for that will be available in the back of the room and if you wish to provide remote testimony for that uh there's a link provided on the hearing agenda to sign up in advance but everyone else should sign up on the sheet in the back of the room okay um let's see we have an announcement of some completed audits from our audit chair but as she has yet to join us I will hold on that um do we have any other Le on reports from anybody on the board all right all right well directors we will then uh we will move to the tables then at the front of the

018room now and please take your microphone with you e e not for this section yet the floor is yours whenever you're ready thank thank you president Rankin and board members uh we want to take an opportunity to do a an update uh I know that we had the June 10th meeting postponed due to uh a couple of reasons since that time we've been able to take a step back and look at what do we need to get done for uh making sure that we're in tune with the with the community with our board understanding what what is it that we need to do for uh completing a plan for a system of well resource schools what we heard from the community is that there's an there's more information needed there's a an opportunity to have

019more transparency There's an opportunity to frankly bring our community along to the understanding of what's in front of us and how do we get there to really create a a system of well resource schools is a community effort and we want to make sure that we're taking the appropriate time and care to bring folks along with us and for us to be able to understand what community's wants wishes needs concerns are so as we go forward uh we're endeavoring to make sure that that happens with that said next slide please we want to talk about today what we've done what we've heard in particularly in what we've heard is a need for transparency and Trust we want uh to make sure that we provide information on budget enrollment criteria timeline uh there's been questions about

020instructional models IEP support dual language immersion and option schools there's been questions about class sizes consistency and what's the transition going to look like questions about the Clear Connection to student outcomes and then what are our actions based on what we've heard so that's what we're trying to do tonight and into the next types of uh meetings that we have with you whether they are work sessions or or simply updates like this we want to continue to have these opportunities to to share with you all next slide please so where are we today our process we've we've started the process for research and review we continue to research options to align with our strategic plan and our goals and our guard rails we want to continue to review other District strategies as enrollments continue to

021drop Across the Nation we're not the only ones in this in this predicament and we are thinking about uh what are the best practices what are some of our colleagues in California in Colorado uh in Texas are going through a very similar set of circumstances Community input uh in Fall of 23 we had our well resource School inquiry envisioning to find out what is it that people believe a well-resourced school is and in this spring we've talked to uh our community about well-resourced schools and we've had information sessions and so the scenarios right now we're looking at how are we analyzing the academic opportunities within uh keeping mindful of the enrollment and tendance areas uh the demographic and in integration effects and then the sight classifications and so these are the the steps that we're

022taking currently to really get grounded in what's going to be in our ultimately our plan next slide please beb's going to start to walk you through uh the community feedback and what we're hearing and uh synthesize that for you thank you thank you and good evening to the board and also to our community yes we are going to discuss how we are going through a process of community feedback and then on the other side of that we will connect Ed to how that translates into our academic alignment so as we began yes you certainly see that our community feedback was intended and started almost a year ago we're almost at that point we started in August 2023 with a conversation in our community to talk about shaping the values and the aspirations of our community

023and what is it that our community wants to see in terms of our schools that vision is supposed to be and is the framework work for which we will build a system and a vision for well-resourced schools moving on okay in terms let's go all the way back to August some of this our board has already seen But I want to make sure that it's fresh in our minds as we begin the conversation tonight in Fall 2023 August to October we began the conversation uh and many of you came to our five sessions one of them was virtual the other were others were spread across the regions of our school district and we talked about facilities and learning spaces we also talked about e academic and extracurricular Pursuits and support services and resources for our

024families and for our students and what we began to see and hear is that schools are definitely the hubs of the neighborhood you see some nod there in the first category to Safety and Security which is top of mind for everyone as well as making the library the centerpiece of the school as well as making sure that we had opportunities for student reflection and diversity throughout the school moving into the next category academic and extracurriculars there was a lot of conversation about making sure that we celebrate and really work with our dedicated skilled Educators Arts programs our physical education and extracurricular programming our Arts programming top of mind for parents and then moving over into our support services that there was definitely a cry for mental health resources for our students making sure that our

025special education and advanced learning offerings were top multilingual multilingual learner services Top as well as well as our transportation services so this became our anchor survey our anchor efforts moving on to the next SL live and in the spring we went out to the community to verify what we heard from our families but we specifically went out to our students we put out a district-wide survey to all of our high school students and held some inpo in-person focus groups and what you will see is that we had a great representation from our students around the 500 student participation level but when you drill down into that the number number of students participating of color black students was definitely increased from our in-person sessions that we had before looking in the categories we kept the categories

026the same so that we could compare yes facilities learning spaces academic extracurriculars supports and services for our students still those categories you can see that our students said hey outstanding Library all of the things that our parents said but they began to get it a little deeper and a little more rich and be spefic specific about what they wanted to see such as you know they want interior spaces that are particularly designed for learning as well as for that social interaction with their peers if you go over into the academic and extracurricular spaces um definitely want to see physical education and athletic and Arts and Music programming but they want to see diversity reflected in the curriculum and in their instruction if you're looking at support services and resources all of the things that their

027parents or families wanted to see however they wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity to really address bullying harassment racism across every area of the school they really wanted that particular piece addressed we're going to the next slide we kept the conversation going to verify what we thought we heard and what we learned we also held focus groups with many of our multilingual families they came and sat and said yes all of the things that you saw everything is important to us however we really want to see and desire more Educators and instructional supports to support the academic growth where it is needed most so really targeting our resources and then when it came to support services and resources that making sure that we absolutely had services for our multilingual families and making

028sure that that goes as deeply and richly as it possibly can go moving on to the next slide so that brings us till now just a few weeks ago we began going back into the community to talk about our initial planning for well-resourced schools and we wanted to bring that to the community because they are not necessarily always in our board meetings with us so we took that presentation out to the community and we had four stops including a virtual meeting approximately 1,400 individuals participated across those sessions again the intent was to expose the information that we had always talked to you about and bring that to the community in those information sessions would you please go on the and in those sessions we also offered an opportunity to do a virtual community survey districtwide

029the respondents at the time approximately 1100 individuals responded they were able to leave their thoughts on a particular question as we proceed through our planning and we're considering consolidation what would make the process smoother more Equitable for as for students families and staff again 1100 respondents they put in about a thousand thoughts and those thoughts every person participating was able to go back and rate so almost 30,000 ratings on top of all of that so it was a pretty robust conversation online yeah sorry really quick by ratings do you mean uh respondents raing other people people's thoughts oh okay so like a like a I agree with this kind of thing okay I didn't know what you meant I agree or this doesn't represent yes got it but yeah okay yes thanks not a problem

030would you take me to the next slide please so across that Community information session or those Community Information sessions Dr Jones already started and brought us to some of the things that we've been hearing in order to create more transparency and create that sense of trust that's needed to really invest from a community standpoint in our planning more detail more detail more detail on our budget more detail on enrollment more detail on the criteria that we're using in our planning process and more detail about the timeline again inspiring transparency and Trust we wanted the we want the community to come along with us and not just be around our decisions also the questions Rose regarding what does this look like what does a well resource School look like in action the instructional model dual language

031all of the services that our families are using how does that work in our model and then lastly the class sizes consistency and transition how will it operate how will we get there how will we take care of each other along the way so that really began or the initial findings from our community information sessions we're still working with that data still massaging it and we will have a more full and complete report at a later time but these are the initial types of questions initial pieces of information that our families and those attendees wanted answered if we go on to the next and as I promised how does that connect to the academic vision for well-resourced schools what are we using this information for and that is to make our schools our elementary schools

032that are serving our K5 students how do we make those stronger how do we make that robust where students can Thrive to do that I want to introduce Dr Torres good evening board directors and Community I'm going to provide us I'm going to take a little bit of the information that Chief fredman shared with us just share the eight buckets kind of that those fall into and then I'm going to give two specific examples from those buckets of how would we do this from an academic Lane in Seattle public school so next slide please essentially what we look at here this is a distilled down version of the information that Chief redond just shared with us broken into eight different areas I'm specifically going to talk about the inclusive learning for every student area and

033the social emot social and emotional learning support area and discuss how would this look in action if we were to do this we understand this is what we heard from community that they wanted how does this look in a public school district in Seattle next slide please so one of the things that we work on in Seattle is inclusion and so this very much directly aligns with the inclusive learning for every student um construct in addition to the Social and emotional learning support construct so the way that we work it in the system currently and that we've had some success with that that I will share shortly is through redefining a multi-tiered system of support doing a Universal Design for Learning approach and pushing on restorative practices across the system so essentially we have cohort

034of schools that are going through this process and what they receive is intention intentional coaching and support throughout the year for them for their Educators uh through members down here at the central office we also have support from Novac Consulting education which is an OPI recogniz support for this type of work and through that work we work on getting the inclusionary practices to work across the system there are a few metrics that we look at so if you could go to the next slide please we're going to talk a little about the outcomes that we've seen of this work by being very intentional in the approaches and so if we go back a few years ago one of the things that we were really looking at as a system is how do we get indicator

0355A up and I'm going to do a cliffnotes quick version of what that is when you do special education programming one of the indicators that get that gets looked at is 5A indicator 5A essentially says that students are spending students who receive special education services spending 80 to 100% of their time in general education class rooms this was a big problem of practice for the state of Washington and also for Seattle Public Schools if we remember back at one point we were one of the lowest performing States in this indicator in the United States and us being the largest school district guess what we get to help pull that lever in a different direction and so we put some intentional work behind it that's how some of this came to be but if you look

036back to 2020 2021 we were at 66% and that's when we started putting a big emphasis on this and if you can look you will see that it went up by 3% to in 2122 by another 3% in 2223 which are our preliminary numbers and it looks like we're going to grow the number again by another per in 23 24 and that's just for Seattle Public Schools if you crosswalk this with the state of Washington data you'll also see that they've seen a 2% increase in this indicator so just sharing this as we have heard from community that inclusive learning spaces is a priority for us this is an example of how through intentional work on this construct we can actually get outcomes for for kids the next one is around our Panorama climate data

037this is another data metric that we look at when we talk about inclusion in Seattle public schools and there's what they call the inclusionary practices constructs those are questions that we actually ask our students and say certain things like I can see myself in the curriculum or I have choice in what I'm doing etc etc so since we've started this Initiative for example we started collecting data in the spring of 23 and for our high school students we've seen a 3% increase in one year already and student perception of how they're experiencing inclusion in Seattle Public Schools another example is in our middle schools within a year of do of starting to implement some of this work a 2% increase in our middle school students saying that they feel more included in our schools based

038on these survey data and then I just want to give one school level example but if you were to go to Gatewood Elementary principal Kina Hogue was one of our early adopters she was very much her and her team wanted to be an inclusion school they wanted to push on this so they jumped in right when we started doing some of this work and happened to be one of those schools that Dr Jones just noted earlier today for the 27 schools that are going to receive a state award and their award specifically was for growth for one or more student groups and so just wanted to share examples of how this could work in Seattle public schools in a system of well-resourced schools specifically aligned to what community is saying they want to see and

039how we can get outcomes for kids at the same time so at this point I would like to pass over to chief podesta who's going to give us a little bit more about the budget stability and enrollment numbers thank you Dr Torres and I'm going to Veer a little bit outside my lane and Echo the thanks uh that Chief Redmond gave to people who came to our meetings um our uh uh Community input meetings that we've had uh last month I had really good conversations with many people and we knew we have smart and Discerning constituents for our district but the the great questions they asked us will make any proposal we come forward with a lot better and I just really want to thank um people for again very some of these subjects are

040difficult but all the discussions I engag in were very constructive and um also really helped us think about how we're talking about this so I I just want to um Echo Bev's appreciation for folks participation so um budget and stability the the whole discussion of well resource schools the direction the formal direction that uh staff the superintendent and staff have gotten from the board have all come in the guise of a um fiscal stability resolutions and actions about fiscal stability so we want to um keep track of how these things interrelate if we could go to the next slide um and so uh stability and balance go hand inand and um working on our financial stability is really balance balancing the needs of students versus the resources that we have um and balancing where students

041attend school and how Educational Services are delivered to them what sort of programs and Staffing we have and how those are distributed across the system and then we have great resources in our buildings um we have U millions of square feet of physical plant serving students um and those are great resources they are not inexpensive to maintain or construct and so making sure that we're being judicious in how we use those assets and uh think about right sizing our physical size is really important and and that's really what this a lot of this discussion on the technical side um ends up being if we could go to the next slide um so as we've um faced up to the seriousness of our financial situation we recognize a couple of years AG go really that we

042needed to get into um multi-year budget planning not um trying to solve problems one fiscal year at a time that's why um today before um this body has adopted a 2425 um fiscal year budget we're already talking about 25 26 because we're have to keep considering what our present actions mean in the long run so these are um this pie chart is meant to represent the four Broad categories of strategies we can consider um to fill the projected $94 million operating budget Gap we have for 25 26 um and so working counterclockwise from onetime Solutions um those include things extending the Furlow days that we've had for the central office um uh leveraging budget uh uh reserves and funds that we still have remaining to us year end carry forward we are um since we're

043a tax-free organization um we're eligible for some uh refunds and Credits based on some of our Capital work around Energy Efficiency those are kind of one time attached to those projects so there are a variety of things um that we can do there again that are not necessarily sustainable but will um uh be relevant to that year uh we are heading into a long session um a legislative session and so there are things at play that we estimate it's you know realistic to think about a 10 to2 million enhancement to funding models for special education services perhap uh regionalization of how we can use levies there are a variety of proposals that we think that's realistic and then um we are going to have to look at some other uh non-school reductions on the order

044of5 to10 million um go back there you go that's always the case um uh going another bite of the Apple at um uh savings at the central office departments again on the order of uh5 to10 million uh we need to reduce our transportation costs um the largest single action that we've discussed many times is transitioning to a three- tier bell schedule there are probably other things we can do that's a realistic savings we think we can get from our roughly $50 million Transportation budget but the fact is over the last two fiscal years um we've resolve big problems for the 20 for the current fiscal year that's ending soon we resolved $131 million structural budget deficit for the budget that's being proposed that you all will adopt on July 2nd hopefully um we resolved a

045$105 million gap and then we're projecting uh the $94 million gap for the fiscal year after that in those two years we worked hard to um uh maintain schools as our highest priority and try to Shield reductions from resources that are allocated to schools as best we could we also use special one-time funding for each of those years we liquidate dated our economic stabilization account for the current fiscal year um for the coming fiscal year we've um are taking out an in fund loan um from our Capital reserves which we have temporary authority to do but we're at the point now um where those uh Solutions aren't available to us so we're going to have to look at doing something about the resources that we spend in school buildings if we could go to the

046next slide so we've talked about that this you know creates a decision point for us in terms of how we want to think about how many schools we operate um and it you know in the simplest terms it comes down to um will we make reductions in each School building or will we consider operating fewer school buildings so neither of these is a proposal but it this is a model of um because we've we've already made reductions in non-teaching Parts in school buildings we reduce our custodial Services we red maintenance cost so we're really down to um things that have direct impacts on students um and again right now we're modeling about 30 m $30 million need from um school-based reductions or um uh we could continue to consider school consolidations and transitioning to a

047system of schools elementary schools that each have more resources rather than taking Productions at the resources and um again this board has directed us on a coup couple occasions you need to pursue this strategy and come back with the recommendations so we're working hard on that if we could Advance the slide please and um I'm sorry could we go back one more I want to make uh so some of the great conversations we had in the community input sessions we had last month where people really wanted to get more detail wanted to understand um some of the details behind this it's somewhat dense and doesn't lend itself to being presented in a slide deck so we will attach appendices to this deck that for instance um nobody was satisfied with our answers well how much

048money would you save at each school that you close and we were kept describing a range so we have a data set that will be attached to this um presentation that shows the projected savings for all of the 73 schools that we're talking about that serve and the um categories of savings across the system so we have three data sets that we have four data sets that we're um going to try to supply people attached to this presentation so I'll try to highlight those as I go and that's one um savings per school so now I'm sorry if we could go ahead so uh as I said you know in talking PE we get we've gotten so close to some of this work technically that we don't always appreciate you know people understanding what we're

049saying and how could we make this clearer I think we have an enormous opport to be clear about how um our finances and enroll the interplay between our finances and enrollment because um a lot of folks asked me questions about well if you could um increase your enrollment with that uh solve your financial problems and um um remove the necessity to look at school consolidations and um we would we want to be an educated the education service provider of choice so uh new enrollment is great of course we would love to increase enrollment but just from a purely Financial perspective you know our revenue is allocated by students so it does bring new Revenue but it also brings new costs and ideally we sort of Break Even um and that per student allocation is great

050to cover marginal costs so hiring more teachers more instructional assistants things that are fungible based on how many students that works what doesn't work are managing your fixed costs like keeping a building open things that um you can't easily change if enrollment is down at a particular school so I I just want to kind of dispel the notion that the key part of our financial issue relates to enrollment it um it certainly has a factor if you look at this model if we got 4,900 students back maybe we'd end up 6 million to the good we could end up um in the red depending on where the students go what type of services they need which school they attends so it's it's complicated but it isn't that isn't really the main issue and I um

051the reason we're having the discussion is um how many buildings do we need to serve the students we have the and finances are related to this but it's not as causal as people you know think and it that became really clear to me in having discussions at these meetings that the way we're talking about enrollment and how it affects our finances hasn't been clear we could go one more FR president president Rankin has a question I I mean I I flipped through and made sure yeah can we go back a slide I I didn't see what I'm about to say noted in here so the the other thing I want to say about this is that there are not 49,000 students in Seattle or 4900 students students in Seattle to come back to Seattle Public

052Schools so that's even at I mean not only does it not suddenly solve all of our problems but it's imaginary because I pulled State data on private school enrollment and homeschooling enrollment in Seattle public schools has declined by 8% since the 2018 2019 school year to now enrollment and private schools within the boundaries of the Seattle Public Schools district has also declined 8% over the same amount of time homeschooling has uh peaked or spiked during the pandemic and has returned to pre-pandemic levels according to the state data so that is also just even if 4,900 students would solve the budget deficit which it won't it that's not that's not a reality that can be pursued because those students don't exist right now not to say there aren't more students that we would love to have

053return because we want students in Seattle Public Schools period but we don't want them because they're going to bring us money we want them because we want to educate our students and we think public schools are the best choice for them just to be super duper clear if you know we had a perfect system we'd break even you know that that would be the goal is we serve the students that need our services we're a provider of choice and and a perfect adaptable system you know our finances would balance based on how many students we have but that means you have to be attentive to fixed costs as enrollment goes up and down and buildings are a huge part of our fixed cost and so if we could Advance the slide so enrollment again um

054this's kind of a segue between the budget and enrollment um and we could go one further um our uh enrollment forecast during the pandemic um there uh we had a decline that was faster than we expected we have long um for many many years have forecast this design this decline in enrollment basically looking at birth rates uh in the area and then um maintaining very close ties with uh city planners on um issuance of building permits what sort of housing is expected to come online in the coming few years really helps dictate are we expecting family housing are we expecting lots of students to be living in the district and our um accuracy at the system level of forecasting enrollment is usually within uh less the variance is usually less than 1% you know we

055get surprised at a particular school or we get surprised at a um at a grade band but not across the total enrollment um we have a long track record other than um a lot of variability during covid um of being able to count on our uh forecast right I have a question that I wonder if you can answer because something that I've heard flying around a lot is well the district screwed up in 2009 and closed buildings and they had to reopen them what I have come to understand is that was due to a discrepancy between reporting kindergarteners that at the time full day kindergarten wasn't paid for by the state only half day kindergarten was and so there was actually a mistake in the accounting for for the number of students basically they counted

056half day kindergarteners as5 FTE yeah when it actually was that was a whole a whole kid so they h under undercounted the kindergarten students by half I don't is I don't know Fred if you have more information about that this is me going down a lot of rabbit holes to try to figure out what happened so that we don't repeat the same mistakes I think we have full day kindergarteners now that are P you know we we report kindergarteners to ourselves at the same level that we report them to the state one kindergartner is one kid for the whole day um so I don't think we're going to repeat that mistake um but I also wanted to you know it's really easy to say well look at that screw up without having the that was

057something pretty unusual that yes that was a mistake but I I don't see that being repeated and based on also what we're seeing here that's also sort of um like it would be nice if this wasn't the reality yes but it is I've I am not authoritative I've heard um that scenario described as well um and we are working much harder um to integrate our long range Capital planning and enrollment forecast to make sure um that we uh are really accounting for capacity we're also you know anticipating this and the way State funding Works frankly we're just building bigger buildings than we used to build um and again that incre that leads to efficiencies it leads to better educational environments but our ability to and we'll get into building utilization um to absorb New Growth

058is stronger than it was previously the last time the the district faed this issue so if we could Advance the slides I gu sorry that was a surprise comment on the kindergarteners I would I would love for if through staff records for that to be confirmed or to understand better what what that was yeah there also um I don't expect you to know that off the top of your head but I would like us to special circumstances around that Spike um that you see that we should probably explain as well uh if we could go one more please so um this is what we were just talking about kind of the utilization of our assets and particularly in elementary school um we have more buildings and more capacity than we have students um to the

059tune we use about 2third of the space for our um secondary schools were um much tighter we were operating at 80 to 90% capacity and the and we feel that that's comfortable that still if you're at 85% capacity you have room for growth so it given the population and the forecast population we have for uh Elementary School students um we're operating 73 sites that serve them now think something on the order of 50 would be um uh more uh efficient in terms of at the S system level there are other things we could think about the Beyond just that it's inefficient to only use 2/3 of um your paying for 100% of the space and you're using 2third of it are there huge swings in enrollment at schools and different capacities in buildings um we

060could realign our uh attendance areas to mitigate some of those impacts at um lesser resource schools so at least it's more balanced across the system again we have constraints based on the different capacities of buildings and that wouldn't really create efficiencies at the system level but at least it would mitigate some of the inequities we have and how we're allocating resources now again the um option we're uh thinking hard about now and will'll bring a recommendation is about consolidating sites to maximize utilization efficiency in buildings and get to on the order of 80 to 85% capacity utilization is is where we think a good planning um Target leaves us and then also gives us a room for Fairly significant growth um without reopening buildings we could Advance the slides please so um what we really

061need to think about is so which buildings would we invest in if we think that a system of roughly 50 schools would better serve k35 students than the 73 were operating how do you decide and again which which are the best platforms for investment at the building level so there are four um criteria that we're really focusing on uh the build condition um speaks to you know what is the condition of the system um we do this on a regular basis this is how we plan our levies we hire um outside Consultants uh of the cison group is helping us currently for the next Levy that they um uh visit all our buildings they inspect all our Building Systems roofs uh HVAC systems Windows um mechanical systems which boilers are going to fail to get

062a score um for each building they also help us working with our Architects and our educational specifications um give a score to how does building serve as a learning environment so building condition is about kind of the shape of the building the the condition literally you know is it in good repair or not learning environment is about the design of the building and how it's laid out does it offer spaces for partners for early learning does it distribute spaces for all the services and inclusion practices that we want to have is it designed well to meet that need and then capacity again if we're think um we believe that you know the bottom end of our elementary school capacity be on the order of 400 students to something greater than that so could a building

063ever accommodate um the sufficient enrollment to make sure that a sufficient allocation of resources came with it um is a obviously very serious consideration and then location um we need the Stu the buildings to be where the students are we need them evenly distributed across our district and we can't exacerbate travel times um for students to you know to get to uh whatever the new system is so those are kind of the four parameters there's some examples here um if we could Advance the slide so just mechanically how this works um we uh again with suzan Environmental Services who began this Workforce in 20222 we're planning for the next Levy they score all our buildings on a scale of 1 to 100 this is another data set that's will be available as an appendix to

064this um presentation that will provide the uh building condition um for every building that we're talking about so people can see how that's scored if we could Advance the slide and then in a similar fashion we rate the adequacy of the design and the layout of the building um to meet our standards to provide education Services that's also in that same data set and then um the third uh piece of information at the building level is the um capacity so um so folks can and that's what we really heard at the community input session and is people really wanted to see the work behind the work and and how we're how we're making decisions about which again which buildings preent present the best opportunities um for us so um I think then we take it

065back to Dr Jones I I'll take it thank you so we started down this path of uh finding a methodology for balancing our budget and one of those uh items was school consolidation then as we got into it we saw this as an opportunity to really bring program and service stabilization to the entire uh system now we're at a place where we need to think about where we find those efficiencies where we find savings how do we reinvest them into our system so that we can have the student outcomes that we're that we all desire so we've gone from a budget exercise to a stabilization exercise to how do we make our system such that it's going to yield outcomes for students and so as we as we next slide please as we look at

066the next steps we need to explore multiple scenarios understanding the the mix between all of our program offerings all of our service delivery models and in so doing we need to look at uh uh academic impact assessment so how do we make sure that we're aligned with student outcomes how do we how do we make sure that our strategies are enduring uh to do this uh we need to use outside expertise to review and validate to support us to provide analysis along the way and to find opportunities that we may not be able to see because we may be too close to it we also need to make sure that we're further developing our comprehensive logistical plan uh the the detail around implementation is is is uh critical for us to be able to have

067our arms around uh and frankly we don't have experience with doing this on a on a off regular basis most districts don't and so we want to make sure that we're taking the time to be detailed oriented around implementation and as we do this uh as we we talked about we want to clearly communicate along the way and find ways to build trust and confidence with uh with our constituents here because I think that's important as we move forward uh next slide please so our summer imperative our mission is to develop a plan that demonstrates the benefits to student outcomes from a system of well resource schools uh if I can't if I can't say it any planer than this this is what we need to be be endeavoring to do over the summer make

068that connection from where we are right now to this system of well resource schools and lead with the what the benefits are uh that is a a a very difficult task but it is a task that's in front of us uh that's why I mentioned we're willing to uh utilize uh outside expertise to help us through this we're willing to uh talk with community and engage them in ways that we can understand what their wants which and needs are so that we can make sure that we actually develop a system uh of well resourced schools and so I won't beer away from talking about the the word system because it's not a singular well resource school it's a system of well resource schools so doct Torres gave you an example of how that might look

069for inclusion he gave an example how that might look for social emotional learning but if you think about an expanded out uh portfolio if you will of plans for how do we get from where we are now now to the system of well resource schools and actualized student outcomes that's what we would Endeavor to bring forward as a uh a recommended plan so that's that's our that's our goal that's where we're going and so that's an update for for where we are I'm hoping you find this to be uh informative um and think about us doing this on a regular basis having having these updates not just with with the board but with the community as well so uh at this point I'd love to just open it up to the board for uh your

070comments questions concerns uh what are you curious about uh what do you need what would you like more information on uh and did this meet your meet your expectation who would like to go first directors director hery [Music] so I'm really excited to um see that last slide there because I think that that frankly is the most critical part and I think that what we are in a position to do that we have not been in before is to balance the very real need to operate in an efficient way but to reorient ourselves well not even reorient but now that we have done that work it's really I would say a good look for me to see that the work over the summer is going to be focused on like how do we make these

071changes in order to impact student outcomes in a positive way because those are the conversations that I've been having with families um I think that it's hard to Envision what is the benefit to me if my kid's school closes right to have we've been going back and forth about this definition of like what a well resource school is and like libraries are critically important having teachers on site at fulltime critically important um being able to have more resources in a building critically important but the specificity in how that actually translates to a better educational outcome for a child is a step that I'm really excited for us to take in terms of our development in terms of a plan and how we communicate that to our families and so just in terms of specifics that

072I am hoping will be implemented into the plan we really have a very clear road map in our goals and guard rails right the questions that I'm going to be looking for and asking as a board director quite specifically given that this is a move that is going to that is going to exclusively impact elementary schools and we have two goals that are predicated on elementary school performance being third grade literacy and seventh grade numeracy we all know that in order to be successful in seventh grade you need to also be successful in build skills with yeah seventh grade um you also need to build those SKS from K to 5 what I'm really going to be looking for is what is your plan for the reinvestment of the money that you intend to save

073longitudinally what are those options going to be to us because we've said several times that even if we close buildings tomorrow that doesn't necessarily mean that we are going to be seeing a kickback immediately I also think that that is fine but what I do need to know is that there is a plan in place now to show how those in how those outcomes are going to be better I want to know how inclusion is going to be impacted by having less buildings I want to know about like what is the rate of um implementing curriculum with Fidelity potentially I think another piece of that is also going to be how does this keep us better aligned with our guard rails specifically the one around safe and welcoming environments and being able to engage families

074of color more efficiently right I think that that those are really clear uh aspects of um our strategic plan that we are currently in the midst of retooling um that would give us as a board a lot of clarity about where you're headed and the fact that it aligns with the vision and values of the community I think that's also incredibly critical because all of the engagement that we have been doing around our strategic plan has really like hearkened back to a sense of doubling down on what we're already doing with the ability to expand in some areas that I think are probably well served by having a more efficient system and a better resource system in terms of how do we um roll um resources out to specific buildings so I am just saying

075to crystallize all that utilize our goals and our guardrails and our strategic plan and give us some real specifics around how does this actually put us into a position to better deliver on student outcomes in a way that is Meaningful for our family and more importantly our students so I need to follow him go ahead um somebody else has a microphone on okay because I don't like that noise who has it on was it no it's better now um so Brandon essentially articulated what I was thinking during the presentation um um but because there was so much information I was actually trying to absorb it and at some point I gave up and I floated to the audience and I kept looking at you and I sat by you and I was doing thought bubbles

076like do you understand this no no me neither um so I was really like being a parent right and I will take this information and I will look more deeply at it but I think when we get to the end of the road what we need is specifics right I think um what you all did was provide us with literally the the the maximum amount of information that we will likely need but it's hard to digest in a setting like this um and it it's moving fast so when we talk about doing these kind of presentations in the future we need spefic specifics like what is how does this actually translate to student outcomes not sort of a theoretical it's really a specific and I think for our community when I say our community I

077mean the parents they need to walk out of here and go tell their neighbor who has kids man the district knocked that mess out of the park right I fully understood what was happening in that meeting because they're either our ambassadors or the other thing and I want them to be our ambassadors this should be at a level we're we were elected by a representation of the people but we're also parents right we're humans and so I want to be a parent in the audience that actually understands what you're saying and that I don't have to have a manual to understand it so when you do this again and this is not a criticism I I really do feel like we needed this information but then the next time you bring us something it really

078needs to be specific so like Dr Torres when you talk about inclusion how does that connect to third grade reading or seventh grade math right there has to be some connection or this is just a performative exercise right and then Brandon said you know using the goals and the guard rails and for the parents and the um in the audience we are actually trying to move in a direction where we're paying attention to all the students and that you don't have to live in a community where you can raise thousands of dollars in an auction and buy yourself and your children something we want the same thing for all of our kids regardless of who their parents are car caregivers are right and so that's how we get there we we get there by focusing

079on student outcomes and I know this can be difficult for for parents because it's new it's really how it should have always been and it's actually how it's never been and so we're trying to change that because outcomes are not getting better for students some students particularly the most marginalized students we're just like yeah well you know you should have chose different parents not our fault you chose those parents we can't do anything about it well yes we can and we will for being a thought bubble with me you to follow up yeah um there's one aspect of this that the last time that we saw slide 24 I don't know if we want to put that back up that gave me a bit of pause and concern and I want to follow that up

080a little bit so I have a question in this slide it says that K5 students would be more efficiently accommodated in approximately 50 sites evenly distributed with 10 per region what do you mean by region do you mean director District no that would be S wait one second let me let them answer so there there are a map of regions on our website there um uh the regions that the management of schools uses we have five executive director are that um uh Northwest Northeast Central Southwest Southeast great so they and they nobody would be surprised if they saw that map if you said oh if you divide the city kind of evenly into five sectors North West Northeast Central Southwest sou East yep you would picture the map that exists 100% And so um that's

081just a way of saying that well how do you approach this that needs to be evenly distributed just as important are the Middle School feeder patterns we need to do this so um we have the capacity at middle school as well so it's a way of saying this needs to be evenly distributed yeah that's all clear yeah and um and again the actual location in the travel times will be analyzed that nobody can get too far away we can't make this work by um students being too far away from school so that's just built into this dope another question that I have around that is that are the um population metrics that we use to determine those regions are those determined by general population of the city or they determined by student population like how

082many students attend school in that region they're more tied to enrollment okay and then again um Seattle Public Schools board policy and other Investments who make we always look at you know what are going to what are the demographic impacts and the you know re uh envisioning our elementary school system can't um create or exacerbate any um uh uh segregation any any form of racial imbalance that doesn't reflect the local communi that that's also uh will be an important criteria yeah the reason that I asked that question just to explain my line of thinking and why I want to make sure that I'm super clear on this is the fact that like with those regions there are opportunities for growth and there's opportunity for attrition and I want to make sure that the balance of

083student population in each region to justify the fact that each region would have about 10 elementary schools actually make sense right because when I think about the southeast and where folks are buying homes the growth that takes place in the southwest part of the city in the southeast part of the city in my experience is happening at a more rapid Pace than we're seeing in other parts of the city so with that being said if we are equalizing what it sounds like to 10 schools per region I want to make sure that we're also being thoughtful with the idea that the vast majority of students of color are located in my region of the city right as well as the vast majority of folks in my knowledge and correct me if I'm wrong that of

084folks that are moving here and purchasing homes homes and where there is higher density or rather where there are higher density uh living opportunities being built so with that said I have concern that we are approaching this from a nature of Equalization as opposed to equity and I want you to prove me wrong in that when you bring me the plan in September does that make sense absolutely um one of the building characteristics I described was capacity and and capacity versus enrollment we are using the 10 we're using our enrollment projections to model this and the 10 year high water marketting building so that will take into account those factors because our projection is BU based on projected birth rates and housing starts housing permitting so this is probably inartfully um drafted here it should

085say average 10 per region sure every kind of model that we've looked at so far you know it's 9 here and 12 there it and because it needs to be tied to where we have capacity and where we're expecting enrollment to grow so do you would absolutely see that built into any proposal that sounds great thank you the last question that I have is around our Equity tiering system that has been something that's been floating out in community for a minute and I want to have some clear understanding of the fact like can you articulate for me are we utilizing our Equity teering system in this process or are we developing an equity analysis that is more unique to this process I think unless we make a very clear distinction about what tools we're utilizing

086it puts us into a position to confuse community and like put people into a stance of asking us why isn't this tool being utilized if we already have it so that could be circumvented by just being really clear about what internal tools are we utilizing to make these decisions and that's okay to not to like provide more information on at a different time will absolutely be built into um the any recommendation I also think it's important um to hit on the points that Dr Jones cited is we're trying to move to a better system so we want to make sure that analysis is it um are we being Equitable and who gets these new better resource schools that be and it it's only natural that people tend to think of this from the school closure

087perspective is there inequity in which schools are closing if we make this case appropriately this all makes sense um the question should be who gets into these better resource schools it it so the that's the opportunity and and so it you've advised us um a few times director hery don't be deficit based and you're thinking you know be asset based and we're moving to something better so that Equity analysis will be geared into so where are we consolidating into these schools with better resources and what is the Tie to the educational outcomes who's getting this opportunity director Mahi yeah I have a few questions some I think are a little on the technical side and then some about the process so um when you were talking about the criteria one of the things you mentioned

088was learning environment and that seemed like the most qualitative where the other ones are pretty clearly quantitative like you can say what's the capacity of this building so I'm wondering you talked about engaging with some outside Specialists on the um on the building condition questions what what's the process for that learning environment analysis so the district has designed what are called educational specifications for each type of school you know what is you know how many um rooms how many learning spaces maker spaces Labs um Early Learning spaces and so um the point of that scoring is how well does this building conform to um you know how much outside space how much uh spaces for each U Learning it is not it is not a objective or subjective with a blank canvas we we have

089a specification that's also what guides how we build new buildings um um do they have the spaces to offer it all the supports um uh and and so that there is a yard stick that gets measured against and that is our um our educational specification that we renew uh on a regular basis and renew every time we build a new building so we can and those documents are available that's kind of thing people can look at that what do we think the ideal school should look like and how does this building how far off from it is that is that okay I understand um well that leads me to my next question you talked about um you know additional data and at appendices where do people go to find that so could we go to

090the last slide in this deck so um the check will be a little bit in the mail so there are four appendices that aren't attached yet to this deck but will be and reposted so people can go um and and again um those will there will be a report that shows for each building that under consideration what the building condition score what the learning environment score and what the capacity is um how we calculated projected savings for each building and then um our most recent uh our enrollment from the fall 2023 a lot of this can be put in context in the budget book which um we're about to adopt a budget so people see how these things factor out at each building so um we will add these appendices to this so people can

091go to this agenda and this deck and get those documents will be appended on this so my last technical question then I have some processed questions so on um on slide 18 Dr Torres what you were talking about um I just want to Echo what my fellow director said around I think that's a very helpful metric to look at and I think as we go through this process having things like that where it's both linked to the student outcome goals but then also there's a good not oh not 18 maybe 19 um the one with indicator 5A on it yep I think that's very helpful and seeing how that how that applies to the student outcome goals and then the next step is how do we think that will be improved by the system of

092well resource schools like what's the vision for that and and how do we think it's going to move the needle on this and I'm sure there's a lots of other metrics we can be looking at for that so in terms of process uh I'm I'm curious you don't have to have like dates or anything but what in your mind just to expand a little bit on what the summer looks like to actually you know go through that process of getting to a a plan that you want to bring forward and what the engagement will look like with the community yes so we talked about um making sure that we Avail ourselves to uh outside expertise um part of that will be them kind of taking a an analysis of where we are right now and

093uh giving us feedback around how far are we from being able to get to the finish line and so we want to have uh check-ins at least with our status along the way we're thinking something like monthly uh as we go forward but in terms of our our our deadline we're talking about uh sometime in late November to actually bring the plan forward and so we haven't um backed up from from November and said these are our our our marks yet but part of that is uh again the the third party expertise to help us to scope this out to make sure that we're uh We've hit hit all of our marks so timeline is forthcoming got it I think one thing that's going to be important in how I think about is the time

094period between when the recommendation comes forward and November and thinking about you know ideally there there's there's lots of feedback you've already had lots of feedback and you come forward with a plan that everyone says wow you you you nailed it like you got it right we feel great about this but realistically there there are going to be things in there that maybe it's things even that are just about the transition and implementation where people want to say well what about this and what about that and and where the time period is for that feedback to be incorporated in the planet I think is super important to me one thing that we've ideated is having uh specific workshops it's like workshops on learning environment workshops on maybe what Dr Torres talked about and so we

095we don't bring to to director sju's point we don't bring the whole thing to the table instead we chunk it out in ways that when people have areas of Interest where they want to go deeper we can have a workshop on that and so to to the extent that we can feel that time between when we're working and when the plan comes forward I think there's opportunities for us to really kind of expose different pieces of of the puzzle as we go through it um to add to that quickly and then I'll go to director top I really like hearing you say that because I think that's what we've sort of been talking around and maybe thinking we've been asking for and definitely what we've been hearing from our community is that they nobody expects

096a perfect with the bow on it finished plan we actually don't want that we want to see how you're we want to see what the decisions are and what what the trade-offs are and how we get to that final plan kind of together so the workshop thing is is great I think that's important for you know um uh nobody wants this done to them or at them um not that you have to have you know flock of community members following you and all the behind the stuff but this is a really big involved complicated this is basically anything and everything that has to do with Public Schools there's going to be nobody who's not impacted by this even if they don't have kids in public schools traffic patterns are going to change their neighbors are

097be going different places and so the the the more that we can kind of you know I think of it as like a a set design process you talk about what story you're trying to tell you go into a little bit of work by yourself then you come back with the team you kind of compare notes see if you're heading in the same direction you go back off and do some more work again then you come back and you keep doing that you know sketching whatever and on and on and on and eventually you get to opening night but opening night should not be a surprise to anybody who's been part of the process they they have been brought along and they understand what the story is I think that's the part we're not sitting

098here waiting for the curtains to open on opening night we're we we and um community members want to be part of not every tiny little thing but to just understand you know as as there are different opportunities and different choices to be made what they are and how they're being made and and where they might have the opportunity to provide input or feedback at those points um so that when we get to opening night everybody can appla yes and so we're we're looking forward to getting to opening night as well on on that last uh bullet here around clearly communic Comm unicate along the way and find ways to build trust and confidence one of the features of that is going to be and it's this is this is frankly scary for us we're going

099to articulate when we're struggling we're going to articulate when there's a mismatch we're going to articulate when uh we don't have the information and so we will do that along the way so that there's not going to be a surprise so if if the opening night is supposed to be in November and we can't get there you're not going to know that on October 31st first you're going to know that in in advance and so we want to be sharing along the way uh we don't have a a history of of doing that but you know this this group is willing to willing to do that and it it may evoke some a little bit of lack of confidence like what the what they don't know what they're doing well yeah we don't right now

100because we don't have a history of doing this and so I think it would behoove all of us and perhaps build trust and confidence that we can articulate the gaps along the way that we can do formative assessment along the way to know yes we these are areas where we don't have it we don't have it nailed we can't make that Nexus between third grade reading and uh prek at every school but maybe but once we nail that we're going to articulate that you know we think that is a actual uh a strategy that we want to lift up so anyway just want to be be transparent around we're going to be sharing along the way around what the challenges are and where the wins are director Tom I just want to understand a little

101bit of clarity on the timeline so no late November is when you imagine our preliminary proposal comes out from you all is that correct so so I'm GNA put president Rankin on the spot um this is this is what we've been talking about as the ideal date for when we bring that that preliminary uh set of recommendations for I think the pr sorry where we tell people this is what this is this is the plan in late November so we're talking about fall for uh sometime in fall uh maybe mid September for the preliminary plan and then late November for this is where people are going to be moving okay so so well so what we have talked about and I can get sort of Thumbs Up down right now is that the absolute latest

102anyone should know which schools will or won't be open in the fall of 2025 is before winter break that's my I feel like later than that is so I guess yeah yes I agree with that but I think my question becomes more the so preliminary plan possibly in September and opportunity then for engagement on that preliminary plan between September and when winter break of yes that's the that is the that's the timeline that's the if if we're trying for before winter break that that would be the engagement period And so but it's not the preliminary plan it would be November is the plan presentation that that's correct and I think what director top is asking about is the time between the preliminary plan and the actual voted on plan and so that period in between

103is the time if we stick with this timeline is where we would be doing uh where we'd be seeking the feedback and input and so that's that's fast and uh that's something that we have to just accept as uh if that's the timeline that's what that's what it will entail so it'll be compacted and it'll be intense it yeah that's that's very compacted and intense and we kind of look at our previous engagement session that we just went through and we realized all of a sudden oh my goodness there's so much incoming feedback and and information from folks we need more time to sort it out is this is that going to be enough time to be able to allow people to react and engage and provide input that that is a challenge and and

104we just went through that um between May 8th and uh just recently and so that was a compacted timeline uh people didn't feel heard people didn't feel like we provided enough information so we need to go into this clear eye about what those what those challenges are so that's that is that's a real uh timeline constraint that we have as of today how are how are we going to knowing that is an even more compacted timeline go into that and and be prepared for that what does that look like I think that's some more discussion around what what the what the scope of what we're trying to do is and so I think we can back back as long as we know what our delivery date is then we'll have to be we'll have to

105be very clear about what a compacted timeline will be so if we want to have it go out further to have more Pro uh more prolonged engagement that's that could be necessary then we need to do that but I think that's a uh an intentional decision that we need to that we need to look at and I and I'm seeking guidance and I'm open to uh what what you all would want to do with that I guess the question really is do you think it's feasible to do engagement in that short time right just given our recent experience uh we have to manage expectations in a way that it's so clear um because we had a mismatch in expectations when we went out for this last time and so we we need to we need

106to be absolutely clear about what what we can achieve and and what aspects of the plan we will be seeking input and feedback and engagement on and so I think as long as we know that in terms of expectation and scope uh I we can craft a timeline that that will work I think there a question that we need we need further to to talk about I think I think yes I think further talking about that question and really looking into that timeline is important because I don't want to set ourselves up for failure here and I guess be sort of in this same same spot we are in today realizing we need more time yeah we share that uh director hery has a followup yeah so in followup to that I would just say

107you need to be super clear with what the engagement is because I think that the definition of Engagement is going to be very different for everybody right because like you might say hey we've got this preliminary plan come tell us what you think and where we fall into a problem is that the thing is baked and we're not really actually intending on making any changes so I think we need to be super clear going into whatever the engagement is that you are conducting after that portion about like what is up for discussion and what's not right because the last thing that I would want to put our families into a position is to come to uh an event of some kind to provide feedback thinking that it's going to be implemented and it's just not

108feasible to do so so that's part one part two which is pseudo uh which is slightly unrelated is that I've got like some major concerns about our system's capacity to do a wholesale closure approach model um so what I want to see in the plan is a justification for not going with a phased approach where we are being considerate of you know there are some parts of our city that might take more time to be able to like weather this change effectively and given the fact that we have made a tremendous amount of cuts to office there are going to be administrative challenges to doing this right so I want to know what is the benefit of doing this all at once as opposed to a multi-year phased approach in terms of consolidating schools there's

109your engag well and I would add to that that that doesn't mean we can't have the full picture at once but it does also doesn't mean it's a flip of a switch we could know this is where we're headed and because this building is going to re be re rebuilt but we're still going to use it in the next 10 years instead of sending them to an interim location we'll combine you know we'll have students attend this school that we're not planning to use but we'll wait two years and then they can all go to the what you know whatever that may may be we don't have here oh my gosh okay um I am feeling really like a like I have a insane sense of urgency that I'm trying to keep at Bay because

110it doesn't feel matched so I'm trying to um what oh I oh okay I I mean in 20 when when I was first running for Schoolboard in 2019 I knew what the enrollment projection was I assumed this would be a conversation I would have to be a part of on the board 5 years ago and and then Co happened and even when Co happened I was like quick while everybody's home close some buildings like just do it now cuz seeing the forecast that we're going to be in a in a bad spot like this is not this is not a surprise we've known this is coming so I have this real sense of urgency and I am um I want a lot more information right now I'm wondering what is keeping us from being more

111clear about the very real constrictions that exist we know that some buildings are not in great condition that's a like like that's a known we know that um enrollment or uh population density doesn't look the same all over the city um we know that if we don't know what's happening before winter break that that's really too late to tell people what's happening in the fall of 2025 so if we get to that point and we haven't figured it out how do we make up that other $3 million if we don't so I I have concerns that we're still sort of talking in the theoretical when the board has already agreed that consolidation is a necessary component of stabilizing our budget to meet the needs of our students at current enrollment and projected enroll levels so

112I just kind of want to say again I don't we are not still we need to get out of the if place and if we're if we're because there's not another option um and into the how is this going to work place I think we're still when people talk about transparency they mean they don't understand what's happening they don't mean that they don't understand the like our meetings are public they're transparent ton of this information is somewhere on our website so it's it's transparent but either people can't find it or they don't even know what they're looking for or if they find a piece of it they're not sure how it connects so it just is totally overwhelming and confusing and and I think the people in this room need to be much more direct

113about the fact that some Bill building I can name I can name you right now the top five worst conditioned Elementary buildings and one of them is a K8 so my question is if that building is not good enough condition what's happening to that K8 that I we got to figure that out we we have to talk about it and I'm still we it still feels very theoretical um so I have a lot of concerns about that at this point um in the because I I think and I'm wondering too where have maybe we as the board not been direct enough or clear enough um in in in asking for where we are because I I I know this information exists because I found it on our website in my own spreadsheets about what I

114think you know but I also people shouldn't have to know as much as I know to be able to understand what might or might not happen we should be telling them we should be saying hey here's the reality of how enrollment has declined of buildings that have opened over the past 10 years while enrollment was declining because we added SPS added capacity in um the North End in option seats added new capacity while enrollment was projected to decline and that's you know I don't I would like to know about how we could maybe think about not repeating that in the future um but also we don't have a we can't undo that so we have to figure out how to deal with Wedgewood and Viewridge being 70 year-old neighborhood schools that are both about in

115need of replacement with thoron Creek as the crow flies basically right in between the two of them that was added capacity and we don't have enough kids for all three of them that shouldn't be scary to say because if you look at enrollment and you look at building conditions you know that so we need to just say those things and then talk about okay now what are we going to do because the reality is we have accepted that we need we have fewer students than we used to and we need to serve them in fewer buildings our district has the operational capacity right now for over 60,000 students and we have 49,000 students and it's projected to continue to decline that's that is reality and we can not like it I don't like it I

116don't want this is not what I want to be talking about but but uh dodging around the wh ifs and whatevers are not going to get us away from that reality that has to be reckoned with so I guess I with the appendices I'm requesting that added to that for people to look at are enrollment projection reports that we have have had done by two outside entities already the flow analytics analysis from um February 2023 I think that was presented to the beex levy oversight committee and then the I can't remember the guys name but the outside guy who used to be SPS tomographer and it's all over the place thank you um in March 2024 which I I happened upon on accident on the SPs website when I was looking for something else and

117I was like oh here's a whole another presentation about enrollment projections that just came out in March so those are and like I found it by accident I would like us to deliberately say hey look at this so um I would like to have please those added to the appendices um I would like to see our um Beck Levy guiding principles added to that appendices so it's easy to find as an understanding of direction that has been given and approved by the board already on the use of buildings and when we adopted those principles we knew that enrollment capacity was something that would be coming even though we hadn't gotten to the point of like that has to happen but that's in the principles to pay attention to adequacy and you know really think about

118making Capital investments in ways that improve opportunities for all students um including replacement buildings because something that's going to come up very quickly is the capital Levy which is going to go out to voters in February 2025 and we're going to have to before we get there people are going to need to understand that there is a budget deficit and we have a whole bunch of more money coming in because we're we're we're very fortunate to have the ability to raise the capital funding in Seattle and in a lot of King County other districts are not so fortunate but we can't convert that to operational costs operational funding but we have to be very clear when we go out and ask voters to give us Capital Money when we've just said how many schools are

119going to close that's you know so when people are talking about transparency I don't think that they mean that there's secrecy I think they mean we don't understand what's going on because we don't work in central office and so H how how do we help people understand and when we talk about engagement too um being very clear about if we're saying here's the reality what do you have to say about that if we're asking for input or involvement um because it's also it's not going to do anybody any good to engage on likes and dislikes about things that maybe are not actually a choice because of the reality of the finances and so we just really I just really want um and if if you need more clear direction from us I also the where

120do students live maps on our enrollment website we have pretty good descriptions of like Brandon was talking about you know 10 schools being equally distributed we have a higher density of um people under the age of 18 living in southeast we also have the top five um poorest building conditions for K5 students currently the worst ones are in the north end but the Southeast has the highest number of buildings that are approaching that and so we can't just say well those are poor building conditions those are the ones that are going to get closed because that means all of a sudden district 7 doesn't like that so but those are things that are real that we just need to State and explain and help people understand what the scope of what this is I would

121really like us just get out of the theoretical to the to the actual as quickly as possible um and so so having these things in the appendices is great even better and this is as a staffing suggestion I'm so sorry but is a is a school consolidation or right sizing website that is designed to be accessible to the average Community member to just to not have to look through like this is a lot even the appendices that' be great to have those in one place that's still a lot of information and a lot of documents to look through we need to be able to just say why is this happening how did we get here what's happening going forward and then um we really need that timeline of what kind of Engagement is happening when

122like the workshop things that Fred was talking about or or Dr Jones sorry was great I think those could and should happen over the summer but also knowing that that's not when people are the most engaged um I don't think we need to wait until there's a preliminary plan to ask people about it my expectation as a board member is that a preliminary plan comes with and this is what the people that we that are served in our district like we we have done some engagement already and this that helped inform the recommendations that we're making to you um yeah timeline uh understandability not just transparency I guess and then I would like to see a lot more clarity about the limitations oh and then lastly I think what families really want to know is

123even if they're like I understand that we have to do this for a well resourced school they want to know what does that mean how big is my kids's class going to be what what does Staffing look like in the building even if we we we are not going to know 100% but like a good kind of prototypical expectation um there's also a confusion that class sizes are going like classes are going to be larger in a larger school and so how we can help folks understand like Brandon was saying what's the experience that my child is going to have at at this school as opposed to to the school ring currently what will that look like and that's what I want to understand that when we approve Something That We're approving something that pencils

124out that is not uh um aspirational I have director Briggs hi everyone um sorry I was late um I I think I said this last time and I'm going to say it again I would I would still really love to see how this plan is going to impact secondary education because um I think that's an important part of the story to tell that um that while this is really focused on Elementary and um and they will be the the impact will be greatest for them there is a ripple effect and I think a positive one on um on creating a more efficient system and what that can do for our middle and high schools as well and so I'm not so far I haven't seen anything about that and and I think that's that's um

125it's a missed opportunity because we you know I think that that's sort of an added that's a bonus um that's a that's a benefit to creating a system of well resource schools is that we will um free up more resource ources for middle and high schools that have been bearing the brunt to some degree of um an inefficient system so I just would hope that um you know before this presentation is complete that we could have at least a high level um idea of of what that looks like potential negative consequences like you mentioned feeder pattern I'm curious how that all gets impacted as well yeah I I will say one thing I think that you know the direction I think is that we gave was to come back with a plan to show us

126how to how we can best use our resources to get better student outcomes or to get student out to get the student outcomes we want um I have bought into the idea that closing schools will allow us to do that and to get additional benefit but as you go through this summer planning and and you see and and maybe the analysis shows that that's not the case I I want there to be space that you come back with that response to because we've put a lot on you to come and show us that but the you may come back and say we tried we did this analysis and here's where we're at and I think you need to have the space to be able to say that as well the thought bubble um this is

127a lot and um you know this whole setup doesn't allow for us to engage with the people and I tend not to follow the rules and so I I'm going to speak to the people for a minute because this is a lot it's a lot for us up here like our elected official status we don't have special brains that allow us to like comprehend all of this stuff at the same time and make sense of it um the central staff this particularly the senior level staff I'm 100 99.99% cuz can we NE ever be 100% sure that they are doing their level best to try to Grapple with this even in sometimes when it feels like wow that's that's not what I thought we were going to get and so as we cuz we're trying

128to get this right y'all at the end of the day we're just trying to get this right we are going to have to consolidate schools this is my fourth I was trying to count them experience as a parent in this district for almost 40 Years of a some kind of school closure or consolidation was I happy with any of them no I I wasn't because it actually impacted kids in my neighborhood and yet it still happened and here we are again and what we're actually trying to do this time is prepare for a future that we know based on data is coming it's coming unless we get rid of birth control the birth rate is going down I'm in public health we have been seeing this right like that would be the solution if we

129want more kids let's just eliminate birth control right I'm not advocating for that affordable housing affordable housing that's true and birth control I'm all for birth control though as a midwife um but so as I as I sit here I'm just I'm grapp I think what I'm grappling with is just the volume of information and trying to make sense of it and so what we're asking you is is there a different way to prevent to present more simplified information that is specific and clear to the people in the audience right like if we think about who is our audience yes we as board director dors you're talking to us you're not necessarily talking to them but I don't think anybody wants to come back and sit and experience this again and not and leave and

130not really know what we're saying so for the record I think on that page where you have next steps like when you say explore multiple scenarios EG k8s option schools dual language and highly capable that's a really general statement I think what you're saying is that we may have to eliminate k8s and if that's what we're saying then let's use that clear language parents may not like it they can come yell at me sorry had to do it my kids you know I mean it's this is not about being likable parents want to know right and why would we eliminate k8s like what is the rationale why is that good for our system that's what they want to know and so when you the bottom bullet is clear clearly communicate along the way that should

131be the top bullet because if that's the top bullet then everything that comes after that you're asking yourself are we clearly communicating along the way you shouldn't have to have a master's or a PhD to understand this and that's kind of what it feels like I don't want to go back to school right like I want to be able to understand it in clear and plain and simple language and what I think is even though people may not like what they're hearing I think the majority of people are going to understand okay I don't like this but I understand this is what we have to do right this is a life lesson when we tell our kids you got to do something and they say I don't want to well you don't have a choice

132Z you got to do it do it first and then we can talk about why I asked you to do it later but the first thing is you got to do it first right and I think that's what parents want right ultimately nobody wants their school closed if we're being honest nobody wants their school closed and at the end of the day we're going to have to close and some consolidate some schools period Point Blank I'm saying it for the record it's got to happen we cannot continue in this trajectory so that's what I'm asking you all as make make it simple for yourselves as Central staff because you are presenting this to us and then we're giving you feedback and hopefully this feedback is like let's just let's just State what's true the plain

133truth like Liza said and then let's work from there um and at the end of the day I think parents will appreciate that kind of process that kind of as a former board director used to say transparency I think at the end of the day we will meet that Mark if we do that we good all right public comment is next yes public comment will be in five minutes [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] you're trying to get [Music] okay [Music] okay once it is 5:00 p.m. or later is what my notes say it's it's later um we will now go into public testimony board proced procedure uh 1430 BP provides the rules for testimony and I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules some important parts of the

134procedure are that 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 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 and when the listed speaker name is called the total amount of time allowed will not exceed 2 minutes for the combined number of speakers time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they're on the testimony or waiting list those who do not have wish to have time seated to them may Decline and retain their place

135on the list the majority of a speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about and the board expects the same standard of Civility for those participating in public comment as we expect of ourselves I have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of Civility required by this procedure um a speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines may be asked to leave the meeting uh staff please read off the testimony speakers for those who are joining online when we come to your name you can press star six to unmute yourself on the conference call line right now your mic might be disabled but I will make it so that you can unmute when we come to your name

136um we did have Izzy rampers sand as our first Speaker our signed student speaker from Ballard High School but it looks like Izzy just had to drop off the line so if Izzy rejoins I'll go back to Izzy um so then our next speaker will be Dominic Parker oh actually Izzy is on sorry Dominic let's go to Izzy um let me make sure that your mic is working there yes hello is it we can hear you awesome okay um hello members of the school board uh My Name is Izzy rampersad and I a recently graduated senior from Ballard High School I'm here to make a proposal for the school board to form a committee with teachers and students in order to reexamine the grading policy for the school district particularly the section regarding the minimum

137grade for a missing assignment being 50% for my final project in my AP statistics class my group collected data on the percentage of assignments that students had turned in versus their percentage grade in that class and then we made a scatter plot of the STA and formed a linear regression line we chose this topic for our study because we noticed that some students at Ballard are chronically absent but do not seem to find that is majorly impacting their grades we wanted to investigate whether the current grading policy is allowing students to miss class and turn in a minimal number of assignments yet maintain a passable GPA what we found was that the the predicted value of a student turning in zero assignments was a 61% grade in the class 11 percentage points higher than the

138passing grade of 50% I know our data is only from Ballard High School and I know that our school has a lower percentage of students furth this from educational Justice For Whom this policy was supposed to benefit though I think that if this is the policy going forward there needs to be some serious conversation as to whether it is actually benefiting students to see a 50% rather than a z Z I believe that school is meant to prepare us for our future going into the workforce next steps of our life maybe higher education and I don't believe that this grading policy is preparing students adequately for those next steps I don't get half of a paycheck when I don't show up for work grades are meant to communicate understanding and learning and therefore students and

139teachers deserve the district looking at the policy and not just rolling forward with the current model thank you for your time and for listening I would ask the school board to create a with teachers and students to have a conversation about this policy and how it's impacting students thank you thank you very much is the next speaker is Dominic Parker Dominic um if you press star six you should unmute from the conference line hello my name is Dominic Parker I oh something just happened there can you hear me we can hear you okay thank you uh my name is Dominic Parker I graduated from Seattle Public Schools last Thursday and I would like to share my experience I started attending a development developmental preschool at greenw Greenwood Elementary at 3 years old as a supposedly

140typically developing period to be a role model for my disabled classmates and I attended Pathfinder Ka in West Seattle until December 2016 when the impact on my mental health became too great because I did not receive the support I needed for my learning disabilities I became depressed starting around 10 years old and I was telling my parents that I did not want to live because my school was restricting my ability to learn and participate I didn't get an IEP until I was 12 and a half years old and only then thanks to my my parents advocacy I had to stay out of school for over seven months and repeated sixth grade at Denny middle school I was bullied all year and left the district for three years after that I returned for 10th grade and

141didn't get any instruction for half a year because I could not attend classes in person only my zero period jazz band teacher provided remote access to the classes I was identified as a highly capable student in by SPS in elementary school but other than seventh grade math in sixth grade I never received highly capable Services during my time in SPS I wasn't invited to the advanced math classes initially because I had a hard time focusing and I worked slowly I could easily do a higher level of math with the appropriate support but if my parents didn't speak up I would not have had that opportunity I needed adequate support of uh special education services and the challenge of Highly capable Services neither of those were provided and I'm still having to catch up on skills

142that I need for college and beyond my brother who is now a seventh grader at Pathfinder has similar needs the school psychologist kept denying evaluations to me and when he did evaluate me he dismissed he dismissed my needs he is still there he also denied my mom ADA accommodations and said that since she has English as a second language her input into my evaluation would cause questionable evaluation results even though she is fluent in English I don't understand why someone who caused so much harm to me and other students over the years would still be working with kids especially with when SPS is aware of the impact of his discrimination I'm glad to be done with Seattle Public Schools thank you for your time you Dominic the next speaker is Sarah Butler Sarah it looks

143like I need to un um set up your oh you should be able to unmute by pressing star six hello we can hear you hello I am Sarah Butler I have two children at Seattle Public Schools I'm speaking today about item four on the agenda which sets regular Bo meetings to be held only once a month for the 2425 school year I heard director Rankin's comment about adding special meetings but I do not understand the public benefit to reducing regular meetings these regular meetings are extremely important for two reasons the first reason the district is headed into a very very difficult year the board has so much work to do to address the fiscal crisis and to address student focused outcomes and the board and the public need time to work through these issues in

144a thoughtful way the second reason is that regular meetings with the public comment period are an extremely important platform for the public I have watched families use public comment as a venue to Spotlight problems that they tried to solve with the district on their own such as problems with staff at their school or safety concerns it would be a huge loss to lose half of those meetings the Seattle school district is a complex organization that over oversees a $1.2 billion budget and it impacts the lives of nearly 50,000 students and their families very deeply meeting once a month is not enough oversight during an enrollment and a budget crisis or any time my expectation is that our elected and appointed officials hold regular meetings at least twice a month to show their work to the

145public and my expectation is that these meetings allow for public comment I urge you to adopt a regular meeting calendar that meets it at least twice a month thank you the next speaker is Chris jackins my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on action items on today's board agenda I am including written comments two examples number one on the Moss Adams contract Moss Adams expertise would be misused toward reducing the board's due diligence with delegation of monitoring to staff this sounds like the FAA and and Boeing number two on Final acceptance of fieldwork at Madison at West Seattle High School these projects included artificial turf with forever chemicals on school closures Four Points number one I have visited many targeted schools and I have provided the district with dozens of signed statements by

146parents and others opposing school closures number two there are other ways to address Budget gaps such as using the interest on Capital funds to help out with operations costs as Allowed by state law RCW 28a 320 320 number three the district notes that its local operations levies are capped by the state but the district can and does accept money from separate city-run levies the district should ask the city to repurpose existing City Levy funds to keep schools open and to aain teachers and other staff number four I have helped people go to court to fight past school closures and to petition to recall School Board directors I will happily do so again the board directed the superintendent to present a school closure plan by June 2024 that did not happen the board agenda does not

147include a vote to authorize a plan for September the board should vote tonight to stop the school closure process please do not close schools thank you very much the next speaker is Betty Paulie bety Paulie hello my name is Betty Paulie a parent of two young children in the SPs system I came here today with prepared testimony but after engaging in today's presentation I'm going to go a bit off the cuff board member thank you for humanizing this process emphasizing trans excuse me transparency for considering the timeline the enormity of this proposal and the magnitude of accountability that sits on the shoulders of the superintendent SPS staff and ultimately the voting members of the board the timeline feels over overwhelmingly congested and rushed which brings me to my most significant point it is our expectation

148that you Dr Jones and the board are making your utmost priority the psychological experience of the individual child it is alarming to us that you plan to initiate school closures in the 25 26 Academic Year this plan most significantly impacts would be fifth graders the exact same kids who were most negatively impacted by covid as they experienced kindergarten remotely we are seeing from this cohort devastating behavioral challenges it is undeniably true and research supports that disrupting this cohort's fragile stability the year before they make the change to Middle School would have longlasting detrimental effects continuity of social groups is important to Children again Dr Jones I urge you to come assess for yourself the vibrancy of the places you are contemplating closing we have faith in you thank you the next speaker is cherylyn Crowder

149cherylyn Crowder hi I'm sheryn Crowder and I am the immediate past president of the Seattle special education PTSA I have my notes and then I came to listen and I've been rewriting the whole time so and I also had a good conversation with Dr Torres which I hope proves true that Staffing for special education students will be available the first day of school in all schools okay but the one thing that I really wanted to talk about is a something on the consent agenda item for blue sprig Pediatrics autism program it's all of a $1.5 million expansion or total of $1.5 million but I'd gotten curious after talking to a Schoolboard member down in Kent about the growing business of ABA by National Organization Blu sprig is owned by KKR a worldwide private Equity Firm

150it is part of their healthc care growth portfolio in other words it is an investment expected to generate significant returns I choose to believe that funneling more money into a profit driven entity is disturbing to special education administrators within this building though I suspect the finance and budgeting departments see this as an obvious solution use the state's safety net funding to pay private businesses instead of providing the services through hiring training and supporting staff a more sustainable service and integrated into the schools when did special education services become a money maker in much of the talk about real resource schools I've wondered do people recognize how underresourced special education is in this District I intended to talk about Equity instead I am talking about private Equity making money off of the public school system with

151the changes that we have ahead of us in the potential or the Potential Threat or concern about Charter Schools taking over some of the buildings as well I want to keep some of this as public schools public free and appropriate education thank you the next speaker is Laura Marie Rivera Laura Marie Rivera and speakers as you come to the podium or unmute to please do reintroduce yourself especially if I um have mispronounce her name good afternoon uh I'm Laura Marie Rivera and I yield my time to my favorite Seattle public school students who have been very patient this afternoon my name is Alice and this is my brother Zach today is our birthday and we are here to remind you that we have about 50,000 students here in Seattle public schools and this means that

152we have 50,000 individual learning profiles this is why we must keep the option schools open k through a schools dual language immersion advanced math inquiry based learning parent Partnerships stem or steam Career and Technical skills alternate high schools or early college our students need all of the options and in the name of equity we need to have more options available instead of less and I am here to remind you that student outcomes Focus government needs to focus on the students and as individuals the CDC says that one in four people have a disability but it seems like SPS does not consider us when making new policies I am concerned that nobody is thinking about us when closing school is either for example why is the school nurse two days a week what happens on the

153other days and when consolidating school is where where are the additional staff to Hope with special education needs SPS has not considered their needs in the past students with disabilities are some of the students furthest from educational Justice and SPS must do better thank you thank you Zach and Alice and happy birthday the next speaker is Andrew bringer so I got to follow that okay um like many of the previous commenters I came in here with prepared remarks I rehearsed it and then I kind of threw it all out because I thought today's presentation was very good and very informative so I sort of had to sort of write new things on the cuff um let me just talk about a few things that I didn't hear much about I first of all I'm a

154parent of a second grader at North Beach Elementary North Beach is one of what president Rankin talks about one of these North End schools is pretty old and those of us in the North Beach Community are quite concerned about the prospect of our school closing we love that school but you know what we're also very concerned about is what will be the experience regardless of whether the school closes or not we've looked at what the plan for well-resourced schools is and it does not look good you know everything the previous commentators mentioned about you know the nurse resourcing and the you know everything out the counseling everything else it does not look like the definition of a well resource school this is clearly a a school system in crisis I want to know what are

155you doing to Advocate with the legislature the district is in grave Financial Peril and you you know it's not just $100 million deficit now it's growing to $150 million in two years and what are you going to do two years from now are you going to close 40 more schools I mean it it just doesn't work out there a Statewide crisis in K through 12 funding and I think it needs to be addressed at the state level and I want to hear what the Seattle School Board is doing to Advocate with the state to really fix the problem and not do these paper cut fixes you guys are proposing um I also think personally the estimate of saving $30 million uh from closing 20 schools seems wildly optimistic we seem from other school districts that

156have done this they' have not realized cost savings that they hoped for and I'm very curious I would love to hear you all explain why you think Seattle will be different in that regard uh and finally the demographics you know it's hard to escape yes people are having smaller families but I walk around my neighborhood in Crown Hill and every third lot is being redeveloped from single family homes to town houses and high density and I it's just hard to connect these realities together so I'm looking forward to digging into the data that you all share to really understand whether I can actually believe the transy project thank you the next speaker is Brendan Levy Brendan Levy hi thanks for the opportunity to speak I'm a parent with kids inbs speaking about the MTH school

157closures I appreciate what youve share tonight I just really want to get out of the theoretical and into actual Alternatives as an example the slide showing a plan entitled maintain the current system of schools with cutback isn't great as its red backwards Arrow seems designed to imply but actually I think majority of us would prefer that even with some larger classes to the bulk closures as he proposed the trust inherent in stable neighborhood schools gives us the emotional and literal space to fight for enrollment regrowth there may not be 5,000 additional kids to enroll in Seattle today but we're losing families to the east side in part based on this constant short-term thinking in other cities Mass closures of neighborhood schools effectively caused mean testing and insidiously worsen inequity harming student outcomes as Rich Kids

158move to private schools or out of the district shrinking the pie for all SPS runs on enrollment dollars but to stabilize enrollment requires a culture of trust transparency and shared Community long-term Vision in theory it may make Financial sense to put every student into a one- siiz fitall school using Statewide Staffing models however in practice I don't think that's what parents want but what's best for kids by the data and will accelerate a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling decline in the kindergarten capture rate the school my kids go to is small but its teachers and staff love it the climate surve is overwhelmingly positive our school is small but we have green space and Fields used by teams across the city our school is small but it's efficient and uses less tax dollars to educate each

159child than the enrollment heate earns from the state our school is small but I vastly prefer it to a big box School across busy streets that tries to check off every part of a well resourced school's checklist I don't want a school to close and at the very least I want to be meaningfully involved in the choice we want to be your allies asking to State for the money our constitution promises we want to be your allies in designing optim istic and pragmatic Visions in the future give us plans constraints and real Alternatives as President Reagan urges and let us decide with you thank you for your servant the next speaker is Leslie Harris my name is Leslie Harris I am a um has been School Board member for eight years from an admired teacher

160in the district quote punting as often as the Seahawks you had this conversation in November plenty of time this last year to listen as opposed to carefully choreograph sit and get meetings what you chose not to have in the Southeast portion of our district don't get it you didn't suddenly wake up and realize folks have a desire to be part of the solution you Kick the Can you have been working with a matrix of decision making for at least a year why so paranoid not to show that if the draft list isn't available until September and if there isn't a draft list already then that's just plain cowardness and negligence that compressed time frame with the legalities of closures hearings boundary changes boundary changes you want to see ugly boundary changes budget deficit conversations safety

161conversations and hopefully changes and holidays will prevent real engagement and the possibility for input and change oh let's add to that list beex renewal Levy and collective bargaining agreement negotiations that's a perfect storm and was entirely preventable by planning and Leadership that which we aspire to teach our students listening and learning this dissolves trust in the district its Administration and board and I'm most sincerely do not wish to be correct in this analy analysis it's painful please address the elephant in the room and processes about option schools and K through eights and the rationalization for those beliefs and and if it's going to happen please say so and why and please address how much real money will be saved for closures netted out with the increased Transportation mothballing expenses displaced laid off staff C costs

162added to these equations for example is it true that some 40% of our principal core is not coming back for 2425 if that's the case that's really profound if it's not the case let's give us please a percentage senior staff positions have exploded in the last few years yet there has not been a commensurate quality upti uptick and if you disagree please tell us how the long range Capital planning task force dissolved some years ago might have helped as well as the defunct board committees for operations and finance even the executive committee may have assisted in fiing out the details proposed timing and work plan and basis for such a large and belated undertaking the district is now beri of advisory committees or inclination to SN input from families students and voters we obviously need

163the help we could and can do must better the next speaker is Josh dhy Josh D hello I'd like to seed my time to Heidi Yokum hi I'm Heidi Yokum I have two children that attend Seattle Public Schools I'm also a special education chair of rpta at our elementary school I'm profoundly concerned over the proposed closures especially of the Continuum elementary schools it is essential that the board considers the far-reaching consequences of such decisions I urge you to look at what you're mandated to do especially in the rcws you can say it supports the learning needs of all the students in the district and give special attention to high need schools and classrooms and to determine the allocation of Staff time whether certified or classified I take that as a huge charge my son who

164just finished second grade has had seven special education teachers in his short three years of education he should have only had two and in his program cohort they didn't have an occupational therapist for six months this is due to the intentional District under Staffing and under hiring hiring of qualified teachers and support staff he's finally excelling after six months of consistent and adequate Staffing research shows school closures have are disproportionately affecting students with disabilities adversely they require consistent routines familiar environments to thrive and this upheaval caused by school closures can lead to regression academic and behavioral Pro progress Seattle public schools has not shared detailed plans on how they're actually going to implement well-resourced schools or transition special education services and programs to the schools that do not currently have them where are the staff

165going who are these staff this lack of clarity raises significant concerns about the continuity and the quality of our education of the most vulnerable students Seattle Public Schools must do better we need concrete transparent which I do understand plans communicated to us how can you provide consistent high quality education and an inclusive environment if we don't have these this is your legal responsibility the next speaker is Peggy Fu Peggy [Applause] Fu good evening my name is Peggy Lewis Fu and I am the parent of three children in SPS one in high school one in middle school and one in elementary school I'm here to express my deep concerns regarding the lack of transparency inclusivity and accessibility in this decision-making process in start to Seattle San Francisco Public Schools has implemented multiple phases of community engage

166engagement regarding their upcoming school closures and mergers prior to their releasing their proposed criteria they engaged thousands of participants through surveys held over 30 public forums and Community advisory meetings and Outreach to almost 300 community-based organizations moreover San Francisco is hiring independent thirdparty researchers to rank schools based on criteria and will create several proposals instead of just one they are hiring Stanford University conduct an equity audit to ensure no Community is disproportionately impacted this comprehensive approach exemplifies how school districts should operate by prioritizing transparency inclusivity and genuine Community engagement Seattle Public Schools must strive to do better we need a transparent process that involves all stakeholders and includes a leadership commitment to increased Community input hires independent third-party researchers like Stanford to vet proposals and communicates clear timelines that do not change the day before

167meetings which further erodes our confidence and SPS leadership and all of you on an already difficult topic our children deserve better than decisions made in the dark thank thank you the next speaker is Gregory Dawson Nichols Gregory Dawson Nichols hi thanks for hearing me um my name is Dawson Nichols I work for the office of Head Start um I go around the country doing trainings on Early Child Development and learning um my own children went through the SPs um and are graduates now so I am here only as a concerned Community member and somebody who knows a great deal feel about how children learn and I guess I just essentially want to say differently um children learn very differently from one another there seems to be an animus toward alternative programming and options schools that

168I really don't understand and there seems to be a trend toward a homogeneization of uh programming and curriculum and um I just want to say that if if we think that we can have one system that is going to serve optimally every child who walks through the door uh they can be put through the same sort of program we're wrong um children you know need different learning environments to reach their own um maximum potential uh we have um I don't know pea patches and we don't ask that everyone plant the same thing and do the exact same kind of gardening we shouldn't do that in our schools either um the metaphor I like to think of uh and this is borrowed from from a researcher much better than me is uh that we are not

169Carpenters we are gardeners uh we can't you know construct children as though they're coming down some sort of industrial line where we can do the exact same thing to each one and each one will have a wonderful education at the end of this they don't work that way um plants grow differently and they thrive in different environments we need those different environments we need to embrace those diverse environments um so if the upshot of a lot of your decisions tends toward a homogeneization I would ask you to rethink some of the decisions that you're making um the talk earlier about Thorton Creek being between two schools and conveniently having you know some excess capacity well it has excess capacity because people are not being let off the weit list so in the end it may

170look like this is an alternative program we can shut down please reconsider that uh we need a lot of diversity in our educational programming thank you the next speaker is Jeremy masner Jeremy [Applause] mner good evening a well-resourced school is a safe School SPS has failed to provide the resources to keep the students and staff at Garfield High School safe Dr Jones wrote that business as usual in the wake of such a tragedy is unfathomable but business as usual is exactly what the Garfield Community experienced after the March 13th shooting you'll find in your email history my message from March 17th pleading with you to imagine the headline Garfield students slain and asking you proactively prevent that rather than waiting to react after the fact your lack of response in March April and May is

171indeed unfathomable providing sustainable and Equitable access starts with safety I'm glad Dr Jones outlined specific funded steps as a starting point but what's happening at Garfield is unique and merits unique Focus look at this sign seven incidents of gunfire at Garfield in one year compare that to Nova or Franklin Garfield is an unhappy outlier SPD tells us some of the gun violence comes from gang members driving to the school uh to Target specific students what resour what resources are you providing to Garfield to develop a meaningful safety plan to get targeted students out of Harm's Way for themselves and their peers students tell us it's an Open Secret that some are bringing guns to school what resources are you providing to Garfield to bring those Whispers into the open and ensure guns are not present

172on school grounds Dr Hart has asked for the flexibility to have SPD in the building which is why the ptsa's safe schools action plan calls for an immediate change to board policy to allow for a school resource officer at Garfield why is this policy change not on the agenda tonight you need an immediate change if Garfield is going to be ready for next year gun violence is a community issue it needs a community solution but Garfield cannot wait for any more forums or task force you are our school leaders it is time to lead don't tell us what you can't do or why your hands are tied tell us what you need from the state and the city and let us be Advocates together for policies and resourcing to give Garfield students and staff the

173safety they deserve thank you the next speaker is Michael lent Michael lent Michael if you're on the line you'll need to press star six to unmute not seeing Michael on the conference call line I'm going to move to our next speaker and check back later for Michael manuel Sly can you hear me yes we can hear you Manuela can you hear me yes we can hear you thank you good afternoon my name is Manuela Sly I'm a proud mother of three West Seattle high school graduates I also serve on the Seattle Council PTC PTSA board I want to emphasize the importance to publicly discuss the progress monitoring of guard rails on today's agenda listed as informational items as follows number one the superintendent will not allow school and District initiatives to go forth without engaging

174students of color forest from educational Justice and their families including those who have a prer language other than English and who require accommodations for disability number two the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service and number three the superintendent will not allow adult behaviors in central office school buildings or classrooms that are misaligned with districtwide Vision Values and anti-racism initiatives thank you very much I see the rest of my time to L very who is in the room thank you thank you Manuela hello board members I'm Liz Barry I'm an SPS parent and I've been a dual language Spanish emersion teacher in SPS since 2006 I was at Hamilton for 5 years and I've been at Denny since 2012 these program models are very different and while both have incredible value for

175our Scholars I want to ask you to consider a model that in the southwest region that would provide access for all of our heritage Spanish speaking students the Denny and Concord programs are designed to prioritize the needs of Heritage and Spanish speakers biliteracy for Heritage speakers is not just enriching but it is necessary for them to have academic and social success within their families as young people and as they go on as adults as you discuss school consolidations I want to offer an idea that could that would better serve our heritage Spanish speakers in the southest southwest region I would like to see the expansion of the Dual language program in the southwest region that provides transportation to all Heritage speakers and a one-step enrollment process that would make it that would facilitate it for

176families thank you very much for your time um thank you the next speaker is Justina Schwarz Schwarz Justina Schwarz is Justina in the room Justina if you're oh good evening we can hear you Justina yes wonderful thank you good evening Seattle School Board of Directors superintendent Jones and members of the Comm Community my dog says hello as well my name is Justina Schwarz I am a single mother of two Seattle public school students including a neuros spicy kiddo and the Pathfinder PTSA president-elect before I get into what I came here to say I really want to acknowledge the brave students for their testimony this evening your voice matters so very much and please never forget that I am here to speak on behalf of over three 350 parents and caregivers of the Pathfinder K8 Community

177where we have been struggling for years with a lack of leadership accountability and communication from our Administration as a parent I send my school kids to school with an expectation of a safe supportive and positive learning environment I feel that as a pretty basic right for all students however that has not been the experience of many at Pathfinder or from what I hear several schools in Seattle I've connected with dozens of caregivers who have followed the district's process sent their concerns in email filled out the forms and our Administration responds with either dismissal gaslighting or just silence that is not leadership and that is not how you build trust or Community taking it a step further we have sent numerous emails to director Carter and Dr Jones which have gone unanswered with the exception of

178Dr Carter asking to meet with our group during the m second board meeting which seems like an attempt to block our group from speaking on that day the lack of response and any effort to Comm to communicate from our district leaders exacerbates the frustration and concern within our community driving further disconnection between the administration and the community it's supposed to serve Pathfinder K8 and every school deserve a safe and supportive learning environment where accountability and communication are prioritized at Pathfinder we need new leadership and we need change thank you the next speaker is Kathleen Warren Kathleen Warren oh we can hear you Kathleen hello this is Kathleen Warren can you hear me yes okay great thank you um my name is Kathleen Warren and um I wanted to speak about my child's um experience um

179at our school um with trying to um get them the help and support they need um my child School conducted a special education evaluation um after we had been trying to get her help since um for the past five years since she was in first grade she's now a rising sixth grader um the special education evaluation that they ended up conducting this past year did not appropriately address her needs um we requested an independent educational evaluation at public expense also because my autistic child's communication was not assessed properly and her assistive technology needs were not even part of the evaluation the school psychologist sent me an evaluation report before the eligibility meeting at my request and reported that he did not qualify her for an iup he even named the attached report file dnq does

180not qualify the psychologist began the evaluation review meeting by informing the team that my child did not qualify for an IEP I am a certificated teacher and I know that the El eligibility decision is the decision of a multi- disciplinary team which includes parents I've seen the psychologist and meetings for other students at the school to do the same for other students not allowing team discussions or any input into whether this students would qualify for special education services he acts as the sole decision maker this is leading to several unsafe situations and also many students not receiving the services that they deserve and that they need to access their education I've experienced several instances where the psychologist denied eligibility for services or declined to even assess students who clearly needed them my child continues to

181need Services as evidenced by various incidents including the principal of the school restraining her on the floor and then isolating her we can't punish children for their disability by physical violence I'm concerned closing smaller schools such as our school Pathfinder K8 could have a catastrophic impact on students with disabilities my child's teachers and her closer relationships she was able to form in a small school with looping is the reason she has been able to stay in school at all moving towards a centralized Learning System like the district is proposing in its wealth resource schools plan will not allow students with disabilities access to their free and public education like they are entitled to under the Ida law moreover it could put an undue stress on students that need unique educational opportunities and more options like

182other students have discussed on this board meeting thank you so much the next speaker is Nicole Patton Nicole Patton Nicole Patton I'm not seeing Nicole on the line I'm going to move to Jana Parker good afternoon um my name is Jana Parker I am the co-president and then next year president of Seattle special education btsa in a recent uh meeting Dr Jones um you challenged people to say SPS doesn't provide high quality services you do not if services are not provided consistently and to all students who need them we can't pride ourselves on having high quality services this goes for special education evaluations and IEP Services highly capable and multilanguage learner services as well as quality curriculum for students with dyslexia Mental Health Services assisted technology equipment sufficient nursing services and more Equitable access to

183education is very much a privileged dependent in SPS the district's exit survey for families does not ask for reasons for unenrolling students instead the drop-down menu lists options for future plans for the students learning there no comment Box available for input we need to know the true Reasons Why students are leaving in order to improve services and ensure they want to stay and or return look at the um look at the more than triple cost of risk management insurance premiums in just six years on the meeting's agenda it is now nearly $9 million with half a million doll self-insured retention a year I understand that this amount shows that SP SPS is highrisk District prone to litigation and utilizing the insurance far more than others when parents get uh desperate enough to get their child

184the support um the support they required to learn a couple of dispute resolution options are um our special education Community complains with OSBI or do process hearing the in the insurance provides the district with $5,000 for with um for legal fees for special education Community complaint and $35,000 for due process um which can be expanded as needed parents also get no they get nothing but additional burden to advocate for their children and their child continues to struggle while the adults are fighting please listen and collaborate with the student parent and teacher communities thank you than [Applause] you I'm going to go back to our um speakers who we did not hear from earlier first was Michael lent Michael if you're on the line please press star six now to unmute I'm going to make sure

185everybody is able to unmute that we have on the line right [Music] now Michael ly okay I'm not seeing Michael unmuting and then our other speaker is Nicole Patton Nicole Patton okay I'm going to move to the wait list then um Oliver Mis Misa MSA is that all that alliv that's unmuted hi I'm unmuted can you hear me yes we can hear you awesome thanks y'all I was there earlier but I had to go to a different event um my name is Oliver Misa I'm a substitute in the Seattle Public Schools uh and a community lobbyist uh tonight in the conversation from what I I did hear in in the district uh proposal there was kind of two elephants in the room um that were spoken around when one of which was ethnic studies and

186the other one was Progressive Revenue I was going to talk more about Progressive Revenue today but it just it was it was so interesting hearing you know reference is to diverse curriculum and students seeing themselves in the curriculum over and over again as a goal for our schools in the well resource School plan as as under the sort of inclusive umbrella um but what I didn't understand and what I what I see in the schools and what students are saying is they're calling that ethnic studies and we're all calling that ethnic studies but when we're talking about all of these reforms and we're painting a pretty picture about culturally responsive this or restorative justice practice of that but when I'm talking to W block who's providing those Services Community passageways providing those Services a they're

187having a really difficult time accessing any grants through the city and don't want to partner with SPS and all their money is being cut currently and that you know whether or not that has anything to do with mayor Herold cutting you know the mental health funds to $10 million from 20 is one thing but it's definitely related but it's just certainly alarming to hear this language around diverse curriculum when scho students have been in Schoolboard meetings month after month calling for ethnic studies it's called ethnic studies so that's the first elephant and the second one is Progressive Revenue um and and our spending allocation and and the formulas that go into that the superintendent Brent Jones came into the community meetings one at Garfield that was at talking about coming back to the community with

188a nice tight plan to go to the legislature to fully fund our schools well wasa's already veloped that that the plan to the legislature and right now it's just special education increased by a tiny amount which uh Senator Wellman fighting against I'm sure you know increased admin costs and addressing some inflation costs but I don't see anywhere on there uh Progressive revenue and addressing the revenue which right now is relying on really really regressive the 49th most regressive in this country right right right before Florida um tax policy and we're relying on property taxes that ultimately just burden renting people and working people so I would really like to see superintendent Jones and and and the and the board stick their necks out a little bit beyond what wasda is doing and and and support

189some Progressive revenue and also look at an overhaul of how our allotment um and spending uh goes to individual schools because right now according to Professor David Knight's work at University of Washington we're spending 3% Less on average in school districts with low income and higher proportions of students of color and I know that we have the you know the weighted staff uh model for for our uh allotment and that does wonders and it's only doing wonders because the state is failing to do that and so we have the opportunity to not just have what our legislators are doing increases to property taxes lifting the uh the levy Lids the bond Lids the voter voter thresholds no we need Progressive Revenue we need to tax the rich uh and and and those are some things

190that we we we would love to work on with you board and superintendent and the district to support and and mobilize parents families Educators youth to Olympia this January so thank you for your time today um and I appreciate the discourse the next speaker is Carol raava Carol raava is Carol in the room Carol if you're online please press star six to unmute okay moving down our wait list to Samra Inayat is Sam on the line I think I might see the right number on the line I still the hand raise if you press star six it should un mute oh here let's try this now we can hear you you can hear me yes we can hear you awesome um well thank you for your time and for the discussion today um well with

191the discussion on the budget challenges the idea that closing schools appears to be the primary path to addressing the shopall may seem logical but if you think about it and really think about it um and not take for granted what you're told um you might come to a different conclusion ini a show reaction may be that yes it must be cheaper to have fewer schools but please think about it there's a lack of transparency in actual costs and impacts here um schools do not pay a property tax so the cost of holding the physical building cannot be very large um Mr podesta says that it is not inexpensive to maintain buildings um I would ask can you please show us the exact cost numbers of for maintenance cost and also how you're going to save

192money to arrive at the 100 million shortfall um you're currently spending around 90 million on a school in my neighborhood to increase capacity where it's actually not needed um but I digress um perhaps just a better use of funding would be something to consider um maybe if you hadn't spent that 90 million on this school where capacity was not needed you could have done those maintenance uh could have taken care of those maintenance issues okay so the number of teachers is that going to be a cost saving no because the number of teachers is mandated by a defined student teacher ratio so you need the same number of teachers um because you have the same number of students whether you operate out of 100 school buildings or 120 so there's no cost savings there with

193the with the teaching staff the only part that may be savings would be individual principal salaries for cl schools which is likely offed by the added Transportation cost to bus children to more to to more schools further outside of their current neighborhoods is that really the past to 100 million plus in savings um I would like to see numbers to make that connection um I would ask the school board demand the school district offer clear details on how these actions actually serve the community and quantify the real budget impacts of such actions show us the data please show us the numbers um I'm glad you are asking how these actions will result in better student outcomes but please also ask how specifically we arrive at any savings whatsoever when all things are considered also please

194remember smaller schools are a better learning environment for children thank you for your attention today and thank you for your service that was our final speaker for today sorry I'm got the wrong stack of paper in front of here okay we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda may I have a motion for the consent agenda move it and then I'll ask for okay I move for approval of the consent agenda I second uh approval of the consent agenda has been moved by D vice president seru and secreted by director Briggs do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda I do I would like to remove item number seven approval of amendment to Blue sprig pediatric con contract for the 2023 2024 uh sorry okay so may

195I have a revised motion oh Liza can I remove number four approval of the 2024 2025 regular board meeting dates have to okay so we've removed item four item seven may I have a revised motion for the consent agenda as amended I move as revised for the consent agenda is that right approval approval of the consent AG as amended as amended I second all that all right um approval of the consent agenda as amended has been moved by vice president president saru and seconded by director Briggs um all those in favor of approval of the consent agenda as amended please signify by saying I I I I I I any I I any any opposed sorry all right I I believe I heard everybody this motion is passed unanimously thank you okay so I would

196entertain a motion um for items removed from the consent agenda um I don't know if it matters if we go in number does it matter if we go number order or the order they were removed all right let's start with let's start with number four um may I please have a motion for item number four moving okay thank you for your patience this is confusing I move that the board approve the following 2025 regular board meeting dates August 28 2024 September 18th 2024 she said I had to read them all October 9th 2024 Tuesday November 19th 2024 December 18th 2024 January 22nd 2025 February 12th 2025 March 12th 2025 April 23rd 2025 May 14th 2025 June 4th 2025 July 1st 20 Tuesday July 1st 2025 immediate action is in the best interest of the district

197she said I had to read it all um I second that yeah I'm going to move we get rid of seconding and not not right now but um uh just to note the Tuesday the November that's a Tuesday that's a change from the original posting in case you missed it because we have a wasda meeting um and then there's and then the last regularly scheduled board meeting of the year is a Tuesday again as it is this year all the other ones are on Wednesday I know we had some odd ones this year on a Monday and all the other ones on a Wednesday all right director top sure um I will ultimately support this uh motion motion but I pulled it just so I can put an emphasis on the idea of NE there

198is a lot going on from August through July 20 August 2024 to July 20 25 thank you Michelle for reading off all those dates and uh it's going to take a lot of coordination it's going to take more than just one meeting a month and I I'm going to put an emphasis on making sure that at our board retreat in August we schedule these out and publish them for the public and for ourselves I think that is imperative for us to do both because we have so much to go going on but also for our community who who we want to inform and and be as transparent and open about our processes so I pulled it just to highlight that again and really push us in August to schedule these things out I don't need

199to Second it but I totally agree that's oh and related to that you should have in your emails request for dates for that Retreat so please respond if you have not I have not responded and I will great any other questions on this item all right uh Miss Wilson Jones roll call please director top ior do you want mine you got a few director BRS I director Clark I director hery I director Mahi I vice president sarju I and president ringan I this motion is passed unanimously thank you um may I have a motion for the other item pulled from the consent agenda item number seven I move that the school board authorized the superintendent to amend the contract with Blu sprig Pediatrics in the amount of $777,000 no 777 what how do I read

200that 367,000 oh my math skills have gone bringing the total contract for 2023 2024 to 1 million 527,000 367 for Applied Behavior Analysis therapy for students as required by the students individualized education programs also known as IEPs from September 1st 2023 through August 31st 202 4 with any minor additions deletions modifications deemed necessary by the superintendant and to take any necessary actions to implement this contract immediate action is in the best interest of the district I second um Dr sarju as the puller of the item please take the floor um one of the things I think sometimes that is a really good outcome of public testimony is um very astute and educated parents actually pointing things out to us that we wouldn't have Otherwise Known ourselves and um thank you to my friend Cheryl Lynn

201um after that and then after hearing about some other stories about students um and their efforts to get IEPs um and the challenges and the problems that their families have had um I have real pause for concern um about a priority of profit vers over a priority of our students um in my opinion based on what I've heard and I'm open to um hearing a reason why I should vote for this I don't believe immediate action is in the best interest of families um before I go to Dr Torres okay so the reason that this item is on consent is because according to our policy it's above a contracted threshold yes so I just want to be clear I guess that we are veering into the territory of superintendent work not board work and this

202is extremely I almost swore serious the amount of money that is being spent protecting the liability of the institution instead of ensuring that the needs of children are being met is something I have a lot of questions about and have talked with legal council about to figure out how that information can actually come to the board I also have questions about Contracting with outside agencies and the increase in the number of Behavioral texts and the expense associated with those and the the revolving door of people coming in and out of buildings understanding there are many complexities with with Staffing um and all kinds of other things um but in an effort to uh say something that is board work I'm thinking about what are the questions that we need to ask and as we're setting

203and um questions from the governance level how can we actually address this instead of when there's one item to be approved like this is a ongoing chronic problem that um I'm really tired of and and it's expensive and so that's it's it sounds like maybe a guard rail I mean it's it is a guardrail and actually quite frankly the interim guard rails did not get at um like the removal of students from class um uh missed instructional time because of behavior um the failure actually to provide safe and welcome environments so that student Behavior leads to scenarios where they are removed from class instead of being educated um uh the lack of appropriate intervention at a time where support can be provided instead of um removing them from their environment so say that to like

204yesh so I don't I'm I'm also thinking like probably at this point this item whatever children are already planning to attend this program I don't know that voting no makes the immediate sense even though it might feel like the right thing but it's a bigger problem then the where those kids go can I get some clarity is this money already spent for the past school year and is already the services have already been provided so this is not moving forward we've already essenti spent this money yes it's for the past school year yeah and I guess then that leads to my question of when something starts below the board threshold but goes above how do we what is the mechanism for us to know before I guess the money has been spent at like such

205as in this case um well for me it's not about the money it's about the students and so we need to monitor we need to actually monitor the services that are being provided and whether or not students are getting the support that they need regardless of the amount of money that the contract is and we don't have to wait for a contract to come forward to care about the services that students receive um Dr chares do you have anything else or anything specific to this item that you want to share yeah I just wanted to point out that when we think about this I am duly noted on some of the board testimony from earlier around private Equity getting involved and there's some work that should be done on our end to double check some

206of this one of the issues that complicates this is the fact that when you go to look for providers there are not tons and tons and tons of providers that can provide these services that are specified for students so not surprised to hear that private Equity firms have figured this out and are trying to profit off of it off from public schools that is not a great thing but at the same time it takes us to a place of when we comply with the federal law this is a team decision as to what the needs of the student are and once a team has made the determination that that's the service we need to provide to the student we have to provide that to the student so it puts us as a district in kind

207of a rock and a hard place between there because we do not have an option it is not within our scope my scope the board scope to say that we do not follow an I team decision we have to follow an IEP team decision um but in that vein I think there's further discussion to potentially have over how do we access ABA Services now we know more about who's getting to the game and why but at the same time there is a limited number of providers for ABA services on the flip side there's a whole another level of conversation that I think as a district we should be getting in around ABA um applied Behavior Analysis because there are two competing thoughts on that that but I do like to note that in general people

208do prefer ABA type therapies at this time which is why we see such an uptick in it but there is more conversation to be had about that over is that potentially the most appropriate path to go through when a kid requires some sort of behavior modification open to further questions of course though I have a quick question the bar said this was for tuition is this a school we're sending kids to or is this services this is a service for Blu spring and so there they have they provide us therapist and we have to pay sort of a tuition for the service so they're coming into the buildings or students are going there it depends on the IEP it could be a very various mix depending on what the team determined I don't have any

209questions that wouldn't lead us into a 4our conversation on this so I'm going to okay what am iing moving unless you had further question that you needed okay oh it's been moved right sorry uh Miss Wilson Jones roll call please director Briggs I director hery hi director Riva oh this is an old document um let's go with director Miss Rahi I vice president seru nay director Clark I director top no no president Ranken I this motion has passed with a vote of five yes to two no because of time because we have to have the budget hearing starting at 8 um I'm going to skip now in our agenda to the introduction of the budget so that then we can have a hearing going out of order on the agenda because the this we're going

210to go back to them because we have to have the budget hearing at 8:00 and so we need to have it introduced before we have the hearing and if anyone is here to provide uh comments in the budget hearing the signup sheet is in the back of the room and Dr Bulman whenever you are ready Dr Dr Jones do you want to start you want me to start go for it okay so finish by eight o'clock is that what I'm hearing so that the that's when the budget hearing is scheduled to begin yes okay thank you I'm KT bman assistant superintendent for finance at sale Public Schools this is the culmination of um nine separate meetings with the board over the course of the last year um today we're going to talk about the the

211goals and principles in timeline for which this budget was developed and just to be clear this is for the 245 budget that will start in the fall a lot of the discussion earlier in the meeting was about the 256 so this is kind of putting the the final touches on the 245 budget um we have some highlights and a summary um information on enrollment general fund which is the one that gets the most discussion in these meetings um some required maintenance supplies and operating cost information and then some other information on the associated student body Debt Service and capital funds and then a four-year forecast next slide please the goals and principles that the board established in September are represented here I won't belabor those you've seen those but these were what guided the process

212this last year we can go to the next slide um as I said this is the ninth meeting on the budget for 2425 um in September was the foundational talking about the goals and principles um the need for some ongoing solutions for the 245 uh budget development process and the over Reliance on some of the one-time funding and how to to wean the district from some of that um in October some potential Solutions were presented to the board for discussion um subsequent to that in November um a resolution was brought forward to to get guidance from the board on how to approach um more details on those Solutions going forward December the board adopted that resolution to began and then the staff began the work to start to balance the budget for 2425 using those

213tools um January was an update on the governor's budget um some of the impacts that would have going forward and then the the legislative updates in March um the recommendation was made to the board board a preliminary recommendation on how to close the gap for 2425 which was estimated at $104 million um the board provided feedback and so an amended uh proposal was brought back in April and then in May the board approved the utilization of a loan to balance the budget for this year up to $35 million um delaying the repayment of the rainy day Reserve fund one more time and then the utilization of $2 million in capital fund interest to balance the budget for 2425 um so today we've got the culmination of all that work presented each of you should have

214uh 200 and something page budget book with a lot of details those are also available online um this is the recommended budget this presentation we can go to the next slide this next slide is sort of an attempt to make it understandable for just the general public in terms of what the main main drivers of the budget are for 2425 and you'll see there the budget is going to be 1.25 billion um for the sale Public Schools um and there have been ongoing reductions of around $90 million over the last two years in those budget balancing um exercises the major changes for 2425 that are included in this budget are continued reductions at central office and Staffing and other expenses some school Staffing allocation reductions some compensation reductions for non-represented staff um a handful of

215other one-time Solutions um like the loan like the capital fund interest and then the incl the introduction of convenience fees for families who are using credit cards to pay for sale Public Schools fees and then voluntary athletic fees implementation um and as I mentioned the short-term interfund loan is a part of the um balancing for the 24 25 budget in the amount of 27.5 million so just to repeat back at the last meeting authorization was given for up to 35 million and so the 27 A5 is what will take place for the 245 budget and just to be clear this will need to be repaid by June 30th of 2026 back to the capital fund of Seattle Public Schools the budget does maintain the Strategic plan Investments at 8.3 million no reduction were made there

216and then just again to be super clear on this point not talking about school reductions or school consolidations for this 2425 budget that we're talking about tonight and I have three more minutes so let's go to a couple more slides can you go to the next one this is one more let's try so here's the resources that come into the district let me get and you'll see that the majority about 2third of the funding is from the state um about 15% of it is from the local Levy there was discussion on that tonight and then the other 20% is federal the city Levy some other funding so those are the main resources that come into the District we can go to the next slide one way of explaining how the district is spending its funding

217is by activity groups so teaching teaching support the principal's office other support and Central Administration these are the most digestible ways of separating the expenses and so we've included those definitions here for folks so they have that information and then the next slide is a breakdown on some of that expenditure just on the state activity groups defined where is like special where does special education services fall yeah it's not an activity Linda is reminding me it's in the program section so there's a third there's three ways that the expenditures are sliced and so if you go to the program area that's where special education shows up specifically embedded in in some of these activities like teaching special ed teaching um staff those would be in there but it's not specifically outlined in the activity section

218so you see it there in the program section and we're almost at 8 o'clock and this isn't as as informative as i' have liked it to have been well we this is not the first time we're seeing it y i I'm sorry I'm not sure if am I interrupting uh two questions one I had asked couple I can't remember is the last work session or before that about um uh uh conservative Staffing in October and the offset or or the whether or not that would be an offset with am I trying to say this sorry the the balancing out of um compensatory services and for for Mis instruction if there's misinstruction if we if we under under count or under staff and then um the other one was the um overages planned overages and how

219high do we get before it's actually would have been better just to hire another teacher um that was something I asked about seeing reconciled a little bit ago and I um can't vote on this until I see the answer to that those questions can you repeat the first question again I don't um the first question May hopefully be mitigated but basically the cost of if special education um resourcers or Staffing isn't in place in alignment with where students actually are if the projection is under um the cost of compensatory Services um not mitigating I I need to understand the how that um the hedging hedging bets on that I guess ends up it seems to me being more expensive and um uh less service for students so I can I can speak to that on

220behalf of Dr bman but the way that special wed Staffing works is not on the projected enrollment so if you look at the way that the collective bargaining agreement is written it is something that is reviewed every two weeks by A Relief Committee the reason that you don't do special ed Staffing on a projected enrollment measure is because you can't get into predetermination and what that means is if you look at the idea you can't let's say that it's Rocky we cannot say that we're going to predict Rocky's going to have an IEP that's called a predetermination that determination is something that's made by the IEP team and the parent actually has to sign off on the Sur services for us to begin to say we're going to service that student so essentially the way

221that we worked with sea and writing the agreement Now talks about we go into the Relief Committee every two weeks there was a meeting that was conducted recently and the way that the Staffing is done is the the kids that are actually qualified that we know we're going to have in seats in September that's how we staff and that process took place this month and so special wed did push forward to Kurt's team what those numbers were needed to be to make sure that the kids that are qualified that we're going to get funding for and not in a predetermined way will have Staffing in place come this fall and that is a change from last fall yes I would love and we're confident yes yes no yes I would love him more genuine yes

222no it is definitely a yes it was done through Relief Committee it was pushed forward um that it has been received by the finance team and it was very intentional to do it through the Relief Committee um if we think about throughout the school year prior cbas had us doing the changes at the quarter if you remember and that wasn't that was also causing the same problem that you're referring to doing it by the every two week process ensures that we're capturing the most accurate numbers so the numbers that are going to be forward for the fall are based on the kids that were qualified in our system and going to be in our system actual in what is that I can't remember what that system actually signed off as a as a the parents

223have to sign off saying yes I agree to the service those are the kids that we're going to be Staffing for okay is there um uh I know um that the sea contract they're not they don't work all through the summer but that sometimes identification or an evaluation will finish over the summer I'm assuming the relief un doesn't meet every two weeks over the summer it does what's the that we're going to have to reconcile in September once we have a but yes you are you're you're correct that there will be evaluations that occur over the summer in those cases those are what we'll have to address first thing and September and get those moving so there might be a slight Gap but that's just part of the way that you know school calendar works

224but not in mid- October Gap please I that is not at this not a planned not a planned Gap okay uh thank you um and I will look forward to sometime between now and next week I guess on the answer about the overage yeah I have a lot of information on that I'll work with a superintendent on the best way to get that to the board great responsive to your question thank you um well we I think let's see I can check with staff I believe can we go to the hearing and then return if if directors have more questions yes yes yes okay so this is like a a funky thing that we haven't done before um so do we thank you for the duration of the board's special meeting for I see okay

225all right um the board is now immediately recessing the regular meeting into a public hearing which will look remarkably like the regular board meeting we're not going to move um so uh all right we're not we're we're now out of the regular board meeting we're now in a in a budget hearing so this is President Rankin I am calling to order the board special meeting at 8:05 pm. oh do we have to do roll call on everything again yes oh yeah because it's a different meeting okay um for the record I will call the RO do we lose director Briggs or just temporarily okay for the record I will call the role director Briggs director Clark president uh director hery had I think we have L director hery yes yes no no I think he

226had to leave um I just yeah didn't connect all yes he said he had to leave it eight um director mahi here vice president Sergio present director top here and this is President Ranken testimony signups have been accepted online for those testifying remotely we also have a signup sheet here tonight for those with us in person we'll begin with those in-person testimony signups and then move through any additional testimony remotely we had a general public testimony session during our regular meeting earlier and this hearing is reserved for Testimony related to the recommended budget speakers will be given a maximum 2 minutes excuse me of speaking time [Music] um oh uh as a reminder written testimony is also accepted if you are un able to finish your comments in the two-minute window you may provide any

227remaining and any already said also in writing once your name is read staff will begin a timer a beep will sound when your time is exhausted and I will just say I'm unless there are students speaking I'm G to actually cut you off at two minutes um so please honor that uh warning light and then the beep um Miss Wilson Jones please read off the speaker list the first speaker is Chris jackins who'll be followed by Christy christe you're going to have to help me with your last name when we get to you and then Vivian song There's a list in the back of the room if anybody has changed their mind and wants to add my name is is this working well for you my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 I

228appreciate the budget books nice layout of information on the general fund three points number one the current District funding model forces schools to compete with each other number two please increase the size of both the interfund loan and the general fund use of capital fund interest number three the district should ask the city to repurpose existing City Levy funds to keep schools open and to retain staff on the capital fund three points number one the Rainer Beach project has a future $10 million cost overrun number two the Memorial Stadium project is a mistake number three please halt the use of artificial turf contaminated with forever chemicals on the superintendent's cover letter 7 points number one the superintendent's letter States quote given that the state funding model is based on the cost to run a 400

229student elementary school elementary schools fewer than 300 students are simply not sustainable and dilute resources throughout the system unquote number two this is a simplistic deceptive and bogus argument number three one could similarly say that the superintendent salary is simply not sustainable and dilutes resources throughout the system number four or that everyone should wear the same average shoe size number five the issues are more complex number six the district has an idea in its head that the variety and sizes of schools currently in the school district are a problem the district needs to change its mind this resource should be used not closed number seven schools can and should be kept open please amend the budget thank you very much nice to see you again [Applause] next is Chrissy Chris Chris D me I can't

230super close Christy M thank you so much so I'm here to talk about pretty specifics down into the weeds of one specific Elementary School um and that has to do with the funding for Thorton Creek Elementary School which is an option school it's a prek through five option School the budget proposal is based off of the enrollment projections for Thorton Creek is my understanding and my understanding is that the enrollment at Thorton Creek is being artificially lessened so it is currently slated to have 390 students next year which is down from 455 this year um and the school capacity is actually 660 and we have a 45 person weight list to get into kindergarten for next year so we're not filling those kindergarten spots my understanding is that we'll have two kindergarten classes instead of

231the three that we have this year um and so there's definitely a need I think there's 80 people total on the wait list to get into Thorton Creek schoolwide and I'm trying to understand why we're not fully enrolling Thorton Creek um and and then also to urge you to fully enroll Thorton Creek because it's a really great school and when we were talking earlier about students and who gets to go to these well-funded schools in my mind Thorton Creek is exactly the definition of a well-funded school and I'm so disappointed pointed that there's so many students that are wanting to go there and that the school district seems to be depriving them of the opportunity to do that so thank you so much for your consideration and then the final speaker on today's uh public

232hearing list is Vivien song good evening I am Vivian song former School Board director and an SVS parent I recognize the extreme efforts that Dr Jones and his team have undertaken to present a balanced budget however I urge you to vote no on it because I don't think it will adequately address SPS is issues Dr Jones was correct that there are no good options but at this point a better option will be to vote to put the district into Financial oversight a form of insolvency allowed under state law this would be an important step that will allow s SPS to work with the state to make the structural changes needed Dr Nyan the superintendent back in 2018 when the mcle Sol was finalized predicted this moment other districts such as marville have already taken the

233step they will not be the last this recommended 2425 budget requires borrowing against the capital fund the hope is that it will be repaid by cost savings from closing schools this is very risky does the estimated $35 million of savings include assumptions of lost enrollment after schools are closed we know from the last time SPS closed Schools Enrollment dipped sharply we know when schools move temporarily when their building is being rebuilt or renovated families leave indeed several of the elementary schools which now have less than 250 got there precisely because they moved Queen an elementary Mont Lake among others this budget also doesn't address the largest source of our deficit special education school closures will exacerbate this deficit because with a percentage cap on special education students funded by the state if we experience a

234significant change in the denominator of that ratio total students a role we risk more deficit spending both Dr Di and Dr Jones are right SP SPS has exhausted all it can do it is time for State intervention don't throw the dice that school closures will solve our budget R the risk reward is not there not when it so directly impacts kids vote no on this budget and vote Yes on financial oversight thank you president rink and that was the final speaker on today's testimony list for in-person signups and we did not receive any signups for remote I'm going to refresh the page just to make sure nobody else there are no remote testimony signups so okay that concludes your t uh testimony list um okay so I have to adjourn this meeting and go back

235to the other meeting is that right okay so fun all right as there's no further business on this agenda this meeting stands adjourned at 8:15 p.m. would directors like a moment before we resume the regular board meeting yes quick break [Music] okay [Music] oh [Music] okay [Music] right [Music] and director Briggs has a uh parenting duty to attend to so I'm going to go earlier we missed the completed audit report from uh the chair of the audit committee director Briggs so we will do that and then we will just party it on through the rest of the agenda okay board procedure 6550 BP internal audit requires an announcement of completed internal audits as the audit and finance committee chair I am announcing that at the June 4th quarterly audit meeting the office of internal audit

236presented two internal audit reports for the Northgate elementary school replacement project one related to the electrical work and another related to the mechanical work all audit reports are discussed at a public audit meeting and the completed reports are posted for public viewing on today's agenda and on the office of internal audit Department website the end end of announcement fantastic thank you so much welc thank you and good night you're free to go um we still we we have a quorum where it's okay yeah we do yeah that's yeah and and we got even one more online so we actually still have five we have a super Quorum yeah okay so let's see we've done consent agenda we went back into the audit if I am reading this correctly do we now have action items is

237that where we are oh excuse me sorry okay if there are no further questions for the budget right now you you do have one no I will submit my questions to Dr Bulman to answer later perfect I'll just say we um are scheduled to vote on this vote on the budget next week so if you do have questions um you have a couple of days to get those in and and hopefully receive Answers by the time we come to vote excuse me okay everybody ready yes okay uh we are now moving to action items on today's agenda the first action item is uh approving the selection of Schoolboard student members for 2425 may I have a motion please vice president Serio I move for the selection of school board student members for 2025 approval of

238this item would select Colin Bragg safia ilas sabii Yun I apologize if I mispronounced uh that Young Person's last name as the three Schoolboard student members for the 2024 2025 school year immediate action is in the best interest of the district um approval of the selection of school board members has been moved by director by vice president seru and seconded by director top um this this will be the third year of our student Schoolboard member positions it has been such an awesome uh opportunity for us to have um student members on the board um and they have been invaluable to our work in the last two years and also very generous with being willing to start a new program you know this we've had two years of sure your student board members and trying to

239figure out what that actually means together um um has been really really great and it's just going to keep getting better so um really grateful for the insights and Leadership of our previous student members and very excited to meet and begin working with our um recommended appointees from our student L selection committee do directors have any questions about this item all right um uh then I will call for the vote director Clark hi director Miss Rahi hi vice president seru I director top I president Ranken I this motion is passed unanimously nice all right looking forward to meeting them in August uh the second action item is approval for naming the Rainer Beach high school gymnasium the Michael S Betha uh Athletic Complex in honor of Rainer Beach High School basketball coach Michael Betha may

240have a motion for this item please I move that the school board approved the naming of Rainer Beach high school gymnasium the Michael espa Athletic Complex immediate action is in the best interest of the district second this uh approval of this item has been moved by vice president Sergio and second by director top I see somebody I see Richard best approaching the podium and um please take the floor thank you uh director uh Ranken again Richard best I'm executive director of capital projects planning and Facilities operations and I'm really honored to uh present this bar to you tonight on behalf of superintendent Dr Bren Jones and the rer beach High School Community um Mike Betha has been a longstanding coach at Rainer Beach High School he has uh been been there for a period of

24130 years and he is a disting and has a demonstrated a clear commitment to to that student and uh to the students furthest from educational Justice uh during his tenure he has had 180 students earn athletic scholarships to two and fouryear um Collegiate uh institutions and I just think that's a outstanding you know that's why we serve in public education is to create academic success for all students so so pleased to recommend to you tonight um acceptance of this bar and the naming of the gym at the new gym at the um New Rainer Beach High School in honor of Mike patha and I open it up the questions anybody have questions directors Dr Jones yes I just might uh add that um Mike is a pillar of the community in in many ways uh

242his reach goes far beyond basketball uh he's one who's connected to a family of a extended family as well that uh has embraced the entire Southeast region um I've grown up with that family and have known them for uh pretty much all my life since we were about 7 years old and I just know of uh his family and the folks around him uh I think there's a there's some honor in us being able to name this after Mike Bea uh and it's not just him it's the family that he he's associated with so uh I want to endorse this thank you well I think we're all looking forward to calling for the vote director M Rahi hi vice president seru amen director top I director Clark president Ranken I this motion is passed unanimously

243awesome we're I'm I'm assuming will all be invited to the name unveiling when it's ready yeah that's really exciting um all right uh the third action item is authorization to negotiate a revised employment contract with the superintendent may I have a motion for this item I move that the board no I move that the school board authorize the board president to negotiate with the assistance of councel a revised employment contract for Dr Brent Jones to replace or modify his his existing employment contract with changes that may include but are not limited to revisions to the exising existing salary and term the revised contract if one is successfully negotiated will be presented to the board for approval immediate action is in the best interest of the district second all right this item has been moved by

244vice president seru and seconded by director top uh I'm the sponsor of this item so just briefly uh states in the materials but um what this item would do is authorize me as the representative of the board to work directly with Council to seek a revised Employment contract with superintendent Jones um the current contract uh is set to automatically Renew on July 1st um because of a complicated uh not non-renewal it's it's anyway basically his current contract as it was negotiated the the terms of that of the the negotiated terms end on June 30th and and we have an automat renewal to um one more year and so um and then this would author would authorize me to negotiate a further tenure onto that um so if a revised contract is successfully negotiated it would

245be presented to the board for approval at a subsequent meeting um I did not very elegantly state that so directors have any questions or clarifying okay um uh then I will call for the vote unless you you don't have anything to add to you okay vice president sarju I director top I director Clark I director Miss Rahi hi president Ranken I this motion is passed unanimously great we will now move to introduction items oh my God on today's agenda wait we already did the first one the student fees fines or charges I don't I'm missing a page I think oh there's too many things up here all right thank you oh yes there's an introduction item it's the budget okay all right introduction items the first item for introduction is resolution 2023 24 4-9 fixing

246and adopting the 20242 budget is it not that we did that one oh I'm so sorry that's what yes okay apologies uh approval the actual introduction item that is going to be introduced having not already been introduced is approval of revised board policy number 3520 student fees fines or charges and board procedure number 3520 BP and I was going to ask for a motion but it's introduction not action so um Dr buman please uh this is a motion to amend the policy and the the board procedure around student fees fines or charges um to allow for the voluntary collection of athletic fees for the coming school year um with no impact on participation of students um and then once this is approved in on July 2nd assuming it's approved um the athletic department will begin

247communicating this to families um and we'll be implementing it um accordingly do directors have questions yeah so I understand that this is part of our budget and we've talked about this quite a bit I just want to I guess when we say it has no impact on participating participation of students in sports because it is a voluntary fee how are are we at all tracking whether participation goes down um in the ne next year or so um seeing as maybe this is however implemented becomes a barrier to some students yes I think we'll put PL in place tracking me mechanisms to make sure participation if there's changes if any it's attributed to this okay and I guess so yeah I think that's really important and something I think we will want to check back in

248in a year to see if this is something we want to change from a participation standpoint I guess my second question is you know this has been a cost that's been covered by a generous donation to the school district have we ask that donor if they would be willing to donate again to participate or to to fund this need okay thank you yeah I was just going to say since it wasn't on the microphone um the the response was that yes that the donor who originally provided that Grant to the district and was Anonymous um is anonymous to the public not Anonymous to everybody and that person that person or entity has been contacted um I don't I don't have a question question but uh director top brought a thought to my mind and that

249is ensuring that students understand that it is voluntary and that this message is consistent at every single school it has to be the same message um across the district and that's that um participation shouldn't go down if if students really understand that you don't have it great let me sign you up that's how simple it should be there shouldn't be any feeling around are you sure you can't come up with the money that kind of thing um and if if there isn't oversight and accountability to that then that will become a problem to me um it's all in the messaging I the students do want to participate and they shouldn't be made to feel guilty for the financial lack of financial ability of their families yeah that's the reason this makes me very very nervous

250I understand moving forward with it but this still makes me very nervous and I you know I think one year come back and review and see where we're at any other questions all right um uh board self self- evaluation time use evaluation we don't need to discuss unless director top you have anything to add but it's in our it's in our um notes and thank you to uh staff for including so that we can track uh previous months that's great um did you we need somebody to do May and June do you want to assign somebody or do you want to do it so I created a nice handy dandy spreadsheet for folks to use the time use evaluation I think that I can do May if someone wants to sign up to try to

251do June and July there you go all right let the record show dror top is going to do May dror Mahi is going to do June and July thank you both um if there is no further business going once going twice checking with director Clark I'm about to call it are you good I'm good okay great thank you guys there being no further business to come before the board this meeting stands adjourned at 8:44 p.m. thank you and good night