001[Music] fast at 4:19 p.m. uh or sorry I guess it actually recessed at 4:18 p.m. um the board has recessed out of executive session and the special meeting of the board is reconvened at 4:19 p.m. and there's no further business to come before the board in the special meeting so the special meeting is now adjourned at 4:19 p.m. the board will convene for the regular board meeting uh I'm just going to say momentarily e [Music] order in just a moment um spsv will begin broadcasting for those joining us by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called uh this is President Rankin I am now calling the March 20th 2024 regular board meeting to order at 4:23 p.m this meeting is being recorded and we acknowledge that we
002are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound coish people Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please director cron Baron director muus swamy present director Briggs present director hery present vice president sarju present director top um director top is oh was here was here and I'm sure we'll be we'll be back and president Rankin here we will now go to superintendent Jones for his comments thank you president Rank and board members and audience um welcome everyone happy first day of full spring uh I don't know about you all but I was definitely rejuvenated by the spring like summerlike weather in fact um feeling rejuvenated and ready to tackle what's ahead I hope you all are are feeling uh the level of energy and optimism that I do as well um before we get
003into uh some some of the comments some of my further comments I want to uh have you all check out our latest edition of first Bell I'm K wheeler the proud principal of vian's elementary school and the or are taking over first [Music] B what's up SPS I'm Maya Wilson and and I'm to Joel thanks for tuning in to First Bell where we chime in with news from around the district we're excited to bring you the news from our new school building this beautiful campus was funded by taxpayers through the building Excellence Capital Levy we love our new school and we want to thank everyone who voted for the levy now we've got some awesome stories to share so let's get into it photos stuffed animals and traditional clothing from around the world were just
004a few items thought in Creek students display during the school's artifact day the event Bridges the gap between generations and cultures the tradition began after principal Jared kishner and Community partner Dr Donald Felder came up the idea as a way for students to share more about themselves tell me about this dress part of artifact day is connecting students with their Elders in their Community grandparents aunts uncles and neighbors were invited to serve as listeners and help guide students in conversation about their items on Vicky gave this guy Dr Felder called the event the best day of his educational experience when we connect children to their history their origin of language during career week counselors gave students the opportunity to see themselves from different professions guest speakers encouraged them to explore their possibilities by diving to
005careers in public service the Arts stem trades and more we stick an IV in your hand and we give you drugs for military servicewoman and music Executives the School principles and screenwriters BFD counselor John Taylor and counseling intern sh for p John Mir Elementary in orc Ka brought black families to campus for food fun and fellowship in honor of national African-American parent involvement day mother's father's Guardians and extended family came together with students and staff to celebrate black history black culture and parent involvement in their child's education at John Mir the school hosted a career fair and families had the opportunity to see firsthand what their children experience to learn in the classroom we've got some quick important announcements so get ready for the Run down applications for the 20124 2025 Seattle preschool program are
006now open that's it for this episode be sure to tuned in next month because we've got some very special stories coming your way and before we go we want to say congratulations to our friends ad vence and other students around the district who are competing in the global reading challenge good job to learn more about these stories visit our website until next time I'm Maya Wilson and I'm T jzo we'll catch you later for first [Music] Bell so that's first bill uh want to talk about tonight in our budget work session we'll work together to ensure the continued success of SPS to ensure we're supporting our students our teachers our community and our city uh in that session I'll be talking about our plans for balancing the budget for next year our road to a
007system of well-resourced schools and together we will work to Envision problem solve and ensure the success of our beloved system I'm grateful for the dedication and expertise of our team as we work towards ensuring fiscal responsibility while meeting the needs of our students and staff I also want to recognize that we are joined tonight by many in the public who have had concerns about how budget reconciliation will Impact Staffing and student outcomes I want to give assurance that we are committed to making decisions that mitigate impacts to student experiences in recent weeks our principles have been meeting with HR and budget staff to develop their budgets for the upcoming school year to those who have been actively participating in building leadership teams we appreciate your involvement your presence ensures that families and communities have a
008voice in their individual School budgets and your contributions are invaluable to our decision-making process I want to acknowledge that there are challenging decisions ahead of us and I hear your concerns but please know we are carefully considering all perspectives as we navigate these complexities and strive to make decisions that are in the best interest of our students and our staff You know despite these challenges that we may face we are united in our shared goal of creating the conditions in which students Thrive uh together I'm confident that we can overcome any obstacles and continue to provide a high quality education for all of our students I just want to thank everyone for their dedicated support and in closing I'll hand it back to you president ranker I will now turn it over to our student
009directors for comments director cron Baron excuse me thank you uh president Ranken oh it's exciting to call you that um uh um first of all I want to thank everyone here tonight um especially those with concerns about um impacts of budget decisions because I share your concerns I feel those concerns I'm in I'm in the school building all day um and this this stress over how things um that are shortfalls um on on parts of bigger systems are going to impact our communities it's hard um and I want you to know that I see you I'm with you and the reason I'm up here the reason I came wanted to be in this position is to be able to advocate for you um for my community um at SPS so thank you for being here
010um kind of on that note um this month March is theater in our schools month um if you know me personally you know I'm super passionate about theater and about Arts education in schools um and bouncing back to when we were talking about budget I think what's been really difficult for a lot of my peers who are also find so much passion and joy in um Arts programs at their schools um is is a consistent fear and stress around their their programs being cut or sacrificed or um diminished um when we Face these budget challenges um in fact over the over the weekend I was at the Washington State thespian festival and we did a letter writing exercise so School Board directors up here you may be receiving some letters um not mean ones just
011very important I promise um uh letters that really hold some very powerful stories about how Arts Chang change lives of so many students um and so I hope um when those come uh you will take some time to read them and think about them when we're in our decision-making processes um turning to a different point now uh so just a couple weeks ago there was a bill p in the state house um that was a parental rights bill when it came to CH children's education this was initiative um unfortunately and really disappointingly me as a student this Republican started and backed Bill received widespread Democratic support um especially as a as a student who has had has has accessed programs at my school like medical programs our te Health Centers which would be directly affected
012by this um bill which sorry I forgot to tell you what it does it gives parents right to access medical records of students it gives parents right to access um uh what is currently confidential of you know if students have reached out to try to seek counseling mental health counseling at their schools um I cannot stress enough how detrimental moments like these and uh bills like these are to the safety of our students to my safety at school um to the safety specifically of our students who are survivors of um sexual abuse uh to the students who are experiencing mental health issues and have an unsupportive um space at home um to trans and lgbtq students uh who who seek support at schools when they don't have that support at home it is so vital
013that our schools are safe havens for our students no matter what their backgrounds are our schools are places where people can seek out medical care when they need it um it's it's you know it's just it's really hard to see things like this happen and so I I hope that as a school board as much as we can especially when things come into state law um push to make sure we're always keeping the safety and well-being of our of our students in mind um and yeah that's all I really have to talk about tonight and I'm going to hand it over to aush director M Swami sorry is totally fine thank you director chome Baron um I want to take my time today to elevate some of the concerns I've been hearing from students I've
014been talking to over these last few weeks regarding the school board the board is the highest level governing body of this district and that means we make the highest level decisions for this District and with that it's easy to remove ourselves from the day-to-day function of the district and some of that is necessary it's it's impossible to run a district of our size if we divert our attention to every single instance and issue that pops up in the dozens of schools that we represent but when I talk to students over and over again one thing comes up and that's the question of how have I gone 12 years without knowing we had a school board how have I gone 12 years without knowing who my school board director is this board wants to hear from
015students I see that I know that I feel that and it goes without saying but students want to be heard but unless we actively engage with our students they will not actively engage with us we get a few amazing individuals who come to here to these meetings and talk with us but that's just a snapshot of who this district is and our District's needs if you get give kids a name and ideally a face to put with that name I think you'll be surprised with how much they have to say and how in tune they are with the issues that are facing our district that means showing up to schools to basketball games to musicals and just being a person to them not just a name on a website or a figure on the dice
016and when you do that I think there'll be a person right back with you and they won't say what you want to hear but they'll say what you need to hear and I know you all are incredibly hardworking and busy people but that extra step just to show up with no agenda no no goals in mind just to talk and be a person goes an incredibly long way and with that I also wanted to give a shout out to all the seniors there getting College decisions backs it's crazy it sucks but hang in there you're almost there it's on the home stretch and Ramadan Mubarak to all those observing that's all right excuse me thank you directors um moving along in the board comment section let's see need time check um since it's 4:36 I'm
017going to suggest I'll do a couple things and then let's move on to other business and we can come back to any further comments after the um I'll say a couple things I need to say now then we'll go for the audit report and then we can come back to the rest of board comments at the end of the meeting if that works for everybody okay um so uh really uh Happy announcement um and I just found out about this uh so on behalf of the whole board to I want to recognize with uh great pride um and extend heartfelt congratulations to Dr Jones on being honored with the prestigious U uncf 80th anniversary outstanding educational leader of the Year award um this recognition is a testament to his unwavering commitment to Excellence and his
018Visionary leadership of our school district um especially as a son of Seattle schools I will say United e college fund right yeah oh I've been asked to uh it's not for somebody's not on here that's the United Negro College Fund is uncf um in navigating the precedent the unprecedented unprecedented challenges faced by our district um Dr Jones has exemplified resilience compassion and partnership um so congratulations and thank you Dr Jones we are grateful for your leadership and partnership you guys can clap again yeah um so quick uh work plan update for the board uh as I have mentioned previously the Washington State School director Association has a um time bound window where they accept uh platform revision proposals and um I know we have many we have new directors we have two uh to be
019filled seats um we also put forward four position proposals last year so I uh sent this information out to directors and did not receive indication that anybody had an issue they wanted to bring so we don't have a bar for that for this year which is fine there probably years that there haven't been um but if you uh in looking at the um standing wasda catalog of legislative impermanent position if there's something that we want to put up to the wasda membership which is all the Schoolboard directors in the state um for next year we would have to be ready to do that this is this is the time of year and we have to submit those um so yes uh okay moving president rank can I ask a quick question about that is it
020officially too late now or do we or do we still have time uh well it so it h so under the under new rules it has to be adopted by the board and submitted as a board right so because of our meeting calendar we would it would have to be intro and action in the same meeting if you have something do you have something no no no not at the moment oh okay um I can't remember the platform oh no yeah the revision window closes April 8th so I guess yes okay okay sorry I did that out loud okay so uh the board will be holding a forum uh yeah changing topics the B board is holding a forum for the eight finalists for School Board director District 2 and district four positions we will
021be holding this forum on March 27th next week at Lincoln High School um beginning at uh officially beginning at 6m though candidates and directors will be asked to join us um a little bit ahead of that uh The Forum will be open to the public and streamed live on spsv so we invite the whole Community to um join us we are scheduled to appoint one person to each position during our April 3rd regul board meeting and then plan to hold the oath of office for our appointees on April 4th so I will do a legislative update and other things later um uh so our other reports for tonight director Briggs let's go to you for the uh announcement of recently completed audits thank you okay so board procedure 6550 BP um states that internal audit
022requires an announcement of completed internal audits as the audit and finance committee chair I am announcing that at the March 5th quarterly audit meeting the office of internal audit presented two internal audit reports one audit on contract data and another audit on the Webster School Edition and modernization project all audit reports are discussed at a public audit audit meeting and the completed reports are posted for public viewing on today's agenda and on the office of internal audit web Department website that's all I have thank you um uh yeah I will save legislative update I was in Washington DC until less than 24 hours ago um so I have uh local state and federal updates um uh but because of time let's go now to public testimony um unless there's anything urgent no okay uh board
023procedure 1430 BP provides rules for testimony and I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules uh in summary we take testimony from uh individuals called from a public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list all of which are included in 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 uh listed speakers May Seed their time to another person when the listed speaker's name is called the total amount of time allowed will not exceed 2 minutes for the combined number of speakers and time will not be restarted after the new speaker Begins the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting
024list if you do not wish to have time seated to you you may Decline and retain your place on the testimony or wait list uh the majority of speakers time should be spent on the topic you have indicated when signing up and um we expect the St same standard of Civility for those participating in public comment as we expect of ourselves as board president I uh have the right to and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard required by board procedure 1430 BP um and I will also just again remind and ask everyone to please please stick to that twom minute um limit so that we can get through to everybody um and I don't like cutting people off so don't make me um so let's see um staff will read off
025the testimony speakers um good afternoon for those who are joining remotely to provide testimony when I call your name please make sure to unmute on the conference call line by pressing star six and also unmute on your device the first Speaker today is going to be Chris jackins Chris will be followed by Ashley Warner and then Kate Campbell my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on on District use of artificial intelligence or AI Five Points number one the superintendent is promoting the use of artificial intelligence number two the district announced a new tool for classrooms including a students St including access to a students activity history after class such surveillance is disrespectful toward students number three screen-based education did not work well for everyone during the co pandemic number four one wants humans
026directly in the education Loop number five the School Board needs to publicly discuss these issues before the superintendent and District Implement AI tools and strategies on school closures two points number one the district has now explicitly said that there are no plans to close the recovery Academy number two the district is supposedly not yet going forward with school closures but undoing this Public Relation dance the public can see the district's feet moving below the curtain please do not close schools thank you on the district audit of the Webster School Edition and modernization project two points number one District staff originally claimed that the school had never had a gym this is not true I attended Webster for seven years it had a gym number two the district originally planned to restore Webster's South side main
027stairway this never happened why on due diligence I have attached written questions on agenda items please pull items from today's consent agenda and ask questions thank you very much the next speaker is Ashley Warner my name is Ashley Warner and I'm a school counsel at Ingram high school on November 8th 2022 one of my students brought a gun to school which he used to murder one of my other students not far from my office since that day our community has been drowning in a tempest of fear and grief it has been 498 days since the shooting and Ingram students continue to carry the weight of this trauma on their shoulders while trying to make sense of this Unthinkable tragedy our students have come to rely on the counseling office as a refuge of sorts a
028port in the storm where they can check in with their trusted adult a place where they can seek Solace and find the courage to continue on with their day after taking a break in a quiet calm space for some of our students visiting the counseling office is a highlight in their day yet in the face of our students profound suffering Seattle public schools has made a decision to defy all has made a decision that defies all logic and compassion they plan to reduce our counseling FTE from 4.0 to 3.6 for the 2425 school year this means that the 350 students on my case load will only have access to my services 3 days a week instead of five this means that my team will have to take on extra work to support my students on
029the days I'm out of the building all while trying to manage their own incredibly large case loads they will have to take on extra work despite barely being able to keep up with their own because they are dedicated to serving Ingram students even the ones not in their assigned alphabet I know that my co- counselors will help because that is the main the nature of what we do we enter this profession because we love to help and are here to serve the many varying and diverse needs of our student population and while our team will be stretched to its very limits at the end of the day it is still our students who will suffer the most to the district I urge you to reconsider this decision before it's too late our students cannot afford
030to Bear the brunt of your shortsightedness they deserve better they deserve our unwavering commitment to their well-being and success thank you the next speaker is Kate Campbell Kate Campbell um Kate if you're on the phone line please press star SS to unmute on the conference call line is Kate in the room G to move to the next speaker lean hust good evening my name is Leanne host and I'm a school counselor at Ingram high school as a school counselor I'm the ultimate Problem Solver and a team player every time the district asks me to Pilot a program I do it I have piloted direct instruction Avid Naviance and espert a mental health screener all these programs benefit our school district with millions of dollars all benefit our students I'm the epitome of a team player
031cutting school counselors is not right especially when school counselers have worked so hard for funding the best programs for our students I have helped thousands of my students access college level classes at the community college through a program called Running start Ingram alone received $67,000 from running start funds one year money that my department generated the district took all of our running start funds away and now we can only and we now we can not fund fully fund our department we will lose a full-time counselor for the first time this year the state increased running start funding so our students could attend running start year round so now counselors are helping students sign up for summer classes and again our building is not being compensated running start is an amazing program with many benefits it
032gives our students free college credit and increases their chances of being admitted into University this is a program where most students are first in their family to attend college running start start is is important to me because I was the first in my family to graduate from college it is an important work that counselors do registering our students for college classes in addition to helping procure funds for our school district I also provide mental health supports for my students many of our students are struggling with mental health issues and I help support them every day I would like to end my with a list of my students who have died because of the violence in our schools and our community please don't forget our students Angel ortis Sano murdered in his apartment Jasper Toms drug
033overdosed in a the day before school started deshun milikin murdered in a Belleview Restaurant Quincy Coleman murdering on the Garfield Community steps Travis wiger drug overdose and Ebenezer Holly murdered inside Ingram please don't cut school counselors thank you the next speaker is cheryn Crowder cheryn Crowder cheryn will be followed by Mary Wagner and then Anthony Maly hi I'm cheryn Crowther she her pronouns I am the co-president of the Seattle special education PTSA and as Dr Jones pointed out budget discussions are underway at the building level they are based on the enrollment predictions in the school's funding allocation here's a brief comparison of how enrollment predictions went last year last March the prediction for 75% of our our middle schools turned out to be off with about 30 more students on average showing up per School
034this year most middle schools are projected to see fewer students at two-thirds of the schools about 20 students Less on average will be in school in October when enrollment is counted predicting enrollment is a science and an art like last September some students as a result will start without a teacher in their classroom without their teacher in their classroom they may not have their teacher for several days but if the past is a lesson then it's highly likely students receiving special education services and so-called self-contained classrooms those needing the highest support levels will start the school year without a teacher or the staff to support that classroom and if it goes like last year the Staffing positions won't be filled for weeks or possibly months even with Educators shifting from one school to to another
035in the student focused outcomes governance manual a fun read uh the definition of input says resources and activities invested in a particular program or strategy that are usually knowable at the beginning of a cycle are measured of effort applied and the outputs are defined the result of a particular set of inputs usably known in the midst of a cycle and it is a measure of the implementation of the program or strategy I'm asking the superintendent with the board's support to change the input now for next September hire this year for next year's student outcomes thank you next speaker is Marian Wagner Marian Wagner Maran will be followed by Anthony U malaky and then Alex Wakeman Rose hello um about exactly one year ago I was here giving public testimony about the loss of my job
036share a job share that was Mo that was a cost neutral job share 046 split so only one of us gets benefits in that situation and after being an elementary teacher in SPS for 19 years I uprooted myself and my relationships with students and families to move to another school in SPS to work part-time so I was able to spend adequate time with my young family during the precious early years that we all know pass so quickly everyone who knows me here in SPS knows that I'm passionate about students teaching for social justice and improving our educational system so all of our students succeed and now I stand Here Again one year later because in my new building at Hazel Wolf My principal just ended job shares for next year eight employees job shares will
037be ended even though the staff just like the staff at my last building have showed they unanimously support job shares that are cost neutral I will be leaving this school and finding part-time work for a couple more years until I'm ready to return to work full-time this is what my family needs this is what my students need um when I'm working honestly I am fresh I am focused I am delivering high quality education it not only works for my family but this flexible work Arrangement works for our schools it works for our students it works for our communities so why is it that HR is pressuring principles to end job shares why aren't they being transparent about that I would like to ask HR to collaborate with labor Partners to find a way to support
038job shares SPS should be encouraging principles to retain job share options openness to job shares is a good HR practice to both attract and retain Educators not allowing flexible work Arrangements inequitably inequitably impacts women as lower wage earners in our society women tend to be the ones who care for children or aging parents a limiting part-time work keeps many women from being able to access work at all forcing them to St their careers and struggle with re-entry several years later please retain job shares in Seattle public schools that are cost neutral thank you the next speaker is Anthony Malaki and to all of our speakers I forgot to say this at the top please feel free to reintroduce yourself I will not be pronouncing everyone's name correctly Anthony with us going to the next speaker
039Alex Wakeman Rose or hi is this Alex on the phone hi can you hear me yes we can okay thank you I am Alex Wakeman Rouse a parent and PT PTSA president at Dunlap Elementary and volunteer with altto together for Seattle schools who I'm here representing today we urge you to prioritize transparency and honest toway engagement with all families during the next few months of budget development we support um The District's engagement Focus to ensure that students of color who are furthest from educational Justice and their families have meaningful voice in school and District initiatives but we're concerned that the small Equity focus group meetings you have planned as the only means of Engagement are likely to exclude thousands of these students SPS has tens of thousands of students F furthest from educational Justice this
040is why engagement with the entire SPS Community is crucial when there are proposals that have major changes to kids like Staffing ratios and school consolidations we need to be problem solving together to shape the district's proposals this means publicly sharing options and Analysis of how these proposals could impact student outcomes equity and student well-being for 2425 we're concerned that SPS is proposing changes that will harm students such as budget cuts to school Staffing without any clear analysis on how this is less bad for kids instead of selling non-school properties while these may be the best options to address their budget challenges it's crucial we are all informed of the options you're exploring and why you support some over others transparent and honest communication builds trust and allows communities to understand the rationale behind final decisions
041it builds shared responsibility for the success of our schools excluding families May breed distrust and resentment ultimately undermining the district's ability to achieve its goals mistrust also grows when SPS leaders have failed to take action when staff have made decisions that increase harm to our kids District leaders and board members have known for years of the situation at R viiew Elementary the Board needs to ensure that the current concerns of r view families are addressed let us work together to ensure that all schools have the resources they need to provide the best possible education for all of our kids particularly those furthest from educational Justice thank you for your dedication to our schools and Community the next speaker is Dean Davis Porter desan Davis Porter will be followed by Jennifer mder so good evening my
042name is Dean Davis Porter and I'm a kindergarten teacher at Martin Luther King junor Elementary School I've worked for stle public schools for 40 plus years I started when I was six not only am I a product of Seattle p schools I am the proud mother of five adults who went through Seattle py schools I care deeply about all scholars in our school district I'm here to speak today about the importance of early communication and planning around potential school closures and consolidations I understand there has not been any decision made to consolidate or close schools yet but is being considered as a way to address budget deficit I'm here not to speak in favor of or against closing or consolidating schools but rather to stress the importance of early communication and engagement with the school
043communities that may be impacted I speak from experience I'm a parent and an educator that was at the African-American Academy before it was unjustly closed during his first year we were placed in the same building um that is um Coleman Elementary School that is now known as th Good Marshall there was no plan no collaboration and we became second class citizens the following year we were moved to the sharess building which was an alternative re-entry program the communication with our school Community was lacking and we were not given the time needed to prepare for such a significant change as you know families plan their lives around the schools and the experience they want for their Scholars closing a school is disruptive that disruption can be mitigated if Scholars and families have enough time to plan
044ahead or can be made worse if the process and communication is rushed if you're going to close or consolidate schools please engage with those closest to the work Scholars parents and Educators as early as possible to build the trust and to allow communities to be informed engaged and to build true part Partnerships thank you the next speaker is Jennifer mder Jennifer will be followed by Kent uh say and then Sam fredman hi I'm Jennifer Mo I seed my time to Laura adriens good afternoon my name is Laura Adrian and I'm a teacher at Daniel Bagley Elementary I've come tonight to shine a light on one of the Lesser known consequences of budget cuts and Staffing reductions and that is Educator collaboration we all know educators are more effective when we work together as a team
045sitting down with our grade level colleagues to discuss a challenging math objective for instance can lead to real instructional improvements for students as Educators share ideas and resources or make a plan to find or create what their students need strong collaborative teams are built on a foundation of trust and it takes time to develop those trusting relationships when educators are displaced effective teams are broken apart the process of building those collaborative relationships has to start all over again those of us who have been in the district for a while have seen this happen so frequently that it becomes hard to muster the will to keep trying after all everything takes longer when decided by committee I wouldn't be working such long hour if I just shut my classroom door and work by myself but is
046that what we really want for our school communities I'm certain it is not then Along Comes the October count and maybe the School receives more FTE and hires another educator from the outside everyone thinks that the school has been made whole again but it is not whole we are stuck in a cycle of broken up teams and inefficient ineffective or non-existent collabor ation this cycle based on lowball enrollment projections completely fails to support students and families I urge you to dig a Little Deeper when weighing the consequences of specific budget cuts please direct District leaders to do a June adjustment and help School communities begin the school year with reasonable Staffing allocations and a reasonable hope of keeping effective teams together so students will thrive in our classrooms thank you the next speaker is Kent
047say after Kent will be Sam fredman and then Allison gee good afternoon my name is k say I seed my time to Rebecca Holman good evening I'm Rebecca Holman a teacher at John Stanford International School my school has a dual language immersion DLI program in Spanish and Japanese at jsas we support students who are Heritage speakers and students who are learning Spanish or Japanese for the first time this year our budget did not give us enough Staffing to continue our DLI program at the fourth and fifth grade level we tried to submit a waiver to move Staffing around and we also asked for additional funding from SPS but both were denied with the current Staffing allocation to jsis it is not possible to maintain our dual language immersion program at fourth and fifth grade what
048is our school supposed to do we do not have enough staff to support the learning at our school and there has been no guidance from SPS on what to do next the SPs strategic plan touts the importance of developing a culturally responsive Workforce that effectively support students and families DLI programs fulfill this goal students are supported when they can learn at school in their home language fam's involvement in their child's education is supported when they're able to speak to their child's class teacher in their home language students and families deserve the opportunity to learn in their home language and have access to staff that share their language and culture furthermore SPS is refusing to allow students to come off of our wait list we have space in almost every grade SPS has an open enrollment
049policy where families can choose where to send their child why is SPS not following through with this policy we have heard these struggles are occurring at every DLI and option school and SPS SPS needs to engage and work collaboratively with DLI schools to understand the needs of our programs if SPS changed how they allocated Staffing to meet the needs of our students and follow their open enrollment policy it would help to solve the problem thank you the next speaker is Sam fredman after Sam will be Allison G and then Diane to my name is Sam fredman I'm a teacher at Wedgwood Elementary and I'm here to talk about the budgeting process how it's affected the place where I work as well as Educators more generally over the past few years our resource room has been
050inadequately staffed at the beginning of every year and our CT in that room has had to take so much extra time and energy to push for adequate Staffing this results in students who often need the most support receiving that irregularly and unsustainably we need more proactive and transparent engagement with our communities so that we can start every year with the staff and resources we need those of us on the ground the teachers the family the community Partners we know what our students need and we get so little opportunity to work with the district when plans are made and budgets are created the biggest decisions seem to be made without consulting US during our last bargain the decision to switch funding models was a complete surprise and we ended up wasting many hours debating how this
051would maybe even be possible before pushing this the decision back it was clear this hadn't been discussed with Community Partners and families and teachers well enough to have a clear idea about how it would happen I wish this could have been brought up and discussed in a more in a less time sensitive less professionally fraught space per similarly the original decision to close schools was SE felt sprung on our City's community it became clear that this also hadn't been well discussed it led to fear and frustration and finally a delaying these plans it ends up feeling like the district's announcements of about some of our biggest changes are a test an idea floated to see how the community will react this is not communication we not authentic Community engagement Educators need to feel like their
052expertise and experience are paid attention to at the district level please work with us not above us the next speaker is Allison G and then Diane chow and then m m Vio hello I am Allison and I am a newer employee at an SPS Elementary School I've been working in professional child care for over 15 years and I have studied the wages of Educators versus the current days economy and the job market I have colorcoded the SPs salary schedule against minimum wage data and the udub self-sufficiency standard study it is clear to me that SPS through resources systems or Collective efforts does not have the wherewithal to pay some SPS employees especially par Educators a monthly wage that is comfortable to live on long-term and a minimum standard of living there are possibly SPS employees
053who are making a monthly wage with default summer deferral pay that is near to or below a monthly salary for a full-time 12-month minimum wage position some may say that it this is legal but I think we might all agree that this is highly uncomfortable we pay them this way year round in society at large minimum wage no longer serves the purpose it was originally intended for I would like those who are listening and capable to make change to hear my request that SPS employees be at least provided with a bridge to resources geared toward low-income earners this could be through the EAP program or Partnerships with organizations that make access to housing Transportation extra salary and food security a little easier especially for low-income Educators this could include a monthly bus pass through something
054like the Orca passport program it could look like summer job or second job suggestions or even placement this could look like food security resources such as a map to food banks or even some kind of optional staff meal program this could look like access to resources on applying for low-income housing ideas for housing or even housing placement for educators I feel that SPS could start to compile a bank of resources without utilizing EXT extra monetary funds these are there are already many SPS employees living monetarily underresourced lives and our knowledge is power together I think you could start with an action step like surveying the employees of SPS schools for their ideas and needs I ask the board and those listening to join me and make Making Waves of change toward alleviating the challenges of
055poverty for SPS employees thank you the next speaker is Diane TAA following Diane will be um M viio and then Philip Gerard montejo Thompson after that hi my name is Diane TI I am a classroom teacher at Wing luk Elementary and I am also a parent to an incoming kindergartener in the fall each year budget time in schools is extremely stressful and unnecessarily anxiety inducing we are asked to look at our budget and make hard decisions using an equity lens but the cuts in our building we are asked to make are innately inequitable Wing luk is a high poverty school yet we were funded a 0.0 AP we had to choose between getting academic intervention services and tutors that have a direct impact on student learning in reading and math each day or to fund
056an assistant principal how is that Equitable we are an early literacy priority School District leaders come and do walkthroughs at Wing luk to see all the learning that takes place we work hard we do our job we analyze data we close gaps we reach goals each year the district app plots but how do you think these goals are achieved we need the people in our buildings in the positions that we have to be maintained maintained budget cuts in schools like Wing luk where the student population is more than 75% free and reduced lunch are hugely impactful High poverty schools should just be funded a 05 AP at the very minimum we need strong admins so that teachers can do our job effectively having to choose between these roles is not right nothing is is as
057excruciating as when we were told we had to vote between art or music two years ago staff had to vote on whether we should keep our art teacher or music teacher this process is not Equitable to our students and it is deeply flawed the district says these Cuts need to be made and I know mine is not the only School making these hard choices but if the district really wants to be Equitable instead of pro providing slides about Equity they would require employees in the district office to visit schools regularly on a rotating schedule because schools need support daily in real time inefficiencies should be identified and cut first at the district level to make more money for budgets in schools we are getting new students every single week with the reduction of funding it
058becomes harder for our students furthest behind and our students on the cus to catch up cutting positions in schools is detrimental to student learning and minimizes student gains District Representatives should attend staff budget discussions in school buildings to really understand what these Cuts do and the impact they have on the school Community we need more collabor collaboration and transparency in this process thank you the next speaker is me viio and then Philip Gerard monteo Thompson followed by Lisa alicio good evening me veio former special education teacher with Nova High School and currently proudly serving as the vice president for the Seattle Education Association when I last gave testimony this past October I asked for transparency and collaboration and laid out missed opportunities to adequately staff our schools in the hopes of preventing the disruption we
059previously experienced in all our future planning now as we are in building budget season we seem destined to make the same mistakes we made in the past year the WSS committee a monthly committee established for joint planning met only three times and those meetings were used to inform us past and sea labor partners of decisions that had already been made decisions including raising all secondary class sizes cutting running start funding and limiting options for mental health support staff our questions were not answered and our concerns were not addressed we could not advocate for proportionate Equity dollar deductions and were not given the racial Equity analysis that defended those across theboard cuts to non-staff funding there were no opportunities to discuss any changes made to the allocation formula now buildings have been giving funded allocations with
060little explanation for the basis of student projections or clarity as to how the allocation model was developed special education staff are not given projections for their intensive Pathways and resource numbers appear underprojected again some schools have requested mitigation and received it While others have been denied or do not know that this mitigation is even possible this is a continued lack of transparency and communication tonight we ask first to reexamine alternatives for balancing this budget to restore funding to schools before we finalize budgets this March if we do not invest in our schools and currently enrolled students today we will never achieve our shared vision for the future of Seattle Public Schools we also ask for a clearer mitigation process and to earmark funding for a potential and likely needed June adjustment we know today that
061we will need to Remedy Staffing funding and projection concerns and we believe we can avoid the disruption we saw in October if we begin to collaborate now thank you the next speaker is Philip Gerard montejo Thompson after Philip will be Lisa alicio and then Vivien van gelder hello uh I'm Gerard first grade teacher now at Highland Park Elementary uh what I'm here to say you've already heard we need more staff and I know what you're going to say there's no money but there is they're just not giving it to us and I would beg the district that I don't feel like we're working together on getting the money um I know it's there somewhere we can get it and I just I would like to feel like we're working together towards reaching that money and
062making it available so that we can actually support these students because they're not getting what they need I'm not getting what I need my co-workers aren't getting what they need and we can't keep going this way we can't wait for a lawsuit to decide to fix the problem let's be a little more proactive so let's figure something out include us tell us what's happening tell us what we can tell you that you can tell other people people so that they can give us the money please next speaker is Lisa alicio and then Vivian van gelder hello my name is Lisa alicio and I am an occupational therapy practitioner um a little history of OT we um help students who qualify who need help with writing self-regulation organizational skills sensory integration and even basic self-care skills
063um these Services once identified are federally mandated for our students and our OT department has been chronically short staffed there are students who can't receive their full therapy minutes due to this and now due to stated budget cuts the district is threatening to displace otpt and speech ther thy assistance um our entire team of four otaa practitioners is being displaced as we speak collectively the four of us serve 13 different schools 48 classrooms and spend over 40,000 minutes a year with students these students over 90% of color are especially vulnerable they receive Medicaid many of them and the district is reimbursed for these minutes that we serve and by displacing our otaa team students will suffer families will become frustrated and established and successful sped collaborations will be disassembled ultimately the district will lose money
064while causing harm we're asking for the district to reconsider and support special education by maintaining their current level of Staffing and keeping their classified OTAs ptas and speech language Pathologists I urge the board and the superintendent to seek full funding from the legislature to ensure that this happens thank you the next speaker is Vivian [Applause] velder good evening directors and superintendent Jones I'm Vivian van Gilder co-president of Seattle Council PTSA pta's mission is to make every child's potential a reality by engaging and Empowering Families and communities to advocate for old children as a child advocacy organization we appreciate your work in developing goals and guardrails for our district giving us a clear North star in the form of student outcomes and a road map for getting there we are acutely aware that it has been
065an immense lift to bring us this far and for this we are grateful however we also know that the most difficult part of this work has only begun and that is the work of making these golden guard rails a description of our system as it is and not just of what we hope it could be we know that our district is not yet serve all students as we heard right here last week from the immensely courageous reer View Community egregious system failures are occurring causing profound harm to our children we are aware of many equally concerning instances like these in our sprawling decentralized intensely siloed District sometimes these harms are not visible to decision makers and that is a problem and sometimes they are visible and remain unaddressed and that is also a problem our
066ptas and families are asking us how do we get from where we are now where our children are repeatedly failed by fragmented systems and broken lines of responsibility and accountability to where our system should be and we do not know how to answer them they want to know how do we get ground level information to decision makers about where critical system failures are occurring so that they can be immediately addressed and we do not know how to answer them they want to know as those closest to the problems where can we bring our expertise and knowledge to the vital work of creating a system that uplifts our children and we do not know how to answer them directors and superintendent Jones these are our children we cannot not show up to do this work Council
067and our PTA communities are ready to partner to build a system that puts our students at the center are you ready to partner with us the next speaker is Jana Parker is Jana or Jana Parker in the room I'm not seeing any speakers remotely okay I'm going to go to the next speaker James Parker hi everyone uh calls me Whitney I'm a par educator at Franklin High School I'm here to talk about safety uh Monday after winter break we started school with partial power there were no lights in some classrooms or in some hallways or in the bathrooms or in the star or in the stairs there was no heat no internet no working elevator for our wheelchair users and no cafeteria or nurse refrigerator that had power but when our principal reached out to
068SPS about closing the school he was denied how was that not enough to close the school it wasn't until there was a literal fire on the third floor that school was cancelled the the way these decisions are made needs to change and since then we have had more basic problems two weeks ago the boys bathrooms on two different floors are broken they've been broken since then our principal sent in a work order we've received no word how are bathrooms not a priority it's clear that the budget cuts to the repairs have severely undermined the ability to have safe schools and I yield the rest of my time to my colleague to talk further about this I'm Jonas Crim I'm a teacher at Franklin High School as well um just a second what Whitney was talking
069about um I teach newcomer students um all of my students talk about how beautiful Franklin is on the outside but how it's a on the inside these are students who recently arrived in our country and are very excited to be studying in SPS um there's a 10-ft pit outside the lunchroom that's a safety haard for students um it took me six months to get a work order to fix a leaking sink in my classroom that was causing a mold problem that was giving students headaches um the bathrooms the kids have to go all the way to the top floor to access um physically I would hope that uh the school could invest in the staff that we've all been talking about but also um in the maintenance staff and in the physical maintenance of uh
070our structure so that we can do our jobs as professionals thank you I'm going to go one more time through the names um for folks we weren't able to hear from earlier Kate Campbell is Kate Campbell in the room okay moving on Anthony malaky Anthony malaky and then finally um Jana Parker okay I'm going to go to the wait list now if you uh already had time seated to you please just let us know because we won't um go back to you the first person on the wait list is Juniper amonson hi uh my name is Juniper um I am speaking on ensuring inter agency recovery Academy stays open I'm a youth Health Advocate and educator and I was a student at Roosevelt High School from 2014 to 2019 in that time I saw firsthand
071how harmful the drug culture was in a school without a focus on recovery and wellness every year I attended Roosevelt people I knew and went to class with were overdosing at parties hurting themselves or other people the recovery school is a necessity in the community now more than ever youth have missed significant developmental opportunities from years of online school and the culture around substance youth among youth is now something entirely new it's something none of us have ever seen before and if SPS is core mission is to support students all students then the recovery Academy is an essential part of that mission The increased prevalence of isolation depression and suicidal ideation among high schoolers that we've seen in the last handful of years means that they're more susceptible to substance use disorder and students who
072need that support are seldom able to find it in other schools when I attended Roosevelt our budget routinely overshadowed many other public schools in Seattle and if any of that budget went toward building healthier relationships between students and substance use I never saw any of it but Roosevelt is in a wealthier and wider part of Seattle and so the funding discrepancies were always brushed off as well it's always been that way I know it has students and families and teachers know that it has many SPS students learn in Seattle schools the history of redlining and its Legacy of funding discrepancies but that isn't an excuse to uphold these systems we can't change the past of SPS but we are responsible for shaping its future and the recovery Academy is an integral part of that thank
073you the next speaker is Veronica Pew Veronica PE is Veronica in the room not seeing Veronica going to mean to go to Ellison Litman is Allison Litman stepping forth no Allison Litman okay then Marshall Reed is Marshall Reed here if your name was on the list and I called it and you're still here okay president ranking that concludes today's testimony thank you um I I'm actually I'm going to take chair's privilege and do a little uh preview of the legislative update because it's very relevant to a lot of you with us today and I imagine you might not all be here at the end of the meeting um although I really encourage you to stay for the fun of the budget work session um so uh I was just in Washington DC with the Council
074of great City Schools which is a it was it was formed um uh on the on the tail end of the Civil Rights era to advocate for students and that attend Urban school districts um it's a very long-standing organization and um as a member district Dr Jones and I both serve on the board of directors um it's a really unique organization that uh does have a superintendent and a board director um on represent represent represent each district on the board we have two annual meetings one is at the legislative conference in Washington DC which I was just at and one is at the um annual conference of Council of great City Schools uh which takes place in the fall this year it will be in Dallas and I hope that um the majority if not
075all of our board will attend along with our superintendent and staff um and I'm sharing that because it the experience that I had um being there uh these past few days was um really frustrating and also um validating in ways that I wanted to share with those of you who came to speak about um budget and and other things it I uh we have a lot in common with a lot of other school Urban school districts a lot in common a lot of shared challenges because we also have some challenges that are unique to us and we're fortunate to not have some challenges that many of our colleagues serving um students in urban districts do across the country um so I uh the shared challenges that we all have are in trying to address educational
076disparities we're somewhat unique compared to other urban districts in that um our city is segregated so our schools are segregated but this the unique part of that is that our segregation is within our city a lot of other Urban school districts have the segregation being in the urban Corp and then in the suburbs which we we also have have that but we have um uh a unique population that when you look at student achievement we are a high performing District because we are a high performing District for white students who have what they need when they come to school and we have more of those students than other urban districts which is not to Discount the work of Educators for their students or or families participation but it's a little bit of a falsehood to
077say well look at how much we are performing as compared to other urban districts because if you look at black and brown children we're not outperforming anybody the um moment that we are in right now that I'm going to ask those of you who said work with us to back that up with action because the moment that we are in right now is going to require us all to get very uncomfortable with changing the ways that things have been happening in our district for decades and if I know anything about people in Seattle we are not super comfortable with change we get you I mean and maybe it's not just Seattle but it feels like a very Seattle thing to me um the the fear of having something taken I have seen an experience as
078someone who grew up here actually keeps us from getting to great and so we have the the the reality of the situation that we are in is we actually do have fully funded education education in our state is fully funded the problem is the model that is fully funded is from 2009 and it's 2024 and we have 2024 needs that we are all desperately trying to meet with 2009 funding and allocations so I try and I feel it in myself get you know we're not talking about Cuts it's reduction because of enrollment it doesn't that may be technically true it doesn't matter because when you lose somebody at your school it feels like a cut we can come together around what our students really really need we're still a$ 1.2 billion doll District in one
079of the richest cities to have ever existed and we don't care about our children collectively enough to lean in to discomfort and also to demand that not just other people change but we change we are not going to do these hard things and get these things to our students that you are all asking for if we maintain what we have because what we have is built on Decades of racism and dysfunction and it's not what our kids need going forward we the national reality is we have a house at the national level that proposed a budget that would reduce Title One funding by 80% so when we're talking about go find the money like we we have to fight even to just have what we already have that we know is not enough nobody's giving
080out more money for schools I talked to school and Philadelphia their counseling ratio is 1 to 600 and half their students go to school in buildings that are over a 100 years old that is unacceptable this is the 21st century in the United States where everybody is supposed to be able to achieve and we do not invest in our children and so what I'm um saying this for is we have so so this proposal to reduce Title One funds while we are asking hey could the federal government meet their obligation to fully fund idea at the 40% that it said it would when it was first um put into law they're not going to and if they did they would take it out of Title One funding I had somebody from the Department of Education
081say that to me directly new money isn't happening we have a um I mean I just feel like maybe capitalism is not working as well as we were hoping that it would uh just as a structure so we have the the wealth disparity is just growing and growing and growing and growing our schools are more segregated than they were in the Civil Rights era so the context of the level of challenge is so much Beyond this room which is not to say that we don't all have a responsibility but um it's it's pretty bleak if I'm being honest and in a lot of ways we're really fortunate in Washington n andc Seattle um but just because it's better than it is some other places doesn't mean that that's enough um so I guess so the
082things that came up consistently from cities all across the urban cities all across the country mental health is everybody is trying to figure out our students are facing a mental health crisis and our adults are too and if they're not already on their own it they're they're um absorbing one from from their students um and we barely have enough funding to provide basic education must much less also pick up where there's no support for mental health and people can't access health care um gun violence also a lot of districts we are all talking about how it's falling to school districts because it's impacting our students and our families but it's not a school district issue it's an everybody issue and so um I sorry I didn't wasn't planning to say anything right now so there
083is um I guess nobody's coming to rescue us it's on us together it's on us together and so I really appreciate when we hear directly the impacts of things that happen in in our classes and I really appreciate hearing how much people want to be part of the solution and so my challenge to all of us is to remember that that nobody's coming to save us and that if we want to show up and do things differently for our kids we are going to have to start with ourselves and reach out and come together around our children because that is what they deserve and um that's the only way that we're going to make the change that we want and that they need so thank you for coming and please come back and let's also
084come back together in different ways because this is not really a conversation and it's not designed to be um but we I had a um great experience today with some uh a Ballard the university Ballard Lions Club these are all people who have lived in Seattle for decades who don't have kids in the system anymore and um I showed them first Bell and they just were like we're in how do we how do we support you what do we do think we get caught up in the fact that there are not as many kids in Seattle as there used to be but the plus side is that means that there are so many in our city who don't have children of their own who are there and ready to offer support and resources and who
085want our kids to succeed so my my challenge to everybody is that we we remember that we're not alone and that also we're all we have and that the way we're going to change this for our students is to be okay with getting uncomfortable when we know that it's going to lead us to better outcomes for our students and so um I thank you and ask you to um partner with us and commit I know everybody up here is very committed to um you know we're we're all here because we care about kids and the more we can remember that and focus on what they need and um stop swirling around with problems that happen between adults um the better off we're all going to be so thank you very much um do we need
086a pause before we go into budget work session or do we want to all right all right we're going to take uh we're gonna let's start the budget work session at 5:45 how many minutes that's seven minutes thank [Music] you [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] all righty we have a budget work session today um folks in the in the audience this make a weird sound if if you want to continue your conversations please do but please do it out in the hall so that we can hear each other and get on with the work session thank you uh superintendent Jones take it away uh thank you everyone and uh we have a budget work session we're going to talk about uh 2425 uh what are we doing to bring that to closure in terms of
087our our strategies our recommendations um and then we'll at at a later date we'll get into 25 26 but right now we're trying to talk about what is it that we are are trying to propose going forward and as we come here together tonight we want to begin to address these budget challenges in a profound way uh the goal is to ensure our system success for years to come uh and I want to start by providing some of my thoughts on where we have been um where we are today and where we're going so our overarching goal and my Northstar as you've heard me say is to create a well-resourced school system where still where students Thrive uh these schools offer students families the adequate support programs and resources and inspiration they need to Su
088succeed uh and I truly believe it's going to take all of us uh I I heard president Ranken talk about that in her comments a few minutes ago uh our SPS staff our board business philanthropic Community elected officials everyone is necessary to make sure that we're successful and we need to be led by students and students understand what their needs are and we need to make sure that we're uh following following their lead as well and as a person who is a Seattle native I know what we can do um and I'm commit committing to working with everyone in our system to make sure that we have this success um we do have work to do but let's not forget that our system today is among the very best we still are the very best
089and when you start to look at um us compared to other urban districts uh we we do have some areas that we shine and uh but we continue to have this need to be better and I get that and it's always about continuous Improvement we've spent the last number of years on the defensive navigating covid budget cuts reductions in enrollment persistent gaps in state funding and basic education and more and we have plenty of tough decisions to make in the coming months and I believe we must face these challenges together now it's time to play offense we've been on the defense too long and I think there are eight main things that we need to be focused on one is balancing our budget for the next school year we're obligated to do that we need
090the support of our legislature to do that we need to engage Community teachers students and the board in a listening process around a vision for our well-resourced schools we've we've heard we've heard people talk about that we need to conduct a fiscal analysis and an enrollment analysis of how we can increase our numbers for years to come we need to ensure a smooth transition to any changes that might be necessary with full community engagement we need to increase our the safety of every school that needs it and we need to we need to also institutionalize racial equity in all systems programs and services and the last two we need to make the case for our success with the legislature in and we need to run a successful Levy campaign in 2025 so there's a lot
091of things that we have in front of us and my goal is by 2030 we have created enduring Pathways that ensure every student thrives in a safe sound and Innovative learning environment so I'm a an Alum of Franklin High School a father of a student that attended SPS a son of a teacher in in in the Central District I could not be more committed to the success of our schools look I'm here for the journey and look forward to working together to ensure our system is successful for years to come this is an inspirational charge that that I'm trying to set forward as we go into this budget session this is one of our tools or one of our obligations if you will in trying to get ourselves set for funding our future so with
092that said we're going to roll out the the planning that we're doing we're talking about this from a perspective of let's get this done so that we can go into the next phase and you'll hear me talk about us going on the offense I think that's where we need to be uh and it's challenging to be in a defensive posture all the time your legs get tired and you can't hold the hold the offense back so now it's time for us to be able to do some things uh proactively to say we have something to offer we expect to to be resourced properly and I think we have to be go be active to go get that and I think that would Echo some of the sentiment that President Rankin said earlier so with that
093said let's look at the agenda I just talked about funding our future this is our uh our how we've talked about this budgeting process for the last two years now this isn't about uh us taking a backwards step this is about us thinking about how do we how do we get our s our our resources directed to the right things we're going to talk about strategic goal alignment how do we take our how do we make sure that our resources are aligned with our strategic goals we're going to talk a little bit about the background where were we where are we going and then we'll we'll re recap a little bit around the fiscal stabilization plan that was a resolution that uh the board approved and then what are our future considerations we do have
094a 25 26 uh opportunities if if you will and we'll talk about those and then Community engagement we'll uh we'll share a little bit about our plans for that and then next steps and so I think this is number 10 of number oh number still number six just feel oh my goodness no it's number number six of 13 engagements that we're going to have around I know it feels like it next slide please one more so these you've seen these before but it's it's good to remind us around what the goals and the principles are as we're moving forward uh three three main things we want to make sure again we're stabilizing our financial future to be able to fund our highest prior ities we want to resolve the longterm Decades of structural deficit spending
095we want to make sure through all this process we're trying to be transparent to show fiscal stewardship and responsibility uh prioritizing quality instruction and learning and we we assume that there's good faith efforts we all share the same values around trying to create a condition where our students Thrive uh teamwork the board superintendent we're one team this is this is our Collective Mission our Collective of charge and we want to be cleare eyed and and transparent again around the challenge and opportunities in front of us and so uh I just want to remind us that this is what we how we started and hopefully this is the way we'll finish next slide please so how are we going to do this we are developing a comprehensive package uh we are going to reduce our expenditures
096to a level of future sustainability we're going to make sound sound choices to match our capacity and we're going to continue to Advocate to the legislature because that is our main source of Revenue next slide uh this is what I was talking about when I said we're 10 sessions in but we're actually six sessions in and uh We've we've had a lot of dialogue about uh where we are our our main intent again is to make sure that uh this board and and and interested parties are seeing where we are along the process today we're giving an update for uh 2425 that process and as you'll see we're going to get to to the end of this uh Shoots and Ladders or this this snakes here in in August of 28 and so we're we're
097about halfway through and we're I think we're trending in the right direction next slide please so board policy 0060 that's new uh we just wanted to make sure that we are uh giving you assurance that this is a policy that is is guiding our work it was a newly adopted policy recently but we are making sure that we are uh trying to do long-term planning uh and compliance with state law and to make sure that we're managing our risk and that this is going to be aligned to the district strategic plan next slide please so I'm GNA ask an early question around do you have questions observations on the budget process to date so this is this is number six and we coming around the coming around the bend here and want to and I
098want to also ask you what do you see as the POC are the policy implications for where we are in this stage of the fiscal stabilization plan I just want to open it up briefly for you all to to to weigh in on this director top yeah so quick question I I this is sort of the same kind kind of the same line of questioning that I've had in the past so you know we've we've rejiggered a little bit the May 8th and June 10th uh meetings for What on the timeline on the snake what are your what do you expect to come out for not what you expect the recommendations to be but when you say recommendations for a system of well-resourced schools is that for the 25 26 26 27 years or or
099and how is that different than I guess what's happening in June can you just give a little bit more clarity for what you think about what's going to happen in those two meetings I guess is the I might ask assistant superintendent bman to help me with this but this particular uh session is really here are the uh budget resolution items the tools that were in the toolkit that the board approved for us to utilize to bring us to balance for 2425 that that's the that's the intent of of this meeting the subsequent Mee meetings that we have uh in uh I think in May we'll have the the actual technical document um the F 195 what's going to populate the f195 submitt to the state which is required for us to actually balance the budget
100but this is really here are just to give you all reassurance of here are those uh nine items or so that were approved in the fiscal stabilization plan Dr bman any add additions to that for clear no I can just add that if it turns the corner after April 3rd and so April 3rd is kind of closing the shutters on the 2425 discussions um by and large and then start to look towards the longer term view on May 8th as how the decisions made in 245 start to inform decisions going forward is how I'm viewing sort of this timeline so does that help it helps a little bit I guess where I'm a little where I'm a little bit confused and maybe maybe as we go through the budget today you know the this upcoming
101budget the 2425 I think uh I I think we kind of just eats around at at the edges a little bit and I thought the next sort of discussion on this well resource schools is how are we actually making some larger changes and is that a is that a preview happening on May 8th of what your thoughts are there or is am I misunderstanding in some way well resource schools will be a uh many items and sometimes uh frankly people have confused that with school consolidation but that's uh all of the different efforts that we need to take to get to a as I described this this future state of 2030 and so well resource School plan would be what are all the requisite budgetary uh matters that we need to address how do we
102position ourselves for the Strategic plan moving move how do we look at the that complimentary to the Levy that we that's coming up so May 8th should look like uh all of the different moving pieces represented uh at least in this context in the budget and colleagues feel free to weigh in if if there was a Salient point I missed okay here did that okay all right so uh this is Dr Jarvis I believe gonna speak to these these next slides um one of the things I was I had a brief conversation with the the board about is how are these resources aligned with uh our strategies and so Dr Jarvis if you can uh give some highlights around strategic goal alignment I can and I think I can be brief uh we have uh
103used the phrase in the past that while we're doing the budget cutting and trimming we still look at a 1.2 billion school district and and budget that in essence says we have to carefully plan what we do with that 1.2 billion but we still have the resources to look at our assets to align it with our goals we won't have money for everything but we will have money to do our strategic priorities so in this case the the short version of the goal alignment is that you've not seen any reductions in the what the board has previously identified as the Strategic goals We are continuing those dollar commitments in those areas I think it begs the question that we will as this strategic plan expires and we commence on the next one we're going to
104be in this Middle Ground of both continuing the alignment of what we have supported uh beginning to lay the groundwork on the vision and values of of what's ahead and uh how do we direct those funds so that all of our actions and I I see you edging around that question what's ahead for us in 252 6 and 2627 all of that needs to be part of what is that Vision what are the values yes we're going to have to carefully shepher our resources but the B again the bottom line message here is that our strategic goals that have been identified are continue to be funded they have not been touched they've been carefully protected and while you see evidence of some of the allocations that are shifting because of increased enrollment the the overall
105uh Cuts within the schools I believe add up to about 1.2% and they focus largely on one-time items uh rather than than Staffing wherever possible so when you see the Staffing reductions those have been the reductions of the actual enrollment Decline and and the cost of that not the the cuts being made so I think at that note I'll either answer questions or hand it back to Dr Jones yeah Dr Jarvis if you want to speak to the next three slides that that's third grade seventh grade and College and Career Readiness if if you'd like to in highlight anything in there please do uh I think mainly in the sense that you have been getting the regular reports progress monitoring reports to give the details they've also included the I guess the dollar commitments in
106on each one of those pages so as you as you hear that third grade reading goal and the seventh grade math let me just concentrate on those two for a second as they're up uh you will see that in in fact the high quality standards we go through each of these bullet points are in fact uh prioritized they're they're working hard at that we're continuing that that Staffing and that support and um attempting to deliver on those goals I think I'll again I'll stop there because I know it's a you got a lot of work to do the later part and then show uh College and Career and then we we'll keep moving College and Career uh is maybe that ultimate one of Are We succeeding in all as all of the efforts come together
107and uh in in terms of our I think I'll generalize in a statement that by and large our high schools are not seeing the tremendous enrollment loss that we we seeing at the elementary so the college and career in many ways are able to move forward without even quite as much anxiety doesn't mean there isn't anxiety but it's h not based on the sudden enrollment loss or the loss over the last five years so we are seeing success this is one of the threes where you've seen Pro the progress monitoring report success and we are continuing to fund for that success next slide please and so uh I know this is a desire of the board to make sure that we continue to show alignment with how our invest show alignment with our investments uh
108what are your thoughts on how we can uh make sure that we can express that clear ER and uh give you all more assurance that we are planning our budgeting to make sure that we're supporting our priorities anything that you all need to see or like to see to uh put an exclamation point by that can I go bet um so first all just thank you for asking the question because I think this will be a critical component in communicating how the decisions that we're making here actually translate to the goals that we have like expose our community to and that are becoming a regular part of the vernacular that we see uh even as early as tonight in public comment uh I I would like to see a really clear um connection between the
109goals that we've set out and the line items that are impacting that goal and in what way right so and I think Community would really benefit from that as well for example if we're utilizing our third grade reading as um just an example like I want to see okay show me how much we're spending on curriculum or whatever the case may be show me uh how much we're spending on professional development show me like how are we connecting this to uh the dollars that are being spent on Staffing across uh all of the different portfolios and whatnot and show me how in addition to that give me a like paragraph or something to show me like how the culmination of all these efforts We Believe will result in the goal that we've set for our
110children right um I think that this is going to be new territory for us just because we very seldomly uh made a very clear connection between um how the money that we're spending actually sees a return on investment in our children's you know academic outcomes as one facet of this question right and I think that for us as we are communicating the vision and values to you the way that you communicate that back to us is showing like how are those things being funded in the budget and how do you feel confident that that level of funding is going to yield the results that the community has communicated to us right and I think that that's a a really nuanced way to have a two-way communication um but it's going to equip us quite frankly
111as board directors when we go out and have conversations with Community about like because the question that we get often is like how do you know that the amount of money that you're spending on this is actually going to get you to where you're going um I think the reality of that is that we need y'all to tell us that or at least give us kind of the breakdown in how that calculus is happening in terms of the investment that making toward the goals so that would be super helpful and just you know I've had this conversation in different um capacities with Dr Jones but even as a starting point this can develop over time I don't think that that necessarily requires you to change the way that you are presenting the information but rather
112like as an addendum give us a one pager that says okay here is goal number one here's goal number two here is goal number three for each of those this is a pull out from the bigger budget document that aligns directly to each of those goals and then a little bit of like I said a summary of how that money that we are spending sh uh will help us reach that that is important for a couple of things for me first it shows me in context to the rest of the budget how much are we actually spending on our goals right because that's going to be a very clear value statement for us and then second I think that it also shows us in regard to the individual goals themselves where are we putting the
113most investment and does does that make the most sense because if we are saying that our third grade literacy goal is the foundation of all that right because it impacts how well students can read math problems and math impacts uh College and Career Readiness as well as literacy then to me that means that we should be spending more on third grade literacy as opposed to the others in that like kind of um headspace that I'm talking about right so I know that that was a lot but just a really clear connection between the money that we're spending on the goals how do we know that those are actually getting us toward or the rationale rather of how they are getting us toward our desired outcomes and then contextualizing that against the budget and then against
114each of the other goals that's really helpful thank you director Crown Baron yeah um so for me my question's more they sometimes in in in language and and language that's being used and what I seek to understand and want to see more of um is a more direct layout of specifically I'm thinking of this section of College and Career Readiness um this bullet point that says SPS is promoting success in advanced courses by helping High School Educators promote joyful culturally responsive classrooms and deliver supports for students with IEPs and multilingual Learners um um sorry my words are kind of leaving me but what I want to see and what would be helpful to me when it comes to transparency is to see like this is exactly where the money is going and this is how
115it's like creating a giving teachers resources to create those joyful culturally responsive spaces um because it's difficult for me um to understand or contextualize that kind of information that we see here with the kind of feedback that I get from teachers um and community members at my at the school that I'm in and at schools around the district when I'm not really seeing exactly like when through what I'm provided I'm not really seeing how exactly the money is being spent to make those to meet those goals I'm just I'm just seeing this language um and it's it sounds really great but I just want to see more and I think that's going to be super helpful for Community dialogue is um upfront showing more talking more being more specific um uh yeah that's all thank
116you director Briggs if you had something to say president Rank and I I don't need to butt in line I'm just no indicating that I have provided the floor to you okay thank you um okay so I guess my question and this is I mean it's it's not unrelated to what's already been said here but um it looks like so these numbers that are attached to the goals that's how much we're we're spending basically so that so the grand total is like 8.3 million that we're spending on our goals roughly yes okay that just seems really low to me um but I guess that's where it would be helpful to have a little bit more context for like this is this is this is why we don't need to spend more than 8.3 yeah that
117that's so uh con kind of connecting what the last two directors just said I mean I think this is this sound it sounds weird to me it sounds fine um we're bumping up against what I was talking to in terms what I was talking about in terms of discomfort so really our budget for um achieving our goals should be $1.2 billion EV every dollar needs to be towards um supporting progress towards our goals the discomfort part is most of that budget pays for people and we are very used to talking about people in terms of FTE and what one school has it one school doesn't or we lost this FTE or we're get whatever whatever whatever that actually doesn't mean anything connected to students so I heard at least one um person giving testimony talk
118about connecting resources to student need and we know I know we've talked about that before with or excuse me Staffing to student need we've talked about that with special education we have ratios that don't take into account the wide range of needs that an individual student has um and our formula now says well you get three people for this many IEPs Good Luck instead of this many IEPs requires this much support in order to actually Implement them all and then doing that so the um I know the weighted it's the weighted Staffing standard now it used to be the weighted student standard these are all just different ways that different districts call it all kinds of things but it's all ways that districts figure out how to send money out to buildings where what I
119want to see is where we have students with higher um higher needs in Reading we should see more staff that support reading at that school but right now we have a WSS that says well you have this many kids you get this much staff F that's the budget alignment that I want to see and that but that's actually less about tell me how you are showing how your Investments align with your goals and more about saying I think we should think about investments in a completely different way which I know excuse me I know we're in this we're just about to launch into a new strategic plan um so this is kind of the you know this will the last year under the current strategic plan of which measurable goals only came into it part
120way I we're in a system of transition certainly um what I really want to see and part of the Leaning into discomfort is are we willing to actually say hey third grade reading is a priority when we talk about budget allocations we're not just talking about this program or this service we're talking about realigning staff with ensuring that third graders can read at grade level and that means that not every school and not every kid is going to need the same FTE but we're not going to make progress on our goals and we're not going to close gaps if we don't make changes which I know is not for the 2425 school year but but how are we how are we thinking about that that that the8 point whatever million dollars is not well let's
121see how far we can get on our goals with this little pot of money but actually like that our entire system's existence is to make progress on these goals for our students that's the whole reason that we're here director top so you know I think thank you to staff I think this is sort of what we were asking for from this next step is some numbers that align with our goals um I just have a very quick clarifying question so these numbers are for our priority schools so our 13 schools our six schools and I'm not sure how many schools are in the College and Career Readiness category um I should uh and you Dr dvis you said there's no cuts for in in this coming Year's budget and that's for the priority schools in
122the in these areas it's really continuing the same the plan that we have been directing so we didn't change we are as you heard uh in those latest reports the plan would be to scale up uh and move beyond the six schools and the 13 schools uh and that is in the plan but that's uh right now we have not changed the plan I think that's the basic message so as we so so I guess then my question you you kind of hit on it is you know our goal is to scale up past these numbers in our next budget or in our in the budget we're discussing tonight these numbers should be higher that's that I don't know I I I get where you're go where you're going and I think the the strategy
123will dictate it um as we've learned from these six schools and the 13 schools we're going to try to pull out the uh our learnings and that might make us more efficient it may cost less if we've learned how to I don't know but I think right now how we're budgeted it's it's a continuance of that and then we're going to pull back uh on the focus for the six and the 13 and just really try to see what are those uh learnings that we had how much do they cost to to to redistribute those back to the system so we talking about the targeted and then we want to move it to the universal I don't know if there's a a proportionate cost like if we go from 13 to 64 does that mean
124it's going to cost you know four times as much I don't think so so I think we need to look at that from a strategy perspective Dr Jarvis if you have any comments on kind of the Strategic runup to that please do well two comments one is uh Dr Jones is very persistent in saying he has to know the why and uh if I can just par it out for a second what you're really putting on the table is is part of the why of why it isn't just a budget deficit that we're working on and trying to it's the stabilization of the budget that gives us not only moves us away from having to constantly cut and shave but gives us the resource to move in the very directions that we want so um
125the the direction is very clear on going to the universal the direction for uh not at all abandoning our third grade reading but at the same time moving to the broader spectrum of all kids and the successes that we're having in in Seattle and building on those successes but not jeopardizing it by having less resources every year but rather smarter use of the resources so I'm I'm just going back to that F the very first piece is the why the second piece is that this one could derail our timeline forever if Dr Jones and I get combined on this but that's looking down the road at what we're trying to create what are we trying to create in terms of what really is a thriving school what really is is not just a phrase well
126resourced but but a a school that serves multi- tiers in reality that has an entire spectrum of students that are served from whatever their needs if it's Wellness if it's the the support for reading if it's additional special education if it's uh full scale tutoring and uh and before school after school care in order to make it work that's what we're trying to get to and and the stress I guess that that we're suffering right now is we're having we're Simply Having to cut the budget without getting any necessary benefit from it other than just trying to stay alive we know there are inefficiencies in the system in in the way we're aligned and we're going to have to look at that in order to get to the very goals that we're we're talking about
127so I I was trying really hard to just stay in line now I'm I'm jumping and I can go there for a long time because I think the the reality is uh again for many reasons Seattle public schools has can and will be the lighthouse District the district that that can demonstrate uh everything whether it's AI or or uh Universal uh teaching it and uh along the way to definitely not lose sight of something of of our students that need the most help that that have somehow not benefited in the past from from that so that that's the highest priority but it's one of the places that helps take all children to where we're going that's within our reach and that's there we we're looking at a this major shift if you will coming out
128of the co area coming out of a new funding system at the state coming out of uh the clining enrollment and saying this is what we're going to work towards so I apologize for getting pontificating here but trying to set the the vision and the goal which is uh very much where uh if I may just tease my colleague down on the other end there he is very insistent that that why not get lost and that that is the reason we're making these hard choices so thank you sorry Beverly I got I tried hard all right so thank you uh took a lot of notes and let me just summarize a couple things you want to see a Clear Connection uh to to the my phrase the why you want to see what's going to
129culminate in these efforts I see that's a return on investment i' like you want to see some one pagers that articulate alignment uh you want to make sure that the uh that we have specifics where the money is going in order to contextualize and want to really make sure it's connected to Staffing where the where the student needs are greatest uh if I missed something let me know later but that's that's that's how I interpreted what you your wisdom okay let's move on we're going to talk a little bit about background and uh we'll kind of move quickly through this uh just it's again context setting and uh Dr bman I believe you're up on this I think so thank you just a quick slide this is from last year's budget book The 1.2 billion
130has been mentioned a couple times already so just giving context for the discussion today around the the reductions that will be proposed for the 245 budget um today we're focusing on those changes the significant changes in the meetings coming up May June and July they'll be focused on the entire budget so Graphics like this will be available at that time once all the information is in the system um just to director hery and baron Corone Baron of questions around sort of tying the the goals to the budget just a macro level look here is 73% of the spending of that 1.17 billion is in teaching or teaching supports and so just try to highlight those things it's a good learning for all of us to continue to highlight those things as we go on it's
131not there's not just $8.3 million for um these initiatives but 73% of our funding is now going or 83555 million is going to teaching and teaching support so just context there we've seen this before um Dr Jarvis shared a little bit about that our deficit is 104 to 111 so that numbers slightly different than what we've talked about before there have been some cost increases some more special special ed needs this year there's been inflationary increases and so we won't know the specific answer to the exact 104 to 111 until a couple months from now when the the dust starts to settle but it will be in that range and so that's what we're putting sort of forward in terms of how we're trying to balance the budget and as we've talked before State funding
132is deficient for a school district that um serves kids in the way that Seattle children deserve to be served um our enrollment is down about 5,000 students over the last four years and then some of the the changes in funding the McClary decision the lack of eser funding some of our system inefficiencies that resulted as we came out of the pandemic and the the staff that are needed um as enrollment has declined we've had more staff Staffing growth as enrollment has declined Dr bman I just want to add something to that that in um uh 2015 SPS has had 98 schools and we now have 106 so schools have also increased as the number of students has decreased thank you next slide please another piece of background just a reminder I think Dr Jones touched
133on this but last year there was $131 million in reductions that were made um to the SLE Public Schools budget so just some context for that much of that that first half the 69 million was in the rainy day fund utilizing that as a one-time problem or solving um onetime solution there were some reductions in contingencies there as well and so we're getting to the point now where we're running out of onetime solutions so in um uh response to the board's direction to continue to seek those ongoing solutions that we're trying to lean more into that in the 23 or 245 budget that were're proposing posing today and I don't know if Fred or Dr Jones want to say anything about this part you were here and I wasn't um thank you holding a mic
134would tax my uh ability to multitask um I guess I would and this is not my usual posture but like to take a glass half full view of this slide and the and the arc that we're on is uh we're getting better of finding Sustainable Solutions so we're going to talk and um to director Top's question about where are we going next with these next work sessions is really about the future we've talked a lot about the need for multi-year planning so um this Gap you know we solved a $131 million problem last year it's 104 to 111 this year it's uh spoiler alert there's still a problem the year after that but it's 50 to 75 because we're getting better making sustainable changes system changes that you can't do a year at a time
135that um uh director hery noted at your last meeting that hey some of these situ situations we built up over time they're going to take time um to solve so we're you know really getting geared up you know for bigger system changes that take time that we can't and in the past to a fault we solved these problems annually and then came up with a different set of solutions the following year instead of taking a long Arc and some those things take more than a year to do so um you see some things in this presentation you'll see some things over the next two um presentations that are more about system level changes that are sustainable so um we're we're um making um sustained progress with this problem but there's there's still a lot of
136work to do did you want to add anything Dr Jones because I have a couple uh so if we could go to the next slide just say a couple things about enrollment we've talked about that a lot um uh that you know we've lost uh our enrollment has declined um the number is a little better than that this um with our our latest um counts but still we' lost 4,900 students um since 2019 and our forecasts we work um with our team and other uh demographic consultants and we don't really see anything that gives us any confidence that these numbers are going to spike up significantly these structure natur so again we have to make a long range plan um that is uh you know going to take to account larger demographic trends that are
137going on for of everywhere in in that same time period uh King County over overall has lost 14,000 enrollment public school K12 enrollment has um reduced about 14,000 students so we um perent a big piece of that but this is happening to many many districts there's some gains and declines depending on how Urban or Suburban districts are um as uh housing and demographics change but this is something we really um have to think about and then drankin just made this point about um you know how many schools we can sustain and you know we have about half the students and pretty much you know just all the buildings that we used to have and so um you know we just have to think about where we want to prioritize between uh um the various resources
138we have you know people and buildings and infrastructure are two big categories of expenses so what is the give and take between those two priorities is is really our problem to solve um 4,900 students a decline of that size um is about 14 of our average size Elementary or k8s um and so you know whole neighborhoods of schools have disappeared um o in just a very few number of years we could go to the next slide um so this is uh our optimistic flat and pessimistic um uh forecasts over the next 10 years um the middle one looks about right that you know we're um kind of facing flat circumstances you know the the the key features that we look at are kind of Housing and real estate and the permitting pipeline how much housing
139stock is there going to be how much of that is really affordable family um ready housing and there are a lot of building permits there's a lot of construction going on in Seattle uh there are a lot of one-bedroom and studio apartments um being permitted um and that's kind of the housing stock we expect to grow um we look at uh births and birth rates which can um took a fairly um uh steep uh decline in the last few years in King County we're hoping and I think people were hoping for you know a postco bump that has not shown up um and uh kindergarten enrollments for us and um and uh public school districts around the county are not seeing you know optimistic numbers going forward and that kind of ripples through the whole
140system so we have to have a long range plan for this um and then kind of migration are people moving into the city out of the city into the suburbs uh into our local you know those are um that's how we build these forecasts we um work with Consultants that work here and with other districts and I think we're all expecting pretty much the same Trends um again some Suburban districts have reason to be a more optimistic than we do but um there aren't any uh big outliers in these numbers and um I think I turn it back to Dr bman we we skip to 21 please and keep keep going real quick on you want to go to legislative or yeah just go to 21 just to make connect the dots okay enrollment study
141all right um much has been said regarding 21 please to slide yes much has been said regarding our legislative session one of the pieces that we did receive from our legislative Partners I'm calling them Partners projecting we're working together on our funding is money to do or some funding to conduct an enrollment study $100,000 to conduct the enrollment study of an examine where students may have gone and then a plan to see what we can do in terms of increasing that enrollment so while we're planning on one hand we're also planning on another and making sure that we're covering all bases and now go backwards one please to 21 I me excuse me 20 all right go ahead B thank you continuing our legislative impact again much has been said tonight regarding legislative efforts we
142went into the short session with tempered tempered expectations so we were pleasantly surprised with some of the outcome uh as you're looking at the screen you can certainly see that we had some key investments from our legislature in terms of our Material supplies and operating costs also known as IMX par Educators and special education resulting in about 7.6 million in additional funding for our schools again a note to our enrollment study and then also that we have $5.6 million in capital funding for Whittier elementaries roof that is a yay for us but the entire goal and we thank certainly the partnership from our our delegation our legislature the goal in any of this is again to see is particularly with the enrollment study making sure that we have those well-resourced schools where students can Thrive
143we also promised the delegation that we would be back we also promised them that we would be back together so thank you now to slide 22 and I'm just gonna let president Rankin run with this a little bit uh we we we got excited when we saw this cuz we knew she'd uh be able to speak powerfully to this do you want you want to te this up would you like me to yes please okay so uh may have missed it this was in a packet a few weeks ago when I we had a really long meeting and I said oh yeah and I there's a legislative report in the slides this was one of them um so this is uh belies the fact that you know oh but our state has increased funding in
144public education um the dollars have certainly gone up but so have costs and so has inflation and so the purchasing power the value of those dollars has declined so um the overall investment in K12 education in Washington state is less than it has been it hit a peak as you can see um around 2018 2019 um that was a little bit after mlar here's the other thing about McClary is that [Music] um it it it helped uh bring up educator salaries for a lot of districts that had not been able to keep up with the cost of living um around our district the uh and here's the connection also to enrollment and housing the way the legislature paid for McClary was instead of um increasing state revenue they they did a kind of a magic
145trick where they actually did a local Levy increase on King County and called that state revenue typically state revenue is it is property tax but it's across the whole state it's sales tax in other states it's income tax um we're one of only like four states that don't have an income tax I think and um something we can talk about another time and I can show you slides on is a study about um Equity versus uh adequacy of different sources of revenue for education and it's because it's not just about the number of dollars and where they go it actually really matters where they come from and um if if you a a a property tax is a little bit more stable but it's less Equitable and it will never be adequate to cover the
146costs of providing services that a government needs to provide um income tax can be more volatile so in terms of stability for the government that's why kind of like any kind of investment you want to have a diversification you don't want to have everything relying on one source so income tax tax is um good for adequacy and depending on how it's implemented it can be good for Equity or it could be unequitable if it's like a flat rate um but basically our structure cannot ever be adequate because of the way that the revenues are are are are collected the other thing that happened during McClary that has led to some of our issues is so the the state supreme court said you have to fully fund education so they said okay we will but like
147I said earlier it's a 2009 funding model that hasn't been adjusted when it was adopted it was supposed to be two parts the Baseline formula and continual adjustment and updates that part never happened so we just have the Baseline we also have a 2014 ballot initiative that was approved by voters to lower class size that when it's approved by voters in Washington state that's law it has never been funded so we got all these kind of you know uh vague like oh sure and then a there's just there's so many reasons for um why that is the way it is um and and none of them are really good ones um so uh oh yeah so the the thing the state Supreme Court said with MCC you guys have to fully fund so they said
148okay we will we'll do it by taxing additional tax on King County and then they took another step which wasn't required by the state supreme court which was to say well now that we're using more of these local dollars as State dollars to be Equitable we should limit the amount of local dollars that districts can raise and so they put a cap on our voters actually authorize us to collect more money locally for our local levies than the state will allow us to use so it was a double they said yeah we're going to tax you more in King County we're also going to limit how many tax dollars you can keep locally to make up for the fact that we're still not funding public education fully but we're going to do it all on
149property taxes so people who are low income people who are fixed income will not be able to afford to live in your city anymore and your enrollment will go down I mean that's so these are all they're all um connected and uh the the oh we've made more investments in education it's just not true and even as just a small example part of that MSO amount that's another amount that has never been or not for a long time been increased does hasn't kept up with inflation part of one of those costs that we have as a district is Insurance that's a cost that we have to pay right we can't say oh we won't do insurance this year we won't insure ourselves in 20 thou in the year 2000 or sorry 2020 our insurance costs
150were 2 point Kurt probably knows2 point something million dollars this year they're seven so it has more than tripled and the allocation from the state hasn't changed and then they say oh well we've made all these more Investments you shouldn't have any issues I mean and that's just a tiny example of something that is an amount we have to spend that has tripled that because it's not funded it comes out of dollars that could otherwise be going into the classroom so so next next slide and I think this is going to segue really well so thank you president Ranken and to continue those thoughts how can we continue to collaborate with the legislature do you have thoughts about how to achieve some of those things and we may we may not have time to go
151deep right now but however I want to uh open it up for to get get your ball feedback around what can we start to to do please yeah I think I oh sorry can I go ahead okay lit um I think a big thing that would be helpful for me is to have our lobbyist here to talk about like what are the actual barriers that exist right we have a fantastic liaison but our liaison is not there every day and we are also paying a lobbyist to be there every day right so I think that like having context around and being very clear around what are the obstacles that exist uh in terms of advocacy would be would be super dope I think the other piece there is that like we hear a lot about
152partnering with teachers and community and we legitimately cannot do that correct like we cannot direct like folks to advocate for a specific thing we can Pro and this happened in DC too with some uh folks from Bernie Sanders office and a couple other offices saying well we can't tell you how to Advocate but we can you know cuz we were asking like what do we need to do what lever do we need to pull and they're like we can't tell you that so it's it's not you to Seattle or Washington it's a whole if you work for an entity you can't tell people here's what you should try to make us do so we can provide information yep and um we can certainly say oh well we are going to that's why we do platform
153um and I you know try to share and share with um like Seattle Council PTSA different things and and sea like here's what we're watching this week kind of thing yeah um so we can collaborate in that in a sense of shared information and shared priorities but we we can't be like hey guys we got a bus everybody right come on and let's go we we we can't do that right and so like let me just make this super clear that like if you feel as though the deck is stacked against us it's literally because it is and unfortunately the losers in this situation are the the state's children right and I want to be super clear this is not just a Seattle problem this a state problem I think that it is also going
154to require a coalition-based solution right Seattle is a Bastion in so many ways and like as an a person who has arrived here within you know the last decade being able to look at this from not necessarily an Outsiders perspective but a perspective of a person who like two-thirds of King County as a transplant this is a really messed up situation that we're not experiencing in a lot of other parts of the country so when we are having the conversation of like how do we engage with our legisl are we good I'm sorry okay when we ask this question of how do we engage with the legislature I think a my question is like what do we need to do to level the playing field B I think that it's highly problematic that like we
155are in a position to where because we are Seattle we spend so much money on things that are different right Transportation costs like our teachers are literally like struggling to find housing even mfte apartments are unaffordable for most people by the time they actually get in them let alone families I think that the other piece that I'm concerned about or like when I think about like how do we collaborate with the legislator is like we inherit a lot of baggage when we step into these roles I hear so much about stuff that went down before I even lived here and it's like I am there's the reason I bring that up is not to be Petty but to be like really real with the situation it's like it's almost like a like a prequisite to
156hate Seattle Public Schools as a member of the legislature um it's almost a pre and the way that I hear like a lot of folks in Olympia talk about sea as well is trash you know what I'm saying so I am really wondering what is it going to take for us to break past that and but that unfortunately is not something that we can do exclusively right we our Seattle delegation is great we have definitely made immense inroads into like building better partnership showing that we're good stewards of our money or whatnot but I do think that there needs to be a come to whatever higher power you subscribe conversation that is brass tax it's like look I didn't make a lot of the decisions that y'all are upset about y'all also didn't vote on
157them half of y'all that are in the legislature given the turnover so like why are we inheriting all of this like he said she said baggage and drama from from 10 15 decades ago because 10 15 decades 10 15 years ago because another big piece of this is that like I think that's just a scapegoat for people not knowing how to solve the problem and it's a big problem admittedly and I don't know like how much humorous we can have on our end to just say like hey like this is like we get it this is a big problem but it's also not easy enough to say that oh the district or Seattle public schools because it's like that's so amorphous that everybody escapes blame from that because it's not on the superintendent it's not
158on Educators it's not on the school board no matter how much folks want to say as dysfunctional as we have been I think that it's also really telling that no one can tell us exactly why there's some such an amount of disdain other than the fact that it's more expensive to do school the way that we've opted to do it um so that would be my question to Cliff if we could get him at one of these I think that question would be better posed when he's at the table um to really give us a brass tax indication of like what is it that we need to do who do we need to apologize to at this phase because it's like there's no more like building collaboration or like relationship mending that we can do
159we're we're out of money and like the reality of that situation is is that like we are going to be in a place to where we're going to have to make some really tough calls and by tough calls that means buildings may have to close unfortunately based on what we're seeing here I really don't want to see that happen but like let's call the situation is what it is like folks are going to be educ not even folks children's educational like experiences are going to be vastly disrupted because of baggage that we have inherited and that is untenable and unacceptable and I think that is the conversation that I'm really interested in having as a board and as an individual and so like I want to know how can we prompt that up so that
160because before we even get and I know I'm like riffing at this point I'm just like heated about this because it's like this is by Design they want our Educators and our families to come like tell us this here so that we are the blockade for going to Olympia you know what I'm saying knowing full well that we have no Revenue generating mechanism as a school district we get an allowance for lack of a better word you know yeah and like when the money's gone the money's gone and I just want everybody to be on the same page about like the reality of that situation and because it it's frustrating to be in a position to where like I agree we have to pay for things things are important and the fact that like folks
161are doing without right now is challenging the fact that like folks are going to be experiencing cuts and loss is challenging at the same time I can't print money and I wish that there's only so many Cuts we can make from central office there's only so many cuts that we could even make throughout our district right I want to know what do we need to do to get to the root of this problem and if it's not possible somebody needs to tell me that so that we can figure out a different solution and just call it what it is because just pretending that we are going to go to Olympia next session and this is going to be fixed it's not it's not and I just want to be super real with folks that is
162not a tenable option we might get something we might pull 7 million out of a hat don't great but that's not going to plug our structural deficit and like we will not be able to deliver services in the way that we are delivering them right now that's just not going to happen and I just that is the conversation I'm trying to have that's like yes absolutely uh little bit bit of goodish news on that is some of the things that we really need to do are things that we are doing which is showing that we can make hard decisions and that we're being serious about examining where we haven't been as efficient or really saying okay yeah this was a choice heard we can make a different Choice got it um the more that we
163can share with legislators and they have been very responsive to and and on OSI I happened to Chris I happened to run into Chris R doll on the way out of Patty Marie's office we were both like what are you doing here um but uh he you know I was talking to him about our budget and and what I had talked to the Senator's office about and and he was he was just like really encouraging about what he was hearing and he and the thing that he said too is and you have a superintendent who's on board with you and you guys are working together and he was I was like oh that's new um so us modeling also that we're I think there's a there's a long history of either not hearing from Seattle
164or hearing from Seattle we just need more money yeah and so saying here are the ways in which this impacts our students here are the goals that we share with the goals of the state and here are the ways that we are unable to do this that is that strategy worked really well well last session with special education funding was it as much as we need no it wasn't but it was it was a lot and that was with that was a lot of people families Schoolboard directors um Educators saying the same thing saying listen we this is our this is our deficit that was also from around from not only just Seattle but from around the state you know we collaborated in in wasda and collected our information together and said look here are
165like it's not just this District or that District or these four districts here's the level of deficit that everybody has right now and here is the reality of the number of students we're trying to serve that made that made a difference um so I think continuing to um work with work across the state so it's not just just Seattle um is really important and and contextualizing our challenges because other districts are having I mean there are smaller numbers but um but proportionately they're having the they're talking about um you know I was talking to a Schoolboard director from Northshore who was like well I got to go now I got to go get yelled at about how I don't want kids to have music because one of the areas that they were going to make
166a reduction was an instrumental music they had a certain number of grades who accessed it and they they you know of all the changes that they didn't want to make this was one of the ones they decided they could make which was to reduce instrumental music for one grade of course people are going to be upset about that she doesn't want to make that decision but that's the that's what everybody is grappling with so the more we can um continue in that vein of not just saying you need a fully fun education but to say hi I'm here as a representative you know of this or with these students or with you know these needs and this is what underfunding actually looks like this is what you need we need you to do um but
167the to your point Brandon not only are they not only is there a holdon of past baggage there's also for Representatives they have to run every two years and and the prototypical school funding model in 2009 was a huge project huge project and it's going to take a lot to push people to be who only get you know two years to be willing to dig into that but they're the only ones that can do it so somebody's got to be willing to take on the long-term hard work at the state level the way everyone at this table and around us has embraced getting really serious and making these hard changes even if we're mad about it or we don't want to like we're going to have to you know pressure put keep that pressure on
168because as also as Brandon said it's not about just asking like we've been asking and there's not going to be like the one last magic ask that oh that person said it in just the right way we're going to you know fund it it's it's it's we have to stop imagining that this is easy and we just haven't been doing it right because it's actually really hard and a lot of people have been working very hard for a long time um we just have to kind of show our uh we have to be able to show our work yep and to that point like I want to paint the context that for legislators what they are also looking at the fact is that we spend if I'm not mistaken right at 50 or above 50%
169of the state's Budget on K12 so we used to but in that slide it has declin to 43% that's still a lot it's still a lot of money and it's actually a lot of money that a lot more taxpayers should care about right because it's the I mean Schoolboard directors collectively were responsible for half the state's budget right right unpaid and so like what I what the reason that I bring that up is the fact that like we are already spending a very large amount of the state's Budget on education and I think why it do now comes is is so important is that we don't really have a ton to show for it the amount of money that we spend on our education system for the ranking that our state wholesale is in comparison
170to other states is misaligned and so we have to be able to show okay at Seattle Public Schools we are trying to inextricably link that's why these conversations on our budget are so important what our students know and are able to do and the outcomes that they're getting to the amount of money that we are spending to ensure that they have whatever option in life they want when they leave our care I think that in the long term that is the solution to being very clear not only at a city level but at a state level of how do we justify the amount of money that we are spending on public education because if we're not getting the outcomes that match the investment let alone seeing a return on that investment how can we as
171a district continue to justify the amount of money that we're spending so like that is just a a really roundabout way of saying we are trying and how do we communicate that and that goes back to this question how do we communicate our shared vision and understanding of where how we are trying to augment our system to show those outcomes and Link them to our budgets to our legislators in a way that paints a picture of where we are trying to head that could potentially be beneficial for the entire state if we are like having the conversation in the right way 100% and not only the state I will say the entire Pacific Northwest region when um what I heard multiple times in DC was oh Seattle you're here cuz they have not seen us
172for a while and somebody did actually say like it's not just that you're the the largest District in the state you're the largest District in the Pacific Northwest five state area and if you're not here so that was like a oh my gosh it's not just that that's an opportunity for us it's actually to me an obligation on behalf of many more school districts that we're present in those conversations to say look here's what's happening in our part of the country and here's what our students need some of them are the same as yours but it's all it's really a l a linking of arms across the country to to connect what what um you were just saying too about uh being able to show our work that connects to your question about what can
173we do to further show alignment that's that's for us but also so that we can say look legislature here are the changes that we made and here are the outcomes that we got because of those changes and if you continue to support you know we can continue to do these things and this is the investment that we need in order to do it we've shown we can do it we're not just saying hey we don't have enough money we can we we're we're showing our work I feel like we need to let that breathe for a second that's that's powerful and uh i' I'd be lying to if I had a good transition to this next part of the because then we're going to get to the unfund part but uh we we we do
174want to show uh what we're planning to do and go ahead please oh I was just going to say I I can say something a little bit un fun yes um because the rest of this has been super fun um so I can say something a little bit unfun if you don't want to be the one to the the thing that hit me standing in the hallway in the Senate building was that we have our the Pacific Northwest region has so many natural resources and so much Financial wealth that's concentrated into a very few number of people but we also have a tremendous amount of opportunity in industry and if we don't get serious as a state about the opportunities that we provide to students all of the jobs that come with those opportunities will
175go to other kids who come here and the Washington's kids will continue to struggle and not to say that those kids don't deserve I'm not doing a whole B borders thing but just just that like the kids that live here if they're not giving an opportunity to participate in all of the wealth that's being created in our region we're doing them a huge disservice thank you thank you thank you all right let's let's uh in artfully move on to the next slides please uh so the board in December uh adopted a resolution and this is essentially providing direction for the 2425 uh and 2526 uh stabilization plan next slide please and some elements of those are uh authorizing use of an inter fund loan uh include options to balance a budget work with the board
176to explore legislative Solutions we just we talking about uh directed superintendent to present a plan by May 8th and these Solutions should include research and Analysis of enrollment and cost drivers and so you should see that we're we're uh working this plan to spec so far uh and if you go to the next slide um so our job is to present uh and submit a balanced budget um and I think it was important to kind of show some things that we considered and were not proposing and then the items that we did we are proposing and these are uh align to the fiscal stabilization plan resolution and so uh we considered Leasing and selling of non-school property but we we we thought not as well as program adjustments and restructuring and the utilization of onetime
177self-help funds these were considerations as we were going forward what we are proposing uh reductions and adjustments again in central office staffing and our expenses uh we're trying to find some efficiencies there as well a reductions in adjustment in school Staffing allocations changes and transportation fees delayed repayment of our economic stabilization fund AK our rainy day fund uh reduction in our contingency balances and taking out SE a loan basically a loan against our own cash and to find legislative Solutions and so these are the the tools if you will in the toolkit that we are proposing to to move forward and so uh let's on to the next slide as well and then Kurt I want you to jump in please around these proposed Solutions uh and talk about the difference between the onetime funds
178and the short-term Solutions sure these are organized in the slide deck we'll have details on many of these for coming in the slides that follow but just Fred sort of teased the spoiler alert the proposal that's coming forward is um to close that $11 million gap about $45 million in one time time Solutions about $30 million in ongoing Solutions and between 25 and $35 million in that interfund loan from the capital fund to be repaid by June of 26 and so the slide before us now is the list of the one-time Solutions I think we had talked about many of these at previous um budget work sessions our fund balance from the previous year our carry forward was about $32 million so that's a one-time tool that we will utilize to plug that $11 million
179um gap for the 245 year um proposing deferring the first repayment of the economic stabilization fund which was originally planned to be 6.6 million in that year we were successful again this year and receiving about 3.4 million in Transportation safety net funding assuming will'll be similarly successful in the 245 year and that's um funding that the state provides for excess cost for special need kids Transportation um The Proposal is to continue the two Furlow days and eliminating the excess cash uh excess vacation payout for non-represented staff um in the central office utilization of some Capital fund interest to pay for instructional supplies is part of the the solution here which is listed as a one-time solution other school districts have that in an ongoing category so consideration going going forward and then like I said
180the the balance there is this um loan that we would take from our Capital fund not impacting the capital Fund in any negative way um and returning that with interest by June of 2026 the the the reason for that is to allow for more time and um work around how to solve that 50 to7 75 million ongoing problem we can go to the next slide here's a summary of the ongoing Solutions and like I said we'll provide a little more detail on each of these in the following slides um potential changes to Transportation um reductions in central office staffing expenses of about $8 million um we heard about the many of the speakers were talking about the impacts of the reductions in school Staffing allocations that's about $7 million continuing to reduce the contingency balances
181um in the district's budget um this is a tool that was utilized in the previous year this is proposing using that again um and then a couple of fees one voluntary athletic fee and we'll talk more about that and then convenience fees for families that use school pay and use their credit card to make payments for school um activities next slide I think Fred's going to talk about transfer ation um are each of the things you mentioned in further detail on each of the ongoing ones have more detail yes okay uh thank you Dr bman so um we've talked about Transportation changes as a a big outlier in terms of our expenses versus State funding and one of those things that um our um uh colleagues in Olympia often bring up to us about decisions
182the district has made that lead to expenses um uh the number of bell times directly relates to how many buses it takes um to manage your transportation system the district um uh a few years ago transition from having three bell times daily to having two necessitating a lot more um uh buses of the kind of 11 districts in our area we're the only one that um uses a two Bell system at the state level one of the key performance indicators that the state tracks is how many students per bus you do on average Suburban districts are well over 100 students per bus that they use daily um dead last in uh Washington state is Seattle Public Schools uses uh only have uh serves 28 students per bus we used to prior to going to um
183uh two uh Bel tiers we um used to be in about the 50 range the 45 to 50 range which is what our neighboring um urbanish districts also do so we're definitely an outlier there um we put currently 343 buses on the road daily if we return to um a three Bell system like we used to have um we could reduce that by about 80 buses at least um and a bus cost us about $130,000 over 180 day school year to operate so um that gets you to you know pushing um uh 10 $1 million so we think a $9 million savings is a fairly conserved estimate of what we could get here now um I mentioned earlier that to do big things do big system changes are not things we should necessarily subject students
184and families to in with low with short lead time and doe in a year so we're proposing um that we work on this now and implement it because we may have other system changes as well for the 25 26 year um because the fact is we went to the we this wasn't just a an ill-advised decision we we had goals about going to two Bell systems and we still care about those so can we take the time to see can we preserve some of those benefits can we find other built-in in efficiencies um there are I mean Beyond just the dollars I think we do want to demonstrate um to our funders that we're making appropriate decisions this also just the size of the overall system um we use a lot of vehicles we keep
185a lot of currently you know diesel vehicles on the road if we could downsize the system by having multiple bell times it would be easier to Electrify and move to a green Fleet we also have enormous bus lots that we occupy to have very big vehicles parked most of the day instead of being in service and um if you have't noticed we have housing and other land challenges in this community that would be nice to not be um uh taking up space all over our city for bus Lots if we can get by with fewer buses so I think in any future we probably really need to look at U more bell times but we can um find also other companion efficiencies and also find ways to mitigate the impacts on this own families if
186we take the time to do it right in the following school year so um so that is a 9 million in deferred savings but again we want to start thinking long range and that like to um make a strong recommendation to the board and kind of commit to this now and um plan to implement in the following year um another CH and that's why Dr Bulman represented a range of um 1 to n million I think it's actually 1 to 10 because we think we can also save a million in um Skill Center alternative transportation we have a distributed skill Center model we spend a lot on passenger car transportation we're going to focus more on kind of opt-in for students we've um applied it quite liberally and um students you know working harder to
187make sure students actually need it and really focus on the midday Transportation either getting students um from the skill center back to their home high school or the other way around not um a trip to their first High School a trip in the midday and then a trip back to their home high school is getting um with the most uh expensive transportation we have alternative transportation that isn't at all funded by the state so we're hoping to um get efficiencies in that system um I I'll take any questions about this well I just wanted to add another legislative piece of this is that the the reimbursement formula from the state called Stars don't ask me what it stands for I can't remember student I can't remember um the reimbursement formula is not based on uh
188do the bell times and run the routes that are the best for families and for adolescent sleep in good health it's do it the most efficient that you can and organize your bell times around efficiency so it that's I mean like to get funding like the the the formula itself and the direction from the state and how we get funding is unfortunately you know from the beginning not based on providing the best service or the best benefits for students and families it's make it cost as little as it can so I understand moving to three Bel times is a is a big move and it does also and and I appreciate the idea of making sure we do it right but are you saying you could move this up this 9 million up a year
189from an operational perspective if the board decided that this was was a trade-off here and we wanted to save something else we we could um we're seeing that deferring this is something we would Finance with our cash pool and to me that falls kind of in bounds of the culture of this is that anything we're going to finance should be a bridge to something so um we're we're taking we're giving ourselves a bridge loan from our own cash pool to put this system in place and then it'll be a sustainable savings just buying stuff back from our cash pool that is going to be also a problem next year doesn't make any sense but this is do it right um uh uh give families time to adjust give our partners time to because of what
190we really did is eliminate the first tier the early Bell time that's what we did and that creates a big problem for lots of folks who need child care and and it are it's hard for our providers to just provide two hours of child care in the morning so if we can solve some of those problems um uh we can make this work and then it'll be a sustainable savings I think be you know I think there's value in demonstrating to Olympia that we're we don't want to be an anomaly on this we want to be efficient and I also just think what you think on the ground is it smart um to um have uh whether a diesel or electric bus electric bus is approaching half a million dollars you know that you use
191it twice a day in the morning is is that a smart use of resource you just take money out of it is this a smart way to to run this system so I think we want to use these buses more efficiently and we we'll get there but I don't think we need the shock to the system um we need to allow the time to do it right and allow times um for families to adjust to it and I guess part of that is you know next legislative session is a long legislative session session and the one thing we do hear continually is that we are an anomaly and is oh well we could have saved 9 million this upcoming year but we decided to defer it that that makes the the transportation conversation during a
192long session a little bit more difficult I think we should just be aware of that that's why I think it's we want to talk even though this is mostly about 2425 we wanted to talk about it here because it's very important to show that we're committed to this but um we're also uh committed to mitigating the negative impacts we're going to have on students we're going to take the time we're not asking and we're going to fund this ourselves um because of our Good Financial stewardship of our cash pool and our Capital funds we can take the time to do it right but in the end we're going to get to a sustainable plan on this director muthas Swami with um regards to Transportation changes have we looked into partnering Metro to a larger extent
193reduce the maybe reducing the amount of buses we run from middle explorers and making designated bus routes through Metro we do lean heavily on Metro um for transportation for secondary students um they have been more open in more recent years I don't know maybe because there were Staffing changes at Metro um that they're they're more open to the idea of maybe getting into this um youth mobility and um student uh Transportation um Market than they were in the past that is and so that's kind of a long-term discussion um ideally it would be great that we're not running a little Transit company that a Transit Agency is running a little Transit Agency for us but that's that's a long discussion and um they're uh you know really challenged coming back with Transit uh these uh
194postco but those are discussions we've been having and you know the state at the state level um everyone 18 and under has access to Transit now so we are hitting that as hard as we can that is actually built into this Skill Center reduction is since those are high school students can they um can they uh leverage their orc capath more than the transportation that we're providing Metro also has vans so the yeah we have have a yellow school bus or not a yellow school bus anybody else have questions before we move on all right we can go to the next slide so by NE by the order of magnitude the next reduction being proposed is further reductions at central office and you'll see that's uh 59 full-time equivalent staff um the district has had
195in place a hiring freeze or review the last couple years which resulted in the majority of those positions being vacant at this time and so um it's another further reduction I think Dr Jones alluded to this earlier we're getting pretty close to the the meat of the the folks here in terms of how they can support schools and um the community that we serve and so this is another reduction that will be a significant impact for folks in this building who serve the the school buildings so I'd be remiss if I didn't throw this in here and um central office exist to support schools I want to be really clear on that and and lots of people are very Cavalier about well just cut central office there are impacts for that we we take those
196into consideration but I want to I just it's our mission here at this building to support schools and so we're trying to make sure that we do this in a way that's as surgical as possible but those FTE may not have uh people in them but those Services have been important and so I just wanted to make sure that it's not as easy as those folks downtown are uh Expendable because again we we exist to support schools so I I wanted to just say that as an editorial piece and central office also includes nutrition services and transportation people who are in buildings all all day long absolutely yeah it's not just a bunch of people upstairs looking at computers correct right and a tangible example of what Dr Jones was talking about is one of
197the positions in the central admin was in the budget department and so the impact of that is schools have less resource when they're trying to plan their budget and then as we transition to the next slide in the school allocations HR and budget and the operations team of instruction of uh academic Services partner together to think of a different way of doing the school allocation discussions so there was some more efficiencies gain there and some more training of UPF front with the principles and so as these reductions are happening there's also process changes happening in the background to try to support the schools with the diminished resource and so just a tangible example of this slide and how it supports we can go to the next slide um most of the folks in this room
198have already seen sort of the reductions that were prop are proposed for the school funding allocation the monies that come through the weighted Staffing standards model U many of the speakers ton I spoke about this um I don't think I want to belabor that the details of this too much um do want to share like I was starting to talk about there the schools right now are in these budget Arenas is what it's called where their principles come here work with their budget teams work with the HR team work with the operations team on how to U make their needs of their school fit within the constraints of the budget that they've been presented um as of 3:00 this afternoon the first three days of the bud Arena 25 schools have completed the task so
199that means they've approved their budget their BLT has approved the budget and now they're moving forward with that for 2425 um there's the next six days I think there's the other schools come and work through that process um and along the way that there's more training the newer principles it's a very opaque process as you were describing the de weed Staffing standards is a difficult thing to just understand on its surface and so they're trying to impact that along the way so people have a better understanding of that um similarly um Dr pitchet and I have started meeting and this relates back to some of the legislative conversation um proactively with sea leadership around just exploring the budget and answering questions for that they have on how the budget works and what the the different
200decisions have been made and how do we partner together on um how we're approaching the the budget conversations um internally and in Olympia or in the community and so I'm optimistic that I'm providing that Clarity for all both on the school funding process and the the larger budget process to many of our partners is going to help us in the long run to to partner together to to do what we need to do for kids with the resources that we have are there any questions on this specifically director sju I was going to go anyway um what exactly is a eduction and Equity allocation so there are two types of discretionary allocations that are in the weighted Staffing standards model one is this per pupil dollars and so that's to support the supplies and other
201needs The copier your needs things like that at the schools some schools use some of that to supplement funding for staff um Equity allocation is a similar type of funding that's distributed based on their Equity tier or their High their poverty level and so it's additional supplemental funding at schools um for schools with higher poverty so they're both discretionary allocations both were reduced yes and those were the total amounts for the five schools director top I don't think this will be any surprise to staff this will be the same thing I said to them earlier I think this the the school funding allocations are the things that you know I hear you Dr Jones central office very important critical tasks but the school the allocations to the schools are the things that you know really
202affect everyday lives the everyday school day um and so I I think that you know 7 million I I see other ways in which we could squeeze that 7 million out of this budget and I I talked with staff a little bit about them but I think this seems like one of The Last Resorts to me and we actually have reduced central office for the last four years I believe uh so this isn't uh the the first time that that we've done this I think we did 18 million last year or 32 million I what's what did it wind up being it was 32 32 million the year before uh we did some also some some uh reduction of Central Central office and so I I I'm with you on that and I think our
203our attempts to do this have been just where what how far can we go right now 7 million is about it feels like our our limit I I get you on we could stretch it some more uh but we're getting to the point we're going to sacrifice a level of service to to to our buildings and so uh and I guess I'm not saying it needs to come from Central staff I'm saying you know where are there else like the contingency fund balance is there is there an opportunity there or is there an opport where else is there or in the uh um our loan that we're taking the interfund loan you know is it worth the conversation of increasing that loan because 35 million is an arbitrary number you know what's the difference between
20435 and and 42 at this moment so we pay it ourselves back that year whatever year we pay ourselves back we have to come up with that money twice that year yeah the impact is twofold on anything that's taken off of this sort of proposal yeah so Dr butelman will you just kind of openly respond to the increasing the loan and you know what why that why that makes you Twitchy and we know that we've talked about it internally right if we were to take um any of these things off the table right now it the impact is it reduces our carry forward from this year so it's a a cost that we didn't anticipate going forward so that tool is reduced a little bit and then we have to pay back that amount in
205the following year so we've lost that year of savings twice um in terms of taking any of these things out so our 50 to 75 million estimate goes up by picking the central office one just to change the topic a little bit goes up by $16 million instead of of just eight so it goes to $91 million um just as demonstrating the math of what that would impact would be and and I also want to be clear we we are still we are open for direction though so we want to lay this out and say Here's here's what our proposal is and if and if you all say goart and do something different we we'll try we'll try to make that happen so just to be clear and Dr Jarvis said this earlier part of
206the impact being felt at schools is also the enrollment decline at schools specific schools there are schools who Staffing is increasing increasing in spite of these reductions and so that's just another piece of what's going on right now I have a question about one of the things that were uh not proposed um which is uh School carry forwards can you talk to us about why not school carry forward instead of what's here the tradeoff so my from a like anecdotal way if if there's a carry forward that's money that has not been spent that's money that was allocated to school the how has not been spent so so we historically have said okay you didn't that was for your budget for this year you didn't spend it you can carry it forward to next year
207I you know don't know if this is accurate or not but my reflection on that is that could that actually be increasing is is this a less Equitable solution than bringing back the than than uh saying you didn't spend it that needs to come back to us because I would assume and it may not be accurate but that um it didn't get spent because it didn't need to get spent and so are we like schools who haven't spent their money are keeping it and then we're reducing reducing funds that from money that may have been spent every year one one of the things that's not on this slide because it wasn't a reduction but it was just a change in practice is the district typically held those carry forward funds until the school year started
208once the final numbers were in the budget and everything was buttoned up from the previous year this year there's a change in that schools can staff on parts of that carry forward for next year to mitigate a little bit of this reduction or the enrollment reduction and so there's a little bit more flexibility that's happening with the carry forwards at schools next year and Linda Sebring is the expert on this so I may be a little bit misspeaking on some of that but the intent was to be more flexible to carry forward for schools um which I I guess I would really like to see how that aligns with how it's being spent and what that amount of carry for it is because as it's being described it feels like we're allowing flexibility for districts
209or for schools that might be able to be a little bit more Nimble and reducing discretionary allocations that may have been and this is again maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions but may have been used every year for reading intervention or something so I I would like to know more about the the trade-off there I I'm not um yeah I want to better understand that choice director Serio yeah I think so the fact that we're sort of going back and forth on this this this slide um seems to represent the antithesis or what we want to do to students um and I'm I'm in line with uh director top in critically thinking about is there is this is this the only option it's I'm not answering asking you to answer the question right now um
210yeah I'm just not I'm not I'm not convinced and it's it's not because you haven't done a a good thorough presentation I just this leaves me feeling very uncomfortable at at this point any of you down this row here maybe can speak to just tradeoffs you know is there a is there a clean way to talk about tradeoffs I mean if we squeeze here it's we're going to have to do something over here but I don't I don't know how to talk about the tradeoff so if any of you feel confident and capable to do that I I want to represent it that way um uh you'd also asked uh director top also asked questions about the timing of our transportation changes just in terms of scale that's a that's a swap you because we
211could in fact get that savings um many school budgets are done so it probably isn't just as simple as you know unwinding the 7 million but um it and again both those are difficult things uh allocations of schools are difficult things um springing and the bell times this fall is a difficult thing but that that's tradeoff that at least in terms of the dollar amounts kind of works um I um I do think it will have you know that also will have a lot impact on students too and and affects every single student in the system um because whether you ride a bus or not if the bell times change it's it's systemwide to give some more context from the in the school lens on discretionary allocations because I've worked with worked with my principal
212on making these decisions for discretionary allocations and what it comes down to is do we want 34 kids in our classroom next year do we want to fully fund MLL next year do we want have to have a tier 2 counselor in our school next year so these discretionary allocations and the the flexibility that they provide impact students on a day-to-day level and the actual Staffing that they do have in their schools so I would agree with director top and director seru that this should be at the bottom of our cut list because this actually does impact schools and students on a day-to-day level and the staff that they have in their building so let me be clear these aren't great choices and so I want to I want to I don't want to represent
213that this is good for um our schools for our system uh when we we have to figure out and we don't have we're trying to have a spirit of abundance but we don't we right now it's like how do we reduce and so we've we've looked at different things we've looked at what we really Tred to do in this is preserve uh people and reduce dollars and that's that's the that's kind of what our principle was going into this and we know that sometimes discretionary dollars are used for services sometimes those are services that are one time sometimes those are actual FTE and then when you take the discretionary dollars away perhaps those FTE are not available anymore or those services but what what we've had as a kind of a working principle is let's
214let's keep as much of the Staffing whole as we can and then uh use the onetime funds that we've that were discretionary we'd love to be able to keep it all but I I think I think we're just trying to be articulate about the tradeoffs that's that's where we are and so antithesis of supporting schools perhaps yes but is it the worst thing we can do no so uh that's I want to be as as forthright as I can about what we're thinking about I I do want to know more so that but in terms of tradeoffs it was it's a proposed decision here to not utilize School carry forwards and to and so I I I think I want to know what the tradeoff is like is the school carry forward just not going
215to yield the amount that this is or you know why why did School carry forwards not why is why are school car carry forwards not being proposed to to look at and this is and and maybe there's maybe it's like oh School carry forwards is only a million dollar it is I don't remember the number top so that's like I think we understand that if that we can't just say like oh no we don't like that don't do that because that's that's just not where we are but in terms of the things that were that are currently not being considered I want to know a little bit more about why not what what led you to say we're that's not that's not what we're going to look at for reductions so team we'll try to
216put something together to show what wasn't considered versus what was considered and why we said 25% versus um 0% or 100% uh I'm hearing some showing our work uh director Rankin's line that we can show where this our decision- making maybe it's our our flow on what how we did that so um other other thoughts so what I'm hearing is do some analysis more analysis on the carryover option um I think that reduces a little lot more flexibility for our for our schools it just yeah so I we'll we'll work on that thanks think we can go to the next slide um one of the tools that the board sort of directed the superintendent to investigate was proposed fee for fees and so this proposal is for a a voluntary athletic fee for high school
217sports um of $200 per Sport with a cap of $400 per year um for families who choose and can pay that um as background stle Public Schools um used to charge fees for athletics um was beneficiary of a significant donation that um took the place of those fees um that donation is no longer here and so this is a proposal and their estimates for if participants if 50% of people who are non-free and reduced lunch students pay you would have generated about $770,000 a year or you have 75% it would be $1.1 million um two things on this one I I I wouldn't say we directed the superintendent to explore this I would say we were okay with getting information about this but I think fees was something that made us all kind of um
218uh little you know not super excited uh something that we're not going to be able to answer right in this moment but that we should think about is why do we not have a Seattle schools foundation in this city all like there's a bellevie schools Foundation there's an issaqua schools Foundation um when I was at just in DC I literally had someone say to me promise me before you're done with this term you will have and I'm like well I don't think it's really up to me but like I will try um if we had a school's Foundation as many many other cities do we could stop all of this bickering over PTA dollars and fees and whatever we have people who want to give money and want to support our kids want to support
219their own kids but also want to support other kids so if we're talking about a voluntary fee and I know this isn't up to us in this room but I guess I'm just putting it out in The Ether that we should have a Seattle schools Foundation we shouldn't have an individual High School Foundation that provides transportation that provides access to theater trips that Prov provides athletic fees we should this is a public school system all of our kids should have access to this it's bananas to me that we I don't I don't know what the maybe there's a really complicated history as to why we don't but like having a foundation that supports the students of a public school district with things like athletic fees that are not provided by the state is a very
220common thing and for some reason we're not doing it in in Seattle and um I we should I I don't know who's and I think you know the $2.7 million donation somebody I don't know who this was but somebody said yeah I want to cover fees for athletics a lot of people would want to support our students in that way and that could both help us with budget challenges but also help ensure that all students have access to these things that we all really want them to have access to it's it's it so I somebody out there do a fund have you know and and these typically will have like the superintendent on the board of whatever organization so that it's not this other organization saying well we think you should do these things you
221know we want every school to have a Fencing Club we don't care what you want or don't want that's what we want to pay for no there there are organizations that exist to support the mission and vision and to support Equitable access for students and participating in all of these things we could have these things we're talking yeah this is 700,000 dollars in revenue to collect because of a it's come on a lot of money in this town so we have a few more slides um and uh we'll keep moving but I I we we do need to find ways to bring in additional resources and so uh you want to make it happen let's let's let's figure it out the next one is the convenience fee for credit card users about 5 million was
222collected in payments made through school pay last year um charging what we get charged by the vendor would result in a about a $250,000 budget savings currently we pay the fee on that just out of the general fund so that would be passing that fee along to the credit card user the next slide is related to further reductions in contingency funds um this would get us down to about $5 million out of the $ 1.2 billion budget or less than half of 1% um in contingency funds and so we're getting pretty close to the end of the the line on that type of reductions um there was a year two or three years ago 2122 when the The District budget was in the billion dollar range and the carry forward at that time was only
223$10 million and so um with an organization this large with that amount of funding this we're getting close to the to the edge there of um prudent behavior on some level there are ways you can change direction during the year but with school Staffing being the large re large expenditure you can't just disrupt that in the middle of the school year so it would be there some ways to mitigate things at the end of the year should this contingency fund not hold um we'll watch that closely if we reduce this as part of the solution but um just fair warning this is getting pretty small the rainy day fun was part of contingency that 42 million I think it was that's also now part of the solutions that are inlo so so let's get to
224the the final slide or the final the rollup of these proposed budget Solutions so you can see it kind of in in the aggregate just ordered from largest to smallest it does this slide does include the million dollars in the transportation changes the skill center change primarily um not the 9 million and that's where the $35 million projected loan amount comes from um so that's just a roll up of that information all right next slide please um you all can go as fast as you want on this but if you have thoughts around you know what do we need to be mindful of regarding the impacts of this plan please please let us know it's uh it's a lot and so uh we we'd like to hear your guidance or your your thoughts director seru
225or vice president seru that's my the name my Mama gave me um so I want to be really clear about my statement because it's connected to this um what I'm asking I mean this is this budget exercise is complex and complicated um the language is is not always clear to those of us who are not in finance um I think families with limited AG English speaking capacity should be able to understand this there are ways to present things you know when we think about when we put out Publications you know the general rule is third grade reading level um so the reason why I'm bringing that up is I'm my head is swirling I'm spinning um there's a lot of confusing stuff in here some of it I did understand um and at the end
226of the day I want to make sure you know that slide that had the reduction in discretionary funds the increase in class sizes and then whatever that third thing was um I could look back on my notes but I don't want to put on my glasses um you know is it possible that we could do one or two of those things on that slot like I'm just asking for consideration I'm not I'm not criticizing at all the the work and the planning and the deliberation that you all did to to get to this point um I'm also not asking for you to look at I I honestly believe that our superintendent is doing his due diligence to ensure we don't have a lot of FL quote unquote fluff on the top you know in our
227central office but it does exist to to support schools and so there's a balance here you know of not filling positions and letting go of other positions but still maintaining enough positions that the people who are here will want to stay and that they have the capacity to do the work like I I get that and at the end of the day for for me what I want to see is the least impact to students and and maybe we will get to it this year and maybe we won't but I I want us to really wrestle with it and Tangle with it because when I say at the end of the day it looks like the antithesis of what we want to do is because that's what it looks like and feels like to me
228I'm not saying that that's that that's the be all end all but there's a feeling a sense like gosh do we really you know and the same you know the whole payto playay thing we know who that potentially will hurt and yes I hear you say PE students who can't afford it won't pay but how is that going to be enforced in buildings because I have I have been here long enough to know for sure if you can't pay you don't play We're delusional if we think that that has never happened here in Seattle Public Schools it has happened and so how are we going to enforce that right I mean it's a question so I'll stop there but I I don't want anybody to walk away from this particularly the staff who took their
229time yes it's your job you you collect a paycheck on this and and but it's more than that this is our kids future and I I acknowledge that it appears that you did a lot of thoughtful planning and I'm asking is this it right is there something else that we're missing or not thinking of or that we could do can I ask a question that's related to this um so given that that our number one goal is to keep cuts out of the classroom I was just looking at the list of things that we opted not to explore and can somebody remind me why we decided not to explore lease or sale of non um of buildings that we're not currently using um this Falls also in the category of things that need more lead
230time so legally we can only use rent or um real property transaction proceeds to augment our Capital fund we don't need our problem is not uh Capital funds so we uh and our properties that we're not using are under contract so we would need to break or rewrite contracts we would need help from the legislature and others to leverage um property to solve these particular problems we have we are not giving that up by any means but that's just not something we can do we can um Implement in 24 for the 24 25 budget okay yeah I figured there was a good reason I just couldn't remember what it was director Tom so I guess I guess my ask and I know the next section is community engagement if it is not too late and
231I'm hearing maybe it is too late to walk back some of the uh School allocation funding because of where we are in this process is there an opportunity in our May listening sessions to get feedback about whether the community would prefer to see a three bell schedule vers versus what we see on the school funding allocation page is that an opportunity for for the next three months well so in the next three months in the community engagement section in May it says the district will host we resource schools informational meetings for all family staff and community so as part of that can this be part of some of the information we are collecting yeah I'm I'm thinking about that in the context of the uh session we had around Community engagement seems like it could
232be uh added without not a whole lot of difficulty but I I tend to give Bev unfunded mandates or but uh be why you respond to that I I I I resend what I just said be go ahead that is a hard intro there uh concerning the May date I'll just I'll go through and save us a little time let's talk about Community engagement what we have going on now what is active we promised that we would do well-resourced schools too and make sure that we pressed in and received some more student feedback as well as work with our multilingual families to get more input so that is active in now we have a student survey for our high school students that's active we launched that this week I believe we're close to just for
233the start of of the week four over 400 responses so that's great as a start we want to keep pressing and keep going there concerning the May dates that we announced that was specifically attached to what would happen out of the May 8th announcement following that believing we need to get out to community there's going to be a lot of Need for clarification following that that said we can do what we need to do and as we are advised and directed uh if that is an option and we have that space we can certainly create that um okay I'm not gonna nobody's GNA like what I'm about to say so or I don't know potentially so I would say having been through conversations about bell times H between now and may saying would you rather
234this or that is just going to bring just a battle where there's not going to be an outcome that we can act on because some people are going to say you know it it's like covid should we when should we open schools there like it was just there's there's I don't see having experienced this um a productive way to get to a Solution on would you rather this or that on this by in May that's I don't disagree I hate the would you rather this or that conversation but this seems to be the like as the squishy room in the budget that we're sort of left with that we're we're battling or we're we're having not battling we're having a discussion about and so is there so here here's the other thing that people are
235really not going to like in terms of student outcomes I know that we all have a visceral response to oh my gosh what does that cut mean at the end of the day will a reduction in those discretionary dollars it it will have an impact on somebody's relationship with a person that they know that may not be there anymore it will have an impact on having to make some changes so this is the this is where boo his Liza um does is it going to impact is it going to impact student outcomes or are we having a visceral reaction to we don't want to change anything in buildings because actually we just talked about how we want to change a lot of things in buildings so I would challenge us to really um and and
236that's why I want a little bit more information about the the um the carryovers because I don't know enough about what the actual impact will be on that reduction other than knowing that people don't like reductions so I would like to know more about the carryovers as um what what's the real impact of both of those things both in terms of what savings would it yield and what would it uh what's the actual impact that would be had and what I don't like more than well what I don't like more than the reduction in discretionary out outcomes is the increase in secondary Staffing ratios increasing class sizes that really sucks oh my gosh number one hated person so also my understanding and somebody please correct me if I'm wrong my understanding with those class- siiz
237ratios it does doesn't necessarily mean there will be one more kid in every class it means that the overall ratio of the day is changing and that it's still within contract boundaries I do have questions though about overage pay and what that expense would be that if we say oh well we'll just increase by this much that there's a daily limit and then if we're going to compensate for that by with overage pay that's like a double whammy in that it's not a cost savings and we're overburdening already over burgeon Educators so I would like to understand more about that impact yeah the $7 million is net of anticipated overage pay but proof is in the pudding when the school schedules are put together right so what happens if the school schedules are put together
238and the um counts for special education allocations are still under so we have a whole bunch of empty positions and then we owe compensatory services for students who are not receiving services and then we have overages in all of our high schools when then we've ended up spending more money for Less service I'm not being sarcastic when I asked that was that a rhetorical question or was that to be answered right now or it doesn't need to be answered right now but I want to know what we actually like like if if we're kind of assuming oh and then we'll absorb overage how how do you know the overage won't be um is that possible a model I don't know we and if it's not possible the model why are we proposing it well how
239how do we you know just what are we basing that on and I'm really worried about the compensatory Services also so my my knowledge of this is that the teams have done analysis uh these wouldn't be here unless there was some analysis we we'll try to pull forward Perhaps Perhaps uh our modeling U but there's some things that aren't predictable in terms of this we we have we've we've run on a more uh kind of robust model that we didn't we weren't really sharp with our pencil for lack of better words and so now that we're doing that we don't have experience with tightening them tightening like this looks like there's some healthy debate going on back there about what it is and what it isn't somebody's got the answer okay yeah let's so let's
240uh let's keep moving I know we're we're time strapped at this point can I make that assumption uh so future considerations is this me or is this back to you Dr bman I think the next one is you okay future considerations uh we're looking at as as Dr butman talked about 50 to 7 5 million going going forward uh that's after we do this reconciliation if you will uh and then as we looked at the resolution that we uh did in December uh for 2526 the plan may include school consolidations to be implemented in 25 26 and the year Beyond grade level reorganizations program adjustments and restructuring um want you to pay attention to this slide that's what was in that resolution going forward and let me be clear we are working on plans for
241uh particularly bullet number one and we're we're we're we're modeling we're doing more than modeling we are we're planning and we we're making sure that we are doing due diligence in that space I haven't said that's where we're going because we have not had that conversation uh but that is something that we are uh we have a team work work on this uh they've been spending many many hours on it and so we are at a point where we're we have to think about this now if we're going to do anything in 25 26 please you just do you know the number off the top of your head of how much the district saves in expenditure by consolidating an an elementary schools per se yes so we we Our rough estimate right now is about
2421.5 to three million per per School uh on a consolidation speaking though when we talk about student impact for me consolidation is not about saving money it's about ensuring we can actually provide services and resources to students no matter where they are because um we have lost the equivalent of how many 14 did you say we've lost the equivalent of 14 school buildings of elementary students and so when when some of the testimony they the enrollment reduction that one school can bear when it's under 250 kids is not very many the difference of a handful of kids can mean the difference of a staff person when you have a building that's 450 some fluctuation and and again I'm talking about a building that's Al designed for that many kids I'm not talking about shoving a
243bunch of kids into a little tiny room we're talking about um the the in a per PE we have a per pupil allocation so if if we as a community want and expect every child to be at a school and I'm talking about elementary school to be at a school with a full-time principal a full-time librarian a full-time counselor um classrooms that are not split classes we can't do it with 200 kids so we we have some early credible data from our engagement with um Community around a system of well resource schools around what those would look like ideally if a a school consolidation were to happen it would have all of those elements that the that the community has talked about and so uh it's not just a budget reduction exercise in fact it's
244it should be uh having more access to more service programs and and utilizing space in a in a more robust way so that's that's really what that ultimately should be about not not necessarily just cost savings because that's we we couldn't Pro proceed with just a cost saving measure I mean cost saving effort on that it's too big of a it's too big of a deal to just save money it has to it has to show some upside to to families and students and and Educators for that matter I'm remembering correctly in a previous meeting was mentioned that a few schools expressed interest in consolidating willingly is that something that's still on the table to test maybe as a pilot program to see how we do this right next year with these schools that want
245to consolidate so that when we have to consolidate down the line we know how to do it yeah so we we really um are grateful to the schools who started to talk about this and have uh forthright conversations about how they would be impacted and as we do our planning we've taken the information that they've provided us and said in our planning how do we consider what their experience was and so trying to bring a community along uh and to see favorably something like this is is a is a a big task and some of those principles who has who had engage with particularly Dr Jarvis in a conversation about is this possible we we've saw some promising uh opportunities and so uh we're we're not planning to do anything in 20 2425 so uh
246when we get to 2526 I think we're just we're using those data and the experience from those conversations to inform our our planning I would offer a I guess a a global statement Dr Jones is a tough Taskmaster as you have observed he's been very demanding to fix the system to make the changes in the system not just Tinker around the edges I don't want to refer to a couple schools consolidating is tinkering uh but at the same time it is how are we doing doing this as a whole system I want to put it in the context of the conversation you've been having this last hour or so as we all know 8 if 85% of our budget is in people and the remaining 15% is tied up most of it in have to
247pay the lights Etc there isn't much to work with when you lose 10% of your students that's just the last uh four four years so it really demands that the system be adjusted and the first time in a long time and a big change I think as we hit the conversations on Transportation Fred podesta and I have had a number of conversations do we how much do we disrupt the system in order to disrupt the system more or do we disrupt it at one time uh as we make I I want to president Rank and you were talking earlier about legislative and uh th this I'm going to own this or you can disown it if you when it comes back at you uh the legislature this last session knows the transportation star system has
248to be fixed what happened was my opinion I'm going to own this is the version that came out of the house the version that came out of the Senate then never could agree so it died it wasn't a matter of not understanding that they needed to fix it they needed to fix the system There's an opportunity for us to say by the way we're the number one victim of not fixing that system we're the number one beneficiary in our kids when you fix the system so I I don't want to overuse and just beat it to death but what you're seeing in in this one is how do we fix the system so that we're not just picking at pieces as if they were uh somehow one is less important we have no people in
249this school system that I'm aware of that I would say somehow they just exist and nobody knows what they do and they really don't have any value uh it's just the opposite we're talking about really talented people that have contributed whether it's from this office or uh wherever they are in the system so I again I talk too much but I'm trying to explain in that context that this leads us what we're doing at this point there's no question uh we have been avoiding the total disruption of the system till we have answers that are good enough to say this is how we want to go about it I have been encouraging people to step forward and volunteer and see if we get some early adopters but it also became apparent that that well if
250nothing else we've got some people who are salivating at the opportunity they're really looking forward because they know it will improve their schools and opportunities for their kids but we're trying not to do that in such a peac meal fion that it's which parents or which kids or which buses uh get affected Let's Take on the system and when we start doing uh attendance boundaries for the the entire system i' say that if that doesn't make you nervous uh and sort of start shaking it's going to happen it's going to happen as part of this system change or else we can't get to where we need to be with this level of change so thank you for listening to me but I I'm trying to just put a context to answer your question and really
251take in some other pieces of there are things we could do but they're right now they're more peacemeal they're not part of the change system you know the case the reason I quote the transportation it's not even part of the changed transportation funding system yet so there are reasons to try to do this uh I can guarantee you on the academic side of the house every one of these pieces is painful there is not a a position there and it's been multiple years so you already have people doing uh work that somebody else used to do and we're trying to hang on to good people and and not crush them in the process so thank you for listening pre-recession I think pre-recession 2008 um s public schools had a math department of I think 14
252now I think we have two so but also I mean if we do what we've always done we get what we've always got which has not been good for a lot of kids can you define what grade level reorganization means I think I know but I'm not sure I'm going give that back to Dr Jarvis he he explains that can you can you do it briefly understand that very simply that would be if we chose instead of moving uh kids within school to school to look at something that would change how long they would stay at the elementary school or the middle schools or go to like sixth grade versus eight through six and then that well you don't do seven and you will see systems that are looking at some of those right now
253if that's an alternative uh uh it you know which one is more disruptive I I'm not going to argue that one at the moment or where ninth grader should be or where sixth grader should be but those that's what would run into as an alternative that at least needs to be looked at yeah isqua when isqua a few years ago opu High School the way the numbers were they opened it as a ninth grade only for a few years and then yeah and then um change yeah my friend was an English teacher there she said it was awesome and I get one point for brevity on that um I I'm gonna suggest unless there's anything you critically want to bring our attention to in the next couple slides that we can see where we're going
254on our own and got get our action it done can I just can we go to the spreadsheet I just want to make sure the context for that is provided yeah hopefully you've got a version you can read um so this is just one scenario and I would call this not best worst or likely but pretty good so this is where the show your work of the $75 million in one ongoing reductions for next year 256 comes from so this math shows that taking all the reductions that we talked about over the last couple hours and three bell times in 256 still looks for $75 million in Solutions in a year when our levies are on the ballot and our two biggest labor contracts are being negotiated and so just this context of this is
255important and if we get through that 256 year you'll see the numbers at the bottom are no longer negative and that's starting to reinvest back in the things that are important that we're talking about here um at this table so just wanted to provide some context there's a lot of assumptions behind this but this is one version of how the we could get moving forward on this this challenge right now um one more clarifying question when you're talking about the the the plan on May 8th uh we won't yet have adopted the next set of goals and guardrails for the next strategic plan so am I accurate in saying that's sort of another toolkit a frame of things that might happen that's not the here's the schools we think should could be Consolidated or here's
256the program we don't think should exist because come back say ask the question again the the the plan on May 8th if that is a full baked here's what we're going to do that's a bit cart before the horse but I think but is the we're going to see what the sort of frame of proposal is or are we seeing this is what's happening in 25 26 we we talked about recently the introduction of goals and guard new set of goals and guard rails uh after we made this snake this this uh this budget session planning and so let us think about how we okay readjust to to do that and so I just want to make sure I was clear around okay uh your expectation for how we would the timing of that so
257just yeah I mean there will always be multiple things happening at different times and we have to yeah ad you know adapt based on legislative blahy blah so I I just I don't want anybody um you know seeing the May 8th thing and starting to look at you know buying a house somewhere else not that there's a house to buy but so I just want to thank the the board for your engagement your attentiveness your inquiry uh it's it's helped us um our our intent always on this is to keep you all well informed about what we're up to uh de privatize what we're doing in the lab um we're not sitting around twiddling our fingers but we want to be able to show you our work and so uh I want to maintain it's
258one team that we're trying to make sure that we're going forward in a way that we do preserve uh student uh structures and systems for and resources for students to have great outcomes and so it's going to be hard to do that when you're talking about $236 million over the last two years uh but you know it's the challenge that's in front of us and I'm glad you're on the on the road with us so thank you thank you um we do have some action items that we need to do before we can go all right uh we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda may I please have a motion I move I move for the approval of the consent agenda I second the motion approval of the consent agenda has been
259moved by vice president sarju and seconded by director Briggs do any directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda seeing none all those in favor of the consent agenda please signify by saying I I i i i this motion has passed unanimously uh thank you [Music] um we will now move to the action items on today's agenda which I am am I it's on the um yeah sure yeah give me a motion let's have a motion yeah it's that I'm getting my papers mixed up it's the Motions the uh the amended Provisions motion okay I move I move that the Seattle school board approved the negotiated amend amendments to appendices C and D of the CBA between the district and local 302 and authorize the superintendent to take the associated
260actions necessary to implement the changes including implementing the rates specified on the identified salary schedules retroactively effective to September 1st 2023 immediate action is in the best interest of the district I second well done thank you um do I have a tinet Podium is it on yes good evening Tina me director of Labor Relations um I don't have a big Pres presentation because I think a lot of all of the information is in the board action report I think the essence of this is that um uh reasonable people will disagree and reasonable people will come together to come up with a resolution um this was the result of restructuring two specific salary schedules um in the for the local 302 for our Safety and Security team um where we were finding and um local 302
261rep representative shelle philippy is also here so want to thank her for her presence as well it's her time um and her colleagues time in coming up with this um the essence of this is we found that in these two salary schedules people were getting stuck and so during bargaining and during negotiations we reconfigured how that happened um and developed a new salary schedule that simplified it made it a little more efficient um but we had a disagreement as to where people would would would have been placed so rather than go through a whole dispute resolution process we came together had further discussions saw where people were Landing saw how it benefited certain people um and then came to the resolution of let's have just an equitable across the board 1% increase that matched um
262the one the wage rate increase across the other work groups in local 302 and so that's what this comes up with so I'm happy to answer any questions that the board members may have any questions and this is Introduction and action tonight so if you have questions ask them now very well explained and it's more math like you've done math all night tonight so okay uh do I ask for a roll call Vote or can I yes roll call please vice president sarju I director top I director BRS I director hery I and president Ranken I this motion is passed unanimously thank you uh we have one introduction item on the agenda me which I believe we'll be hearing from director hery go ahead that's right uh do we need to read anything for this
263or can I just start uh no we don't need a motion because this intro right on okay as a sponsor sir uh I'll First Tee up with background uh this project started while I was your board president uh we began with a focus on updating Health policies in the 3000 Series to accurately reflect our practices and address the needs of our students we were able to identify and include additional topics and policies as the work progressed we have more than 270 board adopted policies and procedures and with this package we will get to about 5% of them we need to do this for legal compliance but also need to do this uh so that these policies remain a useful tool for staff and students director of policy and board relations Ellie Wilson Jones will introduce
264the item with additional detail but this item reflects the work of numerous staff across many district departments as well as best practices and guidance from the state so Miss Wilson Jones please take it away at your leisure um thank you pres or thank you director hery uh good evening directors uh this uh item would update 13 of your policies it would adopt one new policy as legally required and it would repeal one outdated policy that is um already addressed elsewhere in the policy and procedure manual I won't cover all of these individually um but we're here tonight for introduction so if there's any additional information you do need prior to action I will make sure that you have it um under President Rankin's leadership the board is in the midst of a policy manual review
265so I want to situate this board Action Report Within in that broader context directors have described that one of the outcomes you're SE seeking um in your review process is that you have more coherence in the sections of your policy manual so that you kind of open with a governance section largely you know focusing in your 1000 series uh covering things like how you collaborate with the superintendent your relationship with the community and then you have a set of operational policies um which are concentrated in the remaining sections of your manual the Opera um operational policies are sometimes at a more granular level covering topics and including language required by State Law plus other areas for which policy adoption helps support um effective sort of operations in our schools today's policy package consists of policies
266that are very much in that with that operational Focus so things like um how to uh support students with specific health conditions background checking successful applicants for employment and how timelines might apply to non-residents applying to um enroll in Seattle Public Schools so that's just kind of a sampling of the type of topics covered in this package the focus and structure of these policies doesn't make them less important to the um day-to-day experience of our students or their outcomes um but it uh means that the approach that we might use to developing them and maintaining them and revisiting them might be a little bit different as um president Ranken has kind of help Shepherd through the policy manual review process so you have in this packet track changes copies of each of the policies proposed
267for revision I'm not going to review those edits but we'll spend just a quick moment giving you a kind of highle picture of some of the um some of the things that prompted these changes that are before you so for instance we have several policies that are um proposed for a revision based on changes in state law so we have a a new newer state law um requiring districts to provide comprehensive sexual health education so we don't need we shouldn't have policy language that sort of divines our own local intent to offer that right so we just need to align with the current state law so there's revisions to your corresponding policy which is 2025 we also had a new state law requiring that the board adopt a board policy um for serving uh accommodating
268students with seizure disorders or epilepsy so that's one of the new policies that is the one new policy proposed for adoption that's 3409 we also have policy updates in the package that aren't necessarily required by state law but are prompted by state actions and guidance for instance there's several Health policies that are revised consistent with recommendations from the Washington State School Directors Association and the health Office of the office of superintendent Public Instruction and then finally we have policies that are proposed for revision based on our own District reviews or reviews that we had commissioned by our district so you've got policy revision to um 5,000 included the packet those are uh related to Recruitment and selection of staff and those are in response to the external performance audit by Moss Adams so there's um
269those are just a few examples of the types of changes in there and if you have any additional questions I'm not going to be able to get to all the technical detail it was a very large team who worked on this um but I will um be sure to follow up if there are pieces the Board needs to support your decision- making do directors have any questions on this item all right thank you Miss wson Jones and again we will be we have some time should anything arise um before uh we need to take action um done uh I oh legis I I was going to give a typed up legislative review of the whole session and I don't know why I thought this but I thought I would have time while I was in
270DC to write it yeah I know so so it's not here in case anybody was thinking like where's that thing she said she would make it doesn't but it it will it will be coming um so uh there being no oh sorry director top there we go I'll be super super fast uh I have office hour on Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to noon there is a link to sign up for a session of office hours um on our Board calendar so please sign up there being no further business on the agenda this meeting stands adjourned at 8:33 p.m.