Seattle School Board Meeting June 7, 2023

001foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign we will be calling the board meeting to order in a moment an SPS TV will begin broadcasting for those joining by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony portion and your name is called all right this is President Hersey I'm now calling the June 7 2023 regular board meeting to order at 4 17 p.m this meeting is being recorded we would like to acknowledge that we are in the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please director hampson director Harris press vice president Rankin here director Rivera Smith president director sarju director song Moritz sent president Hersey here a student member U.N all right thank you very much I will now turn it over to superintendent Jones

002for his comments thank you president Hershey good evening everyone uh to open I'd like to wish everyone a Happy pride month and uh to commemorate the beginning of pride month 2023 last Friday we raised the pride and transgender flags at John Stanford center this month and every month we celebrate and affirm the identities voices and rights of our lgbtqia2 plus individuals who make up our community not not only that we remain committed to making sure that in every space across the district that our lgbtq plus staff students and families feel the freedom and safety to show up authentically and thrive another recognition that we're having is in addition to the pride celebrations the district will be observing Juneteenth uh the Monday after next and that's Monday June 19th The District central office and schools will

003be closed as you may know Juneteenth marks the day when federal troops finally read to Galveston Texas to deliver the news that enslaved people were freed two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation as such Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of all who are once enslaved in our country on this day we also honor the enormity of black Americans contributions to this country in the face of ongoing Injustice it is a reminder that black history is American history and that the Fight Continues to continue to dismantle systemic racism and barriers to Justice regarding youth mental health and safety uh this week staff and I sent out an email to District families outlining our three-part safety initiative to decrease gun violence and violence in our schools around our schools this will entail conducting

004safety reviews of SPS high school campuses convening with safety leaders to create Community Action teams and establish a council a collective of mental health and wellness leaders in our community we are also updating building locks increasing Communications emergency safety training for staff upgrading security camera camera systems there's a lot underway in terms of increasing our safety I also want to recognize the efforts of our school leaders in addressing school safety including principal heart at Garfield High School for his responsiveness to a two community in holding a community meeting regarding violence in the surrounding neighborhood and threats made to the school we are trying to generate a community community-based Solutions and bring everybody into the fold on understanding what they need to do in terms of increasing Community safety and ultimately well-being in our community finally

005as a part of our strategy to build a safe and welcoming schools we are joining Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city of Seattle along with other 12 other sectors to deliver a new youth mental health initiative called Reach Out Seattle this is important partnership that will increase the safety net for student mental health and wellness and it aims to destigmatize conversations around mental health in our communities we will be equipping parents caregivers community members to recognize psychology psychological distress in in youth in early and have the tools excuse me to support them we're helping that this will help address the youth Mental Health crisis that we are seeing now and part of this is a concept called psychological first aid and when we are able to recognize when when a student's in distress similar to

006how we've had Medic One how people can respond to someone in CPR first aid there's a psychological first aid that we can administer ultimately and and be able to be responsive to a young person in mental distress so those are some things that we're doing uh I'm really happy about the progress that's being made on many many fronts and I'm appreciative of the community for coming on board to to help us to resolve some of these long-standing difficult complex issues so that we can get onto our main business our bottom line of teaching and learning without turn it back to you president Hersey thank you superintendent Jones I will now turn it over to director Yuan for student member comments take it away hi everyone I'm student board member Jana Yuan I'd like to begin

007by apologizing because I'll have to leave during public testimony at around 5 30 to go support my little sister's concert but I do wish I could stay longer moving on I like to share briefly on what's Happening just in my high school life right now Franklin's prom was this past Sunday and although it was honestly kind of underwhelming it was nevertheless an incredible opportunity to come together as a graduating class to bond and just create lasting memories finishing up some final projects in my class and I'm checking out on the 22nd which is followed by graduation on the 30th these final two weeks of high school for me and many other seniors will be pretty bittersweet because although I'm really excited for summer it's really sad to say goodbye to the place where I've grown

008so much or have met so many wonderful people and where I have made so many amazing memories moving on I would like to express my appreciation for the spring 2023 safe and welcoming schools update that was posted on June 2nd it's really reassuring to see some of the safety updates that are being implemented like the lock replacement project and especially the safety reporting app however it has come to my attention that nominee students are actually aware of these efforts and that this app even exists so it's imperative that we promote it quickly so that students can start utilizing its benefits it's also imperative that we stay committed to continuously creating a more safe and welcoming environment in our schools last but not least I want to again welcome pride month which is a time to

009honor and embrace the lgbtq plus Community acknowledge the struggles that they have faced and stand in solidarity with them pride month serves as a reminder to continually strive for a more inclusive Society where everyone can live authentically proudly and with pride happy pride month everyone [Applause] into our student board member and best of luck to your sister at her concert so we have now come to the board comments section of the agenda first as a reminder we will take public testimony from those posted to the list beginning no sooner than 5 PM to allow for our exit conference with the state auditor's office after comments during our next regular board meeting on June 21 we will have a full agenda that includes the introduction of the proposed 2324 budget and budget public hearing the process

010to sign up for public hearing will be communicated on that agenda we will also celebrate our 2022-24 school board student members next meeting as they close out their school year with us and will take on and will take actions on appointments for the next coming school year I met with student LED I met with the student-led selection committee on Monday as they completed their work and selection of the three finalists for the 2023-24 school board student members the board action has been moved to June 21 to hopefully allow for the finalists to attend the meeting and meet the directors all right we will now move on to the other reports for tonight do we have an update from the ad hoc policy manual Review Committee go for it we do and I have just a

011couple other General updates that relate to wazda and excuse me legislative stuff um see since our last board meeting director Hansen and I had the opportunity to go to Toppenish and attend a tribal convening between wasda and the Yakima tribe and that is part of an ongoing series or ongoing work that was wazda is doing to a government government work that waza is doing in um bringing in try setting up a formal more formal relationship and process with tribes that what well so there's that was the convening and then tomorrow we're participating in a tribal consultation training that is a new requirement of the state for board directors and principals actually and so there's one in um uh Tulalip tomorrow that we will be attending and so the the one that we did attend was

012a was a convening tribal consultation and then um her governance governance government to government excuse me and then tomorrow is a part of a required new training for um board directors and principals and actually according to by state law passed this past session participating in that training on tribal consultation is now a requirement for principals to renew their certification in Washington state that's something that all principals will need to participate in every three years and board directors as well around the state will be provided on an ongoing basis so it's it's exciting um and uh let's see I had the opportunity to attend with director sarju the community meeting at Garfield oh and director song Ritz was there also the community meeting at Garfield in response to gun violence in the area and um I

013will Echo the superintendent's accommodations of principal heart principal heart and PTSA president uh Kayla epting did a really great job leading their Community bringing people together bringing in partners and and also laying out what tools we have and uh how you know gun violence is a societal issue that is pervasive and impacts all of us way too much and it comes into our schools and we have to as we know all too well we have to find ways to respond um and support one another so uh you know I'm sure there will be more conversations on that ongoing um I also had the opportunity to meet with some counselors from sea and I think we'll be hearing from a number of them during public testimony but I was interested to know how we could use

014our policy to um you know look at our look at our policy to make sure that we're directing what what students need and what that means for counseling support um so for the policy committee we are going to be meeting next week we have met a couple of times uh our overall charge is to review the entire policy manual or to create tools to evaluate the entire policy manual because um policy adopting and amending policy is one of the primary responsibilities of the school board and the clear we can be in policy about what our community wants and expects from the public school system to the superintendent the more clear he can be in his operations and the more clear tools of accountability we have and so the policy the policy Review Committee will be

015evaluating we'll be creating a tool through which to evaluate all the policies and we're not removing policies or changing what is in policy but we're going to evaluate the current policies and help better organizing better organize them into what is board policy that that governs the work of the board and what is board policy that governs the work of the district and make those clearer and provide in um you know complement to what the community and engagement Community Committee is doing provide better opportunity for public Community engagement around the around the policies that are where communities should see their vision and values documented in our direction to the superintendent and we have a lot of policies a lot and it can be very overwhelming and challenging to figure out how to use them for members

016of the public and also for us as the board you know there are some policies that maybe conflict with each other or provide confusing direction to the superintendent and so the more clear we can be about our Direction based on what the vision and values of Community are the more the stronger our direction is and the more we have in terms of holding the district accountable to making good on those on those commitments so we're going to develop a tool to evaluate what kind of what goes where break it up into a little more user-friendly sections and then we're going to bring we'll bring our tool to the full board to consider for approval and then it once it's approved then our committee will use that tool to evaluate if you right now the policies

017are broken up into series of there's the zero series there's the 1000 series two thousand three thousand and so on we will use the tool to evaluate um the the zero and the 1000 series first and then we'll make recommendations about the rest of it and we will also be recommending a process for regular review of those policies so that every time the board changes and as vision and values changes in a just as time goes on there's a continuous scheduled feedback opportunity to ensure that the direction of the board in policy is as accurate and up-to-date as possible based on what the community and the board at that time feels is important rather than you know something from 15 years ago so that'll be part of that too is kind of reorganizing reevaluating the

018existing policy book and then we will also provide recommendations for how to maintain regular reviews by the board engagement with community on those policies and how new policy should should and can come forward to the full board for consideration so if you're a nerd join us in and I say that with a lot of love nerds I love nerds I am a nerd um uh join us in the policy ad hoc committee or look for those votes recommendations to come to the full board thank you vice president Rankin very excited do we have a report from well we already got legislative liaison do we have any additional reports from our Liaisons and as a reminder I will be calling for engagement after this so do you have any reports from any other Liaisons at this

019time go for it uh so just first the brief report out on the quarterly audit meeting which was yesterday from four to seven twenty four I think uh much gratitude and apologies to staff and board members for that lengthy meeting uh much of which was to do with the initial presentation or review of the teaching and learning audit which we learned a bit more about from our consultants in terms of everything that went into that had an opportunity to hear from uh as a an initial response to those findings from superintendent Jones and president Percy because there were levels of recommendations from the board level and superintendent's office as Enterprise on down to strategic and tactical recommendations so there was a lot of Engagement and robust conversation about that those materials are actually available on

020the website if uh would often in the past they haven't been but those are there at lengthy but they are there and then heard updates on a very complex internal audit uh on substitute reimbursements um and uh and then our usual a review of internal audit work plan and ethics update if you have uh if you want to look at the packet there was a review of risk assessment from uh throughout the country a number a small sample of other schools other I'm sorry other school districts and their assessment of top level risks and how they compare to the risks that were determined to be our highest level risks by leadership in Seattle public schools and our risk management team and working with our internal auditor and so we did had some discussion and and

021comparison of those risks and whether or not we're missing anything and there's still opportunity as always for folks that are concerned about any major audit areas that we may be missing whether performance or fiscal or otherwise um to connect with our director of internal audit Andrew Medina and let him know what your interest in specific uh concerns are so that he can review those and and then we can talk about it at the next meeting um which is in September um and then we had audit response reports from the Transportation audit a lot of progress in that work a lot of progress still to come but some pretty deep digging there in terms of improvements to that that department and those operations as well as the Ingram high school classroom Edition uh audit close out

022and then presentation on Enterprise risk management implementation which it sounds like there's been some internal work groups set up to elevate that work enterprise-wide and that's that's extremely exciting and the director of internal audit is part of that the two items that were not presented one that should have been which has been moved to September is the communications audit and then another one that wasn't planned isn't planned until December which is the nutrition services and then we're still waiting to hear on the students on the building safety audit from superintendent Jones and that's it and I like I said the next meeting is September I don't have the date on here so maybe we don't have it set yet I think it's around September 1st but um the next internal audit meeting will be in

023September and um we'll also be working in between now and then uh the director of internal audit and I on a prospective framework getting some support from Moss Adams as well who supported us through our internal audit restructuring as to what is the most effect effective structure for us for internal audit as a committee um whether it's a committee who sits on the committee how it serves as an important check and balance to the president and the rest of the board and any ad hoc committees so anyone has interest on that letting let me know as well director Rankin kind of gave a update on the tribal liaison uh finished up our last it's it's actually the um convening of tribal leaders not just Yakima but other tribal leaders as well Yakima just happened to

024be there in force because it was on their reservation and that was the annual discussion between tribal leaders and School Board directors and superintendents about this concept of tribal consultation what it means and what folks need from it and then the official trainings that are required of board members as director director Rankin said you should have I've talked about it on multiple occasions before and you should have in your inbox from this week a reminder of upcoming trainings to sign up for the most easiest one is this one on Thursday that's up at up at Tulalip and once we all get that training under our belts the um travel consultation policy and other aspects of that will will start to make a lot more sense so that's it from this side thank you director hampson

025any other additional liaison reports go for it um I have two reports the first one is from the B b-e-x-b-t-a Levy oversight committee our last meeting was on May 12th um we did a regular review of the budget and the update on our projects there was nothing of note there our next meeting is on June 9th and this room is tomorrow at 8 30. one change to that meeting will be that the committee will be at my request reviewing the board action reports for upcoming capital projects this is a really nice opportunity to Leverage The expertise of the committee members to inform the board's work in improving those board action reports the next update is from the city the families education preschool and promise Levy oversight committee last met on May 23rd the committee is

026currently considering ways to spend 3.4 million dollars in underspend the recommendation from the Department is to invest 2.4 million dollars in extending the Seattle preschool program through the summer months there's also a discussion around investing in culturally specific and responsive mental health supports in our K-12 schools so I thank the committee for their consideration and reinvesting in our spp and our K-12 programs and I just would like to also re reiterate gratitude to the city for their support and the safety and mental health well-being of our young people as Dr Jones mentioned I'm really excited about this Reach Out Seattle initiative I'm a coalition of community leaders and Health Partners and encouraging young people to participate in supporting mental health of their peers in themselves and also would like to thank Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell

027Director of Education Dwayne Chappelle and the mayor's policy team for attending that community meeting of Garfield High School School their attendance and support is hugely important because gun violence prevention is really a community safety and Community work so thank you director Salma Ritz any other liaison reports go forward director Roberta Smith because it doesn't match up with our meeting dates but I am the Head Start liaison for our board and I have done that for three amazing years so far um and what it means is I get to meet monthly with our Head Start admins um each month we get to I get an update from them um and I will take a moment that that includes the uncomfortable Heather Brown who I'm really sad to see is on our personal report as will no

028longer be with us in a few months I want to thank Heather for her amazing work for our district and um it was your success in the future um so that being said uh yes I have met with her every month for three years now and with the other admins to get the updates on head start this includes enrollment um and enrollment student wellness updates hiring all this really fascinating information it also includes some things I'll share today just because it's I think it's really it's nice to know what kind of PD or Head Start stop is receiving which is actually great um they recently had um gender inclusive classrooms training where teachers were given Direction and guidance regarding gender inclusive practices for the classroom they had an all-staff Gathering where teachers were given guidance

029for wrapping up the school year a lot of them do home visits in June and they're going to have conferences end of your celebrations um they they're learning about the pyramid model which is a social emotional learning framework that focuses on building adult skills so that they can support children's social emotional health um they also talk about the summer planning there will be teacher interviews taking place in June and July there are family educator one and two that's a teacher and assistant teacher positions we have vacancies right now in the north west and south regions Head Start classrooms will be moving some of them we approved this recently if you guys remember um some of them some of the new classrooms that I'll be opening up Cascadia will move to a classroom in the new

030James Baldwin Elementary School and they're into a classroom at the new villains so we're going to be moving those to more appropriate rooms and spaces for them Dunlap will move a classroom to Kimball Elementary and a classroom to Wing Luke so in all these new projects we're doing we often do have Head Start and preschool spaces created there which is great opening up more availability and it's really awesome to see so again I have loved meeting with them every month I will miss Heather but the work continues thank you any other liaison reports go for director Harris I attended a community meeting at Alki Elementary School Richard best of the district was there as well as Milam Architects and our parking Consultants there was probably 20 folks there first hour was a sit and get

031the second hour was questions and concerns and um disappointment there is a very thoughtful write-up in the West Seattle Blog and I suggest you take a look at it but this is one of those places where we have one Ada parking space an extraordinarily uh compacted neighborhood we have no parking we have the city's largest park just down the street we have safety issues with respect to the park and whales Hill Park which you all may know there was a murder uh not too long ago it's a wonderfully expensive beautifully designed School the question is placement and whether or not we gave we SPS gave enough notice to the community it was pretty obvious by the end of the meeting that nothing differently would be done and I think that's going to harm us in

032terms of public trust but that's what it's about at least we met with the folks and we listened whether or not anything will come of it to be determined but I am not holding my breath it was painful at best thank you thank you director excuse me thank you director Harris any additional liaison reports okay finally any additional board engagement for us to discuss today okay thank you very much for the updates all right so directors we will now move to the tables for our next conference um with the state auditor's office um we are joined today by representatives from the state auditor's office and staff for the exit conference for our annual audit by the state uh once we move to the tables I will pass it immediately over to the superintendent and his

033staff to open the session and introduce our guests so if you could so kindly move to the tables directors it is critical that you speak into your microphones especially this evening so please if you are saying anything that you would like to hear recorded and so that folks can engage make sure that you're speaking directly into your mic yep I'm going to turn this over to Deputy superintendent podesta and introduce our guest and give us kind of a run a show please thank you thank you directors for your time thank you for with to our guests from the state auditor's office I'll just heat us up um that uh on an annual basis uh District Works uh with the Washington State auditor's office on three audits uh audit of our financial statement an accountability audit

034that gets into a performance and accountability issues with regard to management of the district and a single audit of federal grants the district is extremely fortunate to have this interaction with the state auditor and coordination across our organization led by director of accounting Amy Fleming so I'll turn it over to Amy to reduce the audit team and the lead of the audit team and we'll walk through it good afternoon Amy Fleming accounting director so with me at the table today I will introduce Joe Simmons who is the audit manager of the team responsible for auditing and overseeing the audit of Seattle School District good afternoon thank you Amy thank you board members thank you for the opportunity this afternoon to present the results of our audit my name is Joe Simmons I'm the audit manager

035for the State auditory's office here in Seattle and I'm here with Eileen do who was the supervisor on the audit and Jonathan Smith who was the lead on the audit and also Carmen Law who was one of the staff Auditors on the audit so again thank you for your time today and briefly on the next slide just want to say that as a state auditor's office we look at as a role to help increase trust in government through our independent audits that we look at our role as providing a window into government to the citizens of the state through our independent agency and providing those independent transparent examinations also looking for ways that we can show where local governments are performing well and also we do have occasions where we have recommendations for areas of

036improvement but overall we look ourselves in partnership with local government to help increase efficiency and effectiveness of government and we did provide a packet with information including the audit reports themselves our recommendations so this is a summary that we're providing with a PowerPoint but please feel free to ask us any questions our overall goal is to be able to explain the results of our Audits and answer any questions you may have so with that I'll turn it over to Jonathan who will walk through the details of your audit results all right thank you Joe and it's nice to see everyone in person for once okay so first slide here so uh first I'm going to discuss the results of the accountability audit so for your District we conducted an accountability audit that covered the period

037of September 1st 2021 through August 31st 2022 the purpose of an accountability audit is to ascertain whether the district complied with state laws regulations contracts Grant agreements and its own policies and procedures in addition these audits also look at whether in general the district has adequate controls to safeguard public funds so Under The Heading results in brief you will see that our audit found the district's operations complied and all material respects with applicable state laws regulations its own policies and provided adequate controls over the safeguarding of public resources uh so on the next slide I'll actually go over all of the areas that we included within the accountability audit of course we take a risk-based approach and during this current audit we looked at a number of okay they seem to be oh okay uh

038the first area we looked at was use of restricted funds professional learning and local revenue for enrichment activities so just a little bit of background on that so for professional learning beginning in the 2018-2019 school year school districts received funding for professional learning days provided to certificated instructional staff the amount of funding received by each district is established in state law and calculated by ospi RCW 4309 2856 requires Sao to audit the use of the state allocation as part of our regular audits and then the restricted funds for enrichment activities so we also performed work to ensure the district has one developed plan and methodology for differentiating between expenditures of state and local revenues two documented specific enrichment activities included in the district's plan and lastly verified the district allocated expenditures as described in their

039plan uh the next area you looked at was compliance with supplemental contracts for enrichment activities So within the RCW Again part of the RCW also requires our office to review supplemental contracts as part of our regular audits of school districts we reviewed and performed testing to ensure the supplemental contracts are only for enrichment activities next we looked at a few different areas within ASB the associated student body specifically expenditures cash receiving and minutes so as the district returned to in-person learning during the audit period we identified large increases in ASB expenditures and revenues so because of that we tested ASB expenditures We performed some surprise cash counts at schools and we reviewed ASB minutes to ensure that the schools were following applicable District policies as well as state law okay uh next oh next page

040for me uh okay and then next we looked at compliance with House Bill 1660 on Equitable access to extracurricular activities uh so House Bill 1660 was passed in June 2020 with goals to increase participation in extracurricular activities for low-income students the Bill's intent is to reduce barriers for participation in extracurricular activities and to collect data on student participation so under the new law districts who charge a fee for attendance at or participation in any optional non-credit extracurricular event or activity must adopt a policy for waiving all fees for students who are eligible so we reviewed for compliance with this new legislation okay and then also lastly on this slide we did a review of school sponsored events at Wedgewood elementary school so there was an Ethics investigation that concluded in November of 2022 the found

041there was a violation of the district's ethics policy at Wedgewood so we reviewed the investigation and Then followed up regarding the finances for the annual musicals at the elementary school okay next slide please the last few areas here that we looked at within the accountability audit was a review of capital Levy funds so we reviewed the expenditures from the capital Levy to ensure that there was no violations on any restrictions on that funding uh next these couple last areas will definitely look familiar first is open public meetings compliance with minutes meetings and executive session requirements so we just reviewed board minutes during the audit period to ensure the district complied with all opma requirements and then lastly here Financial condition reviewing for indications of financial distress so perform an analysis of the district's financials essentially

042to look for any signs of financial distress within the district so I guess before we move on to the financial audit were there any questions related to the accountability audit okay moving on next slide please okay so we also conducted a financial statement audit for the period of September 1st 2021 through August 31 2022 the objective financial statement audit is to issue an opinion as to whether the information included in the financial statements can be relied upon to make decisions we are pleased to report that we are issuing an unmodified clean audit opinion on the district's financial statements this is the opinion you want to receive and provides assurance that the financial statements are stated fairly and are materially correct it's also important to note that the district has elected to prepare its financial statements

043using the modified accrual method of reporting issuing an f-196 authorized under the state of Washington through the school district's accounting manual this method of reporting is utilized by a majority of districts across the state due to its simplified reporting requirements and is allowable for use however National standards issued by the American Institute of certified public accountants require the auditor us to disclose in the report whether the local government chose to report their financial statements under any reporting method other than U.S gaap which is a more comprehensive reporting model so as a result we are required to issue a second or dual adverse opinion noting the district has chosen natural report under U.S Gap and instead of instead of issuing the f-196 okay additionally it's important to note that our audits are conducted in accordance with

044government auditing standards those standards also require that we gain an understanding of the district's internal controls or processes that goes through when to prepare the financial statements for audit should we identify a weakness or concern with that process that could or did result in significant errors in the financial statements we would be required to bring those to your intention and include that information in our report so we'd like to note here that we reported no significant deficiencies in internal controls we identify node efficiencies that we consider to be a material weakness and no to know instances of non-compliance that were material to the financial statements of the district next slide please so there were a couple uh things though that are required to be communicated to the district So within the management representation letter provided

045we included any uncorrected misstatements for your review there was only one related to a new accounting standard for uh for lease accounting Gatsby 87 just related to the calculation of present value and interest calculation for leases but nowhere near material um any questions on this before we go next slide yes the question on the previous slide about the reporting yeah so just to clarify what you or repeat back to you from my understanding what I believe you said is that we use reporting accounting reporting based on what Washington state has established and what Washington state has established is actually not National best practice so Amy Fleming accounting director I think it's easier if I answer that the answer is yes so we have elected as a district and as the state of Washington to adopt

046um procedures from the school district accounting manual that's dictated by ospi the Washington State auditor's office and members of districts surrounding and we found that the value add of doing U.S gaap and the work and the cost involved of doing U.S gaap is not worth the benefit of issuing Gap statements it's expensive it takes a lot of time and the value add for users that don't even understand financial statements is not worth the effort and most districts in the state of Washington have elected to utilize this other reporting requirement if ospi changed their structures of reporting and would that I mean well I guess if ospi required it it wouldn't matter we would have to do it but if ospi I mean so what I'm hearing is we could elect as an individual District to

047adopt those other practices it would be a significant cost and labor to to do that but if ospi were to implement that across the state um I guess I'm yeah so if ospi chose to end the committee change and pivot on this that we're there would definitely be an implementation portion that would have to be done because there's extra requirements that are embedded that I could go into Super nerdy accounting detail then I'm sure you guys don't even want to listen to right now um so that would take a really long time for implementation and they would have to have a go live date if that's the way they opted to go it's also in consideration with members of the committee so the committee is representation of not only large districts but we take into

048consideration the small and medium districts that we're they're also trying to serve and so that makes it a little bit more difficult because there are knowledge in Accounting Standards may not be to the level of maybe a larger district and so they're trying to take all of that into consideration as they're building these accounting standards that we need to follow okay thanks I have questions now for ospi but all thank you I was actually going to bring this up a bit later but since director Rankin decided to bring it up now so um this has always been a question I've asked every year about Gap and uh this year I did a little more research and uh found out that about two-thirds of states require their school districts either their districts overall to comply with

049gap reporting standards or at least their largest districts and the benefits that I see stated in the audit as you um from Sao State auditor's office have noted what you get from from gaap as well as looking at the um some other National standards for Education financial reporting as well as the direction we're trying to get to in terms of aligning the true cost of the cost of of providing good outcomes for kids my question to you is and and kind of back to you um director Fleming is whether or not there isn't possibly a greater benefit to doing our statements according to gap for one thing because then we have more apples to apples for other like size districts which is actually very difficult for us to compare apples I mean Apples to Apples

050in terms of because we don't have Gap statements right and we just don't have the same statement of activities um but also um in terms of the level of analysis that we would like to see our district get to in aligning our through our budgeting process our Resources with the outcomes we seek that that might give our better alignment and more detail more data so I would be curious to hear your response to that given that it is called out so clearly in the audit I mean not just here but on the other you know in the in the nodes well if that was addressed to Amy I I was going to just follow up to what Johnny was Jonathan was saying before that one thing definitely that's all definitely considerations that the district would

051be in position to to make regarding that but one thing I was going to add as far as our report we actually get peer-reviewed ourselves so basically audited over the years so about I think about seven or eight years ago that was pointed out to us in one of our reviews that in the past we had an opinion that we audit and determined that the school districts follow that regulatory basis which is again you know all that's required under state requirements but we were missing that piece to call out the fact that the district doesn't follow Gap but basically nothing has changed over many years as far as most districts do prepare up to that modified accrual basis it's just more that we were required to report that out but again as far as it

052says in to go to Gap or not that's obviously you know up to management up to the district to determine that so there are several factors that we have to take into place and the budgeting process would not align to the gasby statements that we would have to prepare um I think the big districts in the state of Washington struggle in that area now that do I mean there's only I think three or four districts that do Gatsby statements in the state of Washington um and so lining that up with the outcomes that we're seeking is really difficult and I don't think it gets to the answer that we're trying that we're seeking um so I mean I can take this further offline we can have a lot more discussion about this if you would

053like um you know to to hear your thoughts and what you're thinking on that I'm definitely willing to have that conversation with you that sounds good thank you I just want to make sure to approach it publicly particularly since it's it is made clear and it's something that I think you sort of take for granted when you're looking at governmental accounting statements more broadly that's what you learn to expect and and so then you get something like our statements which are then suddenly appear much harder to understand um even for us as directors right because even if you've tried to train yourself it's not it's it's just an entirely different animal and it doesn't have um some of the cleanliness of the accrual statements that you would get under under Gap but yeah I would

054like to learn more about how about the misalignment with the the budgeting process and and then kind of on the other side of it what are the benefits internally from a managerial standpoint that we might that we might gain so thank you okay um let's see can we go ahead and jump forward okay and I think we're done with uh the previous slide so um the next require communication we wanted to discuss is uh next we want to walk through our management letter over C for reporting before we begin please note that management letters are not included in our Auto reports but are referenced while still a public document this item will not be published on our website a copy of this letter has also been provided to District management so you'll see that the

055topic of our management letter is c for reporting and as we previously shared the district received a clean unmodified opinion on its financial statements this result means that overall the district's financial statements are fairly presented and are materially correct however we also discussed that we're required to bring your attention to any instances where we become aware of weaknesses with the district's internal controls or processes it goes through to prepare the financial statements so in this case our audit found that the district's internal controls over C for reporting which is the schedule of expenditures of federal Awards could be improved in particular we found that while the district's accounting department has a process in place to report Federal program expenditures the internal controls were not robust enough to identify if other Department's grants were federally funded

056and therefore whether all federal expenditures were being reported on the CFA so as a result the district did not report 4 million 946 dollars of program expenditures for the Emergency connectivity fund program on the CFA and then once included in the CFA this program was selected for audit based on its size and risk as a major program so as a result we just recommend the district dedicate the necessary time and resources to ensure that sifa is accurate and complete before submitting it for audit any questions regarding this management letter before we proceed to the single audit can you give us a sense four million dollars can you give us a sense of how much Federal money we've run through the district to put that four million dollars in context please absolutely so uh prior to

057coven my first year leading this audit I think Federal expenditures are around like 50 40 50 million maybe total on a big year uh you know covet obviously pushed that number to north of 100 million in the last couple of years so this year with the addition of this program I think the sifa landed around like 107 108 million and this is all just one specific program which admittedly there was some confusion on whether or not this was Federal funding you know which led to why it was not initially reported however once identified the district responded uh you know very timely and uh you know edited the sifa added it to the sifa but due to its size and the fact it's a new program there was coveted funding and it was over three million

058dollars it was just required to be included in in this audit so and hasn't there been a great deal of reporting nationally that the federal funding mandates and how we account for those have been confusing as all get out is that is that a fair statement I'm nobody's apologist for the district but I want to put this in context please uh it could be a fair statement I guess I'll I'll let my audit manager Joe maybe speak more broadly to that regard well for this I can actually turn to our state auditor Pat McCarthy she actually wrote an op-ed in the Seattle Times a few days ago that basic expresses just that related to this program in particular that so far around the state there has been many districts who have had had issues with

059this and in her op-ed she talks about how we as an office have talked about with all this coveted funding and with grants in general that we definitely have preached document document document but we also acknowledge that there's been definitely a very fluid situation with the fact that there's been a large amount of federal funding coming through covid related programs and we're just acknowledging that we're doing what we need to do as Auditors and audit to any of the requirements in place but also understanding that again even in that op-ed if you take a look at that Pat McCarthy acknowledges that it has been a little difficult to keep up with all those changes so I guess the long way of saying yes definitely thank you any other questions uh on regarding the management letter

060uh or the financial audit before we move on to single audit okay next slide please okay and lastly here so also conducted a Federal grant compliance or single audit for the same time period September 1st 2021 through August 31st 2022 so the objective of this audit is to ascertain whether the district materially complied with the requirements of receiving Federal funding so we're pleased to report that we are issuing an unmodified clean audit opinion on the district's compliance with Federal grant requirements with the exception of the previously mentioned emergency connectivity fund program in which we will issue an adverse opinion additionally it's important to note that our audits are conducted in accordance with uniform guidance those standards also require that we gain an understanding of the district's internal controls or processes that goes through to ensure

061Federal grant requirements are being followed should we identify a weakness or concern with that process that could or did result in significant non-compliance we would be required to bring those to your attention so we reported no significant deficiencies internal controls however we did identify deficiencies that we considered to be a material weakness and we did know instances of non-compliance that are required to be reported and essentially those issues are summed up in the next slide but before I move to that next slide were there any immediate questions okay next slide please okay so our audit identified concerns during our Federal grant compliance audit that will be included in our report as an audit finding we would like to walk you through this item with you today and answer any questions that you may have so

062as we previously discussed our Federal grant compliance audits are performed to ascertain whether the district complied with the requirements of receiving Federal funding while our audit found that the district complied with most requirements examined we did identify non-compliance for the Emergency connectivity fund program or the district did not have adequate internal controls for ensuring compliance with aloe about allowable activities and costs and restricted purpose requirements um so just a little bit of background on the program in general so the emergency connectivity fund ECF program was established via the American Rescue plan Act of 2021 to provide funding to meet the remote learning needs of students School staff and Library patrons who would otherwise lack access to Connected devices and Broadband connections sufficient to engage in remote learning during the covid-19 emergency period and that's referred

063to as unmet need so the in a little bit of background then on the areas where we identified issues so first within allowable activities and costs so those compliance requirements state that the ECF program recipients may only seek reimbursement for eligible devices and services provided to students and staff with an unmet need recipients are prohibited from seeking reimbursement for eligible equipment and services purchased for you solely at the school or held for future use such as warehousing essentially anything that was sought for reimbursement had to fulfill an unmet need and then background on the restricted purpose compliance so that actually had two areas within it so unmet need and per location per user limitations so for unmet need compliance same as above District can only sequent reimbursement for eligible equipment and services to provide to

064students and staff with an actual unmet need and be able to provide documentation to support the actual cost of all assigned equipment and then for the per location for user limitations requirements recipients could only be reimbursed for one connected device and a Wi-Fi hotspot per student or School employee with an unmet need and no more than one fixed broadband connection per location So within our audit we found that the district did not document its determination of actual unmet need for the equipment provided to students in school staff specifically the district purchase laptops and tablets iPads based on its estimate of of unmet need and requested reimbursement based on that estimate totaling the entire program formulating 946 dollars the district did not maintain documentation showing it provided each laptop or tablet paid for with program funds

065to a student or employee with an unmet need and because of this we have questioned all costs for the program uh are audit also found the district's internal controls were ineffective for demonstrating it complied with the fcc's per location and per usual limitations requirements uh specifically the district did not maintain documentation showing it monitored or had a tracking process in place to ensure it only provided one device per user and location so some you know summed up we consider these deficiencies and internal controls to be a material weakness that led to a material non-compliance within the program we recommend the district work with its granting agency to determine an audit resolution and we further recommend the district established and follow internal controls to ensure staff fully understand the requirements for the ECF Awards specifically the

066district should request reimbursement only for eligible equipment and services provided to students and staff with an unmet need and maintain documentation demonstrating compliance and secondly monitor to confirm it provides no more than one device per student and employee and no more than one broadband connection per location in compliance with the ECF program's requirements and we do understand that the district does not concur with the audit finding or with the question costs however does agree that internal controls and processes could be improved any questions on related to the finding foreign so this is really this is about like down to the very individual specific hotspot or device basically saying that I'm just because remembering all of this I don't think anybody was taking home five laptops you know what I mean we're two hot spots like

067it was actually a tremendous effort to find and connect families who needed to be connected with those resources and the demonstrated need was that there was no other way to connect with them um so does this really come down to like just and I know that every device has a sticker and a number and a so we're just kind of saying that it didn't every single thing didn't get adequately in because I I don't know I'm just like I I don't think the problem here is that the district was asking the federal government to pay for devices for families that didn't need them but that's what this sounds like it's saying so I'll interject um so throughout the pandemic we all know that we were scrambling for devices we all know that we don't have

068one-to-one laptop ratio we didn't have Elementary ratios for student and even our staff members did not some staff members did not have laptops they were using desktops so when the pandemic first hit technology was scrambling trying to find any device that even worked very problematic because you cannot run multiple platforms on those devices they were constantly failing on us that was the unmet need and it was happening throughout the district it did not matter if you were a student member I had I had staff I had several staff members in the accounting department that fell under that realm in the Staffing so obviously a very huge problem that was our unmet need we had also identified through the pandemic students that met low income status that did not have hotspot devices that didn't even have

069those connections there is data all over the place where we had documented that throughout the pandemic so we believe as a district that we have identified that unmet need now internal controls we do have inventory we kept inventory of all of our laptops we kept inventory of who we gave those devices to so we believe that we have met the requirements of this grant the issue is is that we document an unmet need at the time of application and not at the time of reimbursement and the compliance supplement that they're auditing to indicates it's at the time of reimbursement and that is where I think a lot of the big rub is coming in for the many districts in the state that are receiving the same audit finding you will see that there are some

070districts whose reports have not yet been issued because of this audit finding that are also receiving the same audit finding thank you that's really helpful so I know that uh it's been said that we need to work with the granting agency at the same time I'm wondering what the expectation is on the at reimbursement stage what this looks like because I mean again we all have uh very distinct memories of all hands on deck handing out these laptops making sure that we knew what you know the what the inventory was we were all involved every board member every staff person uh and and it's not just low income status because we had I mean there just weren't laptops available and then their families whose kid they weren't going to have a laptop for their child

071that wasn't something that they had planned for or would buy or would even want them to have except for an eating which was also a problem except for needing them to access their education so I guess I'm I'm just trying to imagine what would that have even looked like on the reimbursement side as different you know are you just talking about a slightly different set of numbers because instead of the estimate it's the actual distribution or is it how that you're saying every student has to be a low-income student who can't afford to buy a laptop is that that's what I'm trying to figure out so yeah I can I can definitely speak to that so as far as unmet need you know every recipient um kind of makes their own definition of unmet need

072it doesn't have to specifically be low income um you know if if you determine what the need is and look at your population like okay these students or staff have you know do not meet this they have an unmet need it needs to be met so the example that it gives within the compliance supplement which is available on the the White House's website which you know space gives us you know spells out all the guidance and what we audit to for this program it does give an example in this section where it says if the you know if a district estimates at the time of application you know we need a hundred devices for for students and then you know between the time of application you know once it's approved and before they file for

073reimbursement they conduct a survey realize oh we only need you know we don't need a hundred we actually only needed 92 so there's only 92 students that you know have an unmet need that you know don't don't for that yeah fit our definition of unmet need so then they only seek reimbursement for those 92 laptops instead of the original estimate of a hundred so that's just the an example that it gives within the compliance supplement for my conversations with other audit leads for other school districts around the state um yeah that was you know really what was coming up was the surveys however obviously the scale of the Seattle School District I know there were some surveys you know conducted that were afforded to us that we did take a look at you know a

074survey specifically I think on the mckinney-vento students however all of that was time done at the time of the application and there was no further you know I guess drill down when it came time of reimbursement so essentially in you know specifically for all of the laptops that were sought for reimbursement all of those tied directly back to the number that was listed on the application so if there's an estimate of four thousand or four thousand three hundred uh teacher laptops that was also requested for reimbursement and there was no you know I guess support to back up that number essentially to show okay these are the you know 4300 staff that you know had this unmet need that we supplied laptops to okay good hi thank you I'm wondering um now what so this

075is the findings what does that mean for us and what happens now so part of what we have in our finding is our remarks and there's also a corrective action plan that's included in the report and as I said earlier just do the nature of this finding and knowing that we have seen it at many districts and definitely understanding you know this is regarding the communications of the final rule versus what the initial information was coming out through I guess but to answer your question The Next Step would be working with the funding agency and they would be the one to determine whether or not they would actually request repayment of the question costs so basically ultimately it's up to the FCC as a federal agency to determine whether they would what action they would

076take we are the reporting agency based on the requirements but the federal agency is the one to make the evaluation as to whether or not they will actually request any repayment of the question costs and they would be the ones to work you know as far as what the next actions would be so I don't know if Amy wants to add in there and I know there's been Communications with um superintendent rech Dolan I'm asking more people who aren't going to be reading all this because we have a lot of viewers who are not going to read out I haven't seen the letters so um Superman Jones or someone else want to talk about that you know we'll follow um the recommendation and the finding that we work with the granting agency we um have

077talked there are uh besides uh Communications from superintendent right doll to the state auditor and others there's uh advocacy at the federal level um we've heard from our representative and and Senate offices you know working because this is not just a problem for us so um you know I think there is acknowledgment that there are challenges with the guidance that was given and um we appreciate the auditor um you know recognizing that and they have a standard they need to audit to the real question was you know if any of these expenses are disallowed that you know that'll be a discussion with the granting agency the Federal Communications Commission yeah thank you so the FCC is the same agency that didn't have a Board of Governors for how many years and is still trying to

078figure out what Fox News is about those are the people that are going to figure this out laughs ultimately I mean I'm not familiar with that that information as far as the board but deaf yes as as the deputies said that would be ultimately as with other findings it's up to the grantor agency to be the one to work out whether you know there would be repayment and ultimately we are auditing to the federal requirements and as reporting agency we do audit to those requirements but definitely this I will say again it's been rather unusual type of situation that you know I've in many years of auditing it's rare that you have this many little governments have the same type of issue with the program so that's back to you know acknowledging that Pat McCarthy

079has been aware that this is a situation where we are doing our responsibility as far as auditing requirements but also you know communicating with the various agencies as to definitely understanding that again I don't want to go too far the communications possibly could have been improved as best I can say I guess it it's worth noting I mean we've been reimbursed for this and so they would take you know an action on the part of the granting agency to try to restore this funds you know there's a lot of confusion around it I'm sure there'll be a negotiation but it's not like we're waiting for this money we're waiting for somebody to ask for it back and um I I think um we the district made sound decisions and did what needed to be done

080and and I think everyone has acknowledged that any other questions related to the finding move to the next slide please uh so this next slide I just wanted to to note everyone just all the programs that were selected and included in our single audit so first as we previously mentioned the kova 19 emergency connectivity fund we also audited the title one grants to local educational agencies covid-19 education stabilization fund and covid-19 Head Start program and the reason why I see covid-19 because either some or all of the funding was related to kova 19 so that's why that is also noted there and all those cost relationship programs total about 63 percent reported on the sifa for 2022. okay and next slide please um so just something we wanted to note uh we also identified some

081minor issues that we reported as exit items during the audit so these are seen as you know housekeeping issues that are insignificant we're having immaterial effect and are not referenced in the audit report we've communicated these to District management and do not plan on going into detail on these items during the meeting but did want to you know include this slide to you know just note that we did Identify some you know relatively minor issues in the course the audit as well any questions before we move forward okay and then with the next slide I will turn it over to Eileen do thanks Johnny good afternoon everyone so now that we have shared the results of our audit we do have a few closing remarks that we would like to bring to our attention to

082conclude the presentation first we're pleased to report the cost of our engagement it's expected to be within the estimate that was previously provided to you we thank the district for your timely response to other requests which really allowed our audits to progress efficiently and remain within budget next we provided information on your next audit and your next audit will cover accountability financial statement and federal programs or single audit in addition we have provided information a cost estimate for your budgetary needs in your exit packet and I believe on page three so the next so the next slide talks about report publication your other reports were already published on our website and we also included copies of your audit reports in the exit packet for your reference we also send out customer service survey we encourage

083you to complete the survey as all feedbacks are helpful in improving our services I believe director Amy Fleming was the one who received the survey please feel free to forward it on to anybody who might like to share their feedback next slide please yeah so beyond the regular scheduled audits please know that we also have Support Services that's available to you and no additional cost all year round first is the local government support team and they're available to assist with annual financial reporting and accounting services this team provides one-on-one technical assistance and they also offer several trainings around the state and virtually to help you keep keep you updated on the latest County and Reporting topics the center for government Innovation is another great resource for local governments to work better and be more efficient

084and effective so they provide expert advice in areas like lean peer-to-peer networking and culture building and Etc they also offer Financial intelligence tool better known as fit tool so this helps monitor your government's Financial Health and compare it with other local governments like yours next slide please so the center also provide best practice guidance on a number of areas such as payroll and bidding there's also resource to help local governments to respond to cyber security threats so if you have not already we encourage you to learn more about how the center might be able to assist with your District any questions before I pass it back to Johnny yes please um can we go back a few slides to next next year's on it right there so accountability for public resources financial statements and federal

085that looks very similar to this year's is it different and if so what's and is it the same every year and I'm just not it is the same every year okay just checking that was my question thank you I I have a question about the center for government Innovation we could give them work all day long um how available are they to help us with some of our some of our systems some of our challenges I mean these things that we're talking about process Improvement team building Financial intelligence tools these are things that we we need to support with how available are they I mean because again we we will wear them out I will say they're available within just the limits of the number of people we have on staff but definitely happy to

086have the district contact them and definitely the very least get on the calendar and you know yeah definitely as we said they're Avail at no cost it's just that there are live a number of staff and all that so it's but yeah definitely happy to have the district contact them and you know talk with someone at the center and you know talk about some of the needs or information that you would like and just you know start getting on their radar and calendar as to what they might be able to help you with yeah it seems like a tremendous resource so thank you okay and next slide please okay so here right before we wrap up just there's a few thank yous a few highlights that we just wanted to to note here during this

087meeting so first just want to thank Amy Fleming for communication assistance throughout the audit um you know Amy's always instrumental in our ability to conduct an efficient audit and really helpful in this last month to ensure we were able to to meet the deadline for further reports so thank you Amy I also want to thank Barry and Kenny for their communication and timely responses throughout the audit process in regards to Auto requests questions anything related to the financial statements uh and federal program expenditures you know next to Amy we you know communicate with Barry and Kenny throughout the entire audit process from planning all the way to conclusion and they've always been been excellent to work with and then lastly just wanted to you know make a note here we really appreciate uh Steve Johns

088and Victoria's prompt assistance with the request related to the emergency connectivity fund program audit we definitely did it in a you know pretty constrained timeline I know Steve and John had never been part of an audit process before Victoria had already been working with us within some accountability areas but all three of them just really made themselves immediately available to me with question for questions meetings requests you know throughout the the month of May so just really wanted to to note them here as I appreciated their their help with with everything related to that challenging audit next slide please and all right and that pretty much concludes our presentation were there any any other questions that anyone had on really anything okay thank you very much pleasure to work with you again [Applause] all right

089directors let's take a very quick five minute recess do what you need to do and then we're gonna go right into public comment I believe after this so thank you very much [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you what a what a nice bright spot going into our next uh opportunity we will be taking public testimony by phone and in person as stated on the agenda board procedure 1430 BP provides the rules for testimony and I ass speakers are respectful of these rules I will summarize some important parts of this procedure first testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from our public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the School Board website only those who are

090called by name should unmute their phones uh or step forward to the podium and only one person should speak at a time speakers from the list May Seed their time to another 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 testimonialist or waiting list those who do not wish to have their time seated to them may Decline and retain their place on the testimony list the majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about the board expects the same standard of Civility for those participating

091in public comment as the board expects of itself as board president I have the right and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of Civility required by board procedure 1430 BP a speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave the meeting Ms coo will read off the testimony speakers thank you president Hersey um some accounts keeping before we begin speakers joining us via phone please remain muted until your name is called to provide testimony when your name is called please be sure you have unmuted on the device you are calling from and also press star 6 to unmute yourself on the conference call line each speaker will have a two-minute speaking time you'll hear

092a beep when your time is exhausted and the next speaker will be called we're joined today by two interpreters for some of our community members to allow for interpretation we may extend that time period provided I'd like to take a moment to allow the ASL interpreters to introduce themselves um if I could pass it to Elizabeth or Marcy hi I'm Marcy nice to see you all thank you and Elizabeth's working so this is Elizabeth my team interpreter and I'll let her keep working yeah thank you all thank you um for the interpreters I will ask you to um help support me in calling the constituent names when the time comes um the first speaker on the list is Chris jackins my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on the 1.25 million Rainier Beach

093property acquisition page one of the report states that property is located at the southwest corner of the site and it also States the property is located at the southeast corner of the site on the termination of the joint operating agreement between Seattle public schools and Technology access Foundation TAF seven points number one thank you for being poised to do today what I asked you to do three years ago number two on January 22nd 2020 the board voted to approve the agreement at the meeting I asked the board to instead vote no number three my comments to the board at that time noted that Washington Middle School would be co-managed by the district and TAF number four and that what was being proposed was to have a private company operate a public school number five I

094included a list of seven areas in which the TAF proposal appeared to violate state law number six and I ask that instead of Taft the board should reopen the African-American Academy and Indian Heritage High School number seven please amend the action today to reopen the African-American Academy and Indian Heritage High School on the District budget three points number one enrollment is dropping free up Capital funds by downsizing the oversized capacity expansion projects at Alki montlake and Rogers and thereby also retain more playground space number two at the previous board meeting I proposed a plan that would use this money to reduce budget gaps in future years number three please do not close schools also wish to extend my welcome to the gramers I see if three of them on the agenda to be speaking tonight

095nice to have somebody from the deaf and hard of hearing community on the agenda thank you very much the next speaker on the list is Elizabeth swarney okay go ahead Elizabeth okay hello good evening my name is Elizabeth swarney and I'm the counselor at Beacon Hill International School I'm here to speak to the district's decision to default all elementary school counselor positions to Social Work positions many elementary school counselors are losing their jobs at a pivotal moment for students school counselors and social workers are complementary not interchangeable both are critical in a well-resourced school each focus on different levels of service with some overlapping school counselors build foundations reaching every child in every grade teaching invaluable life skills like emotional regulation problem solving healthy coping and more only school counselors provide school-wide teaching and prevention

096where counselors tending to the needs of the whole school social workers are able to focus on students with higher needs by replacing Elementary counselors with a different role FPS has ensured that our youngest Learners will receive no systematic SEL instruction and mental health education not to mention College and Career preparation either role can do it all nor should they although counselors have been doing exactly that for years only to be told it's not enough to keep their jobs additionally school counselors are the only professionals trained to implement the comprehensive School counseling program model that was mandated last year by the legislature and is now being rolled out by ospi for that reason alone the timing of this decision is thoughtful the pre-covered formulas for determining critical needs fall so far short of our current reality

097it's hard to overstate this decision solves nothing just passes the problem down the road putting more pressure on students families and staff and putting schools in the dangerous position of being reactive rather than proactive focusing on one role at the expense of the other is mistaken and short-sighted we must take the Long View and provide both or we sail in our own Paramount duty to students have you prepared to invest millions of dollars in outside agencies and Partnerships I ask can't we also support the people who are already doing this work in our schools and hold deep trusting relationships with students I invite you to consider what a true culture of care looks like outside of the scarcity model of white supremacy thank you I'll see you my time the next speaker is Syeda Ahmed

098foreign my name is said Ahmed and I stand before you as a senior in high school eagerly preparing to embark on my journey as a university student this was only made possible by the capable and invaluable counselors at my school throughout my time in the running Start program I often found myself questioning if I was on the right path moments of doubt and uncertainty would creep in making me feel isolated and alone yet it was during these moments that I turned to my counselors seeking guidance and reassurance they became beacons of Hope in my life showing me that I was capable of achieving greatness however the truth is that the majority of running start students often feel the sense of isolation over the past two years I have witnessed firsthand of the disconnect from our

099high school Community as well as the struggles my classmates have faced with learning how to apply for classes what to do when failing a course or even navigating the College Community it is in times like these that counselors that counselor has become an a critical role in our community they are the bridge that connect us to the resource knowledge and support we need to thrive unfortunately the recent actions of our school board have shown negligence and insensitivity towards the importance of counselors by jeopardizing their funding you are not just impacting their live livelihoods but also undermining the success of students under your Care As Leaders tasked with the guidance and supporting us you have shown intentions of setting us up for failure the toll that running start takes on our minds and bodies is immense

100the academic and personal challenges we Face require a strong support system without the unwavering dedication and assistance of our counselors students in the program will struggle to reach their full potential without it it is a fact that cannot be ignored or brushed aside today I implore you to take immediate action to restore and fully support our counselors recognizing the indispensable role they play in shaping the lives of low-income students children of color and all those who have been historically marginalized by investing in their strenuous and much needed Services you will be empowering students to overcome obstacles and achieve their dreams let us not forget that education is a powerful Catalyst for a change in Opportunity by ensuring that every student has access to the guidance and support they need we are creating we are creating

101a brighter future for all together we can dismantle the barriers that prevent students from realizing their full potential I want to leave one more note before closing I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to the counselors who have made a lasting impact on my life your your dedication and unwavering belief in our abilities have propelled us closer to success to the members of the school board please step back and reflect on your actions you're not just affecting the counselors you're affecting all the students that you are here to support and guide thank you [Applause] next speaker is Chloe kimai all right good evening superintendent Jones and members of the school board my name is Chloe kamiyai I'm a proud counselor at Cleveland High School and I'm here today to discuss concerns related to school

102counseling student mental health and the removal of running start funding I feel so lucky to be at a school that has historically valued counseling and social workers and put money into funding support staff to help students with their mental health at Cleveland we have three full-time counselors and one full-time social worker yet still we have caseloads of over 300 students running start funding has been instrumental in supporting those counseling roles with the reduction in cut of funding we were at risk of losing that amount of support support that is not enough as is student mental health concerns are at an all-time high since covid these concerns have been exacerbated we have seen more trauma more school and Community violence more suicidal ideation depression anxiety fear and avoidance just to name a few students and families

103well-being and safety has been impacted as well and so has staff staff across the district have been experiencing distress and as well and burnout is a real issue how can we support students when we don't feel supported as staff how can we support students when the needs are so high that there's already not enough mental health support people in the building as is students came down to John Stanford center to ask for more support and more counselors I understand things are tough and we're in a deficit but I do not believe that cutting funding that many buildings use to help provide that support is the answer please reissue the running start funds so that school buildings can continue to support our students and eliminate the use of aafte to determine counseling caseloads running start students

104are not counted in counts or caseloads when using that calculation thus increasing actual student count school counselors social workers are the first people students come to in distress we know our students and we are trusted supports we need more funding for school-based staff to continue to do this work and build strong relationships I understand the district is receiving Del funding and it's imperative that that go to staff in schools thank you [Applause] next speaker is Claire Abbey hello my name is Claire Abe and I'm a school counselor at Cleveland I've also worked as a school counselor at Rising Star Elementary and Social Work roles at Rainer Beach High School in akikurose and Mercer Middle Schools in southeast Seattle I'm here today to share with you my concerns about the lack of support for student mental

105health in the district despite an unprecedented rise of mental health needs since the pandemic with all of the concerns for safety due to the recent violence in schools and around school campuses the district needs to be more proactive and fully funding mental health and social emotional learning support for students in every school providing extra security or services to schools impacted by violence only after the fact is not enough we can't expect anything to change unless we invest in our students mental health and well-being by providing full-time counselors and social workers in every building K-12 in my 15 years working within SPS schools there's always been a shortage of funding for mental health supports and the pendulum swings back and forth between funding that favors either school counselors or social workers as a person with a

106master's in social work and a master's in School counseling that has worked in both positions I want to emphasize that both school counselors and social workers are well trained and able to provide mental health support to students while our roles may seem similar there are clear differences in the different tiers of implementation and the types of critical supports that we provide without overlap and both are needed with so many concerns there are some solutions that the district could implement the easiest of solutions is to restore 100 of the running start funding to buildings moving forward to help fund counselor FTE the state already gives us funding to the district and its school counselors who do the work to support running star students the second solution is to use funding sources in the district such as

107a new deel Grant or Usher funds for mental health to support more or more both school counselors and social worker positions finally we need more transparency in the budget process and feedback loop so that people making the budget decisions make informed decisions about what schools need I also want to thank director Rankin for taking the time to meet and listen to count to the concerns of school counselors and invite the superintendent and other board directors to visit Cleveland to learn more about school counselors and why social worker rules and School counseling rules uh sorry about the school counselor and social worker roles and the important work that we do and why we should prioritize School mental health supports thank you very much [Applause] the next speaker is napsia Sally hello my name is nipsia Sali

108and I wear many hats I am a proud parent to children and SPS a South Seattle resident and a school counselor at Cleveland stem high school as you can see we brought many folks in support of elementary middle and high school counselors I have been a part of Seattle public schools for almost 10 years and care deeply for my community and feel strongly about our strategic plan of Seattle excellence and continuing to work on academic and life outcomes for students of color and adhering to policy zero zero three zero ensuring educational and racial Equity to students after counselor-led advocacy the district restored half of the running start funds back to the high schools for next year we are requesting all funds back to the schools look let me tell you when a student is dual

109enrolled they are utilizing High School resources Sports ASB activities and especially school counselors for support most of my students are students of color and they are their first in their families to attend college and therefore need guidance I have heard well if they want to become a college student they need to self-advocate and use a website with minimal support the college system has legacies of racism and part of my role as a school counselor is to disrupt that system and provide assistance to students with care and consideration to do that we need school counselors to be fully funded to meet the demands elected community members please join the support of restoring running start funds to schools and be committed to funding school counselors appropriately in K-12 using the city Del funding for mental health and

110aligning to Equitable access per policy zero zero three zero thank you [Applause] the next speaker is Helen tuskisson hi my name is Helen tashkasan I'm a full-time running start student and a 11th grader at Cleveland stem high school so today I wanted to come talk about funding that has been removed from our counsel or is going to be removed from our counselors and social workers that should stay permanently with the schools as a running start student I've experienced a lot of issues that we've already started talking about and counselors are the backbone to making sure that these running start students continue and you know don't just give up before starting running start in ninth grade during the covet pandemic counselors were also there to support so I had a lot of questions like what is

111high school what's going on you know and counselors were the people who were there for us even when teachers didn't know you know what to tell us or no one knew what was going to happen next I actually started a club during ninth grade in the coveted pandemic and my counselor was is there to support me and be the advisor and has continued to be our advisor for the last three years counselors are very important even like in any scenario but especially during the running start process so they run the running start orientations they provide that support they're the people who you go to while filling out the paperwork and that's not a limited amount of people there's so many students who are pursuing running start and taking a difficult course load it makes it

112harder and having those teachers those counselors to go to is super important to continue building our foundations you might say you know you're not cutting out all of our funding for counselors but the workload is already super hectic that if you remove one counselor it seems like it's a small amount but that workload is being shared to the other counselors and that will ruin the experience of having having that time to meet with them and actually you know learn what's going on and create that bond with that one teacher okay thank you for your time and please consider [Applause] the next speaker is Hawa Ismail hello my name is Hawa Ismail I'm a running start student from Cleveland High School I'm also graduating this year and I can't imagine a world without the full counseling

113staff at Cleveland High School in my year at running start I've only I've only been to the Seattle Central running start office like two times but the quality of counseling cannot compare to the ones I've met at Cleveland I find it hard to contact my running start advisors because they only have three advisors and thousands of students they don't know who I am what my goals are what I need from them whereas in my years at Cleveland High School I've found the quality of counselors to be exceptional and in my me and my peers experience the counselors at Cleveland are flexible with my running start schedule responsive and they actually remember who I am and to them I'm not just a number another number on the spreadsheet they know what I want to achieve in

114life and they always work hard to send me internships scholarships and match my that match my skills and interests the counseling office is a comfortable place for me when I'm feeling stressed out at Cleveland I know my counselors are there for me the bond that we created during my first two years in high school were not wasted I'm sure in SVS there are a multitude of counseling offices like this to reduce funding with to would to be reducing the quality of care for all students including the bypoc students that make up a majority of Seattle Public Schools I'd also like to add that I'm the first person from my family to go to to go to a four-year college and I honestly don't think I would have gotten the support I needed if the funding

115would be to would be reduced I bid my time thank you [Applause] the next speaker is Joe Donahoe hello my name is Joe Donahoe I use he him pronouns and I'm a teacher at Cleveland High School where I teach 11th and 12th grade students in applied molecular biology and UW bio 100 neurobiology of addiction I also serve on our School's teacher leader Cadre professional development committee advised the African Student Association and HOSA clubs assistant coach the baseball team and serve as the PLC leader for the biotechnology CTE pathway I list those titles not to brag but to illustrate how the tightening of our school budgets has forced so many Educators to do so much more than our job descriptions many of my colleagues serve on more teams than I do I have two asks for

116you today the first is to fully restore the running start budget for counselors instead of just the 50 that has been returned so far at our school this would be the difference between having two or three of the counselors that you've heard from today I also ask that you increase the Ft allocated to counselors and social workers to have them fully funded in every building if we want to offer our students the best possible chance of success in concurrent enrollment classes we need to keep providing them support at the high school level too our counselors are already overworked and cutting their running start budget would make their work situation untenable and the people who would ultimately pay that price would be running start students and other students left to hang in the balance removing these

117funds would make it less of a running start to college and more akin to pushing baby birds out of the nest to either fly or fall to their deaths every student that I spoke with in preparation for today who's a running start student told me that our school counselors are 100 necessary to be successful in running start a quote from one student is that my Cleveland counselor is so much more helpful than my Seattle Central counselor I can't even get an email back from people at Seattle Central most of the time as a teacher our counselors and social workers are the professionals I turn to and I become aware of a student in need of support that I can't or don't know how to provide for example they helped one student get emancipated from a

118difficult home situation in her ninth grade year and she is now flourishing our school social worker also helped a student get all of his paperwork filed for the mckinney-vento program which enabled him to receive a full ride scholarship to college next year these incredible people are working disproportionately with students furthest from educational Justice and I think they are some of the most important people in our schools thank you [Applause] the next speaker is John Taylor hi we can hear you John go ahead I'm John Taylor and I'm the school counselor for bf day Elementary I am speaking tonight to advocate for Seattle Public Schools to increase funding for school counselors in our schools and especially in our K-5 settings our mission statement as a district infers that we support students social and emotional development and

119we provide the teaching of life skills that's our mission most kids yes will will will at some point receive some of this natural either by their genetic disposition or by their environment but many kids do not we need to be intentional about supporting these life skills we cannot expect our students just to receive these just naturally as a school counselor we will provide a comprehensive School counseling program that works with all stakeholders we support students social emotional career and and academic skills and this looks like addressing opportunity gaps providing an intentional classroom and small group lessons working one-on-one with students and in many cases these students are going through intense crises we and also we support teachers to meet the child's needs in the classroom so they can Thrive academically additionally school counselors are supporting

120families essential needs by connecting them with resources school counselors have a very unique perspective we have a touch point with all stakeholders there's not there's not one other position in the school building that is similar to that and lastly I want to share how my fellow staff members at BFA perceive the need for a full-time school counselor for the past seven years I've been funded 0.5 by the district and then 0.5 by our generous PTSA at the end of the at the at the end of each year the staff determines how to best use this PTSA funding this may include funding for our librarian reading help assistant principal but each of those seven years they have all voted over 90 percent to fund a full-time school counselor I'm advocating not just for our kids but

121I'm advocating for the teachers as well as we are supporting them to be their best selves um so lastly thank you for your time and I'm just advocating for a full-time school counselor in every K5 setting thank you so much foreign [Applause] ER go ahead hi my name is Brett gramer and I am a sixth grader at tops K-8 I am deaf my whole family is deaf and we are bilingual because we use ASL in English I can code splits between the two languages at tops I have deaf and hard of hearing peers and jiren peers I'm able to talk to my hearing peers using spoken English I do wish they do no more ASL to take the communication burden off me because I have to do more work to be able to communicate and

122connect with my hearing peers the ASL teacher would teach my classmates teachers and Friends ASL to be more deaf friendly and better Communicator in general not with me not with just me but everyone else because they would know more how to be inclusive my younger brother Lucas is deaf but he needs ASL to be able to communicate with others he works hard in speech therapies they lip read and say some spoken English words she is doing his part however his peers want to learn sign and connect with Lucas we need to it we need the ASL teacher to help with teaching peers so they can connect with me and be friends where are Lucas classmates supposed to learn sign language I am busy in my own grade Lucas is not gonna want to have an

123interpreter to follow him around so he can talk to his peers I know this works because one of Lucas's coaches um for soccer took ASL classes that was about years ago and he communicates with my brother Lucas he trains who gets to be a better player and helps Lucius Lucas's team play together we need more people who can sign we need an ASL teacher to make our school more inclusive and that we can cast more with our hearing pairs please fund the ASL teacher position thank you the next speaker is Lucas gramer foreign my name is Lucas gramer sorry he's giving it to his friend who's also a deaf classmate and his friend his time and his friend will speak my name is Megan Whitney Miller I'm speaking on behalf of Lucas's friend my son

124Julian uh I'm a parent of three kids it tops k through eight tops is the only Elementary Middle School in the district for the deaf and hard of hearing classroom an accessible environment for Deaf students to learn alongside other deaf peers my youngest has been in the dhh program at tops for four years last year we moved our other two children from a school they loved into tops we made this decision based on assurances from administrators and community members that attending tops would give them the opportunity to learn more ASL and have more exposure to Deaf culture these assurances probably well-meaning were untrue what my children have learned is how marginalized the dhh community at school is outside of the dhh classrooms there's almost no ASL being used to communicate they have learned that their

125deaf peers have to continually advocate for themselves in the general learning environment we're hearing teachers and staff have no idea how to anticipate their needs support them understand or empathize how they're being treated as other on a daily basis I have repeatedly advocated for an ASL teacher in the school to provide access to language and culture in hopes of building a bridge between the deaf and hearing Worlds at Hobbs an overwhelming majority of top students want to learn ASL to communicate with their peers without having to rely on an interpreter dhh students are excited by the possibility of signing with their hearing friends last year the BLT at tops was able to scrape together sufficient funds from the building budget to cover an ASL teacher for this school year the victory Resort lived as the

126newly hired ASL teacher was moved into a teacher of the deaf position mid-year to fill a vacancy this year's school budget review meeting dealt another blow there are not sufficient building funds to cover an ASL teacher for the upcoming school year no one I've spoken to at the district really understands the magnitude of Social and emotional damage being done to the entire tops community the current environment sends a message that marginalization is acceptable the district has a responsibility to the tops Community to correct this and stop validating discrimination in our school I'm asking the school board to support this cause thank you the next speaker is Allison Augustine Allison if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute the next speaker on the list is Laura Allison the next speaker on the list

127is Laura gramer okay hello everyone my name is Laura Kramer and I'm the parent of two deaf boys you just met them you met Lucas and Brett just now and they both go to top school as they sit I want my boys to go there because of the deaf and hard of hearing program there gives them access to school in the deaf and hard of hearing program and that they have peers that are also with them the same as them and it's a deaf friendly School and I have been advocating for the entire time that my kids have been identified as being eligible for services and so it's been almost a decade 10 years and I will continue advocating not only for my boys but for other kids at tops at Roosevelt High School at

128Bridges and and deaf a part of and hard of hearing children who are mainstreamed all over the district they are supposed to have access to free and appropriate public education without any oppression because of being deaf or hard of hearing there are so many things that they need to face during the day I just want to give one example there are many things that I want to address and I'm going to talk about one because of the time limitation we need an ASL teacher at top school that position is different than a teacher of the deck it's a separate position that has to be extremely clear while my boys have both come up through the grades at tops I have connected with other parents of deaf kids and parents of hearing kids both and we

129want to see a bilingual program where all of the students have an opportunity to learn together that they can Witness they are witnessing the separation and inequity segregation and inequity around the learning situation and among the staff among the staff and the parents like me I hope you all have read the letter and the artwork that the students and parents sent to the board the hearing kids want to learn sign and they recognize that they can't connect without it and the deaf kids want the hearing kids to learn to connect with them as well in some of the letters we sent when I saw them my heart broke when I saw what the kids had seen in with their deaf and hard of hearing friends not having the access they should have my heart hurts

130because my young son can't connect with his peers in third grade at school his relationships are very superficial hearing parents know that it's not enough to just show movies with captions or you know with the birthday party events at school with me I know that I need to interpret for school events I need a quiet environment for Clear communication those are my needs and it's terrible that the school is forcing each that the school district is forcing each building to prioritize their money to make a decision about inclusion it's a basic need of what we need to provide in schools all the talk about inclusion and this this lack of inclusion is what makes this situation happen please do read the letters and the artwork that we sent to you and please provide District funding

131for an ASL teaching position at top school because it is going to benefit everyone at tops thank you the next speaker on the list is Tim Sullivan hi Allison's here and Tim said I could use his time can you hear me uh yeah we can hear you hello go ahead okay thanks very much so hi I'm addressing my comments here to the school board and the district including Dr Jones Dr Pedroza Dr storowski Dr Campbell and Dr McCarthy my name is Allison Augustine and my child attends Stevens Elementary on Capitol Hill I'm advocacy chair of the PTA and I'm also a middle-aged white lady um you may have ideas about what all of that means but please believe that Steven itself is a diverse community that meets some real student needs including a food bank

132special education and dual language Learners and this community has questions about consolidation and because we want to help all students not just Stephen we request the district provide meaningful ways for everyone to engage in this process and transparency of information and processes in the following areas who is making consolidation decisions and what is the criteria the definition of a well-resourced school how will you engage Community meaningfully before making recommendations in October could the capital gains tax Surplus literally buy us time to make inclusive plans that strengthen communities and representative Jamie Peterson has noted boundaries from 10 years ago still impact school enrollment and resources and we're wondering why there are no plans to examine those boundaries at this time it's a huge disservice to our children and undermines our communities trust in SPS if the

133district is not meaningful engage one example is kids club provides before and after child care for working parents of all demographics their partner in the districts and the launch program and they're headquartered at Stevens have you considered that you're putting Child Care at risk which is very much an equity issue I spoke with the executive director of kids club and I know so far that you have not it's just one example we're engaging with many people working to support Seattle children including our senior teaching staff and state representatives Seattle PTA cespa kansba integrated schools Southeast Seattle education Coalition and more we look forward to engaging with the district 2 and will follow up with an email to provide you with an address for responses thank you very much and sorry about the mute the next

134speaker is Francis Lynn Jeremy yeah I can hear you go ahead hello can you hear me yes we can hear you go ahead thank you good evening my name is Francis Lynn and I'm a teacher at Cleveland stem high school and I wanted to speak today over my concern about the funding cuts to mental health supports at Cleveland High School and across the district during the start of the pandemic in 2020 the district made the point to prioritize the mental health of our students knowing about more than just students the well-being of these young people we educate for that stake while some of the impacts of coven have been mitigated the need for mental health supports have not we continue to live through unprecedented times year after year and through it all our counselors and

135social workers tirelessly work to help our students navigate these turbulent conditions that is why I was quite framed at the prospect of cutting funding for our calipers using the underpinning that students who are at running start would not count towards their caseload our counselors wear many hats to go well beyond the job descriptions as we've heard earlier today their day can go from walking a first generation college student through the application and financial aid process to developing a curriculum for social emotional learning to holding the emotions of a student who had a difficult day they provide an anchoring calm to the Maelstrom that is being the young person today already stretched so thin cutting funding to mental health professionals over something as asinine as disregarding running start students on their caseloads as if they are

136not being served by our team would cause irreparable harm to staff and students alike I can't count the number of times I've heard from my students telling me that Ms Abe was essential to getting them to graduation or Mr Lee help them get through a tough year or Miss Chloe just helped them get through the day I don't want to think within deficits so I want you to imagine the scenario instead where mental health is fully support is fully funded for our counselors and social workers have the capacity to reach every student so they can all reach get to graduation and Beyond so they can Thrive through each year or just make it through each day fit in that reality and take that first step fully restore the running start funding to our counselors and

137fully resource mental health supports throughout the district thank you for your time [Applause] the next speaker on the list is Laura Marie Rivera Laura Marie Rivera if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute the next speaker on the list is Cheryl Lynn krauser thank you I'm Charlene Crowther I'm president of the Seattle special education PTSA our organization was one of many working this year to get lawmakers to cover the costs of basic education and together we achieve progress some we had a shared goal we have another one in the successful implementation of our new special education service pathway extended resource implementation needs information families have questions what's happening with access can you do a presentation on extended resource when is the district going to share information is the district going to share

138information Dr Torres made clear why this change is needed in talking about the anonymous IEPs that were reviewed where the difference between students in SEL the social emotional learning service pathway and students in Access the only difference was race the services were the same that has to change making that change successful requires a lot more communication one page on the district website and speaking at our monthly meetings appreciated is not enough and on top of the lack of information there's also concerns about what's happening in classrooms filled with students receiving special education AKA segregated classrooms fewer adults because jobs are open but aren't filled and without a June staff adjustment it gets worse next year overage doesn't work more money doesn't make it easier to meet an increased IEP workload when staff is at or

139Beyond capacity it's wrong that our state has failed its Paramount duty to educate even with a little bit more money but it's what we're all dealing with make this change easier for everyone and increase the communication around extended resource reach out in the multiple languages the texts calls drop videos and please set up Community meetings this month and next with full interpretation tell us what to expect with extended resources for its success and I'm going to take a little extra and also say that every time I come here and I hear my other the other people who are testifying and I hear what they say I realize the challenge is that this board is facing and the superintendent is facing tell the story tell the big broad story those running start students those are powerful

140stories Laura and her brave kids great stories we can do better thank you [Applause] the next speaker is Cara gagne interpreter is waiting for her team one second hi I'm Kara Gagner and I'm a deaf mother of my daughter who is hearing at Gatewood Elementary School in West South West Seattle West Seattle uh May 5th I've I got an email from a teacher that there was going to be a musical performance on June 5th so I was so excited I was so looking forward to it and I requested an interpreter and they said that was absolutely that was fine they would take care of that no problem so two weeks later I had not heard anything so I just checked in again just to make sure that everything was fine and they said okay we're

141gonna check that again and told me the teacher would check that again on June 5th the that that was Monday I went early to make sure that there was an interpreter and that everything was all set which I always do I like to meet The Interpreter before any kind of event just to make sure and this was the last musical performance for their Elementary School experience so right before they graduate so it's very important event so it was seven o'clock and I had already arrived there and there's a paper on a seat that said reserved for interpreter but there was no person actually sitting in the chair that was very upsetting to me as you can imagine this is file the 504 coordinator who had not responded to my teacher's email about this interpreter this

142504 inter coordinator needs to make this request and really broke my heart seriously this person clearly does not understand how this feels to know how to access like this to get there to be in my shoes to have no access to my child's my child's um performance and these access issues are so important at our school we need we need to be equivalent with everybody else not subpar with anybody that's not almost equivalent with everybody else I was so excited and I feel like I had to lie to my daughter to say good job in the performance because I did not actually have the access to tell her the truth about what I couldn't hear in the performance so I really think if you could reconsider your 504 coordinator review and look at that carefully

143about ASL interpreter requests and this is across the board expectations at our school especially it's been year after year I mean 40 or 50 years it's been decades oh come on please we need this to be taken seriously really reconsider and take a look at the situation so that we can do take some action please and thank you so much for your time uh the next speaker is Brooke Gagner oh that's my daughter and I'm not sure if she wants to speak for herself let me see oh she's afraid she's afraid to testify actually I'm checking one second let me see one second please thank you oh apparently not no okay no thank you okay thank you um oh wait wait wait sorry wait here she comes okay coming in okay go go ahead Brooke

144okay great thank you oops he's afraid she's stealing fear yeah yeah thank you anyway thank you all that's okay um before uh before we conclude oh I'm sorry this is Tim Sullivan I was in number 15 on the list and I think you may have skipped me accidentally can I read my statement please um Tim I I think that um Allison Augustine um mentioned that you oh she was supposed to be number 13 on the list and just had a problem with her mute button um okay okay go ahead and make your comments thank you so much hi I'm Tim Sullivan a parent of the kindergartner at Stevens Elementary and co-president of the Stevens PTA I'm addressing my comments and questions about the school board end of the school district including superintendent Jones uh Conti

145Pedroza Mike starowski Marnie Kimball and Mike McCarthy as a parent of a kindergartner and a three-year-old I'm personally invested in the long-term health of SPS in our schools what little I've been able to learn about sps's school consolidation plans leaves me deeply concerned that the school district has not taken the time to learn what is most important to our families and communities if School consolidation decisions are simply math on a budget spreadsheet I'm worried it will destroy communities and undermine long-term value I have a few key questions one are School boundary changes in consideration as part of the consolidation effort if so what is the criteria and how will you avoid some of the problems in the boundary changes from the fall of 2014 which reduced Stevens enrollment from over 400 to under 200. two

146our student transportation options part of the criteria is there waiting for Eco and Community friendly options like walking and biking three is the health and viability of the community around schools part of the criteria if so how is that measured and four how will you learn what is most important to our families and communities at Stevens in a recent survey of the community 72 percent of responders brought their child to school via walking or biking 69 of written comments in that survey referenced the community around Stevens as being their favorite thing about the school those steps are connected because a large school with Street side drop off for private cars simply cannot develop the same level of community as one with daily face-to-face connections between parents if you aren't measuring these critical factors and accounting

147for them in your plans you will destroy some of the greatest value your schools bring to Seattle and you will drive even more students away to private education members of the community are standing by to help with all with the difficult process of balancing the budget and consolidating and reselling schools all you have to do is ask and engage if you wait to meaningfully engage until after your decisions are already announced in October it'll be too too late you will undermine trust and drive away some of your greatest supporters thank you for your consideration before we conclude today go back and check on those who may have may have um Laura Marie Rivera Laura if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute um thank you to the interpreters for offering your services

148today this concludes today's testimony thank you very much and thank you to all those who spent some time with us this uh this evening and sharing your Insight we've now reached the consent portion of today's agenda may I have a motion for the consent agenda I move approval of the consent agenda Serge you seconds approval of the consent agenda has been moved by director Rankin and seconded by director sargu do directors have any items that they would like to remove from the consent agenda director samuritz I'd like to remove item number six please noted any other items that we'd like to remove from the consent agenda this evening okay seeing none may have a motion for the consent agenda as amended I move approval of the consent agenda as amended RG seconds thank you all

149those in favor of the consent agenda as amended please signify by saying aye aye uh all those opposed any abstentions all right consent agenda passes unanimously as amended Okay so uh the agenda item number six has been removed um and I would like to entertain a motion for agenda item number six we're working on it one second uh it's right here I move approval of uh agenda a consent agenda item number six removed from the consent agenda amendment to board policy numbers 1220 board officers and duties of the board 1240 committees 1250 student schools School Board student members 1310 policy adoption suspension manuals and superintendent procedures 1400 meeting conduct and order of business and Quorum 1420 proposed agendas and consent agenda 1620 board superintendent relationship 2015 selection adoption of instructional materials 6550 internal audit policy

150and board procedures 1620 BP board superintendent relationship procedure 1630 BP evaluation of the superintendent and 6550 BP internal audit procedure approval item approval of this item would amend board policy numbers 12 20 12 40 12 50 13 10 1400 14 20 16 20 2015 and 65.50 and board procedures 1620 BP 1630 BP and 6550 BP as attached to the board Action Report you seconds all right thank you so this has been moved by vice president Rankin seconded by director SAR Jew um given that director samuritz has pulled it from the agenda if you have any questions or discussions now would be the time anything further to add to the discussion or comments I think I covered my points and when it was introduced thank you wonderful thank you director Harris it will come as no

151surprise that I won't be voting for this I'm consistent my concern is that I believe we have given away some of our limited power under accountability and transparency I am distressed that we do not have committees I think committees are critically important and the Committees have not been replaced by the work sessions as was promised some months ago I am distressed that we don't have board comments from this dice so that folks that elected us folks that pass our levees on a regular basis can hear from us I think that it's critically important that we stand up get counted right here from the dice I appreciate that I'm in the minority and I hope that I have delivered my comments with a sense of respect and collegiality thank you director hamson I just want to

152offer a couple points of clarity uh that the this particular Amendment though it covers a large number of policies um the Amendments themselves are relatively small and yes they do eliminate our standing committees with the exception of the audit committee however that doesn't mean that we don't have the option to reinstate additional standing committees or ad hoc committees we are trying to the intent is to align with best practices in terms of the types of committees that boards use the best practice being that they are generally standing or ad hoc committees that are created when work needs to be done and that there are instances however where you do have standing uh standing committees and we may as a board choose to do that however the ultimate um practice that is not considered in alignment

153with any kind of understood best practice is to have a alignment of committees with the Departments of the district because then that becomes a control and check on the work of the superintendent and our relationships end up being with staff members as opposed to us working together as a board to set policy that is directing the superintendent specifically to do work and that governs how we work together and our relationships and so I just want to be clear that we're not there's no no limitations to um other committees that may come forward because that's what we decide is appropriate for this particular policy governance structure and there's a whole lot of variation out there that whether it's a governance committee or a budgeting finance committee those are definitely possibilities that we could see in our

154future as potentially permanent committees if it makes sense for the work that we need to do to support the superintendent in creating the conditions to achieve outcomes for students thank you any other directors go ahead director Smith thank you um at our last meeting when this was introduced I expressed my my my support of the the idea of making this job more um sustainable I guess I feel like I'm a better word for everybody um and at the same time I worry that there's a lot of information that is being removed with those committees um and whether or not it's information we can argue all day about how important it is for us have it versus not have it but I'm of the opinion that the more information the better um so I I'll just

155say I'm gonna vote yes on this but I will make it very clear that I and we had a little you know I think superintendent Jones understands that we're still working on our Communications from his office to us and as we lose a lot of the meat of the Committees the information that came in those committees um I just want to make it very clear I I hope we can build that in somewhere in that communication that he establishes with us um because we don't have it yet and I know you're working on it but that is part of what I don't want us to miss out on and especially future board members to miss out on because we've been through there we've seen it we kind of have an idea of what is out

156there that we're not quite seeing up days on and we can ask about it because we've heard of it before ongoing wise future directors aren't going to understand what they're not seeing so if there's just I just again I want to emphasize how much I am looking forward to seeing that come through your Communications to us in whatever form that is going to be created for that like online dashboard or weekly memo or however that is um because it is important for us to have that holistic view of our district um Beyond just the goals and goggles I know we're really focusing on those but our district is not just the golden rules it's so much other beautiful wonderful things that we're not seeing or hearing about with those updates of the golden guard rules

157and monitoring of those so again I support this enough that I'm gonna vote Yes but I do expect and hope to see um whatever parts of those committee information so we can see come forward through your ongoing Communications with us and updates so thank you thank you and let me just be super clear on record I am committing for anybody who might be watching this to solving that problem with y'all I have no issue looking at how can we fit uh much of that information as you know director's request into our current structure so 100 agree looking forward to working on it director Rankin um kind of echoing what director Rivera Smith said and thank you for those those comments I think it's our part of this vote to me is like the mutual commitment

158to building a better structure because the the real root of the problem was inconsistent or inequitable access to information that the Board needs and that the public needs and wants and um so why I'm also supporting this this bar this vote is because um committees became I feel kind of an excuse of you know the district in Big quotes um to say well that's publicly available because it went to the board through a committee and committees are public and when when a lot of times some of that information should actually just go directly to the public and be much more available and accessible in a in a consistent in a consistent way without needing it to come through the board in order to be made public and some of what director rare Smith was saying

159and you know my point in this is that that direction to the superintendent is 100 up to us the this this deciding to to make uh make final or approve approve these changes that have been temporary to be permanent and I say permanent because also future boards can always change it anything is up to a vote of the board it's our policy um that part of doing that is also a commitment to providing really clear direction to the superintendent and making sure that like the superintendent board relationship policy has Direction in it for the kinds of communication and information that we expect and if we find that we're not getting that then we can re-look at our policies or we can look at how we evaluate the superintendent or whatever that may be to direct

160that better transparency of information in a way that is Meaningful and useful to the public and to us as the board as we as we do our work on behalf of our community thank you director Rankin any other comments before we move to the vote director someritz I somewhat disagree that um the standing committees were organized in a way to match the depart I just think that's a little bit of a cynical way of looking at it um I think that it is a really constructive way of reviewing material so um on the operations committee for example I think it makes sense to review capital projects together so that you are weighing them against each other curriculum adoptions things that are related to Student Services it would make sense that we are reviewing them in

161the context of each other as well my primary concern and I just will reiter it again I review the agendas of our standing committees when we had them and I looked at the kind of information that we were getting and we haven't been getting them this year and I understand that we are all committed to trying to create a structure so that we can get that content but I'm really reluctant at this point to to take that leap and so I will be voting though just a quick response I mean that wasn't that's not something that I made up in terms of the alignment with District departments that's something that's been stated and noted about um an inappropriate use of our Authority and our committees um that is considered to have to result in not

162the best Dynamics in districts um so it it's based on Research it's not based on on something that that I made up or that I even you know an opinion that I have you're indicating doubt relative to that I don't I don't know if you want to speak to that but one of the things that I'm concerned about in terms of the information that you're you're talking about and getting access to that is that we as a district have for a very very long time and this is um one of the reasons for the recommendation from Moss Adams to go to a policy governance model is that we've been focused on creating policy and asking for information about the behavior of adults in the system at the expense of holding the superintendent accountable for the

163outcomes of children and so I think to acknowledge where director Rivera Smith is coming from there is a um a painful intermediate period where we switch to information about children that frankly were having to push the superintendent and his staff to begin to gather more regularly or to at least make transparent because it hasn't been available or accessible and if in the meantime we are then have less information than we're used to having that's a painful growth point but is necessary so that our Focus because it's not appropriate for us as a governing body to be providing control and decision making about the inputs right about what the adults do there are certain things were mandated to approve and we will always be mandated to approve large dollar amounts large contracts large projects large structures

164large Frameworks that are connected to the policies that are that are connected to the Vision Values I do think it all goes back to Vision Values you can tie everything back to the vision the values the goals and the guardrails and that's how you create alignment in our in an organization that is by definition the nature of creating focus and alignment and not distracting and pulling the superintendent off into 3 000 different directions because we want to nitpick every last thing I'm not saying you shouldn't have access to that information or that you personally want to nitpick unfortunately the focus on that because there are limited uses units of time takes us away from our focus on kids and until we can demonstrate that we have a focus on kids I don't believe we have

165any business making extraordinary comments about the the practice of the adults in the system and the and the inputs oh director Summers to respond because um director hampson uh offered it and then we're going to go to director Sergey and then we're going to move on um I I will give the example of the capital projects bars that is a legal responsibility we have and yet over the course of this year we've done we've put it all in the consent agenda we haven't in my opinion really had robust conversation about them and I think that was one of the functions of the operations committee um could we have done that work in a different structure possibly but we've suspended these committees for I don't know like nine months now six months now but we haven't

166chosen to prioritize putting the structure into place during this time of the suspension and so at this point while I totally respect the fact that we have a verbal commitment to put structures in place I haven't seen it yet so I'm really reluctant to commit to a permanent change at this point I I have tried to introduce other ways for us to give the oversight that I think we should be doing to the capital projects which is for example I've asked the levy oversight committee to review the bars on our behalf but I'm really concerned about the volume of uh Capital project bars we're putting on consent agenda without having any conversation about them though and before we move on to director srg those can always be pulled we pulled an agenda you pulled an

167agenda item tonight director samuritz so like if you want to talk about it pull it like I'm down I've never not supported somebody pulling something from the consent agenda yeah the the right so that that would benefit of the committee we could predict that the staff members would be there on hand to answer the questions um I I know we I'm really confident we will sort this out but I'm just trying to explain my thought process understood thank you for the context director sardu so for people who might still be watching um I'd just like to encapsulate what you're witnessing it is that it is possible for two people or three people to disagree and I'll be right that is a truth it's an objective fact that's not really my comment um I mean I

168wanted to make that comment because I think it's important for people to understand that we can have healthy dialogue and disagreement on the Deus and at the end of the day get stuff done for kids period that's where I'm always going to go back to and I will say that many of you know I was asked to run for school board I did not independently make the decision and I was asked by my community which is the black community and I've had several black families ask why do you spend so much time on things that are not improving outcomes for black boys are we ready to answer that for those families who are parents of black boys when we're talking about capital projects I'm not saying let's not talk about capital projects but if we

169are willing to spend an hour talking about capital projects are we willing to spend an hour talking about the fact that this District historically has consistently not paid attention to outcomes first specifically black boys we're now seeing it for black girls we have not stopped the school-to-prison pipeline in this district and I'm talking about Seattle Public Schools I'm talking about the state I'm not talking about the country so we can have we we and yes we still need to do the work of approving of engaging in dialogue about capital projects but are we willing to publicly State we're going to do so at the expense of our black boys because let's do it right now let's just say that to the public and be authentic because that's what my constituents who asked me to run

170that's what my constituents have asked me to focus on that's what I'm doing I will do the business of the things that I have to do legally but I cannot stand by and watch this District continue to fail my black and brown kids in this district and I'm getting ready to be the grandmother of a black child in this district and I'm going to tell you things better be different in five years because they will be at Seattle Public Schools so let's figure out how we can do a both and but really we've got to focus on improving outcomes and I don't use furthest from ever educational Justice my board members know that the most marginalized kids in our district because that's what we're doing that's what people understand they don't understand the fancy language

171I am so desperate for us to promise that that all the children in this District that we're going to do right by them but I'm desperate for us to address those we have not done right by and continue to not do right by have you gone yet go ahead have you already spoken um I have a question about specifically capital projects that the the suggestion to have the Bex oversight committee review them I think is a great one because they actually have the content knowledge much more than we as a body do and I'm I guess my question is if the suggestion to have those go through that way should be part of a like I don't I don't I think it's a great suggestion and I don't necessarily think it's appropriate that one director

172has made a request and that like because we govern as a body so is there a way for us to kind of codify that recommendation or is that something that would be necessary in terms of how we make the pathways but then also in the context of that is the understanding of the purpose of reviewing those bars for us is to ensure that that they are compliant with the policies that we have laid out we don't have the like the the committee it was interesting but we're really being asked to vote on that and I think why they're put on the consent agenda is because we're being asked to provide oversight in terms of approving the expenditure not analyzing what is the content of the project that's not our role or our area of expertise

173and so so it's it's so we our responsibility is making sure that our policies are directing those projects in a way that meets with the expectations vision and values of our community and then our vote is to say we see that expenditure and that is being spent on being spent in the way in which we expected and in alignment with our with our with our values but not to evaluate the merits of the individual project that's not we don't know how to do that thank you director Rankin Mr protesta has some insight this won't be an entirely satisfactory answer but um I will note that the Bex BTA oversight committee is chartered by the board so my recommendation would be um for the board to review that Charter and make sure if there's going to

174be assignments to the Bex BK over psych committee that um you know you agree that it's consistent with the charter and that you know be a formal assignment awesome so yeah for sure I mean the big thing here is like a this was a really healthy discussion a lot of the discussions that we've had over the past few months have been incredibly healthy nor do I think oh well I haven't even gone to that part yet but what I think director sargu said cannot be understated is the fact that we don't always have to agree there have definitely been some votes on this board that have gone through um that I have not supported in my in my short three years here but the district still stands and we still are educating children um what

175I would like to say to director summer at this point is like that's exactly it us having the opportunity to have conversations and figure out where these things can fit is a big part of this I didn't know that that was a concern of yours until like now right in terms of staff not being here to present but we have had conversations about this right so it's like I can't help solve what I don't know about right so that's where it's like the trust capacity and our relationship as a board becomes incredibly critical because for you you also have to be able to trust that I'm going to actually do something about it right and that all goes in a cycle of how we operate but this type of conversation and us being able to

176build that trust amongst one another and be able to model that for the system is exactly what we want to happen in classrooms just like this framework it is it was incredibly helpful for me as a teacher to be able to walk into my classroom on day one and have a framework especially as a new teacher in how we did business and how do I educate children by having a framework I'm worrying less about the content and more about building relationships with my students which is what I desperately want to do with y'all right and continue to do and what we have been working toward over the past two years at this point so no every question that we may have is not going to be accounted for under this framework or any framework and

177I know that y'all appreciate that but all that we can all that I can say In This Moment is that like this is a good thing we need to figure out these really big problems many things can be true at the same time and so with that I'm going to stop talking and just appreciate everybody who is up here serving this is incredibly hard and difficult work and you are not only accountable and I want to like lift up the fact that like yes we are primarily accountable to our students and that is our North Star you're also accountable to the people that run into you at the grocery store you're also accountable to the people that you see on the street you're also accountable to the people who we all perceive put us in

178office and it is not an easy thing to be in a position to where when you were receiving that feedback and you don't feel like you have a good answer to give them that's a really scary place to be I'm not diminishing that in any way shape or form I experience it on the daily and so does everybody else on the board but what I can say is that with the work that we have put into this process I believe strongly that it's going to be less about being accountable to the folks that you run into in the grocery store and more about giving those folks coming up to you and giving you a high five because for once we are actually putting children first and so with that again public commitment we will solve

179these problems do I have the answers tonight nope don't get paid enough to neither do y'all but we will figure it out that being said if there are no further comments Miss Wilson Jones below please director Rivera Smith aye director sarju aye director song Moritz Direct oh didn't get me no director hampson aye director Harris vice president Rankin aye president Hersey I this vote has passed through the um a vote of five to two awesome thanks appreciate it okay thank you very much the next thing that we are moving to uh will be our introduction item of which we have one and that item is approval of the annual highly capable program plan for 22.23 do we have a staff member to present on this item yo come on up thank you Dr Torres good

180evening board directors I'm here this evening to present the approval of the annual highly capable program plan so this board action approves the district's highly capable program plan which must be approved every year for Washington administrative code I move that the board approved a highly capable program for submission to ospi for school year 2022 2023 per Washington Administrative Code the district's plan for students who are highly capable shall be annually approved by formal action of the district's board of directors the plan follows a format presented by ospi not approving the highly capable plan is not recommended as failure to approve and submit the plan would result in no State funding support for SPS highly capable services the revenue source and fiscal impact from this motion comes from Washington State highly capable funding and the fiscal

181impact to this action will be 1.7 million dollars in state highly capable funding Community engagement from the winter of 2020 2021 to the present has been focused on actualizing the advanced learning task force recommendations in collaboration with the highly capable racial Equity Services advisory and the practitioners work group in addition to development of deeper engagement with families furthest from educational Justice this family engagement as well as staff engagement has been Central to the advanced learning Department's work decisions made by the advancing Department are considered through an equity lens per policy number zero zero three zero the approval of this plan will allow the district to receive state funding to support students qualifying for highly capable services thank you and open for any questions you all may have thank you Dr Torres do we have any

182questions go ahead director Summers I that we should just be approving expenditures and accepting funding without like a rigorous understanding that the money is being used to the maximum benefit of our students so um it feels weird to question acceptance of money in this regard but um I do have some concerns so um I want to preface this by saying I do not consider myself a so-called HCC Advocate but what I am an advocate for is accessible predictable high quality experience for our students families and staff and I just don't think this is the experience that we have been getting in the last couple of years I um have the privilege of being a mom to for elementary age kids which which means that I've gone through at least three iterations of this identification process

183and it feels really weird that we are constantly changing it um what was interesting to me yesterday in our audit and finance committee meeting is that we looked at this Moss Adams teaching and learning report you know the first recommendations that the school board should be adopting a governance structure but actually one of the recommendations was that the we spend way too much time talking and developing the identification process versus actually talking about what is the service or program look like and so I'm I'm wondering these are funds to ID students but um because we haven't had uh committee meetings I have very little information in terms of what has actually happened in terms of what is the service model for the students that we have spent so much time identifying um and you know

184the information I think that would be helpful to have is to know how many students have been identified in the various permutations of the process of what what has changed I would be interested in knowing how many families have appealed and what were the how many of the outcomes were accepted not accepted and ideally that information would be disaggregated but I'm you know speaking as somebody who is a parent who has experienced this I don't all these changes this has been incredibly frustrating and um that's it I'll take on to that we have come a long way in so-called highly capable I hate the language that we use I hate the language that we use I appreciate that it's in statutes and administrative code Etc um my big concern with voting for this and I

185have voted no in the past because this board hasn't been given the information that I feel I need to be able to vote Yes do I appreciate that advanced learning has been working really hard and trying to work with a system that has been defective and racist for decades oh absolutely I do are we there yet no we are absolutely not there yet and if I hear the word differentiation one more time I'm going to lose what's little left of my mind and now we're going to work with inclusion as well we should and we're asking our teachers then to to teach up to five grade bands meanwhile we put more kids in their classrooms and I don't know that that works and I don't think that we have addressed the twice exceptional students as

186well and frankly again we get back to the word communication and if I as elected board member who actually reads pretty much everything that sent my way and do deep Dives on the web I don't have the confidence I can't do that with a straight face and look at myself in the mirror tomorrow it's not clear it hasn't been clear from year to year to year and there's no there there there's no special curriculum it's just push them on through so then do we lose the foundational issues that those kids need we've gotten rid of walk to math we're in one of the richest fastest growing cities in the country with some of the most educated families that are out there and we wonder why folks are leaving us I don't think we're doing a

187good job in addressing the spectrum of folks no pun intended because we used to call it the Spectrum Program and and just slapping new names on stuff I'm sorry done with that but but as a board member I haven't seen what y'all have been doing I haven't seen the report I haven't seen where we are focusing on African-American boys and girls and that furthers from educational Justice people laugh at us now with that excuse my French I'm sorry I apologize people laugh at us because because we use these terms on a regular basis and we don't back it up um I want to say thank you for I asked in my questions for specificity of Ron what is this funding going towards um the only thing that could have been better than this was dollars

188next to these but I appreciate at least seeing the categories um can you explain to me for the PD support it says AP course summer training registration costs is that APS advanced placement is ap's like assistant principle what can you explain that what that means right there I do have program manager Deanie Berry with me here to help with some of the questions so Danny if you could yeah that's the advanced placement training for teachers every summer advanced placement course training was for Teacher okay and how many take that I don't have this year's numbers yet but it's um usually about 30 I believe I get a new course or an update in the course great thank you and so this is a snapshot into what this money is a specific funding buckets go in

189towards and that's great I agree um that I don't know much more about the program than what I see here because I don't know this is the kind of updates that would usually come to SSC and I or cni and we don't have it anymore and I understand this we just covered that um but it would be great I would personally love to get an update on the program as a whole because I know over the over my tenure we've you know we've redefined that we've changed policy updated the program we've done a lot of movement and things have happened since that time that honestly I haven't been updated on I don't and maybe I missed it so I'll give that but I don't think I've missed any large update because it hasn't come through

190the committee at least because we have the committee that tobby said I would love an update on the program at some point here and that's my personal ask I know for what that's worth I understand that I'm not the board but it would be great I think to get an update on it just so that we all are on the same page of what is going on with it send me an email to Ellie and I director Rankin did we have a scheduled work session for something that director Rankin requested it takes a minute to stand up a system as you all know so send me an email I'm happy to schedule IT director Rankin take it away thank you yeah I I feel like this is regardless of committees or not this is the

191same conversation that happens on this item every year um uh yeah so yeah and also that we do have it's it's publicly available for anybody listening it's at the bottom of the um agenda but publicly available are questions that directors can submit in advance and get get responses to so we have we have opportunity to ask questions if we don't have the information that we think we need to vote on any item and totally agree that as we move towards a structure of how the board gets informed I think it would be very appropriate to explore certain you know a cycle of of different divisions including like Advanced learning highly capable whatever it is as a as ongoing um sort of uh professional development for the board um uh we're actually not the fastest growing

192we have more Tech workers in Seattle than we have Elementary School age kids and our population our our school age population is expected to continue to decline for the next 10 years so I wouldn't say we're fastest growing and also the decline is also happening at private schools so it's not a FL there's no I mean there seven percent decline over of population in Seattle Public Schools four percent decline in enrollment and private schools according to State data since 2018. so there's just no kids here um anyway my question about this is I understand that this is an annually required approval by the board to accept or to verify to the state that money that is allocated for highly capable Services is being spent on spent on those services I am wondering how we might

193make this a more meaningful document instead of okay yeah we do the thing because it's annually required so we're going to do it annually how we can connect it more to some things in our csips about access to like who has access to Advanced and highly capable opportunities because as we've been discussing in terms of service to students and in terms of students for this from educational Justice we are actually monitoring how black boys are or are not accessing Advanced learning opportunities that's not a made-up thing we have goals and guard rails that we regularly monitor progress on in public about different category of students so that's not a made up thing that is what we are doing up here and so my I'm wondering how we can connect this required thing to the csips

194or implementation of the goals or somehow make it less of a thing that we have to check off and and help make this thing that we are required to do something that's also useful to us yeah I'll just start real quick because I've heard a couple comments I'm thinking back to what director sargi was saying about our black our black students essentially hearing director samrid's hearing hearing you all and so I just want to share one quick data point and then I'm going to give it over to deeney to quickly talk about the csip portion of this because that is part of the work that's in process but if we think about the universal screening process and we think about the movement on how we're going to objective measures if you specifically look at the

195number of black students in our system who have now been identified as advanced Learners or highly capable from the years of 2021 to 2022 there was a five percent increase in that just by us taking those Equity moves and aligning ourselves to the state law so I just want to call that out in the space for the public record that it's not just about talking about these things we're doing these things and we're getting movement on these things as well so just wanted to point that out for everybody I think what I'm hearing maybe is that we need to have an annual work session information sharing and we'd be so happy to do that and to your question director Rankin this is part of the work that we've been doing with Sarah miraban and her

196team around as we're working through the csip so how do these topics such as advanced learning live within them so that it becomes part of the actualization of what the schools are doing and I know that previously the bulk of this funding was in identification and paying for weekend testing sites that people had to take their kids to and and all of that and so I hope too that we will see that this money can actually be spent in providing greater access to services for those students rather than this kind of outside testing thing which I know is what you all have been developing and working on um and I imagine that having it having different pieces that that provide information for identification is both a better picture of what students know and can do

197but also doesn't require that we set up this whole outside thing that really doesn't have anything to do with with um providing services and increased access to the actual education for students any other questions on this I don't I thank you very much I sincerely appreciate it all right so uh the next piece is our uh board time use evaluation this is on my plate and I'm now taking April and May long story short I don't have it yet like it just takes a long time to do two months I'm going to be working to get this at our next meeting so I owe all of you a penny for not having it done on time that is my responsibility and I sincerely apologize for not keeping my commitment to the board so with that

198being said there being no further business to come before the board this board meeting the meeting now stands adjourned it's 7 29 pm thank you