001ell are you set when we're set are you you set okay good afternoon no good afternoon everyone the board meeting will be called to order in just a moment and SPS TV will been begin broadcasting for those of you joining by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called it feels like I'm not is that is it working oh it Miss just people are okay you ready all right uh this is President Ranken and I am calling the February 7th 2024 regular board meeting to order at 4:21 p.m. this meeting is being recorded [Laughter] oh uh yeah this meeting is being recorded um we would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people uh Miss Wilson Jones
002the roll call please director Briggs president director hery here vice president sarju present director top here president Ranken here um director mua Swami present all right uh per board policy 1114 the board is publicly acknowledging and announcing the resignations of the district's two and four Schoolboard directors Lisa Rivera and Vivian song resigned from the board effective February 2nd 2024 on behalf of my fellow director and the district I wish to thank them for their service to the district and its students and we'll be launching the process to appoint um how to fill these seats soon and more information on that will be coming later in the meeting um so welcome everybody it's a it's a full house um thank you for being here before I pass it over to superintendent Jones I um just wanted
003to take a little moment to give a little bit of background for folks who may be um uh we have a lot of of younger families younger students of folks who during covid we had a big gap right and there's sort of some institutional knowledge was L we have lots of new younger families really eager to engage and kind of learn about being part of a public school district and what different things are and all these things so um there's a lot of people signed up today for um uh speaking in I assume in support of black lives matter at school week and ethnic studies so just to provide a little bit of background um because this is a very um very local event uh black lives matter at school began in Seattle in the
004fall of 2016 when John mure Elementary created t-sh shirts and planned a welcoming event at their school to stand together for black students after receiving hate mail at the school and Central offices including a bomb threat instead of backing down the Seattle Education Association or sea reps voted to stand in solidarity with the John Mir community and students across the Seattle school district and SPS staff also quickly mobilized to ensure the safety of the school and the event was able to go on as planned on October 19th 2016 16 thousands of teachers parents and students showed their support for black lives matter across SPS the Seattle Council PTSA board under the leadership of the first black woman to lead the organization Sabrina Burr endorsed participation in the day of action with the full support of
005her vice president Liza Rankin we also worked with the then chief of equity Partnerships and engagement in SPS Brent Jones to encourage SPS to participate and say unapologetically that black lives matter at school in 2018 the Seattle Council PTSA General membership adopted a resolution in support of the black lives matter at school week of action and so did the Seattle School Board under the leadership of President Leslie Harris who is also in the room today um there are countless other names and people who have been part of this movement Jesse Hagopian Wayne Al many of you who are here today um and uh it's really I'm really looking forward to the testimony it's powerful to have a room full of support of students and Educators who are continually pushing and centering um this movement and
006demanding that we continue to advance and to support the success of our black students commit to dismantling racism in our schools and celebrating and uplifting the Brilliance of our students um I really look forward to hearing from you today about how we can support and push to continue moving the work forward together so that we can actualize for students an educational system where they don't just hear us say black lives matter but they know that it is true by how they move through and experience being in our schools Dr Jones Thank You president Rank and board members um just to tag on to that uh this is Black History Month and black lives matter at school week and this is the time of year to honor Excellence contributions and values Beauty and purpose that lies
007within black people most importantly our students at SPS we're fortunate to have multiple expressions of honoring achievements and black Excellence just this week we opened Black History Month here at John Stanford center for excellence by by by raising the pan-african flag the red the black and the green proudly honoring black lives matter at school week this week it opens Black History Month we will read into the record the official Proclamation for black lives matter at school shortly to that end we welcome our students families and allies who cont who continue to raise their voice in support and are gathered here tonight to urge us to continue press pring forward in the fight for racial equity and as superintendent of this school this school district please know that this will always be part of what we
008do on a regular basis so let there be no doubt about our commitment to racial Equity I will now read a proclamation to affirm our commitment to Black lives matter black lives matter at school week action 2024 and year of purpose 2324 a proclamation of Seattle School District number one King County Seattle Washington declaring the lives of black students matter and recognizing and encouraging participation districtwide in the National 2024 black lives matter at school week of action February 5th through 9th 2024 and year purpose 2324 whereas the black live matter at school week movement began in Seattle in the the fall of 2016 through the leadership of Educators and whereas the Seattle school board has repeatedly recognized and encouraged participation in Black lives matter week at school and action and the year of purpose and
009whereas the Seattle school board has also recognized that throughout our nation's history institutional and structural racism and Injustice have led to the deepening of racial disparities across all sectors of society and have lasting negative consequences for our communities City and nation and whereas a public school district we are facilitators of limit Limitless growth potential of human beings with a charge to be to guide our youth in finding and achieving their purpose with a belief that every human being deserves to live with dignity and whereas in school board policy number 030 ensuring educational and racial Equity Seattle Public Schools makes a commit commitment to the to the success of every student in each of our schools and charges District staff administrators instructors communities and families with this broadly shared responsibility and whereas in the wake of
010the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and countless black named and unnamed victims the Seattle School Board adopted resolution number 2019 2038 to affirm Seattle Public Schools is committed to the safety of black students and resolves that black lives matter don't just matter they are worthy beloved and needed and therefore Seattle Public Schools declares that the lives of black students matter and hereby proclaims February 5th through 9th 2024 as black lives matter at school week of action and encourages participation districtwide through discussions in classroom rooms and homes throughout this week of action the 2023 24 school year of purpose yeah uh I will now turn it over to sorry oh sorry sorry sorry and in pursuit of Excellence uh transition in we will do progress monitoring today and progress monitoring is where we describe our
011current state our desired State and the strategies that we to get there we're talking about third grade reading and seventh grade math our transparency around our process our transparency around the action steps that we're taking are going to be expressed here in front of the board uh later on in the agenda but this is a this is a key part of what we're trying to do to ensure that we're held accountable to student outcomes must speak a little bit about budget our journey to a balanced budget is difficult our last year's efforts got us through $131 million deficit this year as you may have heard we have $105 million deficit some of us have gone to Olympia as early as this weekend and testified around the resources that we need to sustain what we do
012in terms of Excellence for our students however those efforts yet are have yet to bear fruit we are taking uh unnecessary steps we are reducing uh resources here at central office in a way that is cutting almost to the Bone we are taking every step in doing that to ensure that our bread and butter of what we do teaching and learning is not negatively impacted but after a while we are going to be in a place where we cannot cut anymore nonetheless it is is important that we focus our Collective efforts to ensure that we are asking our state to fully fund education this superintendent this team is tired of fighting a fight with limited resources to spend time being creative and Innovative about trying to find ways to reduce a budget that is already
013stretched too thin it seems like a waste of time but it's something that we're forced to do I'm asking all of us who are listening to enroll in trying to find ways for us to get resources is that if that means we need to load up buses to go to Olympia to talk to our our people around fully funding education so be it but it's time for us to continue to excuse me to continue to fight for the resources that we need now on a lighter note I want to have a point of Celebration here I want to acknowledge the C David Hugh bank's donor advis fund contribution to the Seattle scholarship fund and I'm grateful that members of the Seattle scholarship fund including former director lesie Harris are here tonight along with some very
014special guests of the C David hubanks family C David hubanks donor Vice fund has made a $5 million gift to the Seattle scholarship fund let me say that [Applause] again I'm going to I'm going to wait until there's a a more robust Applause a $5 million contribution C David hubanks was the last surviving member from a third generation Ballard family he worked his entire career in PR making Seattle a better place he served more on more than 50 boards all of whom would have loved to have his family's Legacy gift instead he chose the students of Seattle Public Schools his gift of $5 million for postsecondary Education scholarships is the largest gift ever for our district we thank him and his family here for believing in our students who will continue to make Seattle a
015better place for all thank you and if members of the family please stand on behalf of Seattle Public Schools we thank you and now there's no better way to continue centering the celebration of students than to have a watch party for the next installment of first bill SPS is video newsletter produced by the public affairs Division and distributed monthly to all staff and families let's watch a portion of this latest episode it features a takeover by the students of the Center School hi I'm Dr Barbara Casey proud principal of the center school and we're taking over first now [Music] hey SPS I'm Charlotte choker McCary and I'm ran summer Quist thanks for tuning in to First Bell where we chime in with news from around the district it may be a new year but we've
016still got some great things happening in our schools so let's get into it the Office of African American Male Achievement ended the year on a high note when it was announced that their leader had been given a proceeding award Arrow has the story the NFL's inspired change Awards recognizes people who are making a difference in their communities through social justice work the Seahawks selected Dr Mia Williams as their 2023 changemaker Award winner Dr Williams has served in Seattle public schools for nearly three decades as the executive director of aama she has made it her mission to enhance the school experience programming and safe use of artificial intelligence with the the help of volunteers from Amazon Microsoft Google and Minecraft students were able to learn coding video game design and more at Louisa Bourne stem Ka
017and Auber Heights Elementary Amazon volunteers use a new dance party software to give students an introduction to coding and AI when we look at the jobs of the future we don't even know what they are right now but I do think they'll have some aspect of coding they'll have on some aspect of science technology engineering mathematics that's just what it is and we can fight it or we can embrace it and I believe our students are learning how to embrace technology just naturally I love coding oh my gosh that's so cool congratulations to Maple Elementary for being named the estate distinguished school for its exceptional student performance and academic growth the award honor school is showing a commitment to closing educational achievement and opportunity gaps the office of africanamerican Male Achievement ined 2023 with a
018recognition event for students who show up the we show up award ceremony honored 12 black students who continually pour energy into their academics their school the community and their future you already know what time it is get ready for the [Music] rundown the first semester ends next Wednesday for students in K througha middle and high school families should be on the lookout for report cards on the source and Fe if you want to learn more about these stories visit our website and be sure to follow SPS on social media to get the latest news until next time I'm scarlot choka McCary and I'm ran summer we'll catch you next time for first [Music] Bell and that concludes my comments back to you president ranking hi I'm Dr bar thank you thank you so much um
019thank you Dr Johnson uh uh student board member muas Swami do you have any comments do all right thank you president Ranken and today I wanted to take my time and give a student perspective on the fact that there are five and one board members at the Das today instead of seven when events like these arise in the way that they do I feel that they damag the already fraught relationship of this board and this community that we're mandated to represent and we distract and take away from our goal of ensuring students success we need our community to trust us in order to govern effectively and when our community sees that board members struggle to trust one another it's not surprising that they hesitate to trust us to educate and take care of their children
020we're losing two directors who brought a wealth of knowledge through their experience and backgrounds and what I admired most about them is one their unwavering support of our students and their families and also their confidence to challenge decisions that the majority of this board was pushing our board is not a monolith in terms of race socioeconomic stat status what have you and it's not a monolith in terms of the policy beliefs of the school district and in the same way that this board ideally represents the diversity in race and socioeconomic status of our constituents and of our community it should represent the diversity of ideology about the best practices in order to create an effective School District a board that all think the same in a district that doesn't is a sign that something has
021gone wrong the value of healthy conflicts and a difference of opinion in governing bodies cannot be understated and I don't question for a second the commitment to student Excellence of any member on this board today I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are different ways and beliefs about the best way to create that excellence and that we need all of those beliefs present in order to adequately serve our community so as we enter this process to appoint two new board directors I asked the board this one look for members who will yes fill the Gap lost by two strong Asian Latina native board members and also look for board members who will challenge this board and bring New Perspectives in the same way that director song Anda did and in the same
022way that the constituents of their district and the city as a whole elected the representatives too and in saying all this I don't mean to downplay the unfortunate reality of residency conflicts simply that we should reflect on the way that events unfolded so that they don't occur again and I know that parts of that are happening later this evening but I think what we need to focus on is respecting our community by appointing board members who match the profiles of those who they put in office there's a lot of work ahead of us and I mean when is there not but it's especially pertinent that we get this right I also wanted to take a bit of a 180 and acknowledge that February is Black History Month and we're currently in BLM at school week
023and I'm talking about this because of the amazing Community show out today of all the people who came to talk about this critical issue and I want to give my two cents as a kid who's going through that curriculum in our school this week and has for the last four or five years that this has been a program that Pro and my opinion is that this that progress is being made but it's not being made fast enough the curriculum that we get feels repetitive and insufficient in covering crucial issues and pieces of the story and there's a hesitancy to cover topics deemed controversial even though talking about those topics brings the most opportunity to create real change and I know we have a lot of people here talk coming to talk about L at school
024week in ethnic studies curriculum and I'm really looking forward to hearing from all of you and I applaud you for coming here today especially the students because I know there are a few of you here I know how nerve-wracking it can be to stand up here and talk on the dis or talk up there so I want to just say thank you preemptively for coming out and I'm really looking forward to hearing from all of [Applause] you it is 4:42 and we were at the board comment section um I'm going to propose that we move into public testimony now and come back excuse me come back to board comments um later in the meeting um and uh there will be when we get back to board comments I will be sharing information and getting feedback
025from my fellow directors on the appointment process um I will also have a legislative update and any other board comments leison updates can happen then as well so let's get through our business agenda which begins now with public testimony uh board procedure 1430 BP provides the rules for Testimony I ask that speakers are mindful of these rules some important parts to note are that testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from the public test testimony list and if applic and if excuse me gez applicable applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the Schoolboard website only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step for forward to the podium and only one person should speak at a time listed speakers May Seed their time to
026another person when the listed speaker's name is called the total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined number of speakers time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list those who do not wish to have time seated to them may decline to retain their place on the testimony or wait list the majority of the speakers time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about when signing up and the board expects a standard of Civility for those participating in public comment as we expect of ourselves as the board president I have have uh the right to and we interrupt any speaker who fails to
027observe this standard uh speaker who is um refuses to refuses or fails to comply or who otherwise substantially disrupts orderly operation of the meeting will be asked to leave and because we do have a full list and a wait list I don't want to have to cut people off I really want to get through everybody um and uh I also want to be um fair in maintaining the two-minute time so please do your best to stick to that two minute so that we can get through to everybody um let's see Miss Wilson Jones for those who are joining remotely to provide testimony tonight when you hear your name called please press star six to unmute from the conference call line and also make sure you are unmuted on your device the first Speaker today is
028Milo Clark Milo Clark and Milo will be followed by Anya Susa Pon and then William Susa Pon and for all of the speakers as we go through please feel free to reintroduce yourself I'm not going to get all the name pronunciations correct uh hello my name is Milo Clark I am a senior at this at a Seattle public school and an active member of the Washington State NAACP youth Council a proud black and a proud black man as well and I'm here to testify for the utter importance of ethnic studies courses and proper communication surrounding their existence at the beginning of my junior year a teacher whose class I had never had before went on stage at an assembly and told us his names and what classes he was teaching that year which is when
029he said in passing he was teaching an online black studies class for juniors now admittedly if I was at a bigger school I would have Shrugged it off as I missed the news but my school has less than 300 students total so I realized it was not the fault of the teacher or even my school administration but more so a lack of communication on the part of Seattle Public Schools I proceeded to reach out to said teacher personally and have a long thread of emails and managed to transfer into the class with a lot of effort for about 2 weeks it was just me and him and I spread the word around to some friends who proceeded to join the class in the end it was eight students in the teacher we joined the first
030annual black studies showcase and without the combined efforts of us and uh other classes in the district the ethnic studies Branch would have been shut down and current Juniors wouldn't get the blessing of being part of that class my Outlook on school and my future were permanently Changed by one year in an ethnic study course as it inspired me to dedicate myself in college to getting a degree in ethnic studies and becoming a teacher so I can impact students the way this teacher impacted me and really make a difference without that class I don't know where I would be academically today every passing day I am grateful I took the efforts to join it and this isn't just me everyone in my class and other ethnic studies classes feel the same way about their respective
031courses white and PC alike spread information about ethnic studies courses in your district and while you're at it Institute more ethnic studies forces overall to give students more agency in an anti-racist future thank you for your time and I hope to see changes made going forward next speaker is Ana sua [Applause] pante hi everyone my name is Ana suon I you see her pronounce and I'm the president of the Washington State NAACP youth Council I'm here today to talk about the black lives matter at school uh policy of implementing ethnic studies in school so often in schoool as students of color we only see ourselves represented through a traumatic lens and through a our connection our relationship to whiteness so the Aztecs were conquered black people were enslaved n native people were massacred and we'd
032never see ourselves within the richness and the joy of our culture we only see this traumatic aspect and that is all at our white peers see and that is what we end up internalizing we don't get to learn about the joy of our communities the joy of our culture and we don't get to learn a c a culturally cohesive lens of just you know Global basic history we go to school we write literature we learn white science we learn White History we never actually get to uh understand who we are and where we're coming from we have to do this work by ourselves ethnic studies is so vital to Seattle public schools and should be not only a single class but should be implemented among all levels within our history classes within our even our
033electives within our wood shop classes within our boty classes within all of those thank you is Williams [Applause] uson yeah let me pull this up okay um hello my name is uh William suon I uh my pronoun Ai and I'm the treasur for the Washington State NAACP youth Council so I'm a junior in high school and I've gone to SPS schools in the North End since kindergarten and in 12 years I have only ever had one teacher of color I have never had a black teacher now a study from John Hopkins University found that black students are 39% less likely to drop out of school if they have one black teacher and 29% more likely to consider College there are no black teachers at my school and in fact there are no black teachers at
034nearly 3/4 of all schools in Washington so when I say that black students are 39% less likely to drop out with a single black teacher that's over 37% of black students they don't have that over 17,000 black students in Washington or in schools with no black teachers and this is for the black lives matter at school uh policy for hiring and retaining more black teachers there are so many schools that don't have any black teachers or only have a few of them and it's a really important it's really important for students to have this connection have people who share their experiences and can connect with them and that's that's it the next speaker is Milana Lee Milana will be followed by cila burrow um and then AOS Nelson hi my name is Milana and I
035am a fifth grader at decer I am here to talk about how decer has helped me and why SPS should work together with us to support our community and preserve our students future changing schools is never easy when I first came to decator I was a bit worried about how the transition would go however I quickly formed connections with some of my classmates when it was time for recess I felt comfortable enough to ask if I could join their game and they happily included me in their activities it felt like a sense of belonging I truly believe that this is one of the most important values that school can offer to a student a lot of students like me decided to be at decor for this reason I also loved the interaction with my teachers
036at deor in the past the teachers would be busy helping other students so I wasn't able to talk to them and was discouraged from doing more things in the class I felt like I was a burden or extra work to the teachers these interactions made me feel like I was unheard and not important which impacted my self-esteem and confidence so when there was a problem I didn't feel comfortable asking the teacher for help however at deor I feel like the teachers all have my best interests at heart and genuinely want to help me I am now comfortable talking to the teachers this experience has allowed me to be more proactive and confident in sharing my opinions while I am leaving decar next year for Middle School I still have a sister who will hopefully be
037in the decor HCC program for the next 3 years it took us a long time to find a school that we both felt comfortable at socially and academically and then we finally found AAR it was not an easy decision for our family we chose deor based ons's promise to continue the HCC program for existing students If This Promise is broken my sister and many others will lose the stability and confidence they've gained from the decor Community I want you to remember that the school means a lot to the students students spend the majority of their time at school school is the most important part of their lives the students are the ones who will live through your decision and shape their Futures please make decisions that Foster a sense of belonging excitement for Learning and
038confidence for all students including those [Applause] educator CA buros and after cila will be AOS Nelson and then Leslie Harris I attend Lincoln High School I'm one of three students in Phil American US History this is not of a lack of interest rather a lack of promotion and compliance to promote these classes and provide the resources for these classes to um exist I'm here to ask the school board to Simply do what they decare they would to demand the continuation of black lives matter in school week and liberatory courses SS strategic plan States we focus on ensuring racial equity and incl wait we you st the we focus on uring racial equity in our Educational Systems Not only would cancelling BLM week go against this very statement it would be incredibly detrimental I firsthand witnessed
039the profound impact of learning the 13 values to this day my proudest projects have been from CL um BLM week and classes related to ethnic studies and most importantly the education and conversations that take Place Funding this school district Seattle and the U and us has historically benefited from black indigenous and people of color and continue to to this day every single SPS Building is on indigenous people's land this school district continues to financially benefit from the land and bipac people people to say these courses are not financially viable is utterly disrespectful virtual liberatory courses are vital and students and coste efficient as each student in the district already has a device provided by the district the funding of these courses mainly include paying the teachers or curriculums are created by Community leaders and textbooks
040and does that mean I'm done or Contin oh continue okay um stop beeping at me um it's created by the community so therefore there's not enough all you doing is paying for the teachers and also my school continues to do this we have a class that's going to happen and it's called black studies honors how come my school gets to have this and yet more students across the district from that have more representatives of these communities do not have access to this to say that there is not funding is to continue to perpetuate the inequalities that exist in the school system that exist so my school is able to have those because we have resources where from where from where tell me where because we get these resources from other places not the school board
041this has to be addressed or else we'll continue to be here continually fighting for these courses continually every year every year it is absolutely utterly exhausting for students to have to take place to advocates for courses and yet and yet to say it's not financially viable while this building here this building here is able to exist and yet you can't can't teach courses that represent these communities and appreciate the contributions that is what I ask thank [Applause] you the next speaker is Eros Nelson Erol Nelson hi everyone I'm Nelson a student at the center school and a member of the NAACP youth Council the first classroom where I felt like I mattered was an ethnic studies classroom me and seven other students all gathered around one table in the Spanish classroom a small but close-nit
042Community though I would never have been able to join that class if it weren't for a friend of mine who saw me in distress taking a break from my US history class because of an incident that happened where me as an afro indigenous kid in a room full of white kids felt alienated and attacked when discussing colonization and the way that it was handled and is handled in Seattle Public Schools he told me to he told me to talk to our school counselor about it so I did and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made it was the first time I had a teacher who I felt actually cared and understood me one of the few times I felt like I sorry I felt like I was made out I wasn't made
043out to be an based on my cultural differences I felt safe enough to drop the mask that I had carefully crafted to make my white peers feel comfortable I was finally able to escape the constant microaggressions from students and teachers for a small part of my day without ethnic studies I would not be standing in front of you today I would not have the confidence to be proud of who I am because this school district taught me to be anything but myself so I urge you please give the ethnic studies program the time and energy and funding it deserves thank you for listening and I hope you take my message to [Applause] Heart the next speaker is Leslie Harris hi there it is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce Ronald boy former appointed District
044Council fellow co-chair of the Seattle scholarship committee and the see David hubanks family I figured you needed to hear from this family out of respect as opposed to secondhand information I seed my time thank you I appreciate your remarks earlier Dr Jones and I would just like to add on to those so that everybody in attendance and the board can fully understand the Legacy and the gift of $5 million that my cousin C David hubanks and his family made I am an oette fitzmorris I'm here with my sister teres rain and her husband H and um I want to just add on to what you already know my cousin C David was a third generation Ballard family he knew hardship his family passed away while he was attending the udub he had a sister with
045special needs and while he knew this hardship he lived a life of outgoing positive energy his career career was in public relations and he worked tirelessly to improve each organization and thus making Seattle a better place to live this included creating bumpers shoot and the folk Life Festival for the Seattle Center as a proud batt Ballard Alum he created the Ballard High School Foundation that served at a model for many other schools he served on uh more than 50 boards throughout his life into his 70s we had the honor to help him create the donor advise fund that would hold $5 million his family's Legacy he felt strongly the best place for these funds was with you the students of this Seattle school district for postsecondary scholarships he believed with this huge gift that you
046all will make Seattle a better place and it is my hope and highlighting his life that the Seattle school district will continue to highlight this gift so that others will follow his lead and that you can have some fantastic PR as C David would have done thank you the scholarship Gala for 2024 is May 9th check your calendars thank you please sendemail about that obviously the next speaker is Chris jackins my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 it's great to have members of the Native Community here today please listen and respond to their concerns on the Rainer Beach High School construction project boondoggle Four Points number one there are expensive items on the consent agenda for a vote without any board discussion unless a board member requests that the items be pulled number
047two one item would give the architect for the project bti an extra $728,000 another item would give the contractor litig an extra $3.4 Million number three on June 21st previous board allowed the project to owe $10 million over budget an amount the district hopes to to cover through a future Levy likely while claiming that all of its projects are on time and on budget number four to those members newly elected to the board these cost overruns in this boondoggle now belong to you please ask questions please vote no on the alai Elementary project Five Points number one it is not clear that the board has the information to honestly certify what is happening with the project number two the city ruled against the alai plans number three the district magically now says that it can
048provide on-site Ada and some other parking number four the project is still way too big for the site number five the board also needs to fix Mont Lake on school closures please drop school closures also I would like to thank departing board members Lisa Rivera and Vivian song for their service to the district thank you very much the next speaker is Laura Le Lany and following Laura will be Claire ab and then Aiden Caroll of course my speech went away as soon as I get up here I am I signed up to testify today about goal number one literacy which states 70% of black boys will achieve proficiency or higher on the third grade smarter balanced assessment by June 2024 according to the most recent data less than 30% of black boys are achieving this
049why does that matter our students deserve a transformative change in their education and I believe ethnic studies for all students can do that I am not an elementary school teacher I am not a literacy coach I am not the parent of a black boy but I can tell you that making goals and not changing our methods is not working to address the systemic and institutional racism within Seattle public schools which impacts bipo students specifically and all of our students holistically I am a high school teacher I have been a teacher in the district since 2006 and I am still seeing the district make the same goals to be promoted each year for our black and brown students that means we are not achieving our goals and we are not serving our bipo students students arrive
050in my classroom with 2 years remaining in the public school system and they are just starting to learn things that they should be included from elementary school on students deserve teachers Educators books and leaders that not only reflect them but also see them for who they truly are not just an s o f or s o c FF CJ or whatever the letters are on Atlas that comes with ethnic studies I am an ethnic studies teacher and all of my student and all students deserve ethnic studies in all of their classrooms and as a specific course of study today in class students stated why ethnic studies was so important to them they said ethnic studies should be mandatory for all students students need to leave this class changed they said that this class is more
051than a subject it is a community the barriers for ethnic studies black and brown students black lives matter at school week and Literacy for black boys are everywhere where is the district leadership in all of this they're not here what happens to in the ethnic studies classroom is in spite of what is happening at the district and administrative level we keep hearing that there is going to be a lean this is going to be a lean year financially and that the threat of losing sections of ethnic studies or having less teachers have been thrown out more than once that is not what is best for our students next is Claire [Applause] AB hi my name is CLA ab and I'm a school counselor at Cleveland High School I'm asking that the district please show a
052transparency and accountability when when determining the upcoming budget and include important stakeholders in the planning and decision-making process I want to remind the board of the amazing advocacy work by the SPs students in the Seattle Student Union who saw an unmet need for mental health support and successfully advocated to the Seattle City council to approve $20 million to fund school counselors to have a 1 to 250 student ratio at least one full-time social worker and one full-time mental health therapist in every school building it is important that students families social workers counselors and social workers um and other important Comm stakeholders have a seat at the table when the district and the Department of Education and early learning uh when they discuss how the funding will be allocated we must make sure to listen to
053our students and center student voice in the in the decision-making process I'm also going to read um a on a different note a statement from a Cleveland student um uh so Mara P Johnson lunchtime Society for Club a club for Trans and non non-binary students wants to speak out on the need for providing more resources to all of our ethnic studies classes ignorance because of a lack of proper education has no home here earlier this year in our 12th grade ethnic studies class Mixie menz gave us a list of possible ethnic studies classes from our SPS course catalog these classes don't exist at our school because of a lack of resources for example we learned that we could have had a nth grade queer literature class but we didn't I person personally believe that learning
054about where people come from even if it's not their not our own is necessary for further betterment of understanding empathy many students of color never get to see our own culture and taught properly in a standard classroom proposing that these classes be cut as harmful and highlights the lack of care and support it's SPSS job to reflect its students and cater to their learning needs to get rid of ethnic studies or never provide queer studies can not only be harmful to the students but to the growth of society as whole these classes exist to give better opportunities to students these classes should not be taken away but expanded on SPS is nothing is nothing without its students and resources should not be taken away because of a lack of budgeting on your part thank you
055next is Aiden [Applause] Carroll you know oh they started it all right so uh my name is Aiden and I'm here with Urban native education Alliance um for a couple reasons um one of which is the importance of uh focusing more um uh attention and and transparency and Community collaboration with um Native education and the title six um additionally uh the recognizing uh Billy Frank Jr day which is um on March 9th um he was a squali activist and in the fish Wars and somebody who was arrested more than 50 times in in Civil Disobedience um for treaty rights but there there's many kinds of Civil Disobedience um and finally we want to speak about the importance of of everyone including the school district um has a responsibility right now to teach about the ongoing
056genocide in Gaza and to do everything in our power for an immediate ceasefire um I don't think some people realize that our government could stop this with one phone call like not the whole aart situation but the war certainly we need to build International mve movement to to isolate Israel in the same way that rodesia in the 70s and South Africa in the 80s that the good people within that country will eventually take power with the external pressure being applied for human rights as is so desperately necessary all right next speaker is Chloe Kim Kier and then after Khloe will be Sarah sense Wilson and then Fiona barane hi I'm Chloe Ki and I seed my time to Lila Adam hi I'm Leila Adam I'm a former Chief South student well alumni and I'm a
057current Seattle youth student and Communications major and I'm I'm here on behalf of the Southwest Community who had gathered a week prior to talk about student safety and our concerns for our students in school and we had come up with some ideas we would like to share with the board today but firstly I wanted to start to say the request of changes most definitely has been in response to my brother's death last week oh well two weeks ago on the 23rd of January um gun violence is an issue gun violence is an issue in school sorry it's most definitely some sorry um um we've seen this incident happen in Ingram our students lives are being endangered in school and we need the board to start making decisions to prevent things like this from happening um
058so we urge the Seattle public school district to of reinstate resource officers an increase of um hiring security specialists at Chief sou there are only two security Specialists for a school of over a thousand students that it's simply inadequate for so many students if there's an incident in one place they can't get to another place and we also demand that oh sorry we urge the school district to consider our requests for the increase in security the reinstatement of police presence and possible meta detectors to keep these Firearms out of our schools they don't belong there they shouldn't be there sorry um and the sorry and um our community has also asked as that in Chief South specifically sorry that Chief South has 13 entrances that are unlocked at all times and it's very hard to
059monitor these entres students will go in and out at all time thank you so we request that at least four of these entrances which have been um what's sorry that have already been picked as up by the school we we had talked to folks in the school that it's possible to close these four inces without um compromising the safety of these students and we would like to see the possibility in that and if it's not possible there was a suggestion that they be used as fire exits like emergency exits where there are some sort of alarm system in place where as a deterrent so students don't willingly go out all the time through these entrances is just so it's easier to monitor our students to make sure that they're safe and there was also a
060request from some parents that there' be separate grade lunches cuz um at least a chief s ninth graders aren't allowed off campus but my brother who was a ninth grader had gone off campus the night of the incident so sorry I just sorry I just on behalf we really want you to hear our please because we send our kids to school to learn for their future but their lives are being cut short school is a place for students to learn and we want that to be the case but this can't keep happening it's happened before it's happened to my brother and doesn't seem there will be an exact end but we urge the school district to T start making some measures to prevent it and the best that we can because we know the Second
061Amendment law is a thing but thank you sorry the next speaker is Sarah sense [Applause] Wilson [Music] Hani Sarah s Wilson imach um good evening everybody and um I'm with the urban native education Alliance and these are majority of the folks here are students of unea interns and students of the clear sky academy uh we're here today really to voice some concern and then also make some requests uh first I would like to make public the request to have Indian education provide by anual reports historically they always did that and for some reason the last four years or so there's not been any reports when I sent the request to the school board and superintendent I did not get a response other than a month later an email from public records saying that it was
062going to be done through public records um so I I'm not sure what the secrecy is or what's being hidden with Indian education but that is something that it's a treaty right title 6 Indian education our kids deserve better we also um would like Brent Jones you've been superintendent now for a while why have you not met with our native Community why it's long overdue and we have put we've extended ourselves multiple times so we expect better of you we've we've been working with the district for 17 years and more and longer and we've always had uh communication and meetings with superintendents and so this it's really curious ious to me is why that's why that's not um happened as of yet we also have um concerns about the high turnover rate of Indian education
063we understand that there are nine grievances that were that have been filed against the Indian Ed leadership why is there this High turnover rate what is happening what is the turmoil and the crisis happening internally with Indian Ed that needs to be resolved it impacts all of our kids it impacts our communities and our amilies there needs to be a stabilizing force and that comes from the leadership top down we'd also request that um that their the district data dashboard be reinstituted and also really curious um what is the district's strategy around the severe woful undercount of American Indian students in the district it is not reflective of the population in King County and so there's there's some severe under counting happening which means that's less funding that means there's less support that means there's
064less um effort uh from resources that could be assisting those students also curious about what what is the job description who's going to be apped appointed as the native l zone um is a school board member and what does that job description look like what are the qualifiers we want access to Robert Eagle staff school there has been some severe serious gatekeeping happening at that school we are very confused about that um I think one of our elders is going to give some history about what was committed to our community at Robert Eagle staff uh unaa we're loc we're situated and located at a good place we don't you know we don't need Robert Eagle staff but there are things that we do in terms of um curriculum and educating Community about the significance in
065the history of that school and as things stand now we have to stand on the outside of the fences the native Community the community that helped name that school the community that helped keep that school going and um so that's that's again that's very curious to us essentially I speaking for Sarah since Wilson have a vote of no confidence with Indian education period another question is what's happening at lton Springs where's the report on the future of what what they're doing in terms of a native Focus curriculum what how are they working with Community uh what is the plan I know that they they have uh an attendance and a uh enrollment problem so curious about that and is there a possibility that they may be moving back into the Robert Eagle staff as a
066solution to keeping that alternative school going and finally um you know we would like to throw our support behind ethnic studies and all the people that are here advocating for that we have always supported that and we also you know support black lives matter and most definitely free Palestine all right thank you the next speaker is Fiona Baine Fiona Baine after Fiona will be Julia Wilson Peltier and then Amelia Andres and apologies there I was I was listening very intently and missed the beep of the time so I was like listening to everything Sarah was saying but um yeah we still do have a long list so please as much as possible stick to that two-minute limit if you're on the to go we can hear you hello my name is Fiona B I am
067a firm believer that ethnic study should be enforced in schools for one specific reason I will talk about today representation and inclusivity studying ethic studies exposes me as I do go to a private school to experiences and perspectives of people from different backgrounds this broadens my empathy and understanding towards others fostering compassion and respect for diverse cultures and lived experiences ethnic studies courses provide representation and inclusion of different perspectives histories and experiences that may otherwise be marginalized or overlooked in schools it acknowledges the contributions the struggles of various ethnic and racial groups promoting a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of history and Society so please think about ethic studies thank you the next speaker is Julia Wilson Peltier hello I'm Julia Wilson peler I'm ter mount in chipu ol Lakota and I am a parent
068of a kindergarten student at Olympic View elementary school I am here to express the importance of having an Indian education program that serves our native students not just one that merily acts as a referral service there needs to be intentional Outreach efforts on behalf of the Indian Ed program from my firsthand experience nobody reached out to me regarding en rolling my son an Indian Ed who is an enrolled tup tribal member and who is a student in need of additional Services additionally it is concerning that there's an extreme lack of native Educators in Seattle Public Schools comprising only 05% of Educators where are these Educators and additionally also why is there such a high turnover in the Indian Ed program upon reviewing the title 6 Indian Ed website there appears to be an incredible lack
069of transparency and accountability I had to really dig deep to find any type of reports for how they utilize title 6 funds and I was very unimpressed with the documents I did find the program advertises a referral service that states they work with students parents and Guardians teachers principes and SPS departments to address the broad scope of needs and that their goal is to ensure all Native students have a high quality educational experience and reach the goal of graduation however according to Urban native education Alliance which is the only organization in Seattle area that focuses on Urban native youth education the Indian Ed program has never referred a single student to une's culturally Based Services and programming this is alarming considering the promising educational outcomes among students who are involved in unea programming my question
070is what systems are in place to ensure the most transparency and accountability of the Indian Ed program and its leadership because our native students have some of the poorest educational outcomes our students deserve better they deserve an accessible Indian Ed program that has proactive caring competent and professional leadership because from what my experience is that is not what I am seeing from the current indan Ed leadership thank you next is Amelia andrees ohelle I'm Amelia Andress I seen my time over to Jazelle Jenkins hello hi good evening um hello I am Jazelle Jenkins I'm a NK ALU from the Lucian Islands of Alaska and I'm currently a freshman at the University of Washington and I'm a 2023 Ingram high school graduate and SPS scholarship recipient and my brother Elijah is currently a student at Robert
071Eagle staff Middle School um I've worked with Urban native education Alliance or uni EA since my sophomore year of high school as I found support in them that SPS lacked during the pandemic today I am speaking on behalf of my mother Lyell Jenkins a unia board member and Isabelle hawkon a un intern and a senior student at Roosevelt High School so we're concerned about the lack of communication and inclusiv inclusiv for our Native American students I kindly request that the board's action to ensure their inclusion and purpose establishing a yearly Billy Frank Jr Day on March 9th honoring his contributions additionally I urge the acknowledgement of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and stand for a ceasefire educating students about the atrocities of this war while you're at it um speaking for Bella hogon old Harbor
072tribe uh we'd like to use this time about to speak about the educational system disparities for our native youth especially specifically in SPS as um you've heard of the title 6 this is an annual funding for the title 6 Indian education formula grants program that assists American Indian and Alaskan native students for SPS grades K through 12 that was enacted in 1972 I would like to ask where is this money going uh when her sister was a sophomore at Roosevelt in 2018 she saw a poster about indigenous club meeting after school she brought smoked salmon and was the only one who showed up I wonder if this was an attempt to use the title s money or a box to check off where her school could say they have representation um as Co ended she
073started the native student Alliance her junior year she hadn't seen any acknowledgement of Billy Frank Jr mmip P day the club wanted to have these acknowledgements and announcements informing the students cuz uh SPS doesn't and as Billy Frank Junior Day came around she put up the posters um with his face and the next day she found one of these posters defaced um by a Fight Club sticker with uh she contacted them and they responded back by cursing her out and tearing the rest of the posters down this should not be acceptable in SPS being one of the six native kids in that school um she looked to un to address this obvious Act of racism these issues are generational and yet they continue to happen now her family is specific and has seen and handle
074these disparities as long as all the these other families and anyone here today that come with being indigenous she's had we've had homelessness and addiction in our Bloodlines and we need more representation and education opportunity so Generations in the future don't continue to carry these issues I urge the school board to recognize the generational trauma and Implement more resources for a native Community as written in title six kagak thank you next is John Greenberg John Greenberg will be followed by Katherine Hansen and then MC notal hello John Greenberg um there was a time not that long ago that the district actually paid SPS employes to create black lives matter curriculum led by the work of Dr Castro Gill and there was a time not that long ago that the sea promoted people to teach it
075I see the rest of my time to be Park um hello my name is B Park I use any pronouns and I'm a junior at Lincoln High School in support of ethnic studies it was only just year when I it was only just this year when I signed up for black studies that history went from a cumbersome boring subject to my favorite class and too many of my middle and high school history courses were fixated on the same region of Europe and those few times when the stories of people of color were included there was always an emphasis on tragedy death and suffering at the hands of white people however in teaching with an emphasis on on restoration My Hope Is that critical thinking is something that students can find compelling and as something that
076I enjoy now instead focusing on the successes backgrounds and the knowledge of black indigenous and people of color is what should be emphasized if our uh curiculum must be limited we need to pick the stories that challenge society's biases and share those and um and not only acknowledge the reasons for the these uh biases but also uh emphasizing that black history is US history and it's not meant to teaching this course is not meant to divide us or to shame people for having these biases but is meant for us to reduce and reverse these biases and grow from that the most authentic way to learn is by listening to multiple different perspectives and mindsets and this is only one of the many reasons why ethnic study should be preserved thank you next is Katherine [Applause]
077Hansen thank you board members and thank you to all the people who've spoken tonight really important issues and I'm grateful my name is Katherine Basera Hansen and I am the counselor at tops K8 I'm here to request that the school board honor and advocate for the demands of the Seattle Student Union they went to the Seattle City council to propose a $20 million tax that would help fund school counselors in every school at a ratio of 1 to 250 one full-time social worker in every school and agency therapists in every school the city council approved this money and it's vital that it be applied in the way the students intended this is my 12th year in Seattle Public Schools I've spent many years working 14-hour days with a case load of over 1,000 students in
078my years I have supported students who have experienced shootings family suicides family deportations housing instability and who have experienced profound neglect and abuse I've helped many suicidal students students who self harm and students with numerous diagnosed and undiagnosed mental health challenges there is ample scientific evidence to show that students cannot learn if they are struggling with mental health and behavioral challenges teach teachers have have neither the expertise nor the capacity to fully address these issues school counselors and school social workers are the only people with specific training to support students and families with these mental health needs and yet we are the very professionals who are the first to be cut or whose funding is taken away when there are budget shortfalls please honor the demands of our students and provide transparency and include stakeholders
079in your budgetary decision-making thank you [Applause] good evening my name is MC Nagal and I'm a school nurse high school students across this District who are enrolled in both World Language and music classes are being told that they must drop out of their longtime participation in music programs such as band and Orchestra to satisfy a graduation requirement of a health class we know the well documented benefits of participation in a school music program on attendance cognition mental health and social engagement we also know the increased likelihood of giving up music participation altogether with a long absence from playing this is demonstrable harm in forcing adolescence to give up the social support and benefits of music playing to satisfy a course requirement that can be accomplished in other ways current options include taking Health in 12th
080grade enrolling in running start to take Health Online or enrolling in summer school Skill Center to take Health however all of these carry some uncertainty for the student of whether they'll be allowed to enroll near the end of their High School career um when I was a student at Roosevelt High School um a million years ago and preparing to study abroad for my senior year I took Health through the University of Washington distance learning it was allowed then I went on to earn three graduate degrees in Health Sciences Fields so I was not harmed by not taking Health in school uh including the one that led to my current employment um as a school nurse in this District currently in Seattle there is a board policy that prohibits a student from taking a course outside
081of the district if it's offered at their school I ask two things of the board today first modify the policy number 2024 ironically um that prohibits a student from taking a course um uh so that students may take Health through or other courses through an approved online sources for purposes other than to satisfy college preparatory reasons which is the current stated policy section id5 of policy 2024 SP second instruct all high school counselors to offer all options for satisfying the health requirement thank you the next speaker is ISA Jimenez guer after um isaa will be cherylyn Crowther and then Jennifer modder thank you I'm actually going to defer my time time to n bayana [Music] Casey hi my name is n binda Casey I'm I'm a freshman for at Cleveland High School I'm also the
082founder and co- founder and president of the Pacific Islander Club at Cleveland and I'm also a part of the Filipino club and I'm also a part of the racial Equity team at Cleveland I am here today to talk about the Pacific Islanders I even have something that my cousin wrote Because I feel like her story is very important my cousin shylin she experienced a lot of racism and a lot of misplacement U at her school especially it because it was um mainly white school she I I told her to write something because I feel like her what she said I mean sorry what she she went through is really important and I feel like she needs a voice so she wrote that Seattle Public Schools need to realize that they can't just teach history forc
083on one culture or race they also need to stop teaching one side of the story yes we learn about the Native Americans and the messed up story of Columbus but what about the native Hawaiians and the other micronesian and Polynesian cultures just like New Zealand we were forbid we were forbidden to speak our language because of the Hawaiian language no because because the Hawaiian language is almost extinct did you know that Hawaii was stolen from our people as well did you know that our that our Queen was in was locked up in her wait did you know that the British locked up our Queen in her room like a prisoner I bet you didn't because we don't learn about it if we were in Hawaii and enrolled in the school there would be we would
084be learning about our culture and and our history so why can't we do that here this is why we need a history uh history classes that involve more of the students population not only it will help the Pacific island Pacific Islander students and students of color feel more comfortable and welcome in their own skin but it but it would also educate the other students and teachers at Cleveland and other SPS schools we need to stop letting our ignorance get invol get in the way of our education also we are here in Seattle that connects that connects their okay there's people in Seattle that connects that connects their home and Country these classes that are what okay never mind so basically you know Pacific Islanders they experience a lot of racism in in America because us
085Hawaiians we got our land taken away I Island got annexed illegally and it was stolen the reason why our island is a part of America is because it was annexed and it was illegally stolen and they imprisoned Our Queen so the thing is I feel like we need to have a ethnic studies at this in any school I feel like if you think about it every single person who goes to Hawaii they only go there just just to think just to go to the beach and be and also because it's just a trop it's a tropical island it's very beautiful but think about it there's a lot there's a lot of cultures there's a lot of history behind everything you're walking on so I feel like we need to have a history class talking about
086the Pacific Islanders especially native Hawaiian native Hawaiians went through so much stuff but no one acknowledges what we went through so I feel like we need to talk about it so this is why I'm going to hand it off to my to my vice president um hi hi my name is Jackie bppa Rachel Stowers I'm the vice president and the co-founder of the Pacific Islander Club at Cleveland and I'm here to talk about how ethnic studies should be one of the things that we have in Seattle Public Schools why because there are so many there are so many topics that people could learn about other cultures besides the Europeans and if you think about it in Humanities classes in high school who all we learn about is the history and the war that has happened
087between the Americans and the native Hawaii the Native Americans what about the history that has happened in the Pacific Islands such as the colonization of New Zealand and how they were close to the point of their language almost becoming illegal to speak and so on and so on how would you feel if your language was colonized no if your culture was colonized and you weren't allowed to speak your own language because you were scared of what would happen to you and your family and else Seattle Public Schools should allow Pacific island ethnic studies you must be asking why the reason is that the Pacific Islanders have gotten misplaced and underappreciated having a p and underappreciated so many years and so many times even I as a sophomore at Cleveland I grw up grew up getting
088called by racial slayes and other things I say we should have a pi studies at all Seattle public schools because is one of the things that our culture should be taught because there's so many things in our culture that nobody knows about because everybody is too un uneducated and too unaware of what our culture is about there's so many things that you guys can be taught about because we are more than just being like Polynesian sauage Chick-fil-A being Moana the Moana movie the Lilo and Stitch and so on and so on why should our culture be colonized just because you guys are too uneducated to learn about it that's all next speaker is cheryn Crowder cherylyn Crowder good afternoon I'm cheryn Crowther pronouncer she her I am the co-president of the Seattle special education parent
089teacher student Association at the last board meeting there was an update on the head start preschool program in Seattle thanks to additional funding from the deel at the city Head Start is switching two locations to become inclusive preschools this opens spaces for the grown gr number of preschool students being evaluated for IEPs and special education services this need makes sense the city's largest early intervention Clinic has been seeing an increasing number of referrals for infants and toddlers thanks to early intervention not all of these children will need additional Services after age three knowing an increasing number of Seattle Public Schools youngest students are coming into preschool with IEPs is important unfortunately those preschools are most likely segregated looking at the district map of preschools 46 are operated by the district or Head Start more than
090a third are development preschools where childrens with disabilities are separated from their typically developing peers that's the type of program my son was in 16 years ago to be inclusive the number of students with IEPs needs to remain below 25% less than half of the non-developmental preschool programs in the district meet that bar according to the National Association for the education of young children including children in with disabilities in preschool results in Greater empathy and acceptance of differences among all children as well as improved academic social and behavioral outcomes for children with disabilities while the head start funding will shift two locations into inclusive preschools there is an opportunity for SPS here inclusive preschools connect families as well parents of a child without a disability are more likely to meet and get to know the
091parents of a child with disability Head Start is making the changes thanks to the city's funding but the price tag on inclusion works out as an investment that saves over a student's lifetime please learn more about the Inclusive Preschool programs in the district and increase the numbers thank you next is Jennifer modder who will be followed by John inof and then Kay fidler and I'll also say myter at Roosevelt took theth studies class white girl loved it thought it was so much better than AP US History all right good afternoon my name is Jennifer modder I us sh her pronouns and I proudly serve as Seattle Education Association president which represents approximately 6,000 Educators working in Seattle Public Schools today I'd like to talk about safety and gun violence as we heard gun violence tragically
092killed another Seattle student just two weeks ago in 2020 guns became the number one cause of death for children and te in the United States and according to a recent KU report is the number one leading cause of death for juveniles in King County of course in 2020 covid also happened and it became the primary focus of our attention and so the Grim Milestone of gun violence becoming the number one cause of death for our youth did not get the attention it deserves it's time we start treating gun violence like the public health and Public Safety emergency that it is for our students families and educ S I recognize that the primary focus of Seattle Public Schools is academics and that our school district does not have the resources or ability to address public health
093or public safety issues plaguing our community and speaking on behalf of SCA we don't know the answers but as school leaders we do have the ability to ask for help from our city county and state leaders and so I'm asking you to think about how we can ask for help and work together with our city leaders and public health officials to address the gun violence that is afflicting our school communities and as you consider candidates to replace director song and Rivera I would also ask you to consider candidates who can see the big picture of complex issues like this affecting our schools who have the ability to ask for help and to partner with our city county and state and who are committed to engaging with and honoring what our students families and educ ators
094share they need in their school communities in order to thrive thank you next is John inov and if you're on the wait list tonight um we have three more speaker spots and if those speakers are here we will not be making into the weight list so if you're deep in the weight list probably not going to get to you hi my name is John inov I have two kids in the Seattle Public Schools a kindergarten and a third grader my third grader is at decar um so for the parents of decator have been told that Decor will be open next year but we don't know what will happen the following year as I'm sure you can all imagine that causes quite a bit of uncertainty and anxiety for students for parents for staff um I
095understand obviously the district faces some difficult choices and it's a complicated plan that we're trying to think through um the the options that the parents have heard floated include everything from the kids will move be moved over to Viewridge maybe the kids will be allowed to go to KES IA maybe the kids will be moved to the neighborhood schools and any number of other options we frankly don't know what what to expect we don't know when we'll find out um I I and many of the other parents indicator are particularly concerned about any option that has the kids moving back to their neighborhood school for the simple reason that the neighborhood schools right now are just not equipped to provide the support that these kids require so for in just as one example a fifth
096grader at deor is taking seventh grade math I don't know how how is it going to work that you take that fifth grader you put them in a neighborhood school where all of their peers are taking fifth grade math I just we just don't understand how it's going to work nobody has explained that to us um I again I understand the district faces some difficult choices uh I don't envy the the decision-making uh My Hope and my ask is that the district can provide Clarity soon to the to the students teachers and uh parents and also ideally find a way to keep these kids together so that they can get continue to get the support that they need thank you K Fiddler Bou you started this time before I even got up here you have
097no handicap accommodations B the band Anna shab um I want to talk to you a little about history because none of you have been around that long and I've been coming to the school board meetings for over 40 years to talk about education rights for our native children and for all children so you all started as an organization what I saw on Google and Google don't ever lie right said uh y'all started in 18 1967 nobody's arguing so it must be right and then I read that the African-American people in this country were given un uh what is it called citizenship in 1868 so as an organization you beat citizenship by a year native people were given citizenship in 1924 and so that had to get like applied over my parents I'm a citizen of
098My Tribe first and your country after that because your country has worked really hard to annihilate my people to practice the genocide in the Seattle Public Schools um started early on and it continues you've made a lot of promises you promised us I was standing there the day Seattle Public Schools promised the native Community not just unea the native Community were promised that we would have access to the Robert Eagle staff building promised that we would have Secure Storage in there to keep our supplies we were promised that you would respect shut up we were promised that you would respect and educate our children we were promised that you would not try to push our children out of your school district one of my grand children I had to move to Highline School District the
099only native in her high school and she gets treated better than your school district was treating her we haven't had to deal with racism we've dealt with understanding we go to the principal boom it gets fixed we don't have to go to the school board for years now you're going to appoint a new Indian agent we never even asked you for an Indian agent agent but you're going to appoint One Like You appointed that one to the school board that Shandra she worked actively against my grandson graduating high school thank God for that Lisa Rivera Smith she helped him do the work that was racism that they were trying to hold against him Fine Arts Credit as long as the Fine Arts were studying white people Fine Arts right we natives we have Fine Arts
100we know that and so he finally was able to graduate on the Fine Arts in our native Community but that Lisa woman that y I don't know why she left I've heard RoR um and it might be true because that's the same stuff that's happening to our kids anybody who speaks out now you're going to put a new Indian agent on your school board leaz on to your school board the Indian agents on my reservation starved over 300 almost 400 people in 30 and 40 below weather because they wouldn't sign a treaty that gave away everything forever and when we act we act for the next seven generations because Seven Generations ago people gave their lives so I could stand here so these kids could stand here we're not the same tribe all of us
101some of us this girl's My Tribe we are different tribes we're different people we have different cultures and and I'm listening to these black Liv matter children and especially this girl who's you know suffered that loss in her family yall need to come off the podium and I think that the other superintendents probably might have gone a full month before they met with our community but see you all are listening to your Indian agents they want to starve us so we sign a treaty I am not willing to sign a treaty I do not want your indan agent I do not want your leers on because they lie to you and you believe them because they make you comfortable I don't want you to be comfortable I want you to be uncomfortable a while you
102destroy my babies if you're going to go after us with your racism and your genocide at least have the decency to be uncomfortable while you do it so no Indian agents keep them but you come out and you meet with us Jose Banda did it even D Juno Juno did it Susan Enfield she a tiny little woman she did it joh good Lord Johnson did it yeah there is history and see we are a people of History because without history we don't exist without history we're just like you all no more genocide on our children no more Indian agents putting a buffer so you feel comfortable if you cannot grw a pair get off that chair anyhow thank you goodbye the final speaker tonight is enrio alesco uh my name is REO badco from Cleveland
103High School I'll see my time to jiren from rer Beach High School hello I'm jiren Regala from rer Beach a current sophomore at rer Beach and I am part of the rer beach High School Philipp Club ever since last year despite being a Freshman I been fighting for the right for ethnic our ethnic studies class to exist but before this I didn't even know what it meant to be Filipino to be somebody from my culture there was no place nor any way for me that I saw to learn with our community and for that to happen well that's such a disservice to the millions of Filipinos who have lived and died in the United States and who have been in major events in US history and is tied integrally with communities like this one here
104in Seattle San Francisco and la and especially with uh our landmarks being named after our own national heroes like the Jose resol Bridge which is confusing to me because how are our landmarks being named after our heroes yet the education for our history is being cut there's they Filipinos here have fought for this country and bled for this country they at least deserve to be taught about and their stories shared their stories deserve much more recognition and they deserve much better and I'm sure a lot of you are know know about ringer Beach's story our own troubled schools previous students had to fight for our continuance in the district and fight for a new building much like how we right now are fighting to save these classes that we had last year now this year
105how much longer do we have to fight in order to secure our very own stories and Heritage at schools where this District abide by its commitments to the ethnic studies classes I can recall I've seen one document resolution 20161 17-17 where this very District had promised to build on ethnic studies but now revert on that promise I want to end on this note we are able to tell that immigrants built this country but not tell their stories their cultures and the real impact that they had how is that any different than just rushing aside their past and denying their our history when people today don't know our own stories when our own people don't understand the significance of these stories due to a lack of education and knowledge on these issues thank you that was
106the final speaker for testimony tonight thank you very much everyone we will um take a 13 minute recess to [Music] I'm all right keeping the party going do we have let's see director Briggs and director seru not to rush you but we're going to get started so join us when you're ready all right it is 6 611 and we are going to do our progress monitoring session um then we're g to go back there so I'm going to hand it over to Deputy superintendent Jarvis to kick us off thank you president Rankin and for those of you in the in the auditorium please feel free to stick around if there are conversations though that you're having please kindly take those out to the lobby so we can continue our meeting thank you so much thank
107you president Ranken good evening everyone as part of our regular board meeting I'd like to transition to our progress monitoring discussion and to outline the agenda for tonight's discussion as part of the student outcomes focused governance sofg that many have heard about in support of our third grade reading and our seventh grade math goals this is our fourth formal opportunity to review the progress we are making in these two areas through the formal sfg process I am joined by three key leaders of this work assistant superintendent of academics Dr Mike stoski executive director of curriculum assessment and instruction toal to toner executive director of College and Career Readiness Dr Caleb Perkins before we engage in our conversation on strategic questions they will help me provide a clear response to the following key questions what is
108the current state what is the desired State what are we doing to get there we will follow a similar sequence we used in our last review of both of these goals taking each memo in turn first third grade reading then seventh grade math by spending a few minutes doing an independent close reading of each memo to refresh our memories and to ensure that we're all coming into the conversation with the same information similar to both these memos were presented in November the team will also be presenting some slides to help highlight the work being done in support of both goals finally I want to note that we will be incorporating into our introduction this evening some initial responses to the feedback we heard during our last sofg progress monitoring session on January 17th specifically we
109want to begin to note how we are connecting the Strategic work we discuss to the request to have clear leading indicators and lagging indicators Within These indicators we aim to set clear targets and baselines so that we can better understand and communicate what progress we are making where we need to adjust our strategy so let me pause for a second and see if there are any questions hearing none we will go ahead and begin our close read of the third grade reading memo so i' offer a timing back to president Rankin uh do folks need time read or are we prepared to get into it we did our homework let's go then let me reintroduce Dr Mike stoski to do an executive summary of what's ahead of us uh thank you Dr Jarvis um so
110uh as a refresher um as you see on the top of the first page I want to State the first goal that we set uh in support of our strategic plan goal for third grade rating the percentage of black boys who achieve English language arts proficiency or higher on the third grade Smarter Balance assessment will increase from 28% in June 2019 to 70% in June 2024 for our two new board members being introduced to this work and presentation structure I want to touch on a few of the metrics we use when reviewing our District's progress in measuring and meeting our Target we use two standardized assessments of student outcomes to monitor progress um at the board level the third grade smarter balanced assessment SBA is our Topline measure and the ultimate indicator of our success
111the measures of academic progress map uh that assessment is in grades second and third and serves as an interim measure or early indicator of progress that when viewed in combination with other data at the school level can inform implementation decisions in looking at figure one next slide please and looking at figure one which was represented at our last meeting our Topline measure of third graders proficient in English language arts on the smarter balance assessment you will notice 29% of our African-American males or boys achieve proficiency on the spring SBA 23 uh 23 2023 SBA which is a slight decrease from Spring 2022 however it is consistent with our African-American boys student performance pre pandemic while these results for SPS are consistent with Washington State Trends since 2019 they do indicate we are on track to
112meet do indicate that we are not on track to meet our set Target even so our African-American males our students have benefited from targeted efforts in the 13 priority schools despite overall declines and proficiency our African-American boys and our students in our district are benefiting from our work in our 13 priority schools proficiency for our African-American boys declined by 2.4 points from 2022 to 23 compared to two 10.6 Point decline at comparison schools in SPS with similar demographics that is data that we have uh brought back to you uh in the past but we're bringing it back uh in into uh tonight's discussion taken together these results indicate that SPS is strategy is beginning to take hold and have an impact at the 13 priority schools by staying focused on research-based strategies for lit literacy
113instruction and effective school-based implementation supported by central office we will be able to solidify the model and begin thoughtfully expanding supports and scaling these efforts across the system so what I would like to do is just do a general reminder and you'll see uh this evening as you've seen many times a consistency with the strategies that we're using among third grade reading and seventh grade math so some of the things that I talk about on this front end you'll also hear about in math as well um specifically the core of our strategy uh at the school level is to provide our schools our principes our teachers with the job embedded learning and support necess necessary to deliver highquality standards aligned instruction and we are basing that on the five following areas excellent teaching and joyful
114learning strong relationships and connected families Equitable measures and student supports expanded learning and enrichment and finally opportunity Pathways now I will turn it over to executive director of assessment and instruction caselle toner to further explain what the current state is since the last time that we met um thank you Dr stoski um let's see I'd first like to re reiterate the results of the first two figures highlighted in the memo so that you have the context for our current state and an understanding of the progress we're making towards our goal so as previously noted on figure one the SB SBA is our Top Line measure and the results from this spring indicate that while roughly one-third of African-American male students were proficient on the ELA portion of the spring 2023 SBA um which is stable
115compared to historical trends um those results are 29 percentage points below our Target so we clearly have a lot of work to do together moving on to figure two thanks uh this V visual illustrates predicted proficiency indicators for the spring of 2024 SBA based on the fall 2023 Ela portion of map that's a lot of Education ease there so if but I believe that you all probably read the memo in advance of this meeting right now so I'm kind of looking around you're all nodding so we're going to move on all right um 43.6% of current third grade um students uh for this from educational Justice are projected to test proficient on Spring Ela SBA while 32.1% of African-American males are projected to test proficient on the spring Ela SBA this information is useful to
116think about as we look to identify groups needing to make accelerated growth to meet proficiency to ensure we match them with the supports and resources needed finally I wanted to kind of zoom out for a minute um and remind our whole system that overall in third grade reading achievement um historically our district has been at about 65% proficiently proficiency for all kids and that would be like pre-pandemic just to put this into context and post pandemic in um spring 2023 third grade kids overall in Seattle Public Schools were uh about 61% proficient so we have work to do as a whole system and we have targeted work to do as well but I just wanted to share that with you all right now that we have established the context for where we are currently I'd
117like to talk about the progress being made and the next steps to get us to our desired State um the student outcomes I just touched on are uh are the product of several factors so just to be really clear um it is our core belief that all children can be confident in joyful readers by third grade there's nothing wrong with the kids they're brilliant it's our job to think about what are the systems and structures we need to put in place in order for all kids to be um their best selves and their most brilliant selves as they partner with us um in their school workor right so this isn't about fixing kids or fixing schools this is about systems and structures improvements to that end um putting aside the impact of the pandemic the
118most important historical factors within the control of Seattle Public Schools um that we need to address are things like um we haven't had uh research based literacy instruction uh instructional tool consistently implemented across our system we've changed that and now we do have that um with the support of the board right so that's our Center for collaborative classroom instructional material that's aligned to the science of reading that is now being implemented systemwide um another um area of growth that we need to address alog together would be the schoolto home family engagement um that authentically partners with black families um to uh to build that relationship and to build trust um so that we can um you know be really honest about what we can do as a system and how we can enter into partnership
119with families another area we need to keep working on is um a dosage issue because if you have um more growth to make you might need a little bit more time to do that right so we're doing what we can you know during the school day but we also need to really think carefully about at of school time Partnerships um okay so I'd now like to highlight the progress we've been making along with the next steps we are planning on undertaking and support of this work so it's important to note that the work currently underway and planned um support going forward are tightly aligned with our previously discussed five core areas of um work of work that Dr Sosi just talked about excellent teaching um strong relationships Equitable measures and student supports expanded learning and
120opportunity and Pathways here on this slide you can see some of our current um successes but I'd say one of the biggest lessons we've learned so far is that we need to do fewer things and we need to do them really well um when we kind of do a little bit of everything um it it doesn't have a great impact so being really tight being really focused on our instructional priorities um in this work has been a lesson learned that um we need to kind of hold true to we've also learned that um our Educators given the space and time to do what they do really well which is to think about the relationship between the content and the teaching and the student um and if we can do that in professional learning communities and
121focus on student dat and student growth that's a really promising practice um at our let's see I want to make sure I don't miss anything in my notes here another promising practice we're learning from is the um Family literacy connectors that we've hired at our uh early literacy partnership schools to really strengthen the connection between home and school um and at a targeted level our early literacy Improvement Network that I'll talk about that more in just a minute um but we've been having um joint site visits to our schools with the regional executive directors some of the content folks from my team and our school leaders visiting classrooms and um calibrating around feedback uh for educators with coaches um and being really tight on those instructional priorities is another promising practice um let's move on
122to the next slide so I just sort of described some of the lessons we're learning I think we should move move on a little bit cuz I'm worried about time so let's move on okay let's zoom in just for a second on the excellent teaching and joyful learning um let's move to the next slide all right so in response to some of the feedback we've been getting you know it's one thing to talk about SBA results but that's sort of like the end of the marathon right we need to have better uh leading and lagging indicators and that's some feedback that this team has given us so let's just look at this slide together at the top here and we've have some examples of some um leading uh indicators and some lagging indicators so on
123this side you can see how we're thinking about leading and lagging indicators for example under the teaching and learning and joyful learning um top of the slide here um if you were to focus on just one of our instructional priorities which would be fluency instruction a leading indicator could be um something like how many teachers are teaching fluency lessons and how often right the lagging indicator could be changes in student oral read reading fluency measures as measured by Dibbles um and that would be something that would be really interesting to think more about because a student's ability to read accurately and at grade level um when uh obviously impacts the other indic uh the other measures of map and SBA so you can kind of see that through line right anyway as you look across
124this slide you can see some of the other examples that we're considering for leading and lagging indicators um and I appreciate that feedback to help us get that kind of clarity um I just talked with you a little bit about one of our instructional priorities which is fluency um and if we can go to the next slide since we used fluency as an example of one of our instructional priorities I want to share uh with you a few sample slides from our most recent convening of our principles in our early literacy Improvement Network we met with this we meet with this group month monthly and what we call the early literacy Improvement Network um for just a bit of context reading fluency is the ability to read a text accurately at about 90 96% rate
125or above automatically in other words that means not slowing down to sound out the words and reading with an expression that matches the text as you can imagine fluent reading is a prerequisite to comprehending a text though all by itself it's not enough so I wonder if yall could just look up here at this slide for a second and this is an activity we did with our principles and coaches just like a week and a half ago if you want to read that slide to yourself um then we'll talk about it in just a minute okay I can kind of tell that you've all finished because you're looking around a little bit so um now I wonder if um director hery would you do me a favor and read that slide out loud yeah gladly
126since our kids are going to be tested on their silent reading comprehension why would we bother to have them practice oral reading the purpose quite simply is that oral reading practice has has been found to have a positive impact on students silent reading comprehension the national reading panel reviewed 16 experimental studies in which students practice their oral reading with a partner with rereading they should be reading texts that are relatively hard and with feedback someone who helps them when they make mistakes in 15 of the 16 studies the kids who were engaged in this kind of activity ended up outperforming the control students in silent reading comprehension there have been many additional studies since that time across a variety of Ages with similar results so um if I could just indulge a little bit director
127hery what was that like for you to read that out loud versus what was it like for you when you just read that silently to yourself yes so I have a little bit of a cheat Cod having taught this stuff um reading out loud and being able to match the sounds and movements of my mouth with what I am seeing on the paper is like super critical uh I think both in practice because of all of the reasons that it uh articulated in the piece but it also reading out loud for me makes me feel like I have more ownership over the piece and gives me more confidence in my comprehension of what it actually said um thank you for sharing uh your thinking that's like a practice of metac cognition we use in the
128classroom sometimes um but what he was able to describe to you is what a really confident influent reader is able to do and when you're building those skills what we're doing in our um classrooms in our second and third grades in our um early literacy priority schools is being really clear about our instructional Focus right around fluency and then building some like how do you build those skills protocols with Educators and so that means having our coaches work with groups of teachers to teach a protocol around fluency which is actually aligned to a larger focus of our district around inclusionary practices and I'm going to tell you why in for just a minute um if you're a student that's not able to access that text and we all read it together I can fade back
129and not say the words that I'm not sure what they are but guess what you all just helped me out because you read them right and so then my brain gets to say oh that's what that word means right and then we go through that protocol on the first day we read all together um with a teacher support and then slowly the teacher backs out and maybe we're paired up strategically with multilingual learner and maybe somebody who's reading above grade level or whatever the um parents U make sense in the classroom and then as we go across the the week um kids become much more confident in that little excerpt of text and this quote helps you think about why we would want to do a protocol a fluency protocol like that and how it
130can um transfer over to when kids are reading um silently or independently which is what you need to do to be a confident reader right okay so I just gave you a little example of some of the actual work that goes like five levels down away from the Topline measures of SBA then we tracked to map which is a uh one of our data metrics as well and then we talked about some leading indicators and some lagging indicators and we talked about a classroom practice of fluency so um that's some of the work that we're engaged in and thinking about how might we want want to scale some of those practices districtwide and with that I will just I'll pause there for some question oh actually I have one more slide that I wanted to
131show you because you might be thinking about how do you measure that with kids so if we go to the next slide and we did this also activity with our early literacy Improvement network and on the left you'll see um an actual students um um ORF okay that stands for oral reading fluency okay you're like what are you talking about but that's what means um and it means being able to read with you the goal is you want you know a high accuracy and you want to be able to comprehend right but be in able to in order to be able to do that your brain has to have automaticity and understanding what those letters mean and how they all work together so that then your brain can be freed up to think gee what
132does what does that all mean together right so on the left you'll see a student's um first read of that passage and then you'll see on the right what improvements this this particular student was able to uh make after um you know 5 days of affluency routine in the classroom that I just described to you so um that's a kind of real life example of some of the work that we're doing in the classrooms and if if I could just add uh to what was powerful about this this just happened last week uh uh the training with the coaches and the principes um is that you could you know we heard about it but also we could see it um with a a student who who did this so we could see the video see
133it in real time and see so after a week of practicing a week of focus on instruction what would be uh uh how did this student change over time in just uh four or five lessons in a week and this is what we saw this is what was indicated here and so in specifically looking for uh fluency specifically but the rate and expression and accuracy so we just did sort of like a way deep dive into one component of this work by no means is that representative representative of all of the work that um is supporting this strategy so I just want to be really clear about that okay Dr toner thank you Dr stoski thanks this is uh I we hope helpful to you as a board and as we transition to our main
134discussion we're going to stop for just a minute and paused for any clarifying questions after any clarifying questions we'll spend a few minutes uh looking at our strategic questions but first are there any clarifying questions no we will move on focus our conversation for the evening on the Strategic questions in which case I'm going to turn it back to president Rankin to facilitate at the the discussion uh and we'll take it from there great thank you um directors uh as Dr Jarvis noted strategic questions is what we're after if you have tactical questions I would ask that you either um write that down to submit in writing another time or you can state it now if you want to if it's a tactical question though I'm going to ask that we get that answer later
135who would like to go first with questions about what we've just seen be uh helpful just given that we have new directors and for folks who are listening in to give us a brief overview of the difference between a strategic and a tactical question sure well I had the opportunity to meet with our two directors before three made a quorum it was when there were still seven people on on the board to before their First Progress monitoring session at the last board meeting um to talk through a little bit about what the purpose of progress monitoring is and and what we're looking for as a board or as board directors um but yeah so strategic what what our job as the school board is to provide direction to the superintendent to manage staff and direct
136the district to operationalize education in a way that's aligned to you know Federal standards State Standards there's tons of requirements but specifically our Direction and so we have we have asked for um to be able to measure we also need to be able to reflect back to the community who we collectively are rep representing how the system is or isn't doing in educating our our all of our kids and so progress monitoring sessions um we have three Topline goals around third grade reading seventh grade math and College and Career Readiness that's like a spotlight again this isn't like and we don't do anything else we only do these three things this is just kind of a spotlight based on what was really important to our community when the last strategic plan was being developed these
137priorities came through very clearly that that was um those were the focuses and so um we want to be asking not you know our job is not to be curriculum specialist is not to be educ ation Specialists although we happen to have a former uh you know postsecondary educator and Elementary educator on the board um but that's that's our goal really is to reflect back to the community how how our system is doing and so we need to be able to ask from what we've seen we want to ask strategic questions so what strategies were um employed that you deem to be working to be making progress or not making progress on the goals tactical would be more operational things happening in the classroom which might be very interesting to us but the reason I
138ask for us to save those is that they're actually not um they're interesting to us and they're informative but they're not as directly connected to what our role is in this moment which is to examine the outcomes and push the whole system towards what's working what's not and sup I'm saying superintendent but because the superintendent is our connection to staff um but what's being directed is that um making the progress that we expect to see for our students and and meeting our goals and if it's not you know then we want to hear about that too what we might be seeing that they might not be seeing um from that higher strategic level as we govern um a district of 106 schools uh that all have very different needs we have to find a way
139to be to keep our eye on the big picture which is reflecting back to the community how our kids are doing and holding the district accountable for providing the education that we expect so that's why we want to focus on the Strategic rather than the what curriculum did you use and what was happening in you know the third classroom on the right at John Hay Elementary on Thursday that's maybe interesting but not going to be what's really helpful in um our role in this conversation director hery go ahead thank you for that so this is awesome thank you um it's really cool to get a look into like how we're actually using these strategies my question in relation to this particular exercise is is there a follow-up exercise that goes along with this that addresses
140comprehension and can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like sure I'd be happy to um so this um we have um instructional priorities that are kind of sequenced across the grades because because you know learning to be a confident reader by third grade doesn't happen in third grade it starts in the early years and all the way up right so for example um in kindergarten in first grade we're focusing on uh systematic phonics and we've talked about that a little bit I just described to you a fluency protocol but like the next step instructionally would be a different protocol like um that would be like text at the center um or a writing about reading um project essentially what does that mean it means um helping kids read a passage confidently
141and then um make some meaning from it right so make a claim about it use some evidence from the text to kind of write about what did you just learn about so that would be like the next step but before we get to that part you have to do a couple things first you have to understand the phonics component and then you got to be a fluent reader um enough to be able to get to that next part which is that comprehension um progression but great question and all of that work is aligned to the science of reading um so it's not just like what does kelle think that's really um those are research-based strategies that help kids especially kids that um you know some kids learning to read is a is a pretty seamless
142thing but for other kids it's like what are you talking about I need you to actually be really explicit about how all of these um symbols work together and then I need some strategies about how to even I mean make a CL CL and you know have evidence from the text what are you talking about so actually like teach into that for kids and be really explicit about it one additional followup thank you for that I appreciate it are we seeing um data that would suggest that by so saying for instance this scenario when that student then goes to another cold read are we seeing that they are performing better on cold reads through out um and do we have data that supports that so I would say we have anecdotal evidence from Educators right
143um but I don't necessarily have a spreadsheet with all the kids organized to be able to share but that might not be appropriate right like really the power of that is the educator seeing that progression and being able to talk with the with the child about you know their own reading growth but I would say generally speaking yeah and that goes along with kind of Common Sense thinking right the more you practice something and the more you get like really specific feedback about whatever it is the better you're going to feel about it and be able to do it director top so I have a question it's going to be a newbie question and I don't know if I I'm not sure who's supposed to answer it or if it's supposed to be answered even
144tonight but I am missing the connection between we you know we have the goal we have sort of strategies we're we're playing around with strategies that work or don't work how do we take that information and transfer it to the budget decisions we're making in order to invest make sure we're investing in the right things where I I'm missing I guess that link and I don't think it's a question that is a great question it is you're right not for right now but it came up it came up last time because we had a uh progress monitoring session on College and Career Readiness and we had a budget conversation and so we did ask the question you know what should we expect to see as you're furthering down the the budget process to show us
145that Investments are being made in the strategies that you're working on um so that we we should be able to talk about whether like are the strategies working who are they working for who are they not working for how are our students doing and then if staff is being clear with us about what's working we should be able to see that that that's what's being invested in yeah how are we investing then in the in the strategies that you are recommending and some of it might not like you know a lot of it is hiring teachers right so there's not going to be a a different line for you know some of the skills that teachers have but if there's different um like the uh aligned curriculum curriculum that is aligned with the science of
146reading continuing to invest in that that would be an example of something that would see or professional development likewise if there's an area that we see needs to be invested in more that's not I you know my question would be why not or what what do we need to maybe think about doing differently to invest in it but we would see that more in the budget conversation than this conversation director hery I do want to um kind of build off of that question really quickly uh just as an idea that popped up and please tell me if this is wildly inappropriate I think that there is a clearer link here just because it would be nice to be able to see all right this is a really strong strategy as close as you could get
147without with knowing that it would be very difficult to do so but showing how much in a dollar amount of resources whether it be instruction curriculum timing all those types of things how long this has been implemented in comparison to other strategies I think would be super useful for folks sitting in the audience uh members of the public to be able to determine like okay this makes sense to me we're spending x amount of dollars in this what does it look like to double down on this as opposed to some of the other things and curriculum instruction or other strategies that we might not be seeing as readily uh progress from um so I I did just I think there's some there there and I I wonder if there is a way to connect these
148types of conversations because especially for a Community member who's watching this but might not necessarily be watching a budget meeting who might be watching a budget meeting but might not necessarily be watching this finding a clearer connection between uh these kind of frames of thought might be of great use I would say a yes and because this is our only time as a full board to discuss together these questions and so while the public gets to watch us we need to make sure that we are doing our work as effectively as we can and that honestly some of that is on other staff to communicate out effectively to the public because this is not a replacement for that community outreach and education I would say but there also I notice in the memo there is
149um usually at the end what board support is helpful it doesn't have numbers on it but it will tell us kind of like here's what we found to be effective and here's what um we would like your continued support with um that's one connection and then um I think it's a great suggestion for us to maybe have some of those with us in the budget conversation so we can say hey we heard from curriculum and instruction that this is really effective and needs to be invested in are you doing that where is that one last add on to that and then like also having consideration especially from senior staff to say like in addition to that these are things that we are ask are considering letting go of because we're finding that they are less
150effective right so having some almost sentence stems from y'all's perspective uh to provide context for us about what are those tradeoffs could also be a really powerful tool as we're making some of these decisions yes to uh put Dr Jones in the room strategic abandonment yes um is the the term we're all clutching on to and that that there are lots of things that we all like and want to do but we are going to have to make make choices um and be honest about what the tradeoffs are so what's that oh I said math U we still have our math time to to go so whenever you're ready well so sorry because I actually have some strategic questions well one is a tactical question that I'll take later which is I'm still unclear about
151Dibbles because my understanding was that was our approved dyslexia screener but then it's being described here as an assessment so I'm just what what's what's the there don't don't answer it now please put it in writing to the full board um strategically what strategies at so so kelle you said something about you know we're learning that instead of doing a whole bunch of things kind of we're going to focus on doing things really well I still see a lot of things on here under the universal and the targeted support there's still a ton of different strategies in here so I would like to know know you mentioned that the so I'll say the seeing a decline is disappointing and upsetting especially when proficiency was you know not that great beforehand it's not out of step
152with what I'm seeing nationally on just how early learning in elementary school you know reading is is going so um but what does stand out is that uh 10.6 decline compared to only a 2.4 decline what I can't tell from this is what are the strategies that you attribute are making that difference at the 13 priority schools what did it take so um not to get into the specifics of that I will tell you what uh we're discussing with Dr Jones okay uh the directive with Dr Jones is to be very clear uh about going from the targeted to the universal and so what we've been clear about is the the need and the want to of going from not just the 13 schools but to the 14 plus um 57 or 70 or however
153we're going to um count our elementary or Elementary and our k8s but being really specific about a transition plan from the targeted 13 schools to all of our schools specifically in regards to our focus on uh third grade reading for African-American boys so we're coming up with a transition plan it's part of our budget process it's part of our uh scaling out our scaling up and so we're we'll be able to come back to the to you with a a plan that's in development right now okay so what I'm hearing so I'm I'm putting you're not going to like this because I I hear like what's going to be upscaled if you if we don't know which strategies are the ones that are working how do we make those Universal which ones are they is
154that what we have yet to determine that's part of the because there's an implementation plan of rolling up from targeted to Universal but there's also you you have to identify which strategies you're going to be making Universal which you can't do if you don't know which ones are the ones that are working go ahead so sometimes people say you know it's not rocket science right but actually teaching reading is is very complicated and it takes lots of different um components to put in place but I would say and this goes back to the lessons learned and I I can clarify about being really clear the instructional priorities being really clear about that progression I was describing to you around um foundational literacy skills phonics and kindergarten in first grade fluency protocols in second you know
155second and third and then writing about your reading in third grade having that kind of laser focus and then connecting the um teacher practices with the feedback from and support from school leaders in also support of central office that kind of that um Triad that I just described to you um is something we probably need to really dig into but the uh hard thing is you're going to say well celle can you quantify that for me and that's actually really difficult to do in in uh in our work but we are in partnership with University of Washington to do an an analysis of the strategies um and we're doing it as fast as we can I wish I had it a year and a half ago but it's not possible so we're in that process
156right now and I'll be able to share those findings um you know as we get them and I I can appreciate that it's a little bit squishy because there's so I mean there's so much variance in relationship between a a you know in one classroom the relationships and the strategies between um an educator and all the different students but when we talk about scaling up the scaling up can't just be teach harder like we've got like what what are we providing and what is and so I guess the flip side might be if you're identifying things that you know are not strategies that are working I would like to see in that plan what's being abandoned um and then the other strategic question is what do you so the um uh there was a the
157decline the 6.9 Point Statewide decline in proficiency that returns us to prior to the pandemic is really interesting because that to me says that during the pandemic it was higher than usual for we for us to have declined and returned to pre-pandemic levels it's indicating that there was a higher than previous am I misunderstanding what this data is saying I'm thinking um are you thinking about when I shared overall third grade um proficiency or are you looking so it says on the E oh sorry sorry that's Ela or maybe this is a typo but it says um 29% of African-American males achieve proficiency a slight decrease from Spring 2022 though consistent with student performance pre pandemic right so that means that there was an increase um so Seattle schools has historically um our African-American Boys
158in third grade have been hovering somewhere around 29% proficiency sometimes we pop up to 33 31 somewhere in there it's been a consistent trend and so I think that that is what that means is we're kind of back to where we were um so it wasn't necessarily there was a spike and we've returned it's just sort of a there's a tendency to sort of we hovered around that for a very long time which means as a system we need to do something different yeah yeah okay and I would also say the compounding effect of the pandemic on this particular learning outcome really can't be underestimated right because learning foundational reading skills is was quite difficult to do uh virtually that's not an excuse by any means well but that's why I wondered if there was
159a spike it was like wait a second that's no not what we would expect okay so that's along like historical trends that wasn't uh okay thank you does anybody else have questions about these strategies okay thank you Dr Stasi uh would you introduce the the math certainly ly um so with um uh what I mentioned earlier the the same common strategies of the areas that we're focusing on um with third grade reading are also uh present in our seventh grade math and so I just like to read the goal and then I'll go through those strategies real quickly then I'll hand it over to Dr Perkins uh the goal uh for us uh is that the percentage of black boys and teens in th grade who achiev proficiency or higher on the seventh grade Smarter
160Balance assessment in math will increase from 23% in June 2019 to 45% in June 2024 and to 70% in June 2026 essent essentially doubling over three years and reaching the targeted 70% goal in 5 years and so as a reminder that the seventh grade goal um is truly in its second year uh of implementation uh compared to our third grade reading goal uh but the focus areas um are the following is that we believe that um just like third grade reading it's about excellent teaching uh Equitable measures opportunity Pathways expanded learning and strong relationships that will uh move the the rates that we want to see for our our young men uh and our students of color for the seventh grade math and with that I'll hand it over to uh Dr thank you Dr
161stoski if we go to the next slide uh we'll just Orient you one more slide please we'll just Orient you to the same data um as is often the case I I'm drafting off of celle and the literacy work which is amazing and remarkable as Dr stoski shared we're just in year two but we're learning so much from how they're setting up the literacy work in terms of working with Educators and school leaders and uh using the curriculum as well as assessments so I just want to share that gratitude we see as we shared in November some sobering data from math uh because it's uh worse than what we saw with literacy not we're not at pandemic level and we're we're actually below that and we're trending in the wrong direction in terms of African-American
162male students as we saw the last p uh testing that we did was 20% of students reaching Proficiency in the spring of 2023 for our seventh grade math students uh for African-American male students if we go to the next slide so this is also uh indicated by the Fall map so fall map is basically predicting what percentage of students are going to be able to reach proficiency this is of course uh not necessarily a prediction we want to hold we're we're working uh day and night to try to make sure that we're giving students every opportunity but again it indicates that uh far too large a percentage of our africanamerican M male students are off track with math and we know this is a critical level we need to ensure students are proficient in math
163so they can access all the amazing opportunities that uh we've been talking about in terms of stem and advanced math and so forth so as we've shared before this is concerning and it does require immediate and Urgent action and I'm going to talk about that in just a moment and some of the specifics and getting into the leading and lagging indicators that you all have been appropriately asking I do want to just quickly respond to director Ranken your reference ing the National Data because I think it's important we this is the targeted but if we zoom out to the universal just for a second what is interesting is that we were around 62% proficient in seventh grade across all of our uh students before the pandemic we're about 52% but what's interesting is that we
164hit a low point of around 44% so at least there's some indication that we might be rebounding and if you look at a study that just came out actually was covered by NPR so many of you might have heard about it from some St uh researchers at Harvard and Stanford who studied thousands of districts they showed that Seattle uh they showed they they analyzed many districts but Seattle's shows that we fell less during the pandemic by comparison and we have rebounded more in math so I these are just signs of hope there's a lot of work to do but I just want to give you some some hope in the midst of the some sobering statistics so if we can go to the next slide to your point we need to be focused if we're
165going to actually move the needle and I think I am so envious of how focused the literacy work has gotten in terms of the Precision but what we're trying to do in matching that is it really focusing on excellent teaching so yes we have a dramatic pause here we have we have five buckets of work but if we wanted to think about strategic abandonment we have moved most of our our our energy into one specific bucket which is excellent teaching and joyful learning that's one pivot we've done that's one way we've strategically abandoned some of our our energy in the other four and why because we think if we help Educators maximize the curriculum and the assessments within the curriculum that is the best chance of really making sure our students are making progress and
166I'll even be more specific not quite as specific as as celle but we're focusing on two main levers within the curriculum one is this uh exercise that students do every day called solve and discuss where they come in and they they give their energy towards a math problem before they get any instruction to really wrestle with it and to disc discuss it with a peer because it teaches them how to construct a math argument which is required for proficiency so that's one piece and then we're also putting uh a lot of energy around performance tasks which is about ensuring uh students really get a chance to show their conceptual understanding and what has been encouraging is that we've seen teachers across these six schools and I do want to share my my gratitude for the
167Educators at Denny Aki Mercer Washington meting in Southshore along with our school leaders there who have been working uh much intensely with us to try to figure out what are they learning to your point direct ranking how is the S and discuss helping students is it what who which students are benefiting from this is it causing more engagement um just on January 23rd we had a really encouraging uh time with those teachers from those six schools coming together and talking about the same lessons something that we would not have been able to do just a couple years ago uh because we pushed on that consistency so there's a lot more to talk about but I do want to just be focused in my own comments and I'm just going to stay consistent with that excellent
168teaching piece if we can go to the next slide there are a lot of next steps to take there's a lot of opportunities to see we're actually just like caselle we're experimenting with the universal as well as we do the targeted we brought in two researchers Dr Pam SAA and Dr Kendall Brown who are experts on African-American Male Achievement or African-American achievement in math and they're beginning to actually have conversations with outside of these six schools U because we believe that setting that foundation in the belief and and building math identity for our our students our students of color F educational Justice is critical so we're starting that piece and we're also continuing to look for E uh opportunities with excellent teaching one specific thing that uh board members might want to learn more about
169is the the April lab days that we're going to do where we're going to bring all of our Educators together and give them choice about how to really learn from those two levers that I talked about earlier finally uh I'll just quickly share if we can go to two more two slides Advanced so just I think of you might have to scroll through to get all the text but the bottom line here is we want to share that we are listening to your your helpful nudge on leading and lagging indicators and so what we're doing with some researchers from the Regional Education lab Rel is to think about what are we seeing in terms of quality of teaching around that use of solve and discuss around the use of performance task how is it translating
170into evidence that more students are engaged most more students are able to show deeper understanding to kelle's point I wish I had the data right now to share with you but that's the data we're looking to collect to come back to you to have that more precise sense of what's working and what's not working so we can focus anyway thank you with that I'll turn it over to you president for questions well I was just going to say that the cool thing about progress monitoring is that we're not expecting a polished finished product we're all in continuous Improvement and our you know opportunity for proper progress monitoring is just where are we right now um director hery so a question that I have is given that we have so many of our Target populations that
171are behind in seventh grade what does the what do these strategies look like in elementary like how how do we know that the instruction in our elementary schools is best preparing our students for success by the time they get to seventh grade there a lot of pieces there I'll start and caselle will uh U be the The Closer on this I think that one one of the other pieces I'm gr grateful for is that the board uh supported an adoption of a new K5 curriculum that's the same curriculum as we're doing in middle school so that integration in that connection that sequencing is much more deliberate and thoughtful and uh you know has tremendous opportunities for coherence uh for our students so that's one basic piece I I'll see if gelle has other stuff sure
172um so that was a pretty bold move in talking with the Council of great City Schools other partner districts there weren't very many who were engaging in a curriculum adoption during the pandemic um so that's huge credit to um all of you for for resourcing that as we worked through that but we knew it was a huge gap right because we had an instructional material at the elementary level that was not aligned to standard that's not a good choice right so we had to fix that so that's like a structural change we made but what's I think kind of more interesting to think about are the instructional routines that are inside of that that particular instructional material that we selected because they address the um kind of math identity part and the practice that Caleb
173was talking about um around a solvent share is something that um kids now engage in at the elementary level which gives much more access and and is complimentary to our larger inclusive practices strategy um at the elementary level we also made some bold changes and abandon some strategies that we know aren't aren't great for kids and one of those would be walk to math so that was a practice of kind of ability grouping kids in K as young as first and second grade um and that's the math track you kind of stayed on um in some parts of our system and we've moved M away from that systemically and kind of taught into the expectation that the instructional material that was selected has differentiation components inside of it um that we can use to challenge
174all kids to have strong tier one instruction instead of from a very young age kind of sending the message that you know this child is good at math and this child is not good at math right those are some of the structural changes we've made at the elementary level that's super helpful followup question what I heard you say say is that the strategies that we are using that we are doubling down on in seventh grade are also being implemented well I heard you say that the curriculum is the same and so we are uh obviously expecting that it to build upon each other in a in a way that makes sense the strategy specifically can you affirm that the strategies that we are utilizing in seventh grade are being utilized as early as kindergarten or
175like where do those strategies show up for the first time in terms of the scope and sequence aversion shows up in kindergarten but I also want to give um just kind of a little reality to our um Educators our Educators have been through a a major shift in like how teaching and learning happens right post pandemic and Seattle has also ch um updated our instructional materials at the elementary level um kind of more rapidly than we have in recent I don't know the last 15 years or so right so um those are changes so we're in our second year of implementation of um at the elementary level for math instructional material and we know that we need to provide ongoing professional learning so we had when we made that shift um a couple years ago
176with a new instruction material we planned for three years of professional development to support that implementation so where are are we you know 100% implementing we're in an we're in a pretty good place but it takes time for teachers to to be able to you know get used to new instructional materials are you still anticipating that you're going to hit that threeyear Target for professional development well yeah so I'm assuming that professional development means that by the end of the three years that implementation goal of 100% will be met is that a correct understanding yep and we work with our research and and evaluation team to um evaluate our implementation right and kind of get feedback from teachers to help us know you know what do we need to improve on and what and what
177are we doing well sure so again the question that I have is that by the end of the implementation cycle we should expect in classrooms from kindergarten to seventh grade those strategies being utilized that we are doubling down on to get us to that goal is that accurate we should expect that and we should expect to based on the research and evaluation to be ready to address some gaps that that yeah absolutely really what I'm getting at I just want to be super clear is that given the fact that we are woefully behind in seventh grade so many people across the district are not absolving our responsibility there I just want to ensure that we are actually building upon the strategies that we are utilizing in seventh grade so that by the time our students
178get to Middle School these things aren't new so much so that they have been exposed with fidelity to what we are going to be measuring them on asly as ideally kindergarten so that's what I'm try to get at as an understanding yeah yeah we oh sorry what we can do is be more explicit in that connection moving forward that would be great so another put another way you want to know what's happening before seventh grade to support success in making progress on the seventh grade goal because we can't just sayy okay okay seventh graders let's see yeah so what where's the through line and what strategies are being employed in elementary school to support progress on the seventh grade goal correct that's that's what I'd like to see somewhere Alyssa farmer our program manager for
179math is smiling because she appreciates the the the encouragement to do just that that's that's her work other questions from directors uh my okay my big one is um multilingual Learners that's really devastating actually and I know that there's a huge literacy component to that the impact on the seventh grade math goal um and also I mean I don't like that to me just shows that there's something really missing in the language access support not in math instruction but if I'm wrong I would like to know that um so what are some ways that that's being like multilingual Learners are not going to do are not going to improve in seventh grade math without language support it looks like maybe there's something else going on yeah again a couple basic points and ask uh executive
180director toner to add to this so This actually has come up in recent conversations with some of you in terms of interestingly enough it is significantly below where we want it to be and it's trending in the right direction so the question that sometimes is asked is well what do we think we're learning about the improvements and I we do think there's two basic points one our leader of multilingual learner program Services Michelle Oda has done a remarkable job of being a really close partner and not having you know and making sure students are being served at their neighborhood schools within their General General classrooms uh to the extent that's been our approach and so we think that's helping and back to the idea that we adopted k en vision and vision specifically was one
181of the strengths was that they had multilingual supports built into the curriculum so that Educators could take advantage of those those two pieces obviously connects to the literacy work as well anything else I'd like to just jump in for a second we're right on the edge of moving away from our Target and our progress report on Target uh into that next step of then what about this group and what about this group so I want to just call that and say tonight we we're trying to lay that ground workor I think the questions you're posing lead to what are the strategies in the future that we're going to recommend what are the strategies we're going to abandon how will we support those strategies with the budget uh the easy answer is that we will always
182have enough money to do what we say we need to do we will not have enough money to do everything else so as we narrow it down I'm just calling to your attention that in this progress report there are two key pieces one is for the math this is our second year of implementation so we're we're not in the same position yet and and as far as generalizing that and secondly that I think you're hearing the elements that that give hope to say aligning the curriculum seeing implementation full implementation throughout the system and the ability for the first time in a long time to be able to take those two and say this is where it's taking us and then as we address a new strategic plan you'll be able to say here's where we're
183going for all students and and and bring in that so I just I do a little pulling back on the reins as far as sure uh what we're addressing little pullback but that's going to come with little push back which is if we're not thinking about how all these strategies are inclusive of multilingual Learners and students with disabilities I don't want it absolutely and to build off that I think what's critical is that we cannot look at the math goal without also looking at the reading goal right because if you look at this in context the way that we structured this intentionally uh first looking at the reading goal aside from all of the data that we know that says if black boys can't read by third grade they are exponentially more likely to interact
184with a criminal justice system in some capacity but what we also know is that like reading heavily impacts math and so to see that we are really making good progress in Reading implementation I know also yields benefit to math in seventh grade again when we're also thinking about the implementation it makes complete sense to me that math is in a different place because there are more grades that we are going to have to implement through as opposed to our reading goal which is why I'm really curious to see what that implementation strategy looks like and how are we confident that it is not only like being positively impacted by a reing goal but in addition to that one other question I had is just assuring that with math because math in some ways is well
185in many ways is very different than when let me back up assessing math is very different than how we assess reading especially at this grade level do we know for a fact and are we confident that this directly aligns to what our kids are being asked to do when they take the map test between what they are learning from Invision and can you say that with confidence well I could say that first that we share that question we ask it often in terms of you know so the Sol and share solve and discuss the idea is that you're building an argument you're able to then construct that and actually uh translate into what the smarter balanced assessment asks in terms of constructing an argument so in we are drilling down in the performance tasks that
186we're we're focusing on are asking students to do the very things that they're going to be asked to do I think I you've lived through many years of education I think this Balancing Act of how do we continue to make it rich joyful classrooms while still having one eye on the test without uh becoming too consumed with the exact test format and so forth but it's it's absolutely what we're trying to do in the focus on solve and discuss and the performance task that's a yes all right I would just say that we would end this evening in this portion by we hope we providing you additional thought additional information uh and it particularly does focus on on our goal for African-American male students uh I would say that critical progress monitoring uh so that
187we ensure that we really can get all students but particularly beginning with a targeted group clearly continues to be difficult of of showing that progress and that that will lay the ground workor for much of the conversation in the coming future as we look towards what are we what are we doing what do we need to do better what are the goals that you're going to set for that next strategic plan and uh and then how do we resource that so that that's our number one so with that again I thank thank you for extraordinarily valuable use of your time and and back to you president Rankin thank you very much um we do have still our business items and two things from me and I promise I will try to make them short as
188I can but one of them is a legislative update so um but so let's go back to the Das and uh can uh move on with the our intro and action item s okay um where are we oh we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda you're not um I would accept a motion for the consent agenda I move that we approve the consent agenda I second the motion approval of the consent agenda has been moved by vice president sarju and seconded by director Briggs do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda great seeing none all those in favor of approving the consent agenda please signify by saying I I I any opposed all right the consent agenda has passed unanimously thank you very much [Music] um
189where are we okay introduction items we will now move into the introduction items on today's agenda the first is the annual approval of schools per whack which is Washington Administrative Code 180-16 d22 thank you so much for your patience and staying with us to introduce this to us please go ahead it feels like you're very far away I know this does the podium move good evening directors um I'm Carlos deay I'm the assistant superintendent of technology and optimization uh unfortunately uh Tech how our assistant for uh superintendent accountability could be here today um to present this um but nevertheless we would like to present uh an item that focuses the school board annual approval of um the state requirement for maintaining continuous Improvement plans at the schools these items um is crucial to um component
190of establishing a robust uh foundational infrastructure uh to support the implementation alignment and accountability of the Strategic plan efforts aimed to enhance uh student outcomes uh Miss Tasha James is our lead project manager for this program and is here to provide an executive summary of this uh introduction thank you thank you directors and thank you everyone I'm happy to be able to introduce to you the uh as already mentioned the Washington Administrative Code wack 180-16 d220 requires that schools be approved annually by School District board of directors all schools in Seattle public schools are part of this approval of schools including schools with a designation of an alternative learning experience or the acronym Al the schools just as a reminder who have that designation and are included in this annual approval uh having the designation
191of Al are inner agency Academy Cascade parent partnership Nova alternative school and middle college so just want to be clear that they are part of that annual approval so a school board's annual approval of schools also certifies to the state that each School in the district including schools with an Al or Alternative Learning Experience designation have a school Improvement plan in Seattle we refer to this school Improvement plan as the continuous School Improvement plan otherwise known as CIP that's the acronym so I'd like to highlight a few things to to the directors and the community about this new three-year CIP cycle that we entered into this school year the 2023 26 CIP cycle uh the first thing I want to highlight is the CIP planning process was updated last school year to better align to
192uh School Improvement plans with the 2019 2024 strategic plan Seattle excellence and the board adopted goals and guard rails so this means that schools were required in this new three-year CIP cycle to create for example academic goals that align directly to those Topline measures according to their grade level their grade bands the second thing I want to highlight is that school Improvement plans as required by the Washington Administrative Code are datadriven and supposed to be promoting a positive impact on student learning to meet this requirement for this new CIP cycle for the 2023 26 School Improvement planning cycle schools were required to complete a comprehensive needs assessment and that documented their observations and Analysis of the following student data observations of implementation and strategies from their previous 2020 23 School Improvement plans as well as
193something that was just mentioned and discussed by the group um strategic abandonment so schools as part of that comprehensive needs assessment were also supposed to identify um what was having a minimal impact on student outcomes and what strategies they were going to abandon the comprehensive needs assessment that schools completed as part of this CIP development process was modeled uh after a um resource created by Washington State Office of superintendent of Public Instruction acronym OPI and it was based on a root cause analysis that needs assessment provided School leaders School staff and family Representatives on the building leadership teams the opportunity to consider the following about their 2020 23 continuous Improvement plans which strategies and practices and programs needed to be eliminated due to the Min minimum impacts which I just mentioned and which strategies and
194practices are promising and resulting in those positive outcomes for students and families also which strategies and practices and programs were disrupting in mitigating systemic inequities along with systemic racism the third thing I'd like to highlight is that as in the past and consistent with the wack the Washington Administrative Code cips are designated to be working documents and as part of an annual review principles building leadership teams will progress monitor the implementation of their plans review School data and Report out findings to their school communities and adjust their goals and strategies as necessary and the last thing I'd like to highlight is that these continuous School Improvement plans or cips as we call them are currently accessible in their PDF format on the website that's included in the board Action Report that's in posted in the
195agenda and I welcome your comments questions at this time thank you thank you very much do directors have questions okay um I have a Miss Wilson Jones Is Gonna maybe roll her eyes there's an opportunity that I would like to put in a parking lot of some kind to I think use cips as um to to further progress in the ways in which we use our CPS as a district and help um families understand what why they might want to look at those what the process is why we have it um I'm seeing over the many years that I have been involved with this District an alignment between the goals and the cips which is really exciting I think every before things were just sort of a you know half the schools had just like
196the template that never got filled out it wasn't really being used as a tool um and in the in the whack it does say that the annual approval is that each School in the district shall be annually approved by the school district board of directors under an approval process determined by The District Board of Directors so I'm not suggesting any changes right now but just to say that we you know when we have time um may want to really look at what that approval process looks like and look at our policy around it and make a decision on um if we want to uh what we want the process of our approval to look like um right now it is in the whack that at the minimum the annual approval shall require each school to
197have a school approvement plan that is data driven promotes a positive impact on student learning and includes a continuous improvement process da so we're doing the minimum we're affirming that each school has a plan I think there's an opportunity for us to lean into this more as a tool both for our district but also for families to really see what's happening in my school and how can I support and how's my child doing and what's important at my school um so that's not so much a question as just a opportunity thank you very much thank you all right next item for introduction is uh an item that I am bringing forward an amendment to board policy number 1113 board member residency uh board member residency is in state law the policy that we have is
198we're not required to have the policy because it's state law but we do have it as a way to uh it's in it's in the governance portion in the um 1000 series which is our direction to ourselves or to the superintendent and so um in the policy it's our direction to ourselves about what's in state law and how we as elected officials follow it um so the existing policy is based on the model policy that's developed by wasda which is the Washington State School director Association and it was um adopted by the Seattle School Board in 2011 it's it's kind of a boilerplate just this is what's in state law um so in looking at it and relative to the last couple of weeks I saw an opportunity for us to provide some additional direction
199to ourselves as a board about um supporting compliance and making sure that reporting is done as it needs to be done um as as life changes and many things occur just to add uh another level of um direction for ourselves to to support um us in our roles so I will ask for Council narver to come to the podium with whom I consulted as well as the board office and proposing these amendments for uh the legal ins and outs uh good evening am I am I turned on here is the microphone on uh good evening Greg narver general counsel thank you uh I'll be addressing the uh proposed changes that President Rank and just described to policy 1113 board member residency and I'm going to just amplify a bit bit on the points that President
200Rankin made about the prior the the version we've had which is the wasda model policy and the proposed changes that she is uh bringing forward as president Rankin just said and I think it Bears emphasizing eligibility to serve on a school board in the state of Washington is governed by state law not our policy it's all in state law the statutes are the ones that are cited in policy 1113 and these are what set the rulle rules for Schoolboard director residency while the amendment the amended policy would provide some additional guidance from the board to itself as to how to communicate with staff about residents issues it doesn't change anything about state law as president Rankin noted there's been a lot said recently about director residency so I think it would be helpful just to
201take a brief walk through what the statutes say about it and then that will take me to why we think uh some some changes to the policy would be advisable the statutes provide a pretty clear road map for the requirements for director residency and for eligibility to continue serving in office should residency change the statutes begin with a basic fundamental requirement which is that the directors each of you reside in the director District that you represent that's the legal structure that's the presumption in the law that the people who live within your District are going to have the opportunity to elect a director who lives there even though in the general election you all are elected Citywide it doesn't change the fundamental requirement that a director to be eligible to serve should live in the
202district that they represent now state law does allow directors under some circumstances to continue to serve in office for a period of time even if they no longer live in the District they were elected to represent one of these comes about if through redistricting your residence is no longer within the boundaries of your of your District if that happens state law is clear you get to serve your full term even though your residence is no longer within the boundaries of the new District the other comes up if a director changes residence from the district they were elected in to another SPS District the eligibility question then turns on when that move occurred this is going to be a little In The Weeds on the statutory language but I'll have an illustration to show how it
203works if you moved after the opening of the candidate filing period two years after you were elected then you get to finish your full term without question if the move took place before that date then the seat is supposed to go on the general election ballot and the director's service ends when that newly elected director takes office so the director who changed residence before that date isn't eligible to continue with the full term here's how to illustrate that last year 2023 the candidate filing period opened on May 15 and those of you who are newly elected or familiar with that date that's the date it the county opened up uh the process to file a declaration of candidacy and it closed on May 19th for a director who was elected in 2021 if they move
204moved to another SPS District after May 15th they get to serve the full term without question if the move occurred before May 15th then the seat is supposed to go on the ballot for the fall election that director can continue to serve in office but only until the person that was elected to replace them in that seat is sworn into office that is the state law framework the problem we're trying to address here is if the school district District staff who are responsible for communicating and coordinating with King County elections to tell them if there's a vacancy or to tell them if there's been a change in Residence that triggers this need to put a seat on the ballot uh if those staff are unaware that a change in Residence has happened I am not
205tonight going to talk about any privileged Communications I had with any of my SPS clients I'm just going to say in general that SPS staff including the board office and the general counsel Who oversee this process need to know in a timely way if there's been a change in Residence because if the filing uh period has ended there's no mechanism or vehicle available to put that seat on the ballot which is what state law presumes is going to happen I have seen a lot of chatter speculation about why not call a special election that's because under state law while there are some offices that can be filled through a special election that's not the case for Schoolboard vacancies I'm going to cite the statute because I think it's important RCW 28a 34337 that provides that
206any vacancy on a school board is filled by appointment and then that appointee serves until the next regularly scheduled election there is no provision in the law to fill Schoolboard vacancies through a special election so let's turn to the policy how would the changes that President Ranken is proposing help here uh as noted we've been using the wasda model model policy which essentially was just a restatement of state law this adds some flesh to the bones in a few ways the first to make sure that we do get information transmitted in a timely way sets a clear obligation by the board to all of you to promptly report any change in Residence to particular officials at the district including the general counsel and including the board office that's to ensure that there can be timely
207communication to King County elections of board seats that are vacant or need to go on the ballot because of residents changes we have to ensure that the offices that are responsible for that system can do their work so that the voters have the opportunity that state law wants to provide to them to elect directors from the district that they are elected who live I'm sorry who reside in the district that they are elected to represent we just need to know those facts in a prompt way I want to emphasize this the reason that you may choose to move as director Ranken said is nothing we need to know anything about that's no one's business but yours we do need to know if you moved where you moved at the time you moved because those are
208the facts that relate directly to state law eligibility to serve as a director the second thing it does is it makes clear that the residents rules are exactly those set by state law the model policy had some language about the redistricting issue I mentioned earlier that was arguably a little unclear our policy would now just simply State our rules are exactly those that are set in state law and finally the revised policy emphasizes that it's the directors themselves who are ultimately responsible for and able to ensure that they fulfill all the residencies requirements to hold a board position the first thing you all did when you filed for office was sign a declaration of candidacy that included Your residence address and a sworn statement that you signed that you meet met the legal requirements to
209fill the seat King County does the verification to make sure that the resident's address matches up with the district you're running to represent but you're the one certifying that you meet the requirements for office you are not on your own in this process process the general council's office the board office are here to help I have spent much of my legal career advising elected officials on the law of being an elected official I work for the house Ethics Committee in Washington DC I worked at the city attorney's office for many years including a Civil Division Chief advising the city council I've been in this job for four and a half years advising the school board knowing what the law says about serving as an elected official is my job it's other things too but that's
210part of it if you have questions about the law about this policy about what effect a change in residents would have please come to us for advice we just need to know the facts as they occur I believe President Rankin is going to address the appointment process for the two vacancies excuse me looking ahead to 2025 pass the appointment process the board office has already communicated to King County elections that we have the two vacancies King County elections has already confirmed that the district 2 seat will be up for election in 2025 for the final two years of director Rivera's term and that District Four will be up for election in 2025 for a regular four-year term this is all part of the state statutory structure I addressed earlier and I'm happy to address any
211questions you might have thank you um Council nver and I'll just add that um it's still so the reason that I wanted to say just tell these people is because although it is our responsibility and Our obligation to make sure that we are maintaining eligibility um I don't think anyone expects us all to individually know what all of the laws are so it's basically what I see it is as a prompt that like hey you don't need to research it on your own but you do have resources and it doesn't mean that anybody like if I moved a block away from my house I would check and they would say nope nothing's really changed nobody would need to know why I moved or if I moved if I've checked to make sure that I'm still
212eligible so we don't we are responsible individually for ensuring as elected officials as any elected officials are for affirming our residency and our eligibility I just wanted to add this to say that yes you're responsible but there are people who will support you in navigating whether or not it has an impact that's not on us to have to guess um so that's the it still doesn't it still doesn't mean that everybody in the future will necessarily follow it but there's no you know nobody's if you move nobody's nobody's checking on our addresses so like Greg said um King County election confirms when you first file but nobody's double-checking on you know do you still live there a year and a half or two years three years into your term that's part of the oath of
213office that we take so this is just intended to say hey just be sure that you just go right to these folks and they will support because we oversee the district so the district is not responsible for ensuring that we are doing our role in terms of Eligibility um but we do have resources within the district to support us as long as we use them any questions clarifying question question um you mentioned that in 2025 the person elected to fill director or director of a seat would serve two years correct and then we move back to our normal election cycle it's because she was reelected in the fall of 2023 um the appointee will serve through the uh through 2025 two years but then is correct to get back into the regular cycle the person
214elected then would serve two years when that term ends the position would be on the ballot for the full fouryear uh fore cycle correct and and the person who's appointed could run to be the person who's elected and then could run again for re-election but that's up to the voters correct thank you thank you very much um so question because I know I want to explain the appointment process briefly or get feedback on the appointment proc process briefly and I have a legislative report I would suggest I go as quickly as I can through the legislative report and then we go back to the residency and then board comments I thought you meant last in terms of board comments so okay no no I thought but I I thought you meant in terms of people
215making board comments so do we want I guess the question is as part of board comments I have a legislative update and I have the appointment part and then we have any other board comments and I'm happy to do those in whatever order people want to do okay um so let's I guess let's end with the legislative update how about and I'll just make that super fast okay so uh we talked about the resignations which leaves us with an appointment process to carry out um state law provides us the eligibility requirements for these appointments candidates have to be a US citizen and a registered voter of the respective districts um we will be we're we're doing this in real time folks so as soon as we agree on the timeline that'll go on the website
216um so directors in front of you you have a draft timeline and application that I would like to have your feedback on uh we anticipate opening the application by early next week consistent with past appointments because we say vacancies do happen often for a number of reasons on our board and other boards um when I called different folks for um guidance on you know how to move forward the process they're oh this happens all the time so um we are not charting un Uncharted Territory with the with an appointment process um in fact we have somebody who went through it personally so consistent with past appointments uh my suggestion is that we open the application um with uh seeking letters of Interest resume and a resp response to just some basic questions that we can
217then post publicly um and then after applying we will'll ask candidates to report Court a short video statement um like we all did with uh well they won't do it with the city but but you know we did a two-minute video um and then we will have written and recorded materials that will be shared with all directors and available publicly through individual candidate web pages that are um that District staff will set up then we'll have an opportunity to review the submissions depending on the number of applicants we may want to devise a narrowing down um process uh or we may have a number that we we just move on with um so we would want to select finalists by about mid-march and then host a kind Forum or public interview here with uh the
218finalists for both seats together so that we can hear from them and um the the public also obviously would have access to that um I based on when there are um you know midwinter break and spring break and everything it's looking like the the timing for making appointments would make sense around April the beginning of April um and then we would begin we would swear them in and have them start start serving um under state law we have 90 days so the legal deadline is Thursday May 2nd it's 90 days from the resignation that's if we don't appoint within that time the Educational Service District that that is over King County will make appointments so um I am hoping that we can um air on the side of of finishing soon because we have so
219many different things that um we want to onboard new directors and get them at least a little bit the lay of the land before we they jump into some pretty big votes um so so yeah so that's so basically proposed appointment process is to post an online application collect written responses video statements select finalists if necessary given the number of applicants um hold a forum make appointments um as with any board business this will be completely accessible to the public um so this is just a recommendation based on um talking with staff about what work what has worked hasn't worked in past appointment processes um and also the the most recent one was during covid and the one before that was Prior so so this is just a suggested outline and I would um you
220know because of open public meetings obviously we haven't had any opportunity to discuss ahead of right now so now is the time where I would like any questions comments suggestions whatever you may have um on this process yeah go ahead uh so uh a piece that you mentioned was uh the potential for us not to necessarily have a narrowing down portion uh I think I want to like thumbs up that depending on how many folks we have apply I can see why it made sense for my process given that there were 12 people um if we do not have more than five or six apply for these positions I would say that we could probably feel confident in making an appointment um just because I want to make sure that these two we are down
221two members and so like by the fact of like taking an 8we process I do believe strongly in like making sure that folks have time to get ready and that you know Community has an opportunity to really see and get to know these folks but I I want to make sure that we are getting representation for these districts as quickly as possible so I think having two processes one that would be what we would go to in the event that we have like 12 people apply for each seat uh and one that would be a more truncated version if we say have six or less apply for each seat I think would probably be wise so as you go back and like uh work with staff to uh implement the feedback that you receive here
222tonight it would be cool to see you know one process for one and one process for the other okay thank you so would it make sense to have sort of a you have we have our line and then at one point it was like well either if this then this if this then this yeah okay and we'll know once sorry and we'll know once the application like portal closes what we're working with but yeah sounds good I mean my question was somewhat similar to that but more along the lines of like are how are we going to select the final like if we if we narrow down how are we narrowing down and are we deciding that on the March 6th meeting the process to narrow that down or what are we going to do
223that up front here as you no we don't have to do that right now we don't have to do that we we could so I know you want me to talk yeah can actually um uh Ellie could you answer that because I know she has sent out some potential hold dates for further discussion since we're not going to design this whole process right now good evening Ellie Wilson Jones director of policy and board relations so um the the key decisions at this point point that the board would have to be sort of United around would be essentially that you want to open an application you want it to be an online application you want to ask for a statement of Interest resume the questions that are in draft form um that those are ready to
224go and then generally that the the timeline of getting between today and having appointees um shooting for April 3D that that is kind of comfortable for folks the details around um the process for narrowing down finalists how to hold a forum what that looks like those decisions can happen a little bit further in the future I think in talking with President Rank and she wanted to prioritize opening the process so that you can be ready for that eventual decision Point um the board has used I think the same process in perhaps in the last two appointments for selecting finalists the voting structure worked pretty well well I didn't pull it back up for today so I'm not ready to speak to it but the board can make that decision in the future um we can
225schedule a work session or find time in one of your upcoming meetings for you to put a little bit more meet on the plan for those uh further off events oh I have a question on the application portion do you want to go through that or do you want me to just um Ellie when do we so the the draft questions were just sort of a combination we actually just filled a seat at wasda and I thought that there were good questions so I'm like this is a decent starting point um uh timing wise when would you need to gather feedback on what those questions are for the and again this is just for the initial application part um so in um recent rounds the board has s of really um uh kind of short
226initial application well the content was long but the number the detail in the questions was short um and this time uh in talking with President Ranken there were some potential questions that might be ready to go so looking at um pulling together steps one and step two of our prior processes which were application and then questionnaire and just putting the board's questions in the application if your questions aren't ready if you want to spend more time working on those together you wouldn't necessarily need to have the questions as part of your application but if you want to go live next week with the application and you want it to include those questions it'd be helpful if you could flush them out today you also um will have an opportunity if you want to hold a
227forum to Think Through how you generate those questions and what those questions should cover so you can ask about additional things um in the future guess I'm still a little bit confused if we wanted or if I had suggestions or wanted to add to sort of the questionnaire we try to flush it out right right this moment we we can or if you feel like that's too tight on time we can we can do the like you can think about it this application okay yeah then give me a moment to think through a little bit I would like something around sort of you know we spend a lot of time on progress monitoring it's very important to us something about progress monitoring our our educational goals and have the candidates speak to because they're going
228to be coming right into sort of this process what's that oh microphone speaking directly into the mic plus one um this is a really minor question but uh this individual candidate web pages is that is that something the district is taking on okay so we're not expecting people to like come up with a website okay it will it will all be uploaded so people can and and there'll be also there's a communication strategy to let families know you know we have two vacancies here's the process that will be followed here's where you go to find out more it's obviously open to anybody just as an election for these seats are so it will it will also go out you know to press release or other Communications I imagine but there'll be a central place on
229the SPs website about this process and the candidates that people can go to if we are taking any amendments to the questions in the form I'd propose maybe adding a question talking about a director's relationship to the district they currently live in are they're trying to represent because I mean even though the directors represent the Seattle City as a whole and the school board as a whole that I feel like they should indicate that they are connected to the community that they're a district of that's a great suggestion um so we don't have to vote to accept the questions and and we're not nobody's trying to be mysterious um they're very basic like tell us about your work experience tell us about you know why you might why you're seeking candidacy um if if you
230all feel comfortable and to avoid conflict with opma could ask you just to send to Ellie confirmation on a thumbs up and if if we don't all feel ready to go with the addition of um director muas Swami's suggestion um we can bring it back to a public meeting it's just that we because I can't check you know we can't all check in about it together because I don't want to um violate that so if we could kind of do a maybe confirmation directly to Ellie unless we think we don't if if we say we definitely don't want the questions we want that to be a second step I feel like it'd be I feel like they're basic enough that it would be good to have them and be part of the application personally okay
231well if we didn't cuz we'll also have a forum and a video statement if we didn't have the questions then what would the application be it would basically just be like a submission of Interest yeah okay yeah I think I think the questions are good to have okay yeah and we we don't have to vote but I'm looking for kind of if I see like General consensus we continue we'll add this suggestion and folks will let Ellie directly know if there's a problem and then they'll go on the website um can I just uh double check one thing since I have you all here waving your hands for me um in the last appointment process there was a question that was utilized that was um really aligned with what a student member m Swami just
232shared so I wanted to check on that question it says what what is your connection to the district insert District dist number Community Schools families and students how do you foresee growing or expanding on those connections and relationships in your role as a school board director okay so I'm hearing with that addition potentially an addition around progress monitoring and any sort of last minute um additions you want you're comfortable sort of delegating it to me so we don't violate uh excellent can can I just because we have it printed in front of us I will just quickly read for public record what the questions are which is first and last name names that we you would like us to use during the appointment process pronouns um which of the two open seats uh which of
233the districts are you registered to vote in which is the how the law defines residency is where your voter registration is um your first name on your voter registration because it goes to King County elections your last name date of birth um voter registration address phone number email address and then a statement of Interest so we ask please submit a state a letter of interest describing why you wish to serve and should be selected for the appointment and then a resume tell us about your experience including any board or other leadership experience what is your understanding of the role and responsibilities of a Schoolboard director and the Seattle School Board how do you foresee working with your fellow directors superintendent staff and the public describe the areas of strength you bring to collaboration and building
234positive working relationships with fellow board directors please give an example of how you have addressed conflict and overcame it to build alignment as a member of a group decision-making body just want to clarified that doesn't mean everybody has to agree but we have to align and be direct in our direction to the superintendent as a board um and then Seattle Schoolboard policy number 0030 ensuring educational and racial Equity includes the following commitment the Seattle School Board is committed well sorry just in the interest of time it's a statement from the policy and it says what does this statement mean to you and then please share your knowledge Andor thoughts on an ongoing educational issue that is a high priority for you and how do you see the board's role in this issue and I know
235that was fast and I apologize for anyone who is um but that was just to sort of preview and be transparent about it um since we haven't been able to post them yet all right so um once we make the appointments state law provides that the district two seat as as Chief narvick noted the district 2 seat will be up for election in 2025 for the remaining two years of what will then be an unexpired term and then following that will be up for election in 2027 for a regular four-year term and District Four will be up in election in 2025 for a regular fouryear term all right comments questions this is this is now we're now we're in board comments or one real quick thing on process can we put a time limit on
236the videos that's just a oh yeah I would say probably okay we when we like I think it was like two minutes or something yeah no we'll we'll and we can talk about that more too we'll s sort of say like I mean we could even just take the form that we get when we make the one for the city um definitely have a time limit and and possibly uh have possibly have people able to use spsv to like we're not asking everybody to have home video equipment this is a process step that spsv Edgar is listening to us right now helping to broadcast this meeting um supported in our last um appointments and also has experience doing this at the city level and so there is a pretty standard Playbook that um is generally
237used with candidates that many or all of you have probably experienced and so would um plan to utilize that but can check back for confirmation more time to if we want to make some specifics about it but so everybody good with the basic structure and the next steps of the questionnaire sweet all right um I have a super exciting legislative update but I can save that to the end so people who want to leave can leave if we have other board comments LS on updates Etc director seru vice president seru you can call me whatever you want today um so I think I just need to acknowledge that I am a little disheveled um and as I make these comments I think some of you who are paying attention will actually understand why today and
238I'm going to read it this is not normally my style but I need to be measured today the comments I'm going to make will likely not sit well with some they will likely make some people feel uncomfortable the truth does that sometimes and in Seattle we sure love our comfort if you find yourself asking yourself is she referring to me that's not the question the question is why do you think I might be referring to you in most situations I wouldn't normally respond to these these types of situations because it's not worth my time however I will never roll over and play dead in instances such as this Seattle's version of a racist dog whistle I have witnessed happen to another colleague twice I knew my time would eventually come however I never imagined that
239I would would be responding to a choir of dog whistlers this is the metaphor I will use in my comments I ask the media if you're going to quote me to please not take my words out of context the to the totality of what I will say is important last year in late fall I had several private and intimate conversations with choir director number number one I will not go into the intimate details of those conversations however I shared on several occasions my concern for how this resid residency situation may lead to controversy and would affect them and their children I strongly encourage them to prioritize their children I shared with them that they had an opportunity to control the narrative and make a decision that would prevent them from being in this exact situation
240they're in now that is not bullying it is asking people to be accountable the racist dog whistle of accusing a black woman of being a bully because she suggested you do the right thing is not being a bully it's asking you to do the right thing however what is bullying is the racist dog whistle what is bullying is a racist dog whistle choir that is bullying in one of its highest forms and represents in this case adults who have a difficult time with truth and accountability to answer an email I received I'm not happy I'm disgusted racist dog whistles are mean and nasty I'm not a politician I'm not running for city council County Council or Frank Chop's job let me repeat myself I am not running for city council County Council or Frank Chop's
241job to those who have said I will make sure she doesn't get on her endorsement again for me this role is not about endorsements it's about children of this district there is a song from the movie Frozen called Let It Go My Hope Is that This Racist dog whistle choir can let it go and particularly stop recruiting students into this choir accept accountability for both the decisions made and the ones not made to quote someone famous this is your home homework the task is not done the journey is not complete we can and we must do more end quote let us move on in solidarity that we tackle the pressing problems before us that threaten the high quality education we want in this district for our students our students deserve it those are the end
242of my comments and I'm I need to ask the staff I need an escort out of here tonight because when when a person a particularly a black woman in this city is bold enough to stand up and call racists racists and racist dog whistles dog wh whistle whistlers the dogs come out and they come out hard I don't want to be harrassed I don't want to be questioned I want to be respected for the job that I ch chose to take as a volunteer to serve the children of this District that's why I ran and if you don't like it run yourself do it but you know what leave me alone leave me alone I'm trying to serve to the best of my ability I'm a public servant twice that's what I want to do
243in this District hand me the water please I'm just going to let us sit with that for a second and I'm not an angry black woman don't do that dog whistle yes so um to add to that briefly we have a lot of very very difficult decisions coming our way and we have to stop pretending that they're not going to be difficult and we have to stop pretending that expecting people to honor their word follow the law and uphold policy is bullying it's not it's accountability and it's literally the job that we were elected to do and took an oath to do uphold the law state and federally and provide direction to the superintendent through policy as adopted by the majority of the board in service of improving outcomes for students all right do we
244have any other board comments or Lea on updates um I I can go next I guess um just a quick leaon update uh being the liaison for the families education preschool promise lovey um we hel held our uh first meeting of the Year this was just an introductory meeting where we went over the work plan for the year and talked a little bit about uh the goals and uh the role of the uh oversight committee uh one thing I I just will note is that we will be visiting some of the school sites where the funding is going and when that does happen you know I would love to have other uh board members join as well um the other thing I would add is I had uh my January committee meeting or community meeting
245excuse me um I think it went uh well it was well attended uh there was an acknowledgement of the tragic loss of the SPs student uh to gun violence and sort of an echoing cheer or an echoing of needing to have our schools be a safe place for students to grow and learn and you know we must work together as Community to end gun violence and it's a community effort in order to do that um some of the other things were that we talked about were just school funding obviously it's a big thing on everyone's mind and and wanting some clarity there and just communication challenges with the district or the themes um I'm holding my February community meeting this one will be online to allow some easier access for folks who can't come in
246person on February 22nd at 6: p.m. so those are my updates thank you oh and you're all welcome to attend great and um think director top and I talked about this a little bit but I'll just share that something I'm hoping for us to implement is um you know we have various things where one of us is somewhere we go to a you know invite are invited to a PTA meeting or something and as we are looking at um our practice as a board I would I would like us to um develop a system to report back to each other you know oh I like I went to jenesy Hill PTA um and they invited a bunch of other PTA members to talk about school funding and legislative advocacy and as if we you know
247look back in six months who have we as board members engaged with and who are we missing be really helpful to see like oh gosh we really you know just just who are missing and you know that in addition to developing some two-way opportunities with the full board but um that's something that uh I think would be really helpful um that I'm going to try to ask us to to do director Briggs yeah I just wanted to mention that I um am I'm scheduled to meet with the interim director of Head Start later this month um and my role is the liaison oh yes yeah so um I don't have anything to report other than that is in the works and taking it on um and a reminder I mentioned this last meeting but um
248I'll be at the Sandpoint Elementary PTA meeting on the 13th of February and um would welcome anybody to join me I don't have anything to announce uh but I would like for us just quick simple plug uh as we are scheduling uh our appearances at PTA meetings like if they're already scheduled the likelihood of us folks with full-time jobs is going to be low to be able to join you and I for one would love to join you and I think that a simple like email message saying like hey this is in the planning process right like that would be great plus it is also a goal of our board to have at least two or three board members just for accountability purposes at some of these things and so it is a best practice
249just want to remind us this was something that got brought up and it's like yo we would love to come but like the schedules and things like that so right now we can only do two because we're a board of five that's right which every every other we're the only board in the state that has seven so we're now functioning the way I mean we're also the largest District which is why but so um uh two is fine three is a quorum y y yeah so I'm glad you clarified that I remember you saying that before um and then and I checked with you president rank in about that um and got the impression from you that I should just go by myself or that it was fine for me to go by myself which
250I'm happy to do and it was a pre like they were having a PTA meeting on this day and asked me to come but is it um it's totally fine yeah yeah yeah but but if we I guess how when we're invited to come to a PTA meeting are we is it uh well how would it work if if they in in in another scheduling way do you know what I mean like sorry that was a very inarticulately word no no no no I totally understand the question so we had a whole committee on this for like three months last year we're gonna yeah yeah so uh one of the opportunities there is for us to look and see so like the PTA meetings typically happen on every the same day of the week so
251like every third Thursday right and so this might be a good opportunity for us to have a work session and see like can we schedule out proactively so that folks can get more bang for their buck and not necessarily even have to reach out for us and this is not on you this is not on you this is not on anybody this is just me saying for board culture I want to be responsive to all the work that went into the community engagement committee around like coming up with best practices right to be more thoughtful around like how are we doing community engagement as a full board and not just individuals because uh things that happen in a silo very rarely benefit those that are outside of that Silo so just want to Y lift
252that up that's exactly we need to Define um board board engagement which is an an event that the board would be inviting the public to attend for two-way engagement board Outreach would be somebody going to a PTA meeting and then we also need a feedback loop exactly what Brandon is talking about so that just Oh you talked to some oh I didn't realize that oh we talked about that over here you know um uh but so we do need that's something that we are missing and one of the Loose Ends that I would love to tie up in a um work session together uh the work from the community Eng committee and put that actually into a framework so that people aren't so that we know that we're all on the same page and that
253the public understands when and where they can engage with the board and how and yeah um oh so I do have to make a formal announcement that the annual board director and Senior staff ethics disclosure forms are completed and posted for public viewing they're on this agenda um that is a so we we make annual we file annually as elected officials to the public disclosure commission which is a Washington state agency that doesn't go through the district at all there's no sharing of information that's our personal disclosure as elected officials to the state um we also internally then uh share annually possible conflicts conflicts of interests and um those all are shared publicly annually and are is what is in here um I would like to very quickly do the legislative update but it looks
254like director oh no okay so can we just like super quickly go to these slides and I will let people look at them more at their Leisure but basically we're about halfway through legislative session we um we passed the first What's called the policy cut off and then the uh fiscal cff so bills that um were being heard in committees have to have made it out of policy committees by uh sometime last week and oh yeah I have it look it I have it on my slide um this is my first PowerPoint it's not the most attractive but so uh we're about yeah halfway through the short session it's 60 days um it started on January 8th scheduled to end March 7th all the the the state runs in a bium so it's a two-year
255cycle so bills that passed last year are are law bills that didn't pass still carry forward Ward sometimes they get abandoned sometimes they'll get picked right back up in this session and and move through the process so um there was also a record number of new bills introduced record number for a for a short session um of new bills introduced this year so um where we are right now is the policy cut off has happened January 31st so uh uh bills had to move out of um like early learning in the senate or early learning K12 education or the house education bill they had to have been heard and voted out by that committee into a fiscal committee which is in the house its um Appropriations in the Senate its Ways and Means so bills
256have to have moved into or sorry out of one of those committees to still be considered live so February 5th was the fiscal cutoff um and so bills that weren't heard and voted out of fiscal committees are dead and unlike uh bills that were dead last year that get picked up this year since this is the second year of the banum bills that are dead are dead if if this if similar legislation comes back next year they'll get a brand new number a brand new bill number because the the the um Bay is over all right next slide please so I will just kind of quickly explain this and let people look at it more in depth on their own time but I went to um the wasda wasbo was which is yeah wasda is
257the Schoolboard Association Washington State Schoolboard Association Wasa is the Washington Association of school administrators and wasbo is the Washington Association of school business officers which is typically like your your CFO so we have all these Statewide organizations annually we have a legislative conference together so and I really would love for um more like more of us can go I went this year but more people can go so it' be really cool to have um more people from Seattle there um superintendents come uh and it's a chance for us all to just talk together about common common issues and develop like a list of hot topics and then Advocate and go talk on the hill to legislators so as part of this the um Chris re doll the state superintendent from OPI came and pres gave
258a presentation and this is just a quick so this one just shows that um Washington's uh investment in K12 education as a percentage of the gross state project product is consistently been below the US average for other states next slide please um this is spending over time in dollars which you can see it's a bigger number it goes up but then you go to the next slide and it's adjusted for a inflation the value of those dollars so the number is going up but the value of dollars is less so the actual overall investment is not growing the way some may say it is because the number is bigger it has not been you know accounting for inflation it is actually going down next slide um this one is messy I didn't make these slides
259this is like three different figures in one so um this is like adjusted uh share of the state budget people love to say oh it's 50% of the budget well in 2018 2019 it was 52.4 K12 spending was 52.4% of the budget but now it's 43.1% of the budget which still is a lot but when people say you know legislators are like you know we don't want to hear about this anymore you have 50 50% of the budget what are you complaining about well we have less we have less it's declining and the amount per student in terms of adjust for inflation is declining next slide um okay similar things said in a different way next slide so there's links here to our adopted priorities for this legislative session and the wasda adopted priorities for
260the leg legislative session and the next two slides are just I kind of did a capture of bills that are still alive after the policy cuto off that are connected to our priorities um please read them at your leisure I it's been a long day so I'm going to not go through them all but I do want to note specifically um so I kind of chunked them into two pieces uh this chunk is there's a um ones that have more to do with funding and then these ones that have more to do with policy um one of which uh director Mutha Swami testified in Senate Ways and Means in support of the um Fentanyl and substance use substance use prevention education bill which was really great and we appreciate it do you want to share
261anything about that you don't have to just it was it was really it was very cool to to get that set up through cliff and and see him representing us on the record and I have no doubt that he represented us really well and it passed out of committee so um so yeah that's that it's kind of looking Bleak in terms of funding for K12 there were two possible Levy local Levy author uh increasing local Levy authorization which again if we had more time I would go into but that were somewhat hopeful that would have brought us would have really helped us with our deficit for next year those bills are both dead so um doesn't mean there's no more money but like that was kind of the big ticket item no more money um
262uh so you know there's still positive things happening um but nothing is saving us from difficult Financial choices ahead as expected honestly um yeah any questions well then there being no further business to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 8:27 ah I was going to try I tried to get before 8:30 okay 8:27 p.m. thank you all good night