Seattle School Board Work Session - May 3, 2023

001[Music] foreign I don't think so the special this special meeting of the board this special meeting of the board the special meeting of the board is now called to order at 4 30 PM please note that this meeting is being recorded we would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people for the record I'll call the roll director Harris that was a present from director Harris director Hersey is not able to join us this evening vice president Rankin here director Rivera Smith present director sargu is not able to join us this evening director song Moritz president and this is director hampson the superintendent is also present we will begin this evening with a budget work session I will now pass it over to

002Dr Jones thank you madam chair hampson we are pleased to be here today this is our continuing education information sharing feedback analysis of how we're getting to a place where we're bringing a balanced budget forward and we have named this funding our future and that is what that is our intent we're trying to make sure that we're being solid in our fiscal stewardship and that we keep our goals and our our most important priorities up front and so today's objective is we want to present the details about the elements of the 20 23 2024 fiscal stabilization plan I'm being specific about that uh and so doing we want to make sure that we focus on the central office adjustments and the reductions we want to highlight the utilization of the economic stability fund also known

003each day fund and we want to update our current Revenue situation basically outcomes from the legislative session uh next week 5 10 we'll have part two of this and we'll focus on uh special education current and future Financial picture so this week we're going to focus on uh again central office adjustments the economic stabilization fund uh update our current Revenue situation with the outcomes from the legislative session so I'm going to pause for a second so that we can get the the notebooks to folks you might be looking at this online but some of us also like paper thank you Connie sir okay if we can go to the to the agenda so we uh doing a little context setting with funding our future then we'll come back with the budget development status update uh

004we'll we'll take a deeper look at the budget development calendar and then we'll spend some time talking about our general fund balancing process uh the third part of the presentation we'll talk about the fiscal stabilization plan and the use of fun the fund balance and one-time funds uh our increase in revenues again that's the primarily the legislative uh work that we did central office cost and then we'll have some dialogue about the next steps in the May 10th meeting and planning for 24 25 and Beyond next slide please again we're funding our future next slide so I wanted to just express some of the Lessons Learned uh going through this 2324 process we've tried to be uh transparent about the process in terms of uh the challenges we also want to be a learning organization

005we are an education institution and we need to learn from these processes this was obviously it's a difficult process but we've had some good takeaways and so we have grown much more knowledgeable about our budget and fiscal picture we haven't had to do this level of critical analysis before so I want to claim that as a learning we also have a much deeper understanding of our resources at not just the division level but at the department level and going through the process of doing the reductions and adjustments folks had to really dig into their budgets in ways that we haven't in the past through this process and thanks to many of you and particularly uh vice president Rankin we've learned to work effectively with our legislators and our Seattle delegation and that's been a great

006learning experience for me in going to Olympia and talking about our issues and being very specific with that I think next time we do this this legislative season I think will be even more effective uh we are now prepared to enter into the multi-year fiscal stabilization planning we've talked about the the fact that we're here in 23 23 24 bringing that plan forward but as we enter into the multi-year fiscal stabilization planning I think we have much more insight and then we have a tremendous appreciation about the complexity of doing annual enrollment Staffing and the budget balancing process simultaneously and so we have some lessons learned there and I think we may approach it differently or at least we're much more aware of what the uh the intricacies of of that are and so uh

007I just want to say thank you to uh everybody in this process and it was difficult I set out a charge to folks to do the the hard work of looking at their Baseline budgets and and bringing forward at least centrally bringing forward almost 15 percent in terms of reductions and adjustments and folks did it and these are the things that we learned as we walk through next slide please so this is worthy of a drum roll almost that we do have a balanced budget plan for 23.24. again this was difficult it was not an easy to to get here but we do have a plan that balances out uh the resolution uh 2022 2314 is numbered as has given us Clarity moving forward it's giving us raw Clarity has given us Clarity around what

008are the elements of this fiscal stabilization plan and we have listened and we've adjusted the plan so in this plan we're not going to have school consolidations in 23-24 we aren't going to have athletic fees and we aren't going to have a three-tier Transportation solution and so I want to acknowledge that we've we've heard uh from from you all and and other folks around these elements and we we've made the adjustments and we've made we found other ways to uh be able to balance the budget so no school consolidations at 23.24 no athletic fees that was as we was once proposed and we're going to a two-tier Transportation solution versus a three-tier and so please note that and we uh we're on the same page about our priorities and in so doing we've prioritized central

009office reductions and adjustments to minimize cuts at the school building level and so that was all very intentional as we've as we've gotten to this point point so uh I want to stop right there just for a second to see if there's any questions about how I'm framing this how we've gone about this and then we'll we'll get into some detail here in a minute but I just want to see if there's any reactions thoughts uh wisdom that board members want to offer up um I have one comment that might even be better for later because I know we're going to talk more about the committed engagement involved with pulling out you know what the plan as we're working on it um but I'm I I know we've seen already a lot of Productions that

010are happening in central office which I I think people stomach better than taking it out of a classroom but at the same time I worry about our capacity to do the engagement we're going to do considering I think we're down to how many digits in our community engagement and family family Partnerships Department um I'm probably getting the name wrong it changes sometimes so um I am concerned about that I'll be very very honest and I know I've said that previously in meetings so um as we do get into with the engagement process is going to be um I'll just throw that out there now that um I I have big concerns about the capacity we're going to have with what we're left with people in that department so I won't name names we know who's

011gone and it's very sad because a lot of our great people aren't going to be with us soon so um I'm concerned about that and we are yeah we are also concerned and um when we enter into the 24-25 uh process we're going to be talking about the concept of well-resourced schools we're going to be engaging in deep conversations with with the community uh and that's going to require a significant uh lift and so we recognize that and we'll we'll have to do uh do things a little bit differently we don't have enough people even if even with our current Staffing level to do the type of robust engagement so we're we're thinking about that Beverly is going to comment on that a little later on the presentation around how are we going to ensure

012that we are getting that feedback back and forth from what the community wants and we started talking about this concept of well-resourced schools we have not defined that yet on purpose because we want to go deep with Community to understand what what that is so uh yes so noted and and we we want to make sure we're doing deep engagement for the 24-25 multi-year process Okay so so moving on I think I'm gonna hand it over to uh to Linda Linda Sebring introduce yourself please and as you come on the mic Linda Sebring budget director so I'm going to go briefly through where we're at in the timeline right now and we are getting towards the end of our timeline here we're on May 3rd with this budget work session we have basically three major

013activities left we have the special meeting part two next week and then we'll be we will be bringing the budget to the board for introduction on June 21st and have our public hearing on the budget on that same day there is a scheduled vote for the budget on July 6th which is a Thursday next slide so this is a little bit more Deep dive down and part of that learning and sharing of knowledge this is where we're at right now in the detail behind the scenes of what's going on we're in a budget balancing process in the finance division so this week we've been working on reconciling the budget which right now is about 34 000 lines of data um that that's what our budget is um there's about 166 grants and when the legislature

014did their funding recently and we'll talk a little bit more about this later they had just made a major adjustment to pension rates which we talked internally and made a decision that we needed to adjust all of our costs for labor because it was just too big of an adjustment to not take so we had to adjust all of the grants our non-grant positions we can automatically do with our software but the grants you have to go through piece by piece to get them back in balance um so we were finishing that up we have to make sure that every one of those 34 000 lines has state required coding so that when we upload it to ospi they don't boot it out so that's what's been happening this week and then we lock the

015budget for changes and what I mean by locking the budget is all those lines of of data they stop moving it doesn't mean that there can't be decisions changing what we might do with the budget but it will not be reflected in the budget book nor will it be reflected in the recommended budget we will be setting a dollar amount for the budget and anything we'll have to play Within that dollar amount so any changes in expenses will have to have other offsetting changes and expenses starting next week through the 21st of this month we start building data sets for our budget document which is technically the budget book so we pull all the data and start writing that narrative to explain what do we do what is this budget what what are all these

016numbers mean as I put in a third bullet if there are changes after today what we'll do is we'll put a page in front of the budget book saying that the book may not reflect these changes in these analytics but here's what happened after this point so just to know that at some point we have to lock it because there's a lot of tasks that have to occur in order to get those analytics done and get to people getting at the end of this month um we will be doing a final review and edit of the book and then send it to publishing services and we'll be starting to draft the budget resolution and board Action Report the reason all this stuff has to happen by June 5th is there's a public hearing that's happening

017on June 21st and we have to get notices out to the public by June 7th and when you send out a notice you also have to have your budget document available so it may seem like we're doing things you know faster than you might want us to be doing them but in order to stay on the current timeline the board is laid out these are the things that are happening behind the scenes so just wanted to give a little bit more in depth on what was going on there next slide and now I'm going to pass it to deputy podesta good afternoon everyone Fred podesta interim Deputy superintendent um I'm going to give what's labeled the fiscal update which is really um to highlight the changes since the last time we got together in a

018budget work session which was at the end of February while all this is a difficult subject again as Dr Jones said ask for a drum roll when we met in the last work session we didn't have a path to balancing this budget we were still had nearly a 21 million dollar Gap to fill and so it's good news that while these are hard decisions and um we'll have impacts on us all it's good that at least there's a path that we can get there and so this was the picture that we described to you um again at the end of February and if I could have the next slide um this summarizes the changes between uh February 28th and today with the line items that changed highlighted in the table I will note that we

019have not since we're getting ready to finalize this budget we'll have other year-end issues that the 24 25 numbers are not updated yet that we haven't remodeled what that looks like so we should really focus on the current year which for the next few weeks that's really our focus is to get this budget reconciled once and for all and then move into the multi-year planning work that we described which at the start of this conversation we set our problems our bigger than can get solved in a year we really have to have a longer runway in how we do this process and that's an aspect we really appreciate of the resolution that the board adopted on on the 26th it instructs us to refine our planning and budgeting processes to get to a multi-year sustain

020plan which means the calendar that Linda just walked you through will look a lot different in future years and we need to move some decisions and big strategies more Upstream in the process so we're not at this stage and still making um difficult decisions so the things we refined our estimate of the ending fund balance to add four hundred thousand dollars there we use we're proposing to liquidate the entire economic stabilization fund which we will need to repay and we'll talk about later it's while we would prefer not to use the whole thing it's good that it's there it's good that it's bigger than that if if we had always held it to the minimum amount it could be we would once again be back in a place where we're not sure how to balance

021this coming budget and that's why we need to do multi-year planning because we're going to need to replenish that fund the capital funds transfers stayed the same we have been going through very rigorously the balance that we may have on Esser funds and it's pretty much all committed but there are some that we can apply um to balancing fiscal year 23 24. our specialized Special Education team has done a tremendous job applying for safety net funds so we're seeing a big increase in applications this year and expecting that to carry into the coming year so that will help us close the gap for next year the reductions in the central office which have been the centerpiece of this we did not quite hit the target of um 33 million dollars but we came very close

022and it's uh I can't say enough um a good words about Linda and her team and all my colleagues across the district who really dug deep to find efficiencies in the central office rethink how they can do things um and likewise with school level reductions these are kind of systemic things that we did we had modeled uh when we came to talk to last time 11 million we ended up at the 10.2 million dollar Mark so again in both those areas a district a good job and came very close and then in this presentation we're really balancing this with the impacts of the recent legislative session which we'll also go to in a bit more detail so that uh again while this is very difficult process these are very difficult um a decision so it's

023really great to be in a position where we at least have a path as opposed to not sure how we're going to get there I think we're going to take a pause now and ask Dr Pedrosa to kind of facilitate some discussion of what we've covered so far hello everybody um so I am going to be a facilitator for the next at least two questions as we process the information we have I just want to share with all of you that we when student outcomes Focus governance was first adopted last year the the we in Dr Jones the Dr Jones leadership and the team we have embarked on a type of inquiry process internally which we call project management oversight in terms of really analyzing our goals and our guard rails and our district initiatives

024so that's been a process we sort of turned ourselves inside out to do that and so we're gonna one of the we're gonna practices of those protocols here for you in this process so the first one is just to share uh the next slide please and we call it a whip around so we'll go through a ripple round process with all of you so what is the most important thing you are curious about or have learned from the last series of presentations around the budget so we're going to keep that I'm going to just I'll have someone start but then we'll rip around um and hear from everybody so I see you have your uh your mic so go ahead oh I was just going to ask if you could Define whip around because I

025wasn't familiar with that term Val on the board office was kind enough to look it up for me yeah I understand it's an educate teacher's term yeah and I'll say it was a process that actually small cabinet needed to work on themselves on a full disclosure we finally got it down to a whip around process and by the third session correct it took our many times so a whip around process so everyone gets to have I guess to process the information the question might be thinking about uh the question and then in a whip around Fashion we're going to start so everyone has a voice so everyone has an opportunity to share um a response to the question and if you're not yet ready we will come around to you but everyone at least in

026a very succinct um and we say like one or two top level thinking around the question or answers to keep it high level so that we can hear from everybody in the space so that's the protocol we've been using uh it's challenging but um but it's the way so everyone's voice can be heard and then we'll just follow a succinct and go around the room and then um and that at the end if somebody wants to make an additional comment they can but they'll be more reflective questions as we go there'll be three a series of three questions oh yeah and then you can pass that's the final piece you can pass if you if you don't want to say anything you have the opportunity to pass so all right are you ready to go

027or does somebody want to go first no I was gonna ask okay great so we'll start we'll go for round two Rankin director Rankin sure and we'll go this way um I think I'm the most curious about you know thinking past this year about the you know well repaying the economic stabilization fund makes me really nervous I am also really glad that we have that available because during covid there was a lot of pressure to well we should just spend all of that and we would be in a really different situation right now if we didn't have that to go to um but I'm worried about that that's that's increasing our future deficit because that's money in the future that we will have to put back in that fund rather than spend from operating funds

028that we get from the state so I'm curious about you know what that is going to look like how that's going to work um I'm also curious about it's just one thing right it's one or two things okay you can say yeah we're going to try to keep us on track because we've got a tight schedule today the other one time so I have a larger curiosity around Esser funds and what um that I see that some of those will help or some potential Solutions but there are also things like Elementary level social workers that are being paid for through Azure funds that will not exist in the future so uh I'm curious about the existing services or positions that we have that are funded through Esser that we will either have to make decisions

029about not having any more or find different sources of funding um because that that money has to all be spent by August of 2024. um all right yeah thank you director song Moritz I think I'm most curious about um the risk to operational Integrity for the central office adjustments and I think that knowing the narrative behind how each department approached their Cuts will be helpful in understanding what are the risks to operations like one that kind of quickly comes to mind for me for example is the adjustments to Transportation I'm curious you know how we will be mitigating the risk of the domino effect when there's a lake bus for example and I do actually have some specific questions now that I'm doing to see the side by side of what our previous projections were

030and our current projections but we don't have to answer this right now okay director Harris thank you for the clarification on athletic fees thank you very much on that and thank you for pushing out more detail on this and I see some two by two questions that I hope was the trigger for that information part of my continuing frustration is we have all these departments we have all these employees we don't really have an up-to-date org chart we don't really have uh job descriptions and I take this extraordinarily seriously in in my role as elected and fiduciary so some of this and I appreciate that it would be 25 pages long but the underlying issue here is kind of a lack of information and and we need to be learned up we need to be

031fed on a regular basis so that we can in fact do our jobs with the fiduciary intent thank you thank you director of Aerosmith um thank you I kind of already shared a curiosity I had about our ability to do the engagement that we need to do so I think I'm also going to piggyback a little bit on director's song where it says request to know a little bit more of the thinking and the rationale behind those cuts because I like to assume they weren't arbitrary and they were actually strategic um but knowing how that happened I think would would help us not just in our job but in our Communications with the community to explain how and where those were beyond that I'm curious about I look at the comparison um brought between on

032the May but most of your budget planning as a May 3rd looking at this next year versus the following 24 25 a lot of the places that we're pulling from for 23 24 aren't apparently available maybe because just there's there's line like as if they don't exist for 24.25 I'm wondering if we know those aren't going to be available or if they potentially would be um like specifically we're using um Capital funds for 23 24 but not for 24.25 I'm wondering if that's going to be another possibility I know that as we're still building you know there's been contention that you know that that's money that could be better used elsewhere I know that we know it can't necessarily be used elsewhere but clearly some parts can because we're doing that so can that happen

033ongoing later is next year the end of that thank you thank you and director hampson so a echo or companion comment um curiosity around Dr song moretz's concern or I think you stated as mitigation to the the cuts in central office and um I'm thinking about it in terms of compliance uh maintaining adherence to compliance and in and continuous Improvement in that same vein and how we stay committed to that and there's a whole subset of things that I won't go into but and then the other thing I'm curious about as we go into our policy governance process and adopt a more focused governance policy manual what critical directions remain uh what critical directions that that we need to provide to you the superintendents uh remain in terms of the vision and value clarification in

034that that policy development as in the the core governance policies that are regularly updated where where are you all seeing that we're lacking um having provided clear Direction uh because I think that would be really good feedback at this particular time thanks thank you I will pass this on to I believe uh is it Fred podesta uh yes thank you we're gonna walk through uh the first part of the plan as as Dr Jones looted we're going to discuss uh some of the strategies tonight and then some on May 10th if I could have the next slide please so there are really seven big moves if you will categories of moves that are make we're making to um resolve the approximately 131 million dollar deficit that we planning deficit that we went into this um

035we've mentioned a couple times already liquidating the economic stabilization fund some kind of single biggest line item in here there are other uses of one-time funds um that were taking advantage of Esser and other other things as well um and you know that as uh director Smith noted that that's why we need to get into multi-year planning because some of the strategies that we have this year are not going to be available to us next year we found ways to increase revenues largely through the uh through the great work that many people did to get a positive legislative outcome and then we focused really as far as making either funding adjustments or cost reductions in the central office and we have two categories they're uh Staffing costs and non-staffing costs so we'll go through those

036in a little bit more detail as we go the again the if we can go to the next slide um we'll talk together about using fund balance and our reserve and I'm going to ask Linda to go through that to explain policy around it and also the replenishment plan um thank you so what you see on slide 17 is to answer some of director Smith's questions uh the allowable costs to Capital fund I'll just jump there that was not extended in this legislative session so that will not be available for 23.24 Esther funds as we discussed have to be fully expended by August 2024 so when we not will not be available the economic stabilization fund will not be available for 24.25 the sorry for jumping around a little I should probably change the order

037of these things but they eliminate unrestricted unreserved fund what that represents is when we end the financial year and we take all of our revenue and subtract out all the our bills it's whatever's left over so that is considered a surplus from operations we don't and to we don't know what that might be going forward um we have a 1.1 billion dollar budget I don't have the final number for 23.24 but there's anticipation that hopefully we will have something left over at the end it's very hard to land exactly on the penny so we will monitor that and whatever we might have left over I'll talk a little bit more on the next slide which is how will the board and everybody want us to use it so jumping into slide 18 . this is

038a the full Narrative of policy 6022 which is our economic stabilization fund the highlighted portion refers to if it drops below three percent um that there must be a plan to rep pay it and that we have to bring a resolution forward to the board asking for permission to utilize it as recommended in the policy up above which is to buffer The District in difficult times like this to protect programs or and general fund shortfalls that's in the first bullet up above the reason for this fund is to fund activities that would be reduced suspended or eliminated due to general fund shortfalls next slide please so slide 19 is a repayment plan that we are proposing and we will be bringing to the board next week for a introduction and action of a resolution to

039use the funds and then a repayment plan and as you can see in the policy we will be reviewing this repayment plan on an annual basis with the school board in case something changes our current strategy is we would start the repayment in the 24-25 school year since we're borrowing it to pay for 23.24. we won't be able to start looking at repaying it until 24.25 we are also proposing a five-year repayment plan to get it back to three percent right now it is at four percent so if our expenditures are maintained in the 1.1 billion dollar range that would require 33 million dollars or 6.6 million per year for five years so that's the economic stabilization fun next slide please do we want to pause just for a quick second I see we have

040some some questions about the economic stabilization fund please does this District have any precedent for using the entirety of its fund fy0102 consequence also of declining enrollment or was there a one-time event there were a lot of events at that time I'd have to go back I joined the district in O3 um there were different it was a different situation and again it was it was cumulative of a variety of things and yes the district did not have this policy in place so the policies changed regarding the economic stabilization after that event occurred um on the previous Slide the use of the fund balance one-time funds um the allowable costs from the capital fund you said wasn't extended in this legislative session does that mean that that would be I know you know next legislative

041session is not a budget year it's a supplemental year supplemental budget year but uh asking for extending authority to districts to use Capital funds more flexibly wouldn't impact the state budget so would that be something that would be a good thing to advocate for in session in 2024 it is definitely something we can advocate for we did Advocate with our lobbyists this year for it I believe the I don't remember for the senator or representative individual who helped champion this last two times and they are no longer in the legislature so there's no one that our lobbyist was able to find who wanted to bring this forward I mean I think but there are good reason there are some good reasons Statewide not to do that because districts it's really inequitable for districts that don't

042have the capital funds available to do that and ultimately the responsibility of basic education is the state so if districts are using local Capital dollars to offset the cost of basic education that gets into a whole weird however um there are a whole bunch of districts that are going I mean 200 something districts out of the 295 districts in the state are having or have had this same meeting that we're having right now with different numbers and different you know some different conditions but um everybody is looking at how to reconcile their budgets due to you know chronic underfunding slash outpacing of costs due to funding and enrollment Decline and so I would imagine that in next legislative session there will be a lot of discussion of like how what Avenues are there for the

043state to allow districts to use more money for Capital funds without the state actually increasing Revenue to provide those to districts so that was this might be something that to talk to folks about in the interim and just ask what legislators that will be there next session might be anyway I'm thinking about like pros and cons but this is something that I'm seeing as something we we could look to for next session um to increase that allowance knowing that next session is not a session where more money is going to be coming yeah and then um the other question on the economic stabilization fund I mean I'm assuming that you're presenting this as an option because it's a good option my Wonder is um you know is finding 6.6 million dollars every year for the

044next five years realistic and possible and how can we help future boards and our community understand like when it comes to that that this was a choice that was made to close the gap right now and we still have to make it up and we will be doing future boards you know we would be doing future boards and the district a great disservice to use this fund and not replenish it basically so I guess my question is this is something that feels feasible and is not a kicking of the can I think it does feel feasible to do in the as Linda pointed out um it is hard to land a 1.1 billion dollar budget exactly so yeah we hope we're hopeful that we'll really be taking that out of your end reserves is is

045likely how we'll be funding it I don't think anything longer than five years was already a bit long yeah because I mean this has meant for unplanned emergencies and um to plan on being lucky for more than five years it doesn't seem like a plan so if we can do this fat and that's why that annual review is important if we can structurally build budgets that gets to 6.6 million dollar contribution in and use year-end reserves that would be a better approach um because um things do happen you know our current Financial situation is not a rainy day thing it's weather it's a structural thing it's climate change and this is this is meant that's true this is meant to solve uh you know on so it's really good that we have it but this

046isn't really what it was for um and and it's only makes sense that we use this but we we need to make structural changes we're not reacting to a short-term one-time thing we are reacting to a new reality so I we need to replenish this as quickly as we can yeah I don't I absolutely don't want to put future boards in a position where if an emergency comes up that's not available so okay I just had a brief question about the why the 6.6 million as the trigger on the um underspend or Surplus so how we arrived at 6.6 million we decided that a five-year window seemed reasonable and is within our kind of low year-end kind of balances so we need a 3 30 we need a 33 million dollar fund so 6.6 million

047is a is a fifth of 33 million dollars oh that's all it's not yeah yeah that's okay so so that's um we're again we're and again we have big challenge I mean be honest 24 25 is going to be harder than this year was okay I guess that's not how that reads to me I'm saying to me it says it's saying that any if there's Surplus any underspend exceed 6.6 million any sir well what we're saying is let's try to budget for 6.6 million structurally okay because and use kind of reads like it's saying above and beyond 6.6 million we're hopeful that that would be a discussion as part of that annual review is if we build a budget for 24.25 that includes the repayment plan and then at the end of fiscal year 24

04825 we also have a year in balance that the annual review would also decide should we use some of our urine balance to make yet a bigger contribution than 6.6 million so um oh okay that's but we're saying let's plan for a minimum of that and then decide and again as we get into multi-year budgeting we'll have different sorts of discussions of when we close the books about what what's we'll have a discussion on the front end what what's the right thing to do with it 6.6 plus plus okay if it's just something about the way it's worded if there is any plus so that's good feedback since we're writing this resolution yeah that we make sure that that we're clear what they're saying you don't want to get on the wrong side of that

049yeah uh yeah I think one way or the other what we're really trying to say is a minimum one whether it's your imbalance or but built into the budget a minimum of 6.6 a year is what we'd like to do okay I'm hoping that Linda can talk about what is in the underspend budget what's that made up of is is that positions not filled Etc and what has our underspend been annually for say the last three to four years because this is not this doesn't give us context is my concern uh so if you can answer that question briefly and if you need more clarification we'll do it after this our next part of this meeting and then director songwrits uh also keep your question brief and if there's any further clarification needed we'll go

050back to that after the um and my m-m-i-wp um Proclamation so um the brief answer is we had this thing called covid that threw the district in a spin one of these years three years back we ended the year with 75 million unspent and that's what's funding this year uh pre-covered we were very happy when we ended the year with about 20 million unspent from one year to the next but we do an autopsy every year and we look at where we have underspins and where we have overspins and we use that to adjust the budget for the future so to end with 10 million is starting to become a very low number but there's anomalies that happen we have austerity measures in place right now we are not filling all vacant positions but we

051also have some costs that we didn't anticipate coming into this year that are significant so it's all a balancing act of there's overages and there's under areas within the program and this is where when the Music Stops where the system is at 10 million is very close to the edge planning on more than that is probably it would be a blessing if we ended with that but it would also say that we still have excesses in the in the budget and I don't believe that is the 6 '5 projection or is because right now has we have a 104 million dollar resource Gap where we need to add another 6.6 million to that potentially we have not updated the 2425 budget once we finish our major decisions on 2324 we will be building a out

052year three year out years it's part of what we bring to the board every year is out Years and we're going to be doing in a more detailed version of that this next year but it's still it's a it's still at a very high level and we won't be done with that probably until the end of this month okay okay for a pause all right we will now be pausing the budget work session to offer a proclamation on missing and murdered indigenous people awareness during murdered missing indigenous peoples Awareness Week I'm going to read a short statement pass it over to superintendent Jones for some very brief remarks who will then pass it to our director of Native American Education Gil Morris and then we'll invite our students up to do the proclamation and offer

053a song so I wanted to share just two things for folks to know if you are interested in more information about the this week of action I encourage you to go to the indigenous Women's Resource Center they have a tremendous number of um resources that you can use on social media but also resources to educate yourself and also for reporters to want to report on the topic of murder missing indigenous women and uh and additionally I wanted to highlight that here in Washington state um the in 2022 the murdered missing indigenous women and people mmi-wp task force was formed with some really spectacular art on the on the front page I encourage you to to pull it up on the state's website and considering what remarks to give I really wanted to highlight the words

054of of the members of this task force with respect to the perspectives of native people here in Washington state and so I'm going to take a few things from from their statement at the onset of this report and I I don't know when the next report is coming out but this is some some really solid work I'd encourage folks to to keep an eye on it it's a really amazing group of of representatives from the Native community that make up this this task force since settlers arrived in the Pacific Northwest violence against indigenous people has been a constant and pervasive threat to safety sovereignty and traditional ways of life In 1855 the rape and murder of a Yakima woman her teenage daughter and young baby became the first official recorded instance of an mmi-w case

055we've been fighting for justice ever since every racial group has uniquely experienced white supremacy systemic racism and institutional violence the disproportionate violence experienced by indigenous people is the result of specific targeted federal state and local laws and policies that sought elimination through Force relocation removal and brute force with intention of destroying communities and culture this harm continues when indigenous people are murdered or go missing and the compounding effects of this historical drama trauma are felt deeply in our communities and fully addressing this harm we must acknowledge the unique relationship that our communities have to the land and the responsibility of the state and federal and local governments have to our people the failure to live up to this responsibility only continues the oppression and subjugation of our families and culture throughout the process to date

056families of missing or murdered loved ones have shared powerful testimonies about how systemic and institutional barriers create and reinforce existing harm trauma and pain and I'm sure we'll be hearing some of those from our students today uh this Proclamation uh brought forward by unea and representative students is a first step of many as we work to correct history restore balance and uphold the unique status of native people in our state in doing so we aim to find Equitable implementable solutions that are grounded in our district our city our state and our nation I'm sorry let me let me start that sentence over in doing so we aim to find Equitable implementable solutions that are grounded in indigenous values and ways of knowing and to that end we worked uh was fortunate to get support from

057staff members um Gail Morris and Lisa love to make sure that we were able to connect this Proclamation directly to experiences of uh Native students in SPS and to provide the superintendent with some direction as to what we can what we would like to see in order to take that full knowledge of this uh disproportionality of experience of violence and make sure that our students have that awareness as they're going through the system and also that we're tracking the extent to which they're suffering those things and we're hearing from native students about their experiences and looking to them for uh their voice in terms of how we solve those problems going forward as a school district so that we're not just looking at this as something that's out there and separate from us but it's

058part of the work that we do here and then I'm going to turn over to superintendent Jones and he's going to let um Gail Morris talk about what she's doing to help train Educators in SBS to make sure they're able to teach about murder and missing indigenous women and people go ahead superintendents yes I'm honored to be representing Seattle public schools in this endeavor to recognize this Proclamation murdered missing in indigenous people and women this is a tremendously important matter it's it's going to be something that we are going going to be in a leadership position on so I want to thank unea I want to thank the students for your voice we remember when you came to the board meeting and you advocated for such an important Endeavor I also want to thank our

059board members for teeing this up and being uh and getting behind this and so particularly with director hampson and her urgency on this matter so we are really thankful that we have Gail Morris here to walk us through to give us some context for why this is so important and this work is again something that I'm I'm honored to be be part of and so thank you director hampson and uh Gail I'm going to turn to turn the podium around so we can we can make this happen hold on please or do you do you want to sit up here do you want to go to the podium where do you want to go Gail okay that sounds good come on up Braden first I'm going to thank School Board directors for inviting us me

060us to come um director Hampton for putting this together and superintendent Jones for always being a part of this um to unea and to all this SPS students and um clear skies students and interns and their families that are here I brought my grandson with me because we are on our way to hockey and so I won't be able to stay very long but um this is really important to me so first of all I'm Gail Morris I am Nichola first nations from the west coast of Vancouver Island I'm also um Shawnee and Scottish on my father's side from West Virginia um let's see this is really important to me do you want to say Who You Are Raiden this is a really important topic to me growing up a lot of my aunties my

061cousins went missing you know on we I was born here to avoid residential school but grew up on Vancouver Island until I had to come back and I grew up in Seattle Public Schools there's this highway in Canada it's called The Highway of tears and it's a highway where a lot of um native women are stolen and murdered and this hits home to many of us back home on the island and many people in the interior because it's interior but a lot of people leave our Island and they go up there for jobs Fish Camps whatever and they've gone missing we haven't found most of our missing aunties and cousins and sisters and I've grown up wondering what happened to them and we didn't talk about it like we do today and I'm just so

062proud of that that we actually have a voice to talk about this because we do need to talk about it um and we could get into big details but I'm not going to take the time away from the students but one of the things that I think and I hope that you guys address is why this is a huge issue on reservations because of state laws the police laws reservation laws um and and so they get away with with what is actually happening um I know a couple years ago Matt remley was working with city councilwoman Deborah Juarez on a similar Proclamation and it started to come out at that time and I was thinking why aren't we doing something in Seattle public schools and for me I knew why we weren't doing it because

063we had to research more on it because it's such a sensitive topic and we want to make sure that we're giving the information correctly to teachers because first of all we know that teachers are reluctant to teach tribal history because they feel like they're not native so how can they teach it so we encourage them to do it and we're trying to find ways to help them navigate this and then finding material that is age appropriate like Raiden's in second grade what are they teaching in second grade right what are they doing to the young kids to kind of start scaffolding that knowledge as they get older and we did find a few things that we put into the library but we didn't want to put it into the Library without actually giving proper training

064so every month we do professional development on what we call Red Wednesdays that's where all teachers take training and every month we have something different and we do it in a month in advance so we actually did Miss intermittent murdered indigenous women in April so that teachers could plan with us and be prepared for May yeah today we just did one on two Spirits so that they can prepare for June so what we did is we did the training online we found resources on online we have them in our library and we posted them in our schoology course page now I can't share that because it's internal um and unless you're a teacher it you can't you can't access it or an SPS employee we tried to put stuff on our external page as well

065for people to use um we don't want to keep the curriculum so we do have an external site under American Indian studies and um well um April was a short month and a lot of people got sick this month and then um you know we just kept trying to update it as much as we can and then tried to get books out to teachers and Shanna was going into schools and helping teachers with their curriculum that they're going to use so the most important thing for us was to educate staff on what it is and what does it mean and how it impacts us and the trauma that we go every day through that um and we do and how are they going to teach that then we had to talk to them about triggers

066like what are some of the triggers when you're teaching this curriculum with students because students can be triggered because you don't know if they actually have an auntie and grandma or someone who's missing um and I think that's really important we did find a red dress project and I'm sure you all know about the red dress project that what we felt was a little appropriate for younger students and we talked about how to implement that in the classroom and then there was no I'm sorry that was a faceless style project and then there was the red dress project that was we did for the older school age children and then we talked to them about Rosalie fish's activism and many people who are many people are very familiar with Rosalie fish if you're not she

067became in I mean like nationally um famous she's a runner it was a black and white picture as the red hand across her mouth and it really sparked um it really sparked the nation into action and so um a lot of what we were doing was trying to at least get the word out and I'm so grateful that this Proclamation is going to come out so that we can actually add that to teachers um for a resource so that they can help students understand what it means um you know we talked about um if students asked about missing and murdered women girls two-spirit you will be prepared to respond to them and we use guidelines from their voices will guide us on the website mmiwg ffada I can send this page out I wasn't asked

068to bring anything today so I only do what I'm asked to do because sometimes I bring too much um for Middle School in high school we showed videos Linked In the presentation and what they could use we recorded it so teachers have access to it um if students wish to become involved we suggest using the online um the mmip organizing toolkit which is a really great site to look at and it and it's linked to all these different missing and murdered indigenous women sites that you can that you can use and it's an amazing site um and you know we're here the best that we can say is that we're here to help you through this like what do you need so curriculum especially Shannon Brown has actually gone into schools and worked with teachers

069on what it looks like to present the information in a way that children will understand it I wanted to make sure that we weren't just presenting it in a way that glossed over why why it why it is and and it and it was something that we really and we're going to keep working on it because it's not an easy topic to discuss it's it's a heavy topic to discuss and it's and it was and it's really hard to train to especially if you're impact by it um in women missing in your life um we did this that we sent out to people no more Stolen Sisters red uh wear red on May 5th I wore mine I've been in schools today and people were teachers were like oh my god did I miss it

070and I'm like it's actually May 5th I'm like I'm doing this today um to give a little update on what we're doing and then we put this on the site and it has the links on it if anybody wants it they can email me and I would be happy to give them this with the links on it um like I said I didn't make any in advance for everybody but I feel like this is really an opportunity to work with organizations to make this a stronger curriculum to get more people in here to talk about it to find um ways to implement it in a way that students are supported because it is such a heavy topic um and it in its way for us to tell our stories and our stories since colonization right

071since they landed uh well I'm going to say here on Plymouth Rock but in general down in the Tiano people's territories right so um this is definitely a work in progress and it's something that we're not taking lightly and we're really working hard to make sure that the content that we use and that teachers use are using it correctly or they can ask us for help and so that is my update on that and um again I'm just grateful that you know there are people out there there are people everywhere putting this work out thank you so much it's a lot it's a lot it's it's we're treading we're we're treading until we can like really with Fidelity figure out how we can address this in in all ages of children because it it's a

072lot thanks Raiden [Applause] so now um I believe we're going to read the proclamation first does that work okay so Isabelle hawkinson's going to read the proclamation where would you like to read it from do you want to be here okay and I just want to note um yeah right here for you uh that I would suggest that we come back in a year and look at some of the recommendations that are made to the superintendent and see where are we with them because they're pretty critical components and look would be more than happy to work on students that are interested in getting involved at a deeper level if they want to work with any other SPS staff on um because there's definitely a role to give for students to have voice in these things

073so take it away easy I'm Izzy Hawkinson old Harbor tribe and I go to Roosevelt High School I'm in junior a proclamation of Seattle School District number one King County Seattle Washington declares May 5th as missing or murdered indigenous persons Awareness Day mmip mmip awareness day is an opportunity to raise awareness to the national and local crisis of missing or murdered indigenous people whereas mmip is an acronym inclusive to all of our indigenous relatives including lgbtq plus two spirit and is alternatively written as mmi-wg and miwip2s or mmiw whereas on May 2022 President Joe Biden proclaimed May 5th as National missing or murdered indigenous persons awareness day a day for actions calling justice and whereas indigenous women's girls men boys and two-spirit people are more likely to be targeted with various violent crimes such as

074trafficking murder homicide rape and sexual assault crimes and Washington data source whereas Research indicates one in three indigenous women's are sexually assaulted or raped in their lifetime and four in five indigenous women experience violence in their lifetime and whereas a recent study found that American Indian and Alaska native women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average whereas according to the recent data report 393 indigenous people went missing in Washington in 2022 whereas Seattle has the highest number of mmi-wg cases according to a study by Urban Indian Health Institute of 71 cities across the United States and whereas according to the recent CDC data among teens Nationwide more than one in ten teeds have been forced to have sex up to 27 percent since 2019 American Indian or Alaska native youth

075were significantly more likely than most other groups to experience for sex at one in five American Indian or Alaska native students were more likely than students from other racial ethnic groups to experience sexual violence at 16 percent a higher percentage of American Indian or Alaska native and black students experience unsustainable housing compared to Asian Hispanic and white students American Indian or Alaska native students were also more likely to experience Mental Health crisis such as considering suicide 27 percent plan 22 percent or attempt to Suicide 16 than any other ethnicity or racial group American Indian or Alaska native students also have the lowest rates of feeling connected to someone at school with 54 percent whereas most recent 2022 Seattle Public Schools School climate data indicates American Indian and Alaska native teen students have the lowest overall

076rates of experiencing belonging social emotional well-being equity and in particular student voice at 6 64 14 percentage points below the next lowest group and whereas the Seattle School Board recognizes the digits people's day on the second Monday of October and Seattle Public Schools acknowledged to the vast impacts of intergenerational historical trauma including health and educational disparities homelessness and other social emotional political disadvantages experienced by Native American Indian and Alaska native students and whereas Seattle Public Schools is dedicated to improving educational outcomes undoing legacies of racism and providing a safe environment to support every student with a moral and ethical responsibility to teach the full history of these United States and all of its impacts and opportunities and whereas Seattle public school Embraces a targeted universality approach to re-weaving our Educational Systems with the focus on

077students furthest from educational Justice and bringing awareness to the history of precipitating precipitating injustices therefore Seattle Public Schools declares May 5th as mmip Awareness Day mmip awareness day is an opportunity opportunity to educate and form raise awareness and show Unity for social justice and to call an end to mmip Seattle Public Schools will encourage district-wide discussions lessons and presentations in classrooms and in homes throughout not only this day but to continue conversation throughout the year and therefore Seattle public school boards encourages District data collection tools such as student climate survey healthy youth survey youth risk behavior survey and sbirt screening brief intervention and referral to treatment our disaggregated by student race ethnicity and evaluation with Alaska Indian or Alaska native via focus groups for recommended District action policy therefore Seattle public school board encourages a

078targeted Universal approach to the sexual assault slash harassment policy work centering mmiwp history awareness and data transparency therefore Seattle School Board encourages inclusion of mmiwp history and data in sexual health curriculum and students rates and responsibilities therefore Seattle school boards encourages superintendent support for expansion of mmiwp training among SBS staff thank you Izzy and as some follow-up to that I know we've some other speakers um if anybody wants to come first I can just call on you um Landon do you want to come up first oh whichever whichever Landon Z I don't know hello uh yeah uh I'll just get right into it um MMI WP is very important to the Native community and we have hoped that it becomes more and more important to other communities as well um uh the reason that I'm

079up here today um is because I had a cousin who was recently like murdered through neglect I guess that's the best way to say it she was in a residential mental facility in not in Seattle but in Utah and she was from Seattle she's Coastal sailor she's still a guamish like me and she was she complained of pain in her stomach and for months and months and months on end she knew she was sick she knew something was up and uh they just blew her off every time and I mean that's what every one of us has felt at one point in time um but she kept telling them and they just kept blowing her off so and then they called she She fainted one day and they called her dad Dean Goodrich my uncle

080and they told him that she had fainted but they forgot to specify that they were actively giving her CPR to try and resuscitate her and 30 seconds later he got another call saying she had passed and so yeah um indigenous people go through a lot and I mean when I say a lot I mean a lot like from racism hate crimes all sorts of stuff even to myw um but we never really I mean sometimes but we never really get like not compensation I'm I'm struggling to find the word but anyways uh yeah Justice um but yeah we never really get Justice um for those people that we lose and that's something that needs to happen because and we and it needs to be recognized not just in SPS or for example any other school

081district like or just a state the whole United States should recognize it and yeah um but yeah we go through a lot of stuff um I don't really have much else to say thank you for um being here and taking your time to come and support this it's I mean it means a lot um and yeah just thank you peanut giggy Landon uh Savannah do you want to come up next hi I'm Savannah um I'm from the blackfeet and Blackfoot tribe in Montana um I want to thank you guys for the time that you've given us and we want to invite you this Saturday for our event we're gonna have a March and we have a couple other events going on for this week um but I want to also talk about what's happening um

082as a kid growing up I didn't really get the chance to really be able to know about a lot of like a lot of culture about Native Americans like I wasn't given that opportunity when I was younger to learn about how to make a drum or how to make a stick or a shirt or a skirt so because I didn't really get that information I had to figure it out myself with the hand of my mom and even though she's not native like uh she still was there to support me and help me um but what I see around more often than not is that kids have to go through a lot when they're younger they have to especially native kids because they have to go through trauma and uh all the above but we

083need to bring more awareness to the sixth graders middle school high school so they know what's going on around them instead of just what's going on within communities that they just know we need to bring more awareness outside of their communities so they can hear from others and hear their perspectives of what's happening with the mmip the mmiw and the mmig and I also wanted to say that not only does that happen on a daily basis that and we need to bring more support to that we also need to teach kids about it from the ages of maybe from third grade on up because if they don't learn at a young age they're not going to ever try to want to learn they're not going to want to learn about what's happening outside or what's

084happening Beyond schools or Beyond what's happening and I just feel like they need to know they need to hear and listen about what's happening they need to learn about the stories that are happening and what happened a long time ago but not just hearing about stories that have been told wrong even from the from colored communities as well because community not many people really hear about communities that are having Justice in what's right and what's wrong they're just hearing about what happened and why people did what they did but they don't hear about how it affected others deeply thank you Savannah um Kayla It's Kayla okay I'm a little tall um in Kayla harstad Turtle Mountain Chippewa on a Cinnabon I'm a freshman at UW and an intern with unea thank you for having us

085here I graduated from Seattle Public Schools Ingram last year and now I'm a freshman going into college and I want to speak on just like how lucky that this is finally happening because while I was in school it was a bit difficult to navigate these resources and find Opportunities to voice mmiwp activism inside my education especially when I would go into school and people honestly didn't even know what that was about I kind of took offense to it because as an indigenous person I want my people to be heard not only in the context of colonization or oppression but also in the poor like parts of the oppression that's ongoing today and that we have to live through every day so I'm happy that today this Proclamation is getting passed and we'll come back in

086a year to revisit I hope we see you guys this weekend we also have an event tomorrow at North Seattle College from 6 p.m to 8 p.m and it's a mmiwp project and activities so I invite you guys all to come um oh yeah today we'll be singing the woman Warriors song taught to us by Roxanne white who's Nez Perce and the song was gifted to her but it originated from Martina Pierre whose first Nations and she's one of the 13 grandmothers this song came to her in sweat lodge ceremony and it's a prayer and honor song so please stand thank you do you all want to come all the way up and stand in front of the dice oh yeah it's actually right there oh okay I'm sorry I've been just instructed the camera

087is there so let me move this out of the way and then Maybe I don't the wheels are locked [Music] you hey are here [Music] all right did we have any other students that didn't get a chance to speak or we just one more Landon and then Izzy there's actually you're going to be a signatory on the proclamation um as the one who presented it does she come to you to do that or this one okay uh come on up I'm just gonna hand you this mic so we don't come on up yeah I'll give you the take that over here if you don't mind doing it without the podium or you can go back up to the pudding if you want um so I don't have like a speecher in or didn't really think

088too much about this beforehand you know but I just um you know I just want to say um like being native there's you know like like other people said you know if you're not native you just wouldn't understand you know what what it's like and oftentimes in schools we're taught just about what happened you know hundreds of years ago and you know that's important and it is and and we appreciate that but you know that that genocide is still ongoing that genocide is still ongoing and and part of that is is uh the issue with mmiw and and how when our people go missing we don't get the same attention that others do you know um our lives are seen by the federal government as less important and that's it's really unfortunate and even though

089even though it's been you know hundreds of years since we've been colonized we're still we're still facing the same issues we are today when I go to visit my tribal Community which is the confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes from Flathead nation in Montana I see you know I see mobile homes falling apart uh molding with you know four different generations of family staying in them with you know struggling to get food you know a lot of the adults are on meth and and you know our our alcoholics and even some of the youth a lot of them um and you know I don't think people really realize the the you know that that still goes on that it's you know when you when we go out um on our tribal communities it's like it's like

090being set back you know 50 100 years the way the way we're living and you know we we see all this stuff on the news about poverty and and and just you know negativity from other countries around the world but I don't think what people realize is we're living on our reservations and in our tribal communities like we're in third world countries you know in our own country and it doesn't get talked about on the news in I don't know that's all I have to say [Applause] hello uh my name is Aidan Galindo my tribe is patchy and I just like to say I like I'm grateful to be here and with everyone else we were able to share this song you know I think that's just really important as a Native American because like

091you know we just got to bring awareness to the stuff like I'm a MMI WP like people people are oblivious now like people don't know what's happening like again this was stated a few times like hundreds of years ago people know about that but they don't know what's happening now and like yeah again oblivious it's crazy like a lot of people just don't know and like it's good that we're here to bring awareness you know because like this stuff should be known oh yeah [Applause] all right I just want to say peanut geeky did we get everybody thank you oh fantastic yeah um so on behalf of unea we would like to gift you guys this original Ledger art by Gisele Jenkins who's aliu and she made this herself in uh clear sky Academy and

092then took it on her own and we decide to ask her permission if we could use her print and yeah so this is for you guys we want to say thank you again and we hope that you store this someplace where everybody can see and maybe put it in a frame we love our frames I think yeah we'll definitely again as you as you see superintendent Jones is really committed to Bringing out some of the native art that we have had in um archives and I think this would be an amazing addition to the art that we have there's someone right outside the board office that we brought out really prominent amazing native artists if you haven't seen it as you're leaving it's called Little Hawk it's a really incredible piece um trying to you

093know put more of a native face on on this building and um in this institution and also there's School Board positions coming up some folks aren't running like our beloved uh director Harris in West Seattle so um always uh a good opportunity to point out that we we always need native people on the on the school board and um as teachers as well if any of you are thinking about becoming teachers so thank you for taking the time to come down here um would love to shake your hands if um you're willing and uh any picture opportunities you want to do and then we'll get back to our really exciting budget conversation which you're more than welcome to stick around for I will say that one of the things that that we're learning in the

094work we're doing with government to government tribal consultation is how important it is to tell our native families to provide transparency with our budgets and how we're we're showing how we're using our funds and um so we're kind of at the cusp of a new era in Seattle public schools of trying to figure out the best way to provide all that transparency so hopefully that is something that comes out of this not so exciting work that we're going to go back to um but thank you for helping us um shine a light on this week of activism thank you I just want to say real quick on behalf of unea board I just want to say thank you to Seattle public schools for inviting our youth clear sky youth uh working with the youth with

095the proclamation thank you so much and just thank you for being a huge supporters of our native youth they're our future and thank you very much they want to do a picture we'll take a short puzzle we do a picture with everybody on the board and can we invite staff up too [Music] foreign one two three thank you thank you all so much and thanks for being here instrumental thank you everybody thank you thank you thank you oh oh you can oh yeah foreign [Music] yeah oh great thank you but I'm glad to be here no my twins are in the first guidance but I told him I was like I'll be there no kids already driving my fellow board directors I'm putting the proclamation on your seats all right yeah pass it around and

096sign get in your last handshakes say your goodbyes and where's your glass oh sorry sorry and I was like uh what are you doing I had to override him what the heck Austin like so I just took dinner and see how he's doing this is he doing all right he's this I guess I'm getting an email tomorrow okay okay an update an update apparently some things aren't not working so at middle college so surprise surprise goodness so I can tell director Roberta Smith the way she just looked with the red and the braids I have red I can wear red tomorrow I have lots of red I have like tons of bread this will say you looked amazing you look like you should be like on a cover of a book or something with your

097little like your your give me you're giving me free to Frida Kahlo vibes she wore bright colors right I was gonna I'd like to see like the dress and the meaning okay for those of you out in TV Land we're just getting resettled here uh we are on oh did anybody have any follow-up questions to the responses on their last questions under economic stabilization fund the policy and repayment process uh director song Moritz and director Rankin director Harris you all had questions you get your questions answered successfully yeah okay so I guess we can move on to the increased Revenue section is that where we are thank you director hampson I'll cover increased revenues if we could go to the next slide um again uh increasing Revenue was one of the seven kind of major

098strategies we identified in this balancing plan um as Dr Jones noted um we got feedback during this process and and then have been adjusting where we can the bulk of our increase what we're calling here increased revenues as a result of actions in the recent legislative session um I mentioned earlier as we were look doing the fiscal update that our colleagues in special education have done a great job of um of doing uh applying for safety net funds and we're expecting um uh considerably more funding from that source uh both in the current year and the coming year and that represents the 5 million and as we've discussed this budget we've talked about athletic fees were highlighted earlier but we had also a proposal for some administrative fees and we really took to heart the

099discussions that you all had I think led by director hampson at the recent um at the last board meeting we adopted some um housekeeping uh policy changes to align partly to align with state law but those policies some related to accounting practices and the use of fees and really felt that this was more right for a comprehensive discussion about how we approach fees whether we approach fees and just didn't feel like this was ripe I I guess we we are facing um big problems so uh you know this we may need to talk about this subject again but we're certainly not ready to do this now so um that's why we backed um this off if we could go to the next slide just just a confirmation um director hampson you'd ask about what kind

100of critical Direction policy uh items that we might uh talk about and this is one in terms of fees what is what is the what are the policy constraints on fees or what is the policy Direction on fees so this would be an ideal example of we'd be uh we'd want your direction on what what does this mean for globally for Seattle schools and how we pursue fees so and to grant funding and donor funding and you know other other Revenue sources just kind of the that umbrella world and then are there things that it is reasonable to ask students and families to participate those those who have the means um particularly for things that we do that where we get no State funding it's a discussion um we should have but in a holistic

101way and we just don't have time to do it Justice right now so this slide shows the impacts of the recent legislative session and the two columns really you know relating to kind of the issues that we have as we go into a budget saying hey this is the structural deficit we believe we have the column on the left the column of numbers on the left the middle column I guess represents kind of how we went into this process planning and really after analyzing the governor's proposed budget and then shows where we landed and where we kind of net out relative to our own expectations and so um it's it's an it's important to understand what what this is trying to say um uh it and it's good news in fact there are people been

102here a lot longer than I have but I think this is you know the most constructive session that in recent memory um that people have so I really want to Express gratitude to you all director Rankin and others who helped us with legislators we had great partners in the Seattle Council PTSA and Samantha Fogg helped us with advocacy and then we have friends in our delegation Senator Peterson representative Paulette and many others were really championing some of the causes we still have a lot of work to do but it can express enough gratitude to you all and others who help this be a positive experience for us so and special education was a focus so getting an increase in the cap was important and the multipliers lead to the 15.8 million in in funding and

103then the other adjustments below relate to technical adjustments that the legislator May legislature made in a variety of um line items and how they Ripple through our own circumstances so um we had modeled uh we had been telegraphed that there would be a much larger pension increase than was expected um uh the legislature and the and the retirement system were able to adjust that and so given that any change increases to the pension have an outsized um effect on us because of the way we fund positions when good things happen it's a Net game this is a one-time issue but we'll take whatever we can get there were increases for maintenance supplies and others of transportation we the one area where we did get a gain was for alternative transportation by setting up a safety

104net fund for that as well for transportation that isn't yellow school buses but alternative usually passenger car transportation the cost of living adjustment that the legislature legislature made was smaller than we had built into our model based on the governor's proposal so while those increases our net cost for us it being smaller made it uh not as big a net cost for us with the exception of our collective bargaining agreement with the Seattle Education Association the structure that agreement is the state adjustment or four percent whichever is greater so that line represents a Delta between the 3.7 and the four and how that ripples through our system there again we're middle medical rate in cost increases but not quite as big as we had modeled and then other miscellaneous adjustments so the net of all

105that is the in the Shaded line at the bottom it's the net of where we landed which was 12.3 million dollars to the good relative to our um pessimistic look after we vandalized the governor's budget that we would be 2.5 million um worse off so uh uh and so that guesses the net of 14.7 which again is really good news and thank you all um for the help this question director Harris wet blanket here can we go back up to special education percent increase to 15 percent what would we have if they had gotten rid of the cap entirely which is what I think all of us wanted to have happen since the cap has no reasonable basis in logic or otherwise um I I can't answer a rate but maybe Dr Pedrosa or director

106Sebring again I think I think 15 covers where we are or pretty close but that doesn't mean that there should be that doesn't mean there should be a cap um but from I think we live pretty close within 15 at the moment I was just gonna add that it's it's however many students we have that qualify for IEPs over over the 15 which right now I think is like 15.2 in SPS Spokane is somewhere in the ballpark of 18 I think so it's it's significant not as significant as the I mean the multiplier increase help districts out a lot and the lifting of the cap certainly did um um some more significantly than others some states many states actually have a mechanism by which if you qualify for an IEP the state funds it there's

107no limit because an IEP is under federal law for access to basic education so there isn't a limit because the limit is just it's a it's more of a reimbursement model and again while this was a good session and we made great strides we still have a lot of work to do but um it take the win and and we have to keep moving from there and I think we had Dr Pedroza was going to facilitate general questions and then we can take specific questions as well since our last break and I do want to provide additional information so this will be actually a precursor to the next session after this which is on central office office costs and reductions I just want to share that one of the things I want to share because

108this has been brought up in the previous sessions is when we started this engagement with central office in early December Dr Jones gave us all of us when we were looking at our 15 to really prioritize three big bodies of work when we do our cut so I wanted to make sure that this that was answered one goals and guard rails number one priority so when we're looking at Cuts ensuring that we could still uplift the goals and guard rails in the work that we're currently doing and I know this I remember saying this because this is in my mind because this is that what I shared with all of my team as well because they are the leaders of the goals right so making sure that we were looking at that number two what

109were the Strategic initiatives right inclusionary practices all of the key initiatives holding those as a a second tier priority and then third all the contracts with our contract agreements our labor Partners as well as our state and District police so just want to share that with you because I we talk about targeted Universal and Universal Design so when we designed our budget cuts we did that with those three priorities as key in the very beginning starting in December when we're looking at those reductions through up until December to March and we reviewed it many many times we analyzed it so I wanted to make sure that this board understood that and Community understood that as well when we made those central office rejections that it was really done intentionally um and we will still we

110are still going to be analyzing those impacts further but I want to make sure I I shared that with the board and so in light of that I just want to that was the question that I wanted to have this information because so how does what we're going to do another whip around how does what we presented today uh connect to the board goals and guardrails generally in your mind so I'm just going to give you a minute to think about that question and um and then we'll go to the next question which is what are potential challenges we need to consider moving into the next budgeting process for 24.25 okay so just think about those questions and then I'm going to start actually and with the first question how does what we presented connect

111to the board goals and guardrails generally I'm going to start with actually you have Mike yeah I wanted to go because I'm actually going to leave because I have to show that Lisa spot because I have a flight to catch sure um go ahead and then we'll move around that way then uh foreign you want me to answer the first question first you can answer the other one um I I think the Big Challenge moving into the next budgeting process is aligning a really clear direct connection to how I guess sort of how are we going to re-build in a way that is consistent that is has an eye towards the most efficient effective way to deliver the services even at a reduced funding meaning outs not not spending beyond our means but if we

112really do this appropriately what does it look like and keeping those those goals and guard drills but but also in that process defining that that well-resourced school what does that actually look like and there's only so much information we have right now and just even in listening to you talking about that well I I'm not supposed to go on a tangent but so yeah that's my answer that question um I will leave it to the other directors to answer connection to goals and guardrails because I'm struggling with that and I'm going to head off and try to so and I apologize it's unfortunate we have two directors out um uh not not within their control so I apologize that we're going to be down to four directors but we will still have a quorum so

113director Rankin is going to take over facilitating thank you director Rivera Smith thank you thank you and um I so yeah I've been with the question and I actually pulled up the golden guard rails just to cross check there and see if I could make some connections and I really can't honestly so I'm not seeing how they're directly or I guess even generally related circles and gargles I'm leading I guess the most if anything towards the guard role number two the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable Services service um so I'm hoping that that was used in deciding what to cut and where to cut um do so while still maintaining and holding to that guardrail and I guess obviously I'll make the Assumption for all the goals that these cuts and

114decisions were made um to assure that we can still fund the golden rules but I'm not seeing that per se so maybe that's something you guys could flesh out later but uh that's the best I can do thanks thank you director Harris um goals and guard rails we have to figure out what a well-resourced school is we've been banding this term around we move our pendulum back and forth school-based district-based system of school school system and towards that end we have got to take a look at the weighted Staffing standards they're not fair they're not transparent and that's absolutely student focused thank you director song Moritz um I I touched upon this in the last Super round we did but I'm still wondering about the risks to operational Integrity so I'm tying it to specifically

115Carvel too we just did a um we just had our memo presented and the two interim metrics were around Staffing on the first day of school and the second one was an on-time bus transportation so my Wonder is the budget adjustments that we have made how will they empath those two interim metrics are there any risks Associated what can we do to mitigate those risks in terms of potential challenges we need to consider and I brought this up several times I am concerned about special education we are you know prior to the legislative session we're at 90 100 million dollar deficit relative to how much the state funds the overall budget deficit is 131 million dollars so that that is the biggest driver um and you know the the challenge is is that I think

116probably we can expect that in an environment of declining enrollment that ratio is just going to increase above the 15 and knowing that what we have bargained with changes to the CBA collapsing the two service models we've already are doing deficit spending this is going to be the biggest challenge in my opinion around the 24-25 um budget so thank you thank you director Rankin thank you um I would say what was presented connects very broadly and generally to goals and guardrails in in just in the sense that there was a prioritization of preserving buildings and that's where the students are once we drill down any further level I would say it doesn't and and that's not meant to be a criticism I know we're in this like shift right and um uh I don't expect

117all of a sudden everything to be you know I know this is a large ship that takes steering um but I I will I hope and expect that moving into next year's budget lens is more of that direct connection this is sort of a you know right now fix thinking to the future but there's not there's not time to do make wholesale changes to the way education is delivered or to even think about the ways in which they might be but that's the bulk that's the bulk of the budget it's like what 85 percent of our budget is Staffing costs and so if we're not looking at ways to ensure that all of those costs are aligned with that you know we have the the right people in the right positions to support student outcomes

118um that is you know if if I if this was my household budget and my and I was addressing uh you know our our the money that we spend on movie tickets and the money that we spend on gas and not looking at can we still afford our mortgage you know that would be we have to still live in our house right so that might be you know what you want to wait but at some point you have to say can we still afford this house and do we need to to think about making a change in order to um have the other in order to still be able to go to the movies and pay for gas and I mean the movies is that's not a very good example but um but you know

119all the other things and that I think is what the conversation about a well resource system of schools is well-resourced System of schools is not wishes and dreams money's going to drop out of the sky or the legislature because we know that it's not um it's more about re like how do we accept the resources that we have and see where there are ways that we can make different choices to maximize those resources and so that is I think what the goals and guardrails are shifting us towards that at least of the board that higher level thinking of instead of you know why did it cost this much for you know that exterior paint for those three schools to say well I want to see movement on student outcomes and the other the how is

120is up to you all but but here's what's important so that's you know and I don't ex I didn't expect necessarily to see that but that's where I want to see the shift happening towards and I think I've said this before not I know I've said this before not not how do we look at our budget and have less or more of some things but how do we build back up from you know how do we kind of free ourselves from things that we think are set in stone that are actually not um to make sure that we can meet the needs of students provide you know safe welcoming working environments for the adults and and meet the goals and I think sometimes we make there we have a lot of constraints and then sometimes

121I think we make constraints for ourselves that maybe we could free ourselves from just by kind of Shifting our thinking I think that's what this whole thing is about so potential challenges moving into the next budgeting process I think is that much more difficult conversation about what does happen in buildings and if if money is being invested in buildings in ways that produces student outcomes and then also that we have had this kind of Duality where people say oh reduce central office reduce central office and then say why isn't the district doing X that's the district support is going to come from central office so if central office is a skeleton crew we don't have those supports to provide to students and Educators out in our buildings and so I think that's going to be

122a really big challenge is just the balance and helping folks understand that we are all the district ever and in fact that the most I would argue most important part of the district is the teachers that are in the classrooms with our students and so when we start talking about the about what's happening in building is there something separate from Central offices that it's not it's not helpful it's not helpful but I think it's also um easy especially in a scarcity mindset it's easy to get into trying to figure out who's who's fault oh it's the parents are too demanding oh the kids are badly behaved oh the teachers don't want to do XYZ o Central offices incompetent that's really easy and we can't do it because it's easy to do and it's really hard

123to get what we what everybody needs out of that especially the children because then it becomes about adult problems and we're all here for kids I think that's going to be the biggest challenge is just kind of like helping people understand that these are that what decisions this board and the next board feature boards will have to make won't necessarily be about whether or not we want to accept the fact that there's a budget deficit we have to accept that the choices that we have to make is within that what are we going to do to do the best that we can for the kids and for everybody that serves the kids um so I would say I would go back to I I think I mentioned before about ruthlessness and ruthlessness I don't mean

124let's take away Arts from everybody that's that's just stupidity that's cruelty actually ruthlessness I mean being really honest with ourselves and each other about what is and isn't supporting our children and being willing to make the changes and willing to admit hey we try this thing it's actually not doing what we thought it was going to do or you know it's not like actually X group of kids or ex-school really needs this not this we have to be ruthless and be brave enough to to say when we're when something's not serving our students because that's our number one job thank you I just want to make sure that I know some of you just answered the first question if anyone wanted to answer the second question what are the potential challenges we need to consider

125moving into the next budgeting process if somebody wanted to answer that I want to make sure you had the floor to do that director Harris trying to connect my Dots here I recall way back when and you were around Madam when we had budgets at conversations like this one of the things we did to prioritize our values was if we get more money what would we spend it on what would we bring back because one can hope and pray that we're not always going to be in a deficit situation so what comes back first is it you know fifo or lifo here accounting wise first in first out last in first out what's more important to our values to the students and that's a really difficult conversation and and it's a little Game of Thrones

126but I think it's worth having thank you does anyone else want to add anything all right I will pass this to deputy podesta thank you concie if we could move on to the next slide and one more actually this this section is about central office cuts and Dr Pedroza did a great job of describing kind of the values that superintendent Jones was very clear about giving leadership in the district as they approached any reductions adjustments you know what what they needed to preserve and how they needed to articulate either links to our strategic goals or impacts on students so we started the process with identifying where we felt there was discretion flexibility in the part of departments so functions that were not legally required or not really spelled out in contracts particularly collective bargaining agreements

127or other types of contracts where we had to commit a commitment that we couldn't dissolve and so an initial Target of 15 of that flexible amount not across the board for the department but to the extent that some departments have more flexibility than others and again division leaders were asked that preserve resources for students support the Strategic plan when and division leaders came and talked to the whole cabinet and presented um their ideas and that was a question they were all asked how you know or uh could you and again Linda has referenced the 34 000 light items in this budget and people looked all over the place so it is it's difficult to just synthesize so so what happened across all those things because people found a little bit here a little bit there

128you know they made adjustments in programs they looked at their historical spending you know where could they make adjustments so it's not an easy task to synthesize that into something that we could all digest in uh you know a week if we were all sitting here um and then we keep saying reductions um and we should use that term advisedly because what we're saying is reductions to general fund expenses so finding other ways to pay it's not always that we stop doing something we found another way to pay for it either I would be Grant eligible so we could move something to a grant um the capital fund we've talked about a temporary um ability we had in a budget Proviso that allowed us to shift certain typically non-capital expenses to Capital but we did

129that everywhere we could find it that there you know we looked carefully we asked managers think about is this really a legitimate Capital expense does it have to stay on the general fund so everywhere um we could we looked at you know in our CT budget any any budget that was non-general upon or are we are we charging our Capital program appropriately are we charging any Enterprise funds we have appropriately to make sure that we could relieve pressure on the general fund so that was our first push of this that we started in December Fred that's like an acronym Enterprise funds an Enterprise Fund in us it's culinary Services it's funds that we get Revenue uh dedicated to that and uh you know is there any place those are the kinds of questions we ask

130is there any pressure that culinary Services putting on the general fund that could come from the revenues associated with culinary services and that's a true Enterprise Fund in our accounting system but there are other things like that where we have Revenue sources that are not general fund can we leverage those so I it's it's not really a minor point that you'll see that some of this is because we're asking ourselves well is this a reduction and what it was the impact um if it went to another available funding source that wasn't under the same amount of stress as a general fund perhaps there is no reduction in service so it's important we keep saying reduction but to understand what that means and then after we did the initial fifth asked division leaders to the original

13115 I'm glad we did this we we thought well is there any path that wouldn't liquidate the economic stabilization fund so then we went back to the well and said okay now thank you very much we need to find um an additional seven million dollars uh and and there we really asking for um folks to think about are there things that could be re-engineered um other kinds of reductions we we all had a target of what the number we were looking for but it wasn't assigned by departments like the original part and fortunately we did do that because even though we are liquidating the economic stabilization fund we needed that um extra push of 7 million to get us to the Target that we had if we could Advance the slide please Fred real quick

132uh I was I've been reminded that we were over time right now so I want to know what the pleasure of the board is uh this we do think this is still really important stuff I don't know what your time constraints are and what what would you like us to kick over to May 10th perhaps but we can we can keep rolling until you all don't have time to until you run out of time so I just want to see what the board's pleasure is in terms of continuing this chair ranking what what do we estimate we have yet to go over what oh um I'm personally fine with another 20 minutes to seven if other I mean I would be fine with more than that but I'm not the best person to ask because

133time and I have a tenuous relationship is seven okay yes everybody okay staff staff is that okay okay thank you thank you for it thank you I will try to pick up the pace and you've seen this information before um that just breaks it and it got and this is the data that we presented last time so the numbers are need to be adjusted a little bit but the point here is gives you a relevant relative sense of scale on a Division basis and also illustrates the point that um that two-thirds roughly of what we're broadly calling a reduction represents a reduction that we're spending less and a third is Shifting to a non-general fund source and so um look at this at your leisure but it's just good to see how the adjustments played

134out and then relative to the overall budget not just the flexible budget that a division had um so if we could go to the next slide we'll um lay out the major strategies in operating costs oh some certainly yeah additional work on program reductions elimination slash pausing of central activities to achieve the additional seven million dollar cost reduction what program reductions are we slicing here um in the you know so things that we um we're more line item oriented with the 15 I'm I'm trying to think of an example again there are different um that was the request um um uh yeah so we don't want to read about it in the newspaper I guess it's the biggest and you know and again program reduction here um is really speaking on the kind of financial

135term of our program so an example that Linda reminded me of is we look through our um cell phone charges and felt you know this could be managed better and made a kind of a crossover board um uh decision across the central office getting rid of the way that this is written right it's good and vague we're not getting rid of of several of our departments if you will this is strictly Financial programming this is um this is not something that is going to necessarily affect students again you know you see where we focused and and we'll I'll answer that question in a slightly different way in a in a future slide but no these are not programs that are being offered out in the world they're kind of financial programs the way we think

136of them you know um again Telecom reductions is a good example we combined operations in purchasing in our distribution services and what really the what Dr Jones requested folks to do when we took a second bite of the Apple was don't think at the line item level think about how you all can collaborate and see if we can collapse things and find efficiencies um you know that go back and and and identify things frankly that well maybe you can't get it done this year but with enough lead time we can start penciling it in for 24.25 but yeah um oh we'll work on that language or this is not meant to convey educational program thank you thanks for the question um if the 33 million in total adjustment relative to the 441 million that's about

1377.5 so it didn't quite hit the 15 Target is that because the 15 Target is actually over two years the 15 was 15 of Where We Believe departments have discretion please correct me if I'm misreading this Linda what we're showing there is against the total budget so how much did you reduce even in you know relative to your division budget and we had already discounted things where you had no discretion you had labor contract that we have to honor and so that wasn't part of the Target that was set I have have I said that correctly so a quick example on that is the finance division um this is a percentage against their entire budget but a third of the finance division is our insurance cost and it was taken out of the equation before

138they went after 15 because it's not something we can cut so it's examples like that and I apologize some of the percentages at the bottom that 21.1 is should be crossed out because that was some cost across the entire District not just within that division like the cell phones that if I had mentioned additional seven million is that so the 18 million that's on a previous slide is the 7 million in that 18 million the 7 million is in the 30 in the 33 when we started this discussion in the fall last fall we were saying um we're going to look to cut from the central office 25 million or 26 million and then um we started this process and said you know we probably should look for more and so that became 33 million

139of which we found 31.8 of them remembering my math correctly so it was we just moved the goal posts for uh central office leaders to say oh we need to find more um two more to Mom if we The General Counsel adjustments I I'm just curious how much risk is there to that because you know litigation is a really it's a moving Target so um I don't know if you have done any risk analysis because it's it's it's a pretty big chunk of their budget you know that um came from the legal department thinking about what they could do in-house how they're used outside Council we'll see this in contract Visa yes um there's a certain amount of weather forecasting in in litigation expenses and so um they participated but there is risk and for

140you know for costs that um whether it's uh what percentage of students that we have above the cap there there are there are things that we can't control and you know budget budget is a plan but the last question I have is around the kind of process when it came to um staff adjustment so I know in when in the school building level we're talking with the BLT you use the racial Equity tool and I'm wondering if the there's something similar that you also used in thinking about Staffing at the central office um yes in terms of you know people thought of the demographics of their team you know how they face the public and are again our strategic priorities um to see you know if in terms of you know maintaining diversity across the

141central office and the impacts that this would have as far as delivering services to students furthest from educational Justice it it it's a big number in terms of um you know three dozen peoples a lot of people in a lot of positions some of these were vacant you know relative to the overall Staffing there's there's only a certain amount of oil room in making these decisions and first and foremost it had to be about the body of work and how the body of work affects equity for the district but but those were certainly factors that were thought about if we could Advance the slides please so um in terms of non-staff costs um these are the major categories we've talked about them we'll go into a bit of detail in transportation efficiencies this is an

142area where efficiency is the right word this is not by and large a reduction in service it's and back to the points that Dr Jones reinforced at the top of the meeting I think we all um with the proposal last year about moving to a three tier Bell time I think everyone gave Direction the board included that is there another way to find the same efficiencies and I really think we should celebrate the great work of the transportation department that really put their heads together to find a way to continue to deliver the service and um I being the simple-minded person I am I told them well you just still need to find the same number you know we had we had we were looking for a Target get before and please find another way

143to get something at that scale or larger we look through lots of contracts to see where are we really spending money where could we bring things in-house to find contract reduce Contract Services across the district people looked at Supply budgets um we've looked at the Strategic plan had a funding plan from very early on in the first adoption the Strategic plan you know there was covid there were other shifts that made in the plan along the way so that team looked at so what are we actually using here what were some original assumptions that involve non-staff resources that we don't that didn't shift with our strategies do we have flexibility there and again these this is the area where we're looking at you know every little line item see what makes sense what doesn't make

144sense the last one the school rebate Energy Efficiency a long time ago that was about how schools operated buildings now we're getting Energy Efficiency by doing things and how we build building so having this incentive it wasn't really effective anymore so we were looking everywhere we want to drill down a bit into the transportation efficiency because it's a single biggest line item in terms of an adjustment to operations in the in this hole plan and since it affects students Bev Redmond and public affairs and her team have been great partners with Transportation so we've kind of a the transportation department has kind of adopted her um so I'm going to ask her to talk about the transportation changes I appreciate the confidence in making me the transportation Department's Muse tonight so as Fred mentioned we

145are certainly looking at the largest area in our efficiencies within the transportation department and while Dr Jones said we are not going three-tier we're talking about improving our two-tier service and our routing and our teams began looking strategically for regional analysis and really going deep in terms of what they were doing and researching to come up with the efficiencies I may see some people telling me to move closer to my mic oh sorry a switch slide okay and to come up with some alternatives so what we're looking at in terms of the slide taking a look at how to minimize that impact but still gain that efficiency we've come up with a solution that will impact a minimal amount of schools We Believe impacting the start times and end times by switching the tiers of

14612 a total of 12 Elementary and K-8 schools so again minimizing that particular impact but moving from tier to tier to get that efficiency and by doing so that would save 35 buses and I believe I learned the word controls if I'm right listening to everyone save 35 bus buses for a total of 4.5 million in terms of savings moving on through to our our non-standard routes we would call those shuttles looking at high school and middle school routes that are not included in our current transportation service standards so this is outside of what we guarantee as a norm and that would yield us about 1.8 million in savings and then also looking at increasing inclusive transportation for students with IEPs again four hundred thousand dollars in savings if we could go into the next

147slide to look at the detail what we're preparing to communicate to our families because this is an open meeting as soon as you put something on the screen it is so and people will have questions there will be information that needs to be shared so as soon as we close this meeting tomorrow there will be a communication going out to our family's district-wide that explains what this is and what the essence of tonight's meeting will be and following that on Friday to the schools those 12 schools that will be switching those tiers we will communicate to those individuals schools and families as well so in terms of what we're looking at you're talking about a shift of start time so you're either going from 855 to 755 or the reverse 755 to 855 the length

148of the school day and I want this to be super super clear the length of the school day Remains the Same Cosi said one of my favorite words is saying and I repeat this length of the school day Remains the Same you're talking about shifting tears and start times also just want to reiterate what we're going to be doing in terms of communication we've been working with our Child Care Partners and our building leaders already pre-stocking them with this information so that they don't get a gut punch by seeing it on the screen tonight so that advanced work has been done and we have I would say they have been incredibly gracious incredibly wonderful to work with us on this and work with the transportation team and the public affairs team going through the Cadence

149another one of our favorite words in terms of communication certainly tonight is one of those big steps because this is going out not only over teams but also out on YouTube we're also going to do that that district-wide recap tomorrow again following up on Friday and we are certainly looking to host another information session because people will have questions what does this mean how does this work how will we be impacted putting up our our teams that work most closely with the decisions and the information so that they can have that direct contact again we'll be in touch with the families to let them know when that next session will be to come out and hear that information or using it virtually for those who cannot perhaps make an in-person meeting so maybe looking at

150a hybrid approach but more details to come on that also want to lift up because I don't know that we'll get there before the end of today's session that information sharing is the precursor to community engagement it's part of that cycle so making sure that people have our families have that fact based information solid and grounded makes the open conversations much more easy when we begin to start talking about that well-resourced school that they will have that confidence to come back to the table at another time when we can have that that idea exchange so that's a little bit about our transportation changes and I'll give it back to Fred yes actually and I'll I'll try to be brief I I just wanted to take a second and express extreme gratitude for the transportation department

151and for this for doing this work and for this is kind of actually the perfect example of my definition of ruthlessness and what it takes to really examine okay the way it has been done is not the way it has to continue to be done where are changes that we can make and even though it may be uncomfortable or awkward or something new like to me I know I know schools are impacted and there will be just some disruption there and folks will have to adjust their schedules I don't want to Discount that at all but this to me is a really perfect example of the kinds of shifts that the kinds of way that we need to thinking about how we create this system of well-resourced schools because this is a solution that maintains

152the very clear priorities of community of not having times move earlier of not having elementary schools have you know two hours apart of start times so it maintains that thing that was so clearly very important because it would be we could say yeah three tiers is less expensive than two tiers we're just going to do three tiers that is that's the wrong kind of ruthlessness when I'm talking about ruthlessness I'm talking about ruthlessness for ourselves not towards other people the ruthlessness of being willing to be critical and and examine our own what we what we each have our own authority over and how we can make changes even if we don't maybe want to but how we make changes in service of students and in service of creating a system that will support the district

153as a whole and that to me is what this does is being honest about hey we're providing some one-off transportation that maybe at the time they were started were necessary now bus lines have changed there's more access for those students this is a service that people definitely I'm sure like I'm sure there will be people who are frustrated or disappointed that like oh my older child had this bus and how come my younger child doesn't it's because things change and they have to change so but that is very different from how do we you know we have made a commitment to to transport children to school who cannot otherwise get there that is Untouchable we have to continue to do that but being brave enough and willing enough to look at like oh hey actually

154these things that were necessary at one time there's other opportunities to achieve that same end which is getting the students to school we no longer need to maintain this additional thing even though people do appreciate it and like it and also with the inclusive transportation for students with IEPs I would say like saving 400 000 is awesome but what's even better to me is that students who do not have specific Transportation needs will be riding the bus with their peers and that's worth way more than four hundred thousand dollars and that's the kind of student-focused lens that I think as we're moving through this that willingness to say Okay instead of less or more of what we already had what would different look like and what we could do what what could we do still

155Center students and our values and and like you guys did it and I'm not I'm not not pretending that's going to go off without a hitch and everything's gonna be perfectly smooth and everybody's gonna be super happy with it but like from the high level this is such a reasonable solution oh sorry so if if I may I I'd like to um stop here I know this is abrupt but folks have to go and we're going to lose Quorum but also I just want to say I I hear you on an organizational agility you want to know that we're focused on students you want to see the alignment with the goals and guard rails we want to make sure that there's operational Integrity those are all things that we'll we'll try to work through to

156make sure that we have some some solid answers for so when we come back next time we'll pick up where we left off and then we'll go right into our other big ticket item if you will our special education cost and so thank you for being attentive today hopefully this was fruitful and informative and we we took a lot of notes to know that and so we'll follow up accordingly director director Rankin do you want to have any parting direction or I was just going to ask before I adjourn us if they're uh just for confirmation if if folks have questions between now and next week should we send them to the board office send them to you use the for like I guess are you accepting of questions between now and the 10th ideally

157we use the board office format and and then they can collate and sift and distribute them to us so we don't need to like wait for stuff on the 10th before we have to send it yeah please just making sure because it's sort of two parts so okay thank you so much thank you um there being no further business on the agenda this meeting stands adjourned at 703 pm um