Seattle Schools Board Meeting April 26, 2023

001[Music] foreign [Music] president Hersey I'm now calling the April 26 2023 regular board meeting to order at 4 20 p.m 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 Mrs Wilson Jones the roll call please director hampson here director Harris is not yet here vice president Rankin is not able to join today director Rivera Smith present director Sergio present director song Moritz president president Hersey president director cronbrone present thank you very much I will now turn it over to superintendent Jones for his comments thank you president Hersey board members and those who are watching to open tonight I want to thank our SPS Community for continuing to hold us accountable for keeping students safe I want to

002take some time to recount the work that's currently being done as part of our safety initiative we're conducting a safety review of all of our high school campuses we are participating in Community Action teams that include the City Community Partners and we are part of a wellness advisory Council comprised of mental health pediatricians and wellness leaders from our community and this is in conjunction with the mayor's office local hospitals University of Washington just to name a few we are currently working to finalize a meeting with the friends of Ingram pretty soon here to to talk about the progress in more detail and that was per the request I will continue to provide you updates in in a district-wide message on the status of our safety initiative will be coming forthcoming soon speaking of holding us

003accountable I want to State my sincere thanks to all of you in the community District in the district Community who have reached out with concerns about programs and Staffing changes and we recognize the enormous impact that these programs have in students lives uh in response to the dedicated advocacy of our Washington Middle School students and families including those who are with us tonight just know that we have a decreased enrollment and we're faced with difficult choices but we hear and recognize the significance of jazz and understand the many benefits that Art Is providing for our world-class holistic education uh I want to respect the the local context of schools and the decision making and the insights that they have and we will continue to work towards a solution let me be clear I am committed

004to Jazz in the city of Seattle I've been a beneficiary it helped me grow up understanding the richness of that in our culture there are many people who have come forward since we've been talking about the Jazz situation and they're willing to help and so while the solution may not be the same solution that we've had over several years we're going to make sure that jazz is available next I'd like to talk about um what we're going to focus on on our goals and guardrails and we're going to focus on our guardrail tonight that really has a emphasis on operational systems and how those impact students on a daily basis and we're going to talk about how we're providing reliable service and how essential that is to improving student outcomes and I'm looking forward to

005learning along with you all in the process as we talk about this really important guard rail with that I turn it back to you president Hersey thank you thank you superintendent Jones we will now turn it over to director chromberon for student member comments oh is that on oh there it is thank you president Hersey uh so first of all I want to thank our Washington Middle School students for showing up here today and as I was going to talk about today mainly is the importance of Arts in our schools um uh I'm I'm a a true tried and true theater kid I'm a huge Arts person and I know firsthand the importance of Arts in our schools in my life and in so many students lives that was one of the things that Drew

006me to this position is protecting arts in our schools and enriching arts in our schools because the kind of community that you find in art spaces is unlike the kind of community that you find anywhere else the kind of family that you find in art spaces is incredible um and uh with that I will actually extend an invitation to the community and to my fellow board directors and the superintendent to uh Nathan Hale's feeders production of Hello Dolly these few upcoming weekends we'd love to see you there um and uh next thing really good luck to AP students who will be testing in the next few weeks I've seen with a lot of my friends a lot of my peers how difficult this process has been and how hard people are working is really incredible

007I'm like just thinking about it um so good luck you got this another important recognition is uh that this month of April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and this is an important time to highlight the undeniable problem we have with sexual harassment and violence in our schools here in Seattle Public Schools this is something that I've witnessed firsthand that one too many of my peers have witnessed an experienced firsthand and it just breaks my heart because it is a top priority and it should always be the top priority to have our schools be not only loving welcoming and accepting places to exist and to be and to grow and to learn but also safe places and so when we're talking about school safety the problems with sexual violence and harassment in our schools is a

008huge part of that um and a great way to do that is highlighting the importance of sexual violence prevention early on through education through positive sex ed and consent education which is so important and can help so many kids um and that is all I have for this student comment so thank you so much and I'll turn back to president Hersey okay we have now come to the board comments section [Music] for today's meeting we have a full testimonial list and we'll then move into the consent agenda in the action items related to planning for next year's budget we will conclude with progress monitoring on guardrail 2 which supports reliable operational systems last week the board held two work sessions the first related to planning for our next building Excellence or Beck's Capital Levy the

009board will be establishing guiding principles to support the development of that Levy package and I will come back to the directors with ideas on how we can make or excuse me how we can move this work forward we also had a work session about our committee structure our temporary policy waivers expire on July the 31st so it is time for us to make permanent changes to our policies to solidify our committee structure for the upcoming year this will allow us to next set our board meeting calendar and develop our work plan during last week's work session directors provided feedback about our governance practices and we've already made some immediate progress in to in response the board received the updated work plan Monday it's now at the top of the weekly emails for easier reference and

010starting this week our full committee materials were also made available directly on our committee web page for easier reference by directors and the public there were also additional areas of improvement identified these include making more visible and accessible the work I do as your board president to set agendas and collaborate with staff to prepare for our meetings and re-sharing our process for requesting a work session or other agenda items we have an online form but it has not yet been widely used with just one response so far so we haven't had this list of potential topics come back to us um finally it was suggested that we continue to consider any gaps resulting from our changes and address those through the work plan going forward I'll also be preparing a board action report that incorporates

011your feedback on our policies related to committees I heard General support for discontinuing our standing committees with the exception of the audit functions I hope to have a board Action Report ready that is responsive to this feedback for intro on May 17th in action on June 7th we'll now move into committee and liaison reports and I'll open it up with today's ad hoc Community engagement committee meeting I will let you know a little bit about what we discussed today we had a robust uh conversation and these have really you know for me personally having been on the board for about three years now probably a little more have been some of my favorite experiences because we can really get into the nitty-gritty we discussed the need to expedite our work around the community engagement calendar

012so we've moved that up we are also in the process of reviewing several one haters that we have generated to educate and inform folks who are interested about the work of the board and from all sorts of different Avenues if any board directors are interested in what those will look like we'd be more than happy to share them once they have finished and you can provide feedback and we can you know go through that process if necessary um but in addition to that we are also uh trying to think through what is the best means of um us to share out uh the work of not only the committee on community engagement but also the policy committee that just had his first meeting yesterday and many other aspects of board work that have been taken

013up in recent months so um that is a little bit about what is happening in the community engagement space and we will now have a couple of other reports tonight I will be giving a report on behalf of director Rankin who could not join us because she is at fifth grade Camp um and sends her love let me go ahead and pull that up vice president Rankin is cheering our ad hoc policy manual Review Committee which met for the first time yesterday as I just mentioned the committee reviewed the charter and foundational information including recommendations developed by the ad hoc governance committee the date of the next meeting is still being finalized um but do other members of the committee have insights that they would like to share at this time all right seeing none

014thank you so much for serving on that committee let me pull up a um a statement that she also had okay here we go and so this is the legislative report uh as many of you know director Rankin services our legislative liaison uh and so legislative session 2033 has ended and we are grateful for the advocacy and Partnership of our legislators and community in support of Seattle students and families yes that is definitely worth applauding uh I especially want to note the importance of the level of communication and collaboration between SPS staff the superintendent and the SPs legislative team the session was challenging but our teamwork was strong and noticed um and appreciated by legislators so thank you to our team students in SPS in districts across Washington will benefit from the much needed increase

015in special education funding via adjustments to the multiplier and raising the funding cap and we have a strong collaboration coming out of this session to continue work toward a complete removal of the arbitrary cap and continued increase in investment to meet the promise of fully funding access to basic education for students with disabilities thank you to everyone who added their voice to elevate this issue from the state capitol budget our legislators secured over 12.7 million for projects that will increase the skill center access and offerings to students making a difference in their in our lives in Seattle please join us next week for our budget work session to learn more about the specific funding numbers from the state budget that will impact Seattle public schools and next school years budget so that again is coming

016from director Rankin who serves as our legislative liaison are there any additional liaison reports and just keep in mind I will call for opportunities for Community engagement after the liaison reports so are there at this time any additional liaison reports from directors director Hansen okay so Friday uh was a big day for me as our tribal liaison we had uh our first of three convenings of school directors and tribal leaders which is developed it by the Washington School Directors Association and the Office of Public Instruction around new laws that require tribal consultation at the school board director level and required trainings on government-to-government relationships for principles throughout the state as well as the superintendent which are those are in two separate laws but HB 1332 HB 1426 those are two that um you can reference

017and it was a really immensely productive day tremendous participation it was at this when Amish lands and the focus was on the Partnerships among districts and tribes and other entities such as wasden ospi the the biggest piece of Revelation was specific to our historic under counting of native students uh in this country and specifically in school districts and you've all heard me talk about it many many times over many years Seattle Public Schools is no exception there's some uh very genius uh folks representing both different school districts on the Yakima reservation as well as from the Yakama nationally swashians and and Ken Olden who um following on the leadership of current Suquamish chairman Leonard forsman have dug in deep to the data they went and found they went to school found out how to do

018math and came back and said okay you will erase us no longer and here's how to laid out spoke to me in a language that because I'm not a data person within a large institution we're able to present two tribal leaders and two School Board directors right that's who are the who's the focus of these meetings this is how you can hold yourself each other accountable to not continuing to erase native students and the the wonderful thing about that is it's not actually just about Native students it's a way of of digging into the data to really pull out and make sure that each student is counted for their particular Identity or identifier and and one of the things that's always critical to point out and that gets lost in a lot of the Dei

019otherwise known as diversity equity and inclusion work that gets done is that uh Native people we we are have a citizenship that is different than any other peoples in the United States so we're citizens of our of the state of the uh of the nation but also of our tribes and have therefore a very unique relationship uh with this country and with our communities and with its institutions so there was a lot of focus on that as well as focus on the STI adoption curriculum adoption the progress or lack of progress in that to the extent that it's in our schools and working to Shore that up within districts and how we do that there are two more of these meetings I could go on and talk about this in great detail um there are

020two more of these meetings coming up I've sent all directors the information you can attend virtually so you don't have to go in person they're on the 4th of May and share with your fellow directors fourth of May in Spokane and then the 18th of May in Toppenish I highly recommend it and in any case you're going to be required to do a training by the end of 2023 anyway I think by August and that's those are coming up the first trainings will be happening soon this is a really excellent opportunity to be there in partnership with tribes as opposed to just sort of having a one-off training by yourself so I really encourage fellow directors to take the time to do it and I'm happy to resend that that information and I there was

021uh one of the Suquamish tribal council members that superintendent Jones and director Rivera Smith and I met with was there so we were all hearing the same information and that helps us understand how we can move forward in our memorandum of understanding our data sharing agreements and in our tribal consultation policy which again is I'm hoping will be the model policy and um oh and one phenomenal factor that our little tidbit that I mean amongst many others that Elise washing shared um that just goes to the notion of how important it is to uh allow kids to show up in their own cultural space she mentioned being the the data geek and and math fiend that she is um the how much it would you know mean for people to understand that in um the

022Yakima language uh I'm going to see if I can say it right um I think it's inishkin is there are two different ways of saying somebody said it correctly or somebody talking over there no just in case somebody was correcting me there are two different ways of counting you count and use one set of uh words if you're counting things that are alive that have a soul and you use a different set of words if you're counting things that are dead and I think that or that are not that don't have a soul that as a whole level whole different dimension to math that you know we get a lot of pushback about some of the the identity work but when you think about the ways in which that can draw native students in that

023case Yakima Nation members into a conversation about math and getting involved in math it's incredibly powerful and all of our communities and all of our families and um and all of our histories we we have those connections and so it was a really good grounding in what the meaningfulness of that to the first people of this place so as I said at our work session you know still working to try to put into some operational practices as are our tribes and the people at wasden ospi so that it's not just about this statement here that we're on the lands of the Coast Salish people but that we're actually honoring the history and learning from it so thank you president Hersey thank you director hampson do we have any other liaison reports for this evening okay

024do we have any uh board engagement that we need to discuss that is coming up director Harris thank you we had a community meeting in West Seattle at the West Seattle library it was attended by 25 people there was lasagna it was um a difficult meeting it was a meeting from a great many folks in the district 6 community as well as others from throughout the city as is per usual for those meetings we talked a lot about Alki and the building plans and mostly about safety and traffic down there and I will give anybody a tour of that area my colleagues and I encourage you to come I am hoping to spend some time with assistant superintendent podesta general counsel narver and convince one of y'all to help me sponsor a resolution to address

025the lack of parking and take note of the fact that we don't have good Transit down there and that the Alki area is very very dense and um hopefully there are some ameliorating circumstances we can come up with as opposed to All or nothing because it is extraordinarily problematic and what I told our community was that I would focus squarely on the safety issues and the lack of parking and some of y'all will remember that Seattle Times had a newspaper article out there with the principal directing traffic and I don't know about you all but I'm thinking that that principle has other and better things to do with their time on the other hand if he's saving lives of young people I'm all for that the other issue that came up most of us firstly

026is the lack of the jazz band at Washington Middle School and I applaud the folks that took the time to drive across town to meet with us on that issue and I feel as I think all of my colleagues know very passionately about that issue uh Saturday May 20th the Southwest library and that's at 35th and Henderson Street 9010 35th Avenue Southwest from two to four and yes there will be lasagna and I welcome two of my colleagues to join us I'm starting to get my feelings heard two to four pm so um and and I think I'll probably go to PDC jail for that but I have made the announcement that I will not be running for a third term and we need to have an extraordinarily qualified and what's the word I want

027qualified and passionate person to run for the district six four-year term that's West Seattle South Park and in addition to Georgetown it's the best and the hardest job I've ever had I have learned so much and I've met the best people um I will help whoever chooses to run to run whether I agree with him philosophically or not and my information is on the website thanks so very much thank you director Harris okay any other additional board engagement for us to discuss all right see none uh we will next go to public testimony thank you we will be taking public testimony by phone and in person as stated on the agenda board procedure 1430 BP provides the rules for testimony and I ask that speakers are respectful of these rules I will summarize some important

028parts of this procedure first testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from our public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the School Board website only those who are called by name should unmute their phones or step forward to the podium and only one person should speak at a time speakers from the list May Seed their time to another person when Liz when the listed speaker's name is called the total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined number of speakers time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list those who do not wish to have their time seated

029to them may Decline and retain their place on the testimony or waitlist the majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about and the board expects the same standard of Civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself as board president I have the right and will interrupt any speaker who fails to observe the standard of Civility required by the board procedure 1430 BP a speaker who refuses or fails to comply with these guidelines or who otherwise substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this meeting may be asked to leave the meeting Miss coo will read off the testimony speakers thank you president Hersey a logistical note speakers joining us via phone please remain muted until your name is called to provide

030testimony when your name is called please be sure you have unmuted on the device you are calling from and also press star 6 to unmute yourself on the conference call line each speaker will have a two-minute speaking time you will hear a beep when your time is exhausted and the next speaker will be called the first speaker on the list is Charlie Morrison Wong hi I'm Charlie Morrison Wong and I'm a sixth grader at Washington Middle School I have been playing the violin for three years let's be honest school is hard it causes anxiety and stress in a lot of kids myself included but after a hard tested math I know that I can pick up my instrument and lose myself in the music even yesterday when I was stressed about a concert uh as

031soon as the music started my nurse melted away this is the reason I'm proud to say I'm a junior husky the music program here is so amazing and diminishing the quality is taking away something that makes me and a bunch of other kids like super proud proud that after all the struggles that our school has faced we can go we can come every day and make great music part of the reason these cuts are happening is because of low enrollment in Seattle Public Schools so why take away the thing that like draws people to our school in the first place this program means the world to me and everyone that showed up today don't take this away the next speaker is Gianni maisano Taurus hello I am Gianni mizano Torres um I'd like to speak

032about the future of the Washington music program um I play at uh I play Trombone at the Jazz at Garfield High School and uh actually I just wanted to take a second to acknowledge how incredible it is having all of these kids from Washington here supporting the music program I just thought that was really cool um they're doing awesome uh and yeah so I'm going to talk about my experience with it before I joined the music program at Washington I really did not enjoy school I felt like I had nothing to do there I had very little purpose and more than anything I felt like uh if I wasn't there I felt like nobody would really notice it's kind of sad um and but when I joined the Jazz program there I found such an

033incredible thriving community and a place where everybody comes together to create such beautiful music everyone is working and everyone is so loving and supportive of each other and it's it's such an important area it's such an important space it's like removing that isn't just removing an extracurricular it's not just removing another period in the day it's not just removing like one teacher it's removing uh a place where people can grow and Thrive and learn not just as not just academically but as humans and it's um it's uh why I and so many others are who we are today it's it's incredible the next speaker is Silas Collins hi I'm a 10th grader at Garfield and I play tenor sax in the Jazz Band my time in the Washington Middle School music program shaped who I

034am today it taught me dedication and teamwork skills to stretch far beyond the music room it really is the best part of Washington Middle School and I hope that students can experience it the same degree that I did for many years to come you might think you're making this cut to one program in one school but you're not only will it limit the capacity of Washington's incredible music program these Cuts will compound the issue of declining enrollment in Garfield High School's nationally recognized music program there are tons of kids like me who really want to play music who will lose the opportunity to do so this drastic cut does not solve a problem it creates one thank you the next speaker is Mika mirote hi my name is Mika mirwat um I'm a seventh grader

035at Washington Middle School and I play the baritone saxophone um as a mixed person going to Washington Middle School um I find it very difficult to find uh where I belong and um like where I fit in and I feel that music and especially Jazz uh creates a space for me to be myself and just feel like included and I think it's really important that we keep something so important for so many students and I know that we aren't cutting the entire music program but we are going to be cutting uh half of it and we're going to have massive classes which will make it extremely difficult to learn music and it's going to make it extremely difficult for kids like me and um and yeah just kids like me to learn how to play

036jazz and how to play whatever kind of music they want to express themselves in thank you guys for your time Vivian Thomas Kennedy hi my name is Vivian I am a sixth grader at Washington Middle School I have come here today to talk about the Washington Middle School music program yesterday I got to go to the concert at the Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center there I got to hear all the music classes perform and everyone was amazing if the music program gets cut the school concerts will only get worse and less passionate if the music program gets cut the number of kids enrolling will become less and less the most common reasons people enroll at Washington Middle School is our music program and TAF and they are both getting cut next year I'm not in

037the music program but I love going to concerts and just overall supporting music is something me and lots of other people including other kids are very passionate about I just really hope that there will be some way to keep this program it makes me sad to think about all the kids in elementary school who are excited to join the music program and the rest of the kids who will be going to Washington Middle School next year and won't be able to join the awesome music program that we have now thank you foreign I would like to seed my time to M.A Stevens okay the next speaker is Chris drakens or something so I'm just trying to get her the right one so we may have to Circle back my name my name is Chris Jenkins

038Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on the Personnel report under separations the report lists Richard Stout long-time manager of risk and loss prevention I wish to thank Mr Stout for his service to the district on the fine fiscal stabilization plan 11 points number one the board cannot leave this plan to the superintendent number two despite a current and projected decline in enrollment the district is moving forward with expensive construction projects to greatly expand capacity at Alki Mountain Lake and Rogers Elementary Schools number three this will reduce playground space and cause the closure of other nearby schools through consolidation number four school closures always harm education and neighborhoods and they have not worked to save money number five the district already went through school closures number six the district already lobbied the state for more money number seven

039the school board already approved a three-year teacher contract without knowing how the district would pay for years two and three number eight the current District funding approach pits Public Schools against each other through a mechanized model of competition between schools for enrollment and funding number nine some groups and some schools always lose in this process number ten the school district needs to return to paying attention to what each School needs to succeed some smaller classes some larger classes preserving options like Filipino Filipina American history music art no more cookie cutter approaches number 11 a mechanical device will never do as good a job as a good human teacher thank you very much thank you everybody here today nice jobs the next speaker is Carla Holmes good afternoon my name is Carla Holmes I'm a parent

040at Ingram high school and my son is a sophomore the parent community of Ingram High School continues to be concerned about safety following the shooting incident on November 8 2022. our most important job as parents and school communities is to keep our children safe we recognize there have been several District Communications and one parent meeting so far however a situation such as this requires ongoing communication and updates specific to safety at Ingram High School given the traumatic traumatic violent act that happened in our children's school we cannot stand by waiting indefinitely for the district to take action the lack of urgency by the district is extremely disappointing we're here this afternoon because we care about each and every young person at Ingram high school and every school in Seattle Public Schools the following are specific

041areas of concern in his letter of February 8th superintendent Jones states that his team is reviewing quote a report with recommendations for improved Safety and Security for Ingram he also stated he would update the community in March we are still waiting it has been over five months since the tragic shooting of an Ingram student the lack of details is unacceptable with no communication we are left filling in the blanks and feeling anxious in his earlier letter to the broader community in November Dr Jones also States he'll be creating quote an event for all families and students to join us in a conversation about school safety what is the date and plan for this event regarding board's policy 3248 what steps have been taken to ensure that these procedures and policies are being followed in order

042to protect our students and prevent future incidents overall when can we expect the results of the safety audit and a timeline for specific actionable items the Ingram parent group is here to support and partner with Ingram high school and SPS in any way possible to respond proactively to the needs of our community we demand a detailed response from the school board district and school on what has already been done to protect our young people and what next steps we can work on together thank you board members for your consideration and time the next speaker is Greg Rudolph good afternoon thank you board members for the opportunity to speak on Washington Middle School music situation the Jazz Band situation I'm a passionate father to a jazz band participant my son Ness Rudolph is in sixth grade

043he's right over there you want me to seed my time last chance okay he spoke last meeting and did a great job and nothing could be more powerful than hearing from the kids themselves um my perspective on this is um I am a musician I grew up in Philadelphia which is a very strong City for jazz produced John Coltrane Lee Morgan Philly Joe Jones goat go back and look um and I grew up uh having to study on the outside of school because we didn't have the kind of program that this this local program has and imagine how excited I was when my son showed an interest in music he chose uh saxophone and he gets to go to school every day and play saxophone and um his his playing has just gone through the

044roof this year and he's so passionate about it now why are we here we're here because this this program is such an important thing for these kids and it's not just because it makes them better musicians it also makes them better citizens of their school it makes them better team members and better leaders they get to see the connection between practicing something and becoming skilled at it which is an amazing thing to learn it gives them a chance to be more confident and more creative does the tradition of this program matter we the community think it does and we think it really ought to be something that we we work hard to keep and we don't dismantle we thank you very much and we know we all want what's best for the kids thank you

045the next speaker is Maria Monroe DeVito hello my name is Maria Monroe DaVita and I come here today as a mental health provider and a professor in the UW Psychiatry Department and as a mom of two kids who love and cherish music as a white cisgender heterosexual female I also recognize my privilege in these discussions I know I don't have to tell all of you about the youth Mental Health crisis but I'd like to remind you of what's at stake with cuts to the WMS music program youth reports of persistent sadness and hopelessness and suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased by 40 percent in the 10 years leading up to the pandemic then kovid blew those numbers out of the water especially among youth with disabilities bypoc and lgbtq youth and those from other marginalized communities

046weekly Ed visits for suspected suicide attempts were nearly 40 percent higher in Winter 2021 than in the year before almost half of lgbtq Youth report that they have considered suicide social isolation lack of access to the things that make kids happy and provide an outlet and the lack of in-person learning have contributed to many of these issues and that's on top of pressures related to the social media worries about climate change and for so many kids the direct impact of living in a country with daily racial injustices raising anti-asian and anti-semitic hate crimes and laws that try to erase the very existence of being a queer or trans kid as a mom I've witnessed firsthand some of these mental health challenges with my own two kids there have been days they have felt paralyzed with

047anxiety and panic months of feeling too anxious to go to school we've practiced breathing exercises in the park when it was too overwhelming to attend that one event with too many people we've been on multiple wait lists to get help but you know what helped them music something they are passionate about that lightens their hearts that helps them to grow to feel like they're successful and that helps them to find their people WMS band has been all that and more it has transformed my oldest into a happyless anxious kid to greet each school day often having to drag them out of the basement after hours of practicing their instrument completely inspired by the new song selected that day or compelled to transfer just one more Nirvana song cuts to WMS feel like complete gutting of

048our community on top of removing the TAF program please don't remove the heart and soul of our school thank you very much for listening to me the next speaker is Danielle Coleman Danielle Coleman Danielle if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute the next speaker on the list is Francis Francia can you hear me yes we can hear you go ahead hello board members my name is Francis Francia and I'm a proud product of Seattle Public Schools from K-12 a 2002 graduate of Garfield High School I attended Washington Middle School from 1996 to 98 and I implore you to reconsider extinguishing the legacy of this music program I'm not a professional musician I played the alto in baritone sax under the instruction of Mr Robert Nat and Mr Clarence aycox however the

049skills that I gained in concert and Jazz Band are skills that I use every day I learned the value of practice dedication and teamwork being in band taught me diligence how to be a productive team member and how to execute with excellence our jazz band won the festival award at Lionel Hampton in 98. We performed in front of thousands today I'm able to speak and perform in front of any audience because I had to get over stage fright and nerve by the age of 13. our concert band was one of two bands invited to DC to represent the state of Washington for the 150th anniversary of the Washington Monument we performed on the steps of the Capitol and on the White House lawn imagine the sense of achievement pride and responsibility that a bunch of

05012 to 14 year olds felt to represent our state on a national stage in our nation's capital please do not eliminate the possibility of our youth having opportunities like these in the future this decision does not only affect current students and families of WMS Mr Darren fall is the director of the award-winning band at Malik Terrace and he was also our student teacher at Washington my son is three years old and has already benefited from weevop at Seattle Jazz Ed which was founded by Washington and Garfield music families and taught by Miss Kelly klingen former Washington band director you are risking an end to a legacy that jazz Legends began Mr Nat continued and each of us has carried on for the rest of our lives please do not deprive our future students and Global

051community members of the fruits of this Legacy thank you the next speaker is Amy Zurich hi I would like to see my time to Evan Coleman thank you hello can you hear me yes we can we can hear you hello my name is Evan Coleman I'm a musician with the Los Angeles Philharmonic I teach at the Coburn Community School I hold two degrees from the Juilliard school and I'm a two-time Grammy winner I grew up studying in the music programs of Washington Middle School and Garfield High School where I benefited from the work of legendary Educators like Bob Nat Megan Cleary Clarence aycox and Marcus sudokawa to name a few I was a participant in the band The Orchestra I sing in some of the choirs but also I play piano in the jazz bands

052and Jazz choirs the needs of the many different students served by these diverse musical ensembles requires at least two full-time instructors to cut any of these positions would severely limit the experiences of your students although some of my other classes had diverse class lists my music classes were the ones where I really made lasting friendships with students who didn't necessarily look like me or come from my neighborhood and I didn't just learn music I learned responsibility self-expression confidence and teamwork like my former classmate Francis Francia just said large musical ensembles Empower their music their their members uh to bring individual perspectives we bring our individual knowledge our our dedication and our own specific skills to rehearsal we each have our own part to play we bring our own instrument but we combine them in service

053of a shared mission to create something that's bigger and better than even the sum of our parts so I ask that you preserve these programs as they are and if at all possible strengthen them I know it's a tricky time I know things are difficult but this is not something that you can afford to sacrifice thank you for your consideration thank you the next speaker is Eileen Anderson Eileen if you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute hello my name is Eileen Anderson I'm the parent of two Seattle public school students including one at Ingram High School on November 8th last year the Ingram Community sense of safety was shattered when one student shot and killed another in the hallway of the school following this tragic event there was a lot of talk

054from the district about safety today I'm asking for action we are still waiting to hear the results of the district-wide safety audit we are also waiting to hear recommendations for improved Safety and Security for Ingram High School specifically in February we were told that a safety review of the Ingram shooting was conducted that the results were under review by superintendent Jones and would be shared with Ingram principal flow where are the results of that review they have not been communicated to the Ingram community our sense of urgency was only heightened last week when a video was posted on social media of a Nathan Hale student carrying a gun on the Ingram campus the safety of our school communities is no small thing I asked the Board District staff and superintendent to act with a sense

055of urgency to review update and enhance security policies and practices and to communicate with parents and students more frequently thank you the next speaker is John maisano Torres hello I'm John lizano Torres Gianni's dad Giannis my 16 year old son he would not be the same child he is or a young adult that he is without the music program at Washington Middle School uh Johnny started I think it was in seventh grade there and he was assigned an elective of beginner band he wasn't particularly enthused about it but he said I always wanted to learn to play the trombone and he did uh and he's growing um now he's a part of the Garfield Jazz Ensemble that's going to play at the essentially Ellington competition and Festival next month in New York City one of

05615 bands from across the country two of those bands come from the Seattle Public Schools this is something you do so well you've been fundamental in in in supporting that and in supporting Gianni and supporting in all these kids who have come in to testify I don't want to lose that um I'm a product of the public schools my mom taught in public schools my both of my kids have come from the public schools and you know in a time when there there's declining population in the public schools when we're talking about a school that's a block and a half from 23rd and Jackson the birthplace of Jazz in Seattle when we're talking about a school that's 80 percent kids of color when we're talking about mental health and kids needing to have something they

057identify with and some Community they feel comfortable with this is so important this is not just another class this is not just another instructor please find a way we all when we have priorities and we see our kids invested in something we find some way to help them pursue those dreams please help us find a way thank you Grace slipped hi I'm Grace I'm a former Seattle Public School parent my for 16 years my kids went kindergarten through graduating at Garfield High School so it's a great experience all the way through and the best years of all were Washington and Garfield uh my kids graduated in 2018 in 2021. I'm also a former board member of friends of Washington music and I was also the president of it for a couple of years and then

058I was on the friends of Garfield art Orchestra so I was very involved in the music program um and I saw firsthand how music education benefited the students individually and the families in the community as a whole music was a vital part of the culture of in particular Washington Middle School I came from a school where being in music you were pretty much the nerd and I was shocked to see it just everybody was in music it was an important part of the culture and we all know too that music isn't vital to education not just as an enrichment activity but that music AIDS and learning in math in science in language we know that music helps with language development increased IQ spatial temporal skills improved test scores and of course being musical so we

059need more music education not less so I asked my kids both of them what they felt their music education did for them my daughter who's a competitive swimmer At Whitman said that the only other activity besides swimming taught her playing an instrument taught me that consistency in practice allows you the opportunity to do something you didn't think you could accomplish and my son who graduated last year from Cal Poly with honors in physics and math said and I'll read what he wrote To Me music is a huge part of my life at Washington I was in Fiddler's and Orchestra and I learned so much that I couldn't be taught in a typical classroom the idea that you get out of something which you put into it is a valuable lesson that was first impressed upon

060me and best understood through my music classes the idea of collaboration and doing one's job while trusting everyone else will do Theirs to create something together was another thing I learned through my musical career as someone who does not consistently play music anymore who did not end up in a musical career music is still vital to my upbringing and academic success thank you the next speaker is Maria Eugenia gallatelli I'm the parent of an Ingram freshman student and let me first say that this is not how anyone's first year of high school should be like Sierra public school states that it has a long hail commitment to increased gun safety that it has established policies and procedures with a focus on keeping students safe that school safety plans are updated annually this is a serious

061statement and I certainly want to believe that it is true in every way this is what would help me believe one if we are informed of the status of the safety audit that was promised after the shooting and by safety audit I understand the evaluation of many different areas related to safety not only the physical ones not only the buildings but also how the procedures and policies are being implemented and whether they need updates to be more efficient the shooting at Ingram considering the facts that the same student who shot another student had brought dangerous weapons to school weeks prior to the tragic event is to me in men and for many others prove that something failed we want to feel that Seattle Public Schools will always follow the policies and procedures established going forward

062two if communication is direct timely and transparent parents deserve to stay informed about what happens in our schools good or bad three if the community is invited to participate in the community action team that the superintendent promised to establish back in November I have hope that if we all take this seriously if we work together and listen to the needs of our students parents and teachers and take immediate action we can make schools safe thank you very much for listening hi there my name is Chris arms thanks for letting me speak I'm a parent I have a Washington Alum and my youngest will start next year we have lived in the Central District since 2005 almost 20 years now and 10 years in the immediate neighborhood of Washington these are my observations over the past

063five Washington was passed over for the bond issue for facilities upgrades at least once and by the looks of the facility several prior this amidst repeated news from students that I do believe actually that they were holding their urine sometimes all day because the bathrooms were either not working or very unclean the community was split in half when meanie restarted meaning is a more affluent neighborhood so the resources flowed in an expected Direction then there was the James Johnson debacle where he was accused of abusing students my eldest daughter was in that class math instruction seems to always be in Dire Straits at Washington Middle School the TAF introduction seemed to inject some energy but also a great deal of uncertainty into the school it has now abruptly been done away with with little warning

064or explanation and now the cuts to a legacy Jazz program as well as the food pantry provider the food pantry the only bright spot was that the school received an IOP grant to get the ground spruced up to essentially paint and weed what my wife and I call the rat hotel which was a cluster of bushes that provided cover for a large number of rats right next to the dumpster of the front of the school was removed thank goodness this was almost solely advocated for and secured by my wife but for this one bright spot it is all Cuts in crisis all of this is done without any transparency or explanation from SPS or the administration parents have to work so hard at this school advocating for their children finding math tutors private music lessons

065Nye up grants hosting promotions off off school grounds because admin were not allow um and this in the historically black neighborhood of Seattle all the while SPS is doubting Equity that is a huge disconnect for me and I'm sure for many others this all taking place in Seattle which just overtook Boston as the second richest city in America this recent cut just saddens me deeply jazz band was the one single bright spot and no it will not be covered by only one teacher it continues to a long trend of cuts by SPS that tragically seems like it was done here simply because it can every time thank you the next speaker is David chick I'd like to seed my time to M.A Stevens who was trying to connect earlier I'm a Stevens if you're on

066the line please press star 6 to unmute um do you yeah can we oh you can hold yeah hi I think you're having trouble getting on are you okay with me holding up the phone and you can just okay okay all right you bet okay hi great okay hi my name is Emma Stevens um I went to Washington Middle School and I currently go to Garfield High School and I would like to bring up a very important point that music is a safe space for a lot of children including myself and that means it is a safe space for children of color children who are part of the queer Community children who are part of neither and I think that's very important um taking away this music program from Washington Middle School will take away

067that safe space for a lot of children because you are downgrading this program and this one single teacher cannot take care of all of these kids and provide that space for them not only this but the teacher is also an orchestra teacher this means that banned kids who play Band instruments will not receive the education that they need for their insurance um this will not only decrease the education for them but also the sense of importance of that space for them you can already see the effects of a weakening band and Orchestra program from Washington Middle School feeding into Garfield by looking at the success of the symphony orchestra and band programs at Washington not only this but also the Jazz program a lot of people are focusing most of their attention on the Jazz

068program and well I think this is important to a lot of students the majority are in Orchestra and band and this would take away that space for them thank you next speaker is Shea Bloomer Murrow I'd like to ask if Christy to Vader or devatar is present um or online my intention is to see the majority of my time to her because I think we've heard a lot from Washington I want to thank all of the directors because frankly this is a really hard job and I just recognize that I also want to respectfully say this is clearly not about jazz this is about music music it's about our children music's not an extracurricular this should be an essential component of what's happening in our schools and it can't be cut after these kids have

069gone through these years of isolation this is not what Equity looks like and frankly neither of these programs neither of these schools are so special that they have these programs these programs are possible anywhere all the kids at the school are provided instruments that's why we've got this huge program where it's getting more and more diverse so I think we really need to be thinking about our priorities and and having this kind of program in every school in this District there's just no excuse for it Christy are you here because we also shouldn't be isolating kids in special education and restraining them and I know that the special ed PTSA has some things to say about that thanks y'all Christy if you're on the line please press star six tell me I am yes thanks

070Shay for giving me the opportunity to testify and thanks to the school board directors and superintendent Jones for listening my name is Christy devotter and I'm testifying a member of the Seattle special education PTSA as you may know the U.S Department of Justice entered into a settlement agreement with Spokane Public Schools last week to address that District's use of restraints and isolation practices that according to doj findings effectively discriminated against students on the basis of disability by denying them equal opportunity to participate in or benefit from The District's education program this despite all of the work Spokane has done to ban isolation and reduce restraints in their district and it was just the latest in the series of doj rulings around the country Seattle Public Schools through the work of this school board and this

071superintendent has taken some bold steps to address the practices of restraints and isolation in our schools and we are grateful for your leadership but there's so much work left to do so much training and systems improvements that are needed to make the vision of these changes into a reality in our schools and to that end the Seattle special education PTSA drafted a position statement on restraints and isolation in Seattle Public Schools it's a deep dive into the policy and procedure with analysis and information from our organization that highlights some of the challenges to implementation and recommend steps to overcome those challenges I'm the primary author of the statements but it was part of a group effort with input from local and Statewide disability rights groups and Families we hope you'll make time to partner with

072us to discuss the statement our concerns and our recommendations we hear you when you say you are committed to family and Community engagement and we know that we're all working toward the same goals ensuring the safety and mental well-being of students and staff while at the same time addressing disproportionality and discipline and and disparate educational outcomes for minoritized groups students of color and students with disabilities being the most affected thanks so much for your time before moving on to the wait list I want to go back and check on those who may have missed their turn the first is Veronica Briggs no okay um the second is Danielle Coleman yes I am here if you can hear me yeah go ahead okay thank you my name is Danielle Coleman I am an I'm going to

073speak on the cuts to the Washington Middle School music program I'm actually an Alum of Washington Middle School music program and I now play professionally in the Seattle Symphony here in Seattle I play the French horn um so this means a lot to me and I'm really happy I made it out of rehearsal in time to speak today but I wanted to point out a couple of things um this is actually a real big Equity issue in music because if you're gonna cut music education out of public schools then only wealthier families are going to be able to access music education and all the benefits that come along with it and this is just going to create further racial and economic inequity in music the kind that we see in the professional field at the

074Collegiate level and the high school level it all starts in this age when kids are really starting their instruments in middle school so it's so important that we have that public access to music education at that crucial time when so many students starting to learn music and building their lifelong passion for music and specifically with the music education and Jazz Legacy of the Central District in Seattle that's just we want to honor that Legacy of all the great musicians who have come out of Seattle and we don't want that to end we want that to continue we don't want music to be just for wealthy white families in Seattle and also I wanted to point out that playing music is more than just learning an instrument that music Fosters courage and vulnerability and actually is

075a really important vehicle for constructive risk taking the kind of things that as we know now the Adolescent brain we'll search for and music is one of the ways that young people can do that constructively so it's not just about music and art and inspiration but it's actually a safety and a life-saving thing that we can offer young people to have a constructive path to experience vulnerability and to experience risk-taking and and build community in the process so there's so many positives here and I really just don't want to see such an amazing City like Seattle lose any kind of music education the kind that I benefited from but because I wouldn't have been able to afford extracurricular activities uh and I I was so because of that and that Foundation at that age I

076was able to pursue a life in music and so I just want to really encourage you to rethink these budget cuts in those areas so thank you for letting me speak today that was our final speaker this concludes today's testimony testimony thank you very much and thank you to everybody who took the time to come out and speak to us tonight uh directors how are y'all feeling y'all need a break yeah can we keep yeah got you know oh okay that's cool um let's take a two-minute recess please be back here promptly at 603. Birds no no no 5 43 my bad 5 43. please come back at five four T three foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] here [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I love to see people

077making connections please continue to do so if you would like but we have a quorum so if you could uh take those conversations outside the room that'd be super helpful you don't have to go home but you cannot stay in this particular room and chat okay and a little bit here all right we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda may have a motion for the consent agenda I move approval of the consent agenda seven approval of the consent agenda has been moved by director Sergio and seconded by director Rivera Smith do directors have excuse me any items that they would like to remove from the consent agenda director Hanson item number five all right any other items we have a motion for the consent agenda as amended take your time foreign of

078the consent agenda as amended second all right so this has been moved and properly seconded all those in favor of the consent agenda as amended please signify by saying aye hi hi passes unanimously thank you very much okay we will now uh direct our attention to the item that was removed from the Concentra dinner item number five may I have a motion for this item yep I move that the school board amend policy numbers three two three one Student Records three five one zero Associated student bodies 3520 student fees charges fines restitution damage deposit rename student fees fines or charges and 6800 safety operations and maintenance of school property and board procedure 3520 BP student fees charges fines restitutions and damage deposits procedure renamed student fees fines or charges as attached to the board action

079report I further move that the school board repeal board policy number 3233 fees for copies of Student Records second all right thank you both we will now go to director hampson for comments or questions thank you president Hersey I apologize for sending it late I don't know even if I had sent it in advance how we would have Incorporated it but my I don't have an issue comments questions or concerns with the specific changes that are being proposed they are changes that need to be made and we do need to make them now to be in compliance with state law and avoid issues with our audit however I also believe that when policy comes before us we are still approving all the other language that's in there at some level and I don't believe uh

080director Chrome Barone and I sat down and had a long conversation about this particular set of policies and about whether or not in particular policy 323520 and 3510 are consistent with our vision and values with our goals and guard rails with our strategic plan and I do not believe that they are not and I'm not saying that in whole cloth but there are some really really long overdue changes and so I I'm going to read through some of the things that I would like us to consider and I'm interested in bringing this back before the end of this legislative of our legislative calendar to look at some deeper changes so that students can go into next year with uh some hope about uh maybe a calendar of changes that might take place to to better

081insert Equity into um it's it's really about fiscal Equity into this conversation and and also leadership so the first one I'm get you have it in your email but I'm gonna I'm gonna read this because I it's not available in any packet these are for discussion uh this is not something that is to be that is currently under discussion um for what we would vote on today so possible edits number one all allowable fundraising activities must include a rebalancing fund mechanisms mechanism so as to ensure Equitable access to activities Athletics uniforms Personnel for all students and SPS whether school opts to utilize rebalancing funds may not be limited by volunteer availability number two beyond the state required waiver the student superintendent shall make every effort to ensure fees whether assessed by the district or ESB

082are assessed are assessed excluding to the extent possible participants in the federal free introduced lunch Federal free or reduced price meals program and for reducing fees for students this is official language family members and other non-students of the age of 65 or over who by a reason of their low income would have difficulty in paying the entire amount of such fees it's unreasonable in my opinion that for the aforementioned families and students to be required to opt out of each and every fee assessed by the combination of District ASB and booster clubs and I believe that while it's a process I right our system can do better in making it so that those fees are not assessed to those families in the first place those students and their families number three the superintendent shall not

083assess fees without demonstrating that Administration and collection of such fees isn't a disproportionately large percentage of the revenue generated by the same fees in other words it's foolish to assess fees if the cost of collecting those fees is going to represent a huge portion of what you collect than you've accomplished nothing you may not you I mean this is kind of where we are with school lunch right like where we just really want to just pay for it because the whole process of that program is um it's in many ways more efficient to just pay for the whole thing um number four ASB Constitution and biology will be revised annually based on a Model Constitution and bylaws approved by the school board in collaboration with the superintendent similar to what we do with wazda and

084submitted for approval to the superintendent or their designee there's an some portion of this in this policy right now and we are not in compliance with it because we don't review and have never stated when we're going to review ASB Constitution and bylaws they're just out there operating on their own uh ASB Constitution and buy list shall not be inconsistent with model policies and shall not create barriers to participation or fail to create a body uh oops I made a mistake on that one a body representative of the student population number six staff support for ASB activities shall be adequately trained and supported by the superintendent staff including in grades five and below currently state law says that the um superintendent can appoint a an adult at grades five and below as the ASB meaning

085they don't have to consult with students in grades five and below I've seen principals do incredible involvement of students forming asbs in elementary school I don't believe we should support not having that engagement where they make decisions about money that's spent at that school and then add policy 4120 to this revision to clarify the role of PTA and booster fundraising and the implications of superintendent and our principal receipt of such funds I guess I should say District receipt of such funds adding the same rebalancing mechanism requirements stated in numbers one and two any gifts in the first and second points that it made any gifts accepted or fees assessed by boosters ptas must have a rebalancing mechanism and follow the same guidelines for waivers if they are approved by the superintendent or principal in connection

086to 4120 all curricular opportunities that utilize School District resources including District email property Etc must demonstrate the same Equitable approach to assessment of fees and proactivity and waiving fees for those unable to play so um anyway well before I make comments on my comments I would like to pass it over to director Chrome Brown for her comments as well because she had some things to say about this these policies oh is this hey there we go when it comes to these policies and when it comes to our ASB policies and um in general uh I think firstly one of the great things that have been added that I want to thank uh director hampson for adding is um uh or fail to create a body um uh that is not representative of the student population

087because that's so important when it comes to equity and when I think about um booster clubs and I think about student budgets and Student Activities when it comes to extracurriculars and when we say these things must align with our values as a district one of those main values that has been said again and again is equity and what happens um in our schools is really unequitable uh I mean director hampson and I were sitting in this coffee shop and we were like looking through each and every one of the different budgets and how money is allotted throughout different high schools and middle schools and even elementary schools and it is just incredible like my jaw was on the floor of that little Queen Anne Cafe um I thought we can we can claim equity in

088these in these practices and yet have huge gaps like that and not just gaps in funding when it comes to extracurriculars um ptsas booster clubs um but there's huge gaps in quality to uh in access to Quality um uh arts and to Quality Sports and to Quality gear um uh for such things which is a huge problem um to me as a student it's something that we experience like at Nathan Hale with Nathan Hale Theater which is something I'm deeply involved in we we receive very very little funding from our school's budget because we just don't have the budget for it um and so that means we rely on our community and we rely on uh reaching out to parents and families to get the money we need to put to put together high quality

089Productions and to do storytelling and to encourage kids to do what they're passionate about and that in itself just feels inappropriate to me that um school programs are being forced to rely on outside resources of different families and not having this funding there in the first place I know that's a huge and holy like another conversation um but I think with this all reflects is is the need for equity in um how we are Distributing funds and how money is handled in this district and in education in general and the importance of our students experiences our schools should be excellent they should be places of excellence and high quality education that includes extracurriculars and all students should have that access to those things and should not have to fill out forms to opt out of

090fees if they don't have the money for those things because they should just be there anyway and that's all I have to say about that thank you so I would love to hear from other directors if possible I'm taking this as an opportunity to uh hopefully hear from you all about whether this is a direction that makes sense with an ear to our legal counsel over there to make sure I'm not crossing any boundaries but this is one of the few ways that we can do work somewhere on the on the diet so um and if I can accept I mean Luna is the only director I've worked with um directly on this so I can accept to others who if anybody wants to work on this if it sounds like there's a reason to

091move to move forward I mean I might move forward anyway and at least produce a product working with with Luna and others uh and I I don't think this would be a final step I think it would be a first step in trying to um give the superintendent a direction that he can then utilize to to try to accomplish some of these things over time I think the other thing that underpins this for me that I want to be really clear about is if we don't do this we don't these inequities will never go away and we don't actually know what these things cost we don't know how much it costs at certain schools to do the things that they do because they're always being extra buckets of money or being carted in and filling

092in gaps and so we don't know what it costs to really have a robust program of the Arts which by the way despite not being funded by the state is part of basic education according to our constitution so if we're going to get there we've got to know how much things cost and for me this is um there's a obvious Equity component to this but there's also a fiscal component to it thank you I wonder can you explain a little more of what explain what rebalancing fund mechanism is what is that what the rebalancing fun number the number one where it says all allowable fundraising activities must include a rebalancing fund mechanism I'm just wondering what that is so basically that somehow we would have to resource other schools so um the counseling example is

093a good one where we slowly over time have been adding counselors to I mean pre-pre-pandemic we were adding counselors to schools that we started with schools first who were higher needs I should say this the district did and then slowly as funds became available built it into those other budgets right this is a quite a bit more complicated because it flows into extracurricular but it's basically saying if we accept funds for the whether it's within the school day or it's connected to the school and it's supporting things that for example the complexity of Athletics that is connected to Seattle Public Schools it's they are School sports we pay coaches right um how do we make sure that what is raised through booster clubs what's provided through fees that are raised because different schools charge different

094amounts of money as you are aware from reading these policies how do we rebalance that at schools that don't aren't able to accumulate the number the same level of resources that other schools have Luna and I talked a lot about this since having experience of fundraising at schools where there is a combination of need and the rebalancing sort of happens internally versus from school to school across the city where you have extremely high need and extremely low need and there's great disparity in terms of what's accessible there and so the district would have to figure out a way to fund that difference so that whatever it's kind of it's a you could use the um the Levee caps as kind of one what do they call that the re-uh trying to balance out the the

095funds across not that I'm giving credence to that but across the state where just regionalization yeah that's what I'm talking about so um we're in the same category of trying to balance things when it comes to what kids have access to at schools you know just so I know if I'm understanding it right then uh are we balancing the mechanism means that so as an organization or entity does a fundraising activity they will also take a portion and contribute it towards this rebalancing fund I'm not I'm not suggesting how I'm suggesting that it needs to happen and that when we allow communities to fund programs at their schools in many cases as I was also surprised at some of the the numbers because it we are required by state law to report both the and

096there's a reason right because it creates inequities we're approving this tonight because it because the waiver is necessary so that to try to keep us from creating inequities but we need to go a lot further if we really want to address the issue I'm grateful the state has done this far but um when a School receives those dollars then somehow the district has to make up the difference or limit the amount that they receive like I said I don't didn't want to prescribe how it's done because it's um I mean I've been talking with the financial stuff and still Public Schools about this for years and it's highly complex there is no one-size-fits-all and so there's got to be a lot of um you know discretion on behalf of the superintendent and his leadership to

097make sure that those things happen and I think doing it through programming might be their their best approach so you don't want to just start you don't want to start taking stuff away from schools but you want to figure out how to make those things available and it goes all the way to things like you know we do advertising on behalf of ski bus in our schools are those programs accessible to everyone yes they have scholarships are they actually accessible in the same way that that is consistent with our vision and values in terms of our expectations some trying to to put the vision and values and Equity piece in every aspect of our system if you're using our resources then the expectation is that your behavior in line with our vision and values is

098that helpful yes thank you okay okay go ahead [Music] um I'm curious if there are examples from other districts that have tackled the what did you call it the rebalancing fund um so I would not I would very much stay away from calling it a fund and put it very much in the hands of the of staff that it's it's an internal thing that they have to to work through I have not researched it for a couple of years when I had and we got an email ironically today like at the same time that I that I sent this information out there's always these Notions of well if you contribute yeah give 25 and or we'll take all the money and we'll redistribute it just give to the central fund um from an economic standpoint

099those things don't really work and I couldn't find any really functional models because I think the localization is really key people really want to different even if you did say oh well everybody gets you know everybody gets a theater program well not not every school wants a theater program you know it's I think if there's if there are students who want to do that you know we should figure out how to offer it but right now it happens only people can pay for it and that's that's not okay so no in terms of the the level of rebalancing that I'm talking about no I would need to go out and that's what I would commit time to to research more and talk to districts I didn't have certainly access to districts like I do know

100that I'm on the school board where we've had the opportunity to meet with so many of them across the country and to say hey who's who's doing this well but it's an it's really an administrative thing like it's something that I want the superintendent and his staff to figure out um but instead of us telling them how to do it but to at least give it their best shot the example that does come to mind for me was Franklin High School and prom Franklin High School prom is that what you said a situation where um I think that we should be supportive of as the kids came and gave really powerful testimony and I I do see that as a problem that needs to be solved um and and then there's like some kind of

101I don't I don't know if this is the best example but um Lincoln High School because they don't have um athletic fields they are spending a lot of money on that is transportation right yep um that is also part of the problem yeah so I that that's like a different kinds of complexity so um I would be interested in learning about how other districts have approached this but I recognize that the issue exists I think it's something that has to be solved over a good amount of time and we want to allow for that up front but if we don't give the superintendent the charge it's never going to happen and we're just going to keep we shouldn't just let the State beat us to the punch on any of this stuff we should be

102stepping up so but yeah I um as I said I think an initial take at it and then um getting more student involvement and looking at it and we've heard from a lot of students about it but there's a lot to learn about what it means to actually truly do this but if we don't start talking about it and I couldn't let this policy come through without this was an overdue change that got pushed off because of all the coveted stuff and it's it actually as you heard from um when our Ama or kings and queens were here talking to us the other day you heard from Roosevelt the comments about the um the fees issues there it is something that affects their lives every single day and then access to programming like you're saying

103the transportation money being spent on Transportation or having to get into cars or you know and is there Equity there I know there's inequity in terms of you know Title IX girls Sports versus boys sports and forget about the fact that we have very little in terms of non-gendered sports it's a whole yeah but we got to start somewhere the last comment I want to make is that sometimes I get feedback from community members that paperwork and processing is cumbersome when it comes from central office and one concern I have is if we if we're adding a layer of administration and that is the last thing I want to do in terms of slowing things down for things that kids are passionate about so um that is just you know I think we understand that

104and something to be aware of yeah I I agree that occurred to me as well like which is part of I think there that we could probably speak to that and the language right to make sure this isn't meant to add layers of oh you have to do this and you have to do that and you have to get this approval but for the superintendent to look at the whole system and say how can we do better in this regard without shutting things down I don't know superintendent Jones I'm open to hearing from you about it as well and briefly um thank you for asking yeah I think the the clearer the charge with some with some expectations around phases we I think we can backwards map we can process engineer how to get it

105done from from a procedure perspective but if if you all can spend just time getting Clarity around what is the outcome and and it almost sounds like a an emerging guardrail that we can we can have for if such programming goes out then there's going to be this level of analysis per every item or whatever but I think there's a again the clarity of the charge will be will be really helpful and we can figure it out I'm interested in knowing what the intersection is here with the definition of well-resourced schools which we're throwing that phrase around a great deal and we I don't know what the hell that means and two um how we distribute money to our schools under the weighted Staffing standard formula because I I see those three issues rebalancing weighted

106Staffing standards well resourced schools being very much interconnected or crosswalked here that's all I got so I'm not hearing any reason to not keep working on this yeah I don't see any reason not to keep working on it um I the only question that I had is like do you see any potential overlap with the policy ad hoc committee um yeah okay I just don't want to over capacity them so I'm looking for kind of pretty succinct fixes that's sort of why this is the what did you I forget what Les called it but the this is the big version and smaller more succinct versions should come from that but I also didn't want to just move forward without without talking to my fellow directors about it and getting people's questions and that's where it

107needs to be clear and what the unintended consequences are it's all very helpful and so awesome just let us know how we can support if you need additional folks or um you need somebody assigned to the work to support just let me know yeah and I'll talk to director Rankin about just not the actual work but whether or not it fits in that sort of policy manual area or whether this is yeah yeah I'm not sure yet yeah neither are we all right thank you um with that being said uh director Chrome do you have anything you'd like to add don't feel like client yeah awesome thank you uh so Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please we still have very technical things that we do need to approve tonight if I'm not mistaken but

108Chandra is just forecasting that there are additional pieces yes yep director sarju [Music] what I need a point of clarification we're not voting on this correct what are we what's the vote so uh there was no way to do any additional work on this and still comply with the changes that need to be made under state law voting on that we're voting on the changes being proposed and I'm using the opportunity to say I want to bring this back and address the rest of it and here's why yeah my vote is I director song Moritz aye director hampson aye director Harris director Rivera Smith hi president Hersey this motion is passed unanimously thank you very much for that robust discussion um we are now poised to move into our action items which I believe we

109have who knows we will now move to the ax to the action item on today's agenda action item one is approval of the board resolution number 2022-23-14 direction for the 2023-24 fiscal stabilization plan this item is for introduction and action may I have a motion for this item I move that the board adopt board resolution number 2022 slash 2314 Direction Four 2023 2024 fiscal stabilization plan as attached to this board Action Report immediate action is in the best interest of this District second all right approval has been moved by director Sergio and seconded by director Vera Smith vice president Rankin is unable to join us this evening so I will be providing some introductory remarks on this item on her behalf the board action would approve the resolution that directs the superintendent to provide the

110board with a detailed plan regarding reductions and other actions necessary to balance the budget next year this resolution is the first step in a sequence after approval of the resolution the superintendent will provide the board with the fiscal stabilization plan on May 3rd in our work session on May 10th the board will consider a board action to approve the fiscal stabilization plan and this plan will guide the final budget that will be brought to the board in June oh my God we are in the midst of making challenging decisions as a district and this process will help increase transparency and Clarity for the board and Community around the proposed changes to District Operations in advance of our final budget adoption the work session on May 3rd will be an opportunity to discuss major changes in

111more detail where we can get a deeper understanding of their impact and how they align with available resources as well as our values the board action was co-sponsored by directors hampson and song Moritz would either of those directors like to offer any additional comments at this time so as I told superintendent Jones director well director Rankin and then director songrits we talked about the relationship between this particular resolution and what I believe is a more robust Financial policy that we don't actually have a fiscal policy that doesn't exist currently um which I have sent to all my fellow directors I did want it to be included in this but it's was told but right without a whole lot of I guess that it would be confusing because we're not voting on a new policy we're

112voting on this resolution but the reason I thought it was important is that it did speak to Okay when um it spoke to one a situation like this occurs what the expectation is so that this isn't just sitting out there by itself we have not I think if we had taken the time to ha to write a stronger fiscal policy and prayer years prior decades then we might have just naturally come to this place of having this resolution where we have to be really clear about hey we're in this deficit period we don't have we need the clarity of the forward motion and in the face of these significant fiscal challenges we've been our expenditures have exceeded our revenues consistently for quite some time and we have failed to address it and that's all of

113our failing everyone collectively that's in involved in that because it does entail making cuts but it also I think importantly make it underlines even in this time of declining enrollment and that those impacts on funding that we need to make sure that the resources that we do have are that the superintendent is demonstrating the alignment with the successful achievement of student outcomes and we did try to speak to that in this resolution I hope we did so successfully um and this is a big opportunity to have a balanced budget and make that first step on a path towards sustainable fiscal stability we need a much more this this creates some transparency in terms of the process it's always been a struggle for us to figure out how do we provide that transparency so people can

114see how we get from point A to point B because it feels like we just suddenly it's fully baked and then we vote some of it's baked at the state level you know some of it's baked in our existing ratios and the that's another thing that the the draft fiscal policy I sent out speaks to um but and at this time we need to have a really clear and serious response and it's not just the adoption of the budget but actually asserting our commitment to financial stability and directs the superintendent to propose a fiscal stabilization plan that includes specific actions necessary to balance that budget the use of the economic stabilization fund which is a big deal because we do have to repay that as well as other reserves finding non-general funding sources and significant

115reductions of expenditures in the central office and to a lesser extent schools so we need to bridge this 131 million dollar deficit over whatever it is when we finish calculating the uh I don't want to say nominal impact but possibly limited impact of what what the state is is providing to districts right now and and start the development of a multi-year strategy and again I just want to emphasize that it is our responsibility to I my hope is that by the Fall we have in hand a fiscal policy that really clearly lays out all the different pieces the the reporting piece that we don't currently have the administration piece that we don't currently have and the budgeting piece those are the three it's kind of the three legged stool of a fiscal policy I believe

116for a school board and we only have it in sort of smattering places um and it this type of resolution would always be necessary at a time when we need to shift Direction this isn't just you know business as usual so I don't know uh Vivian if you want to add anything um my kind of interpretation of this exercise was um that there isn't formal direction from our board for this superintendent to address the fiscal cliff right um we it's our legal obligation to balance our budget but there isn't necessarily formal Direction and I think this is our attempt at that I think it's an opportunity for individual directors to express ideally um combined Direction and and for our superintendent I have no idea obviously how individual directors plan to vote on this resolution but

117my hope is that there will be enough support for this resolution to give that kind of support for Dr Jones in the exercise that he needs to undertake that will be difficult so that's kind of my interpretation of this exercise and also in addition it puts specific dates as to when we will be getting a plan to add that transparency to the community and I think the um other point that I'd like to reiterate is that it's also giving direction to the superintendent that to do the multi-year budgeting and to create a plan to do that so that's kind of my take on this resolution but I'm interested in hearing feedback from colleagues I don't think that what I'm about to say is necessarily feedback one of the things that um that I've been thinking

118about uh you know it's I I have frequently asked myself the rhetorical question how did we get here and this has been a decades-long march to this place so it's you know we're not in this place um you know because of the pandemic or you know because of the last couple of years um this we have been we have been marching towards this kind of deficit for a long time so that said um I guess what I'm wondering and I don't know if it's really a question because I think I should just assume that this this change that we're doing um you know through through this work My Hope Is that in the future and I know hope is not a strategy but there needs to be a uh a system in place so that

119this cannot happen again as a slow March uh no superintendent it should have to inherit um problematic situations from multiple superintendents over time and that's that's where we are here and this is not a blame game but we did not just land ourselves in this financial position I have a vivid memory of being in this Auditorium when Mary bass voted no on a financial budget she was the Lone no vote and her colleagues were incensed at her but she's a finance person in Metro and is still a finance person we're talking 20 years ago and so this can't just be you know for the time that we have superintendent Jones here we need to set up future superintendents with a structure so that future boards can hold the superintendent accountable to ensuring that we do

120not make a u-turn because if we don't we can make a U-turn right back we can solve it now and then 10 years later we've made a u-turn and we are right back at the same or Worse deficit so I don't think we need to have a I don't need an answer from you all about the the weeds of the details but that to me has to be the Forward Thinking is this is a course correction and we're not going to make that U-turn and the way we're not going to make that U-turn is to have policies and procedures in place so that it doesn't happen again thank you um I endorse what you said and I've also been one of the lone votes against a budget and it really is very very painful but

121I assure you I will vote against a budget again if some of the questions that we've been asking for months and months are not answered because I perceive that as my fiduciary duty not because I don't think that staff is working very very hard I acknowledge that um questions that I asked about this bar this policy is are attached to the agenda tonight they got in late I own that my hope is is that by the next budget meeting they will be answered and they'll be real answers not yeah yeah fine Harris We're Gonna Roll you and blow you away here not a problem I I can't I can't do that I do know that some of us have been asking for the actual costs of special education that we've been spending as I might

122add too many legislators and and if we're going to make that argument to the legislature we need to be able to know what and how we're spending that money and I don't envy anybody on staff in this District with with the ugliness that comes with reductions in force with the overwhelming uh responsibility and the hours worked I do think though that it's unfair to set our superintendent up with these kind of sort of ghosty expectations when we talk about things like well-resourced schools and we don't even know what that is um I I think we need to do a better job of backing our superintendent up on that piece and I appreciate that you and director Rankin worked on this together Dr Jones I appreciate that immensely but I'm going to hold those same questions

123that are attached that haven't been answered to the next budget meeting and and I assure you I'll read every sentence comma and period at that time thank you director Harris thanks for your comments I also Echo that um I think that I'm thinking about this resolution separately from a budget vote I am cautiously optimistic that with this direction um with support around the understanding that this board knows that significant changes have to happen that's what I think this resolution is about but I also have this expectation that we will be getting the information that we have been requesting around special education spending before I will be able to take a vote of confidence on the budget in July so I just want to Echo that any others uh before we move to the vote on

124the resolution all right Miss Wilson Jones a roll call please oh yeah please go ahead I don't think this will affect your your vote but I just want to just give you my uh perspective on this that that this effort is not uh singular to Seattle other school districts have been bringing resolutions forward in extraordinary times uh I believe this brings Clarity to the superintendent and staff as to what to do it brings transparency around what are the elements of uh this this exercise if you will of balancing the budget I'm bringing fiscal stability I believe it instills discipline in terms of what are we what are we setting out to do with with with dates and times and who's going to do it Darren is role Clarity around what is the board giving the

125direction to the superintendent uh I also believe this asserts the board's Authority as to what their responsibility is in terms of fiscal stewardship and then the superintendent's responsibility for res for responding to that and this gives that Clarity going forward and so uh I think this is a a healthy thing to do will it be necessary every year to have a resolution maybe not but I believe this these are extraordinary times that we're in right now and the more transparency we can have about who's doing what and what is expected would be healthy for us so I just wanted to mention that as you all go forward on your vote thank you for the support all right so there'll be no further comments or questions Miss Wilson Jones roll call please director Rivera Smith aye

126director sarju I director song Moritz hi director hampson hi director Harris aye president Hersey this motion is passed unanimously thank you all very much we're sincerely appreciated we have a progress monitoring session today on guardrail number two we are joined by our governance coach AJ crabill with the Council of great City Schools I will pass it to superintendent Jones uh now to begin their progress monitoring session I yeah I got it yeah we are going to the tables before I pass it to superintendent jobs all right thank y'all oh and take your mics don't forget thank you president Hersey and board members today we're here to talk about uh student outcome focused uh governance particularly guard rails and we're going to start with guard rail number two and guardrail number two is really speaking to

127the board's desire to make sure that systems are reliable and the guardrail reads the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service so I have today interim Deputy Fred podesta here and I have a couple of Staff members that are going to help us perhaps walk through some of the more detail Carlos De Valle Dr Dr Sarah Pritchett and Dr Marnie Campbell and they'll lead should be representing each one of these interim guardrail goals that we're referencing as metrics so um the board approved guardrail number two in the fall this fall October 26 to be exact and as I mentioned this guardrail focuses on operations this is the the only guard rail that has it has that focus and as you'll remember from our discussion last spring regarding interim metrics once the board

128approves the goals and guard rails it's my job to determine what our meaningful interim metrics and so these metrics will enable the board to effectively progress monitor each of the goals and guard rails so I'll stop right there and see if AJ wants to do any uh introductions to the first time that we're talking about guardrails but if AJ if you say proceed on I will but I'd like to maybe give you an opportunity to set a little bit of context we've been looking at academics I look forward to the conversation all right fantastic so uh in tonight's memo there are three metrics that I believe provide meaningful system level information about critical operational systems that support the board's monitoring of reliable services these areas are bus on time arrival teacher vacancy feel rates and

129technology system availability we also sometimes refer to that as uptime each of these metrics relates to an operational systems system that students interact with directly on their daily School experience experiences ultimately impacting learning outcomes these metrics also reflect the that the board what the board provided When developing the operational guardrail around systems when you're hearing most from community so we try to identify the the elements that you all have represented were most have most concern for community as you'll note in the memo we are on track to meet The Targets in each of the metrics and my and our interpretation of guardrail 2 is that systems are either reliable or unreliable there's no degrees of reliability it's either yay or nay um and so the Targets in each metric are based on industry standard for

130reliability so once our once our system looks at these standards they're they're considered unreliable excuse me once our systems drop below these standards they're considered to be unreliable and that's when corrective action will be taken so each metric includes not only the meeting of the target but also the maintenance of that reliable status so staff work is to an effort is to maintain reliable systems that's equal to the works required to achieve these targets and so once we get to a place of reliable we'll do the work to to sustain that and that's a little different than perhaps how we've represented goals and metrics in the past so I'll stop right there for a second and see if there's any questions about the framing and what this is and then we can get into some

131more specifics about to actual data how you came about picking these as the interim metrics and specifically why wasn't school lunches for example considered yeah so um that's a good segue into this next this next section I I want to take a moment to review the rationale for each of the metrics so first one is around transportation bus on time arrival and we believe this is a critical metric for our transportation system it allows if we're a monitor excuse me for monitoring for daily service that allows students to arrive at School prepared to learn take advantage of breakfast or Services some of their core classes are early in first period and so we believe that this is a a really important issue and it's been Transportation buses have been an issue that has been have

132been talked about a lot by the board and community the other piece is teacher vacancy fill rates this measures the percentage of classrooms with a teacher on the first day of school we know that a fast start is really important for our students we don't want them to get behind we want them to have the highest quality experience from day one going forward and if they start without that that that's what that's problematic and this allows us to monitor the effectiveness of our supports to schools in preparing for the Academic Year and we have a whole start of school effort that we really have to we dot the eyes across across the t's we do all kind of checks routinely to prepare for that day one experience for our students and we believe that's an

133important measure the other measure that the third one is around technology system availability as I mentioned that's also the term called uptime and this monitors the Key Systems that students use in their daily learning We Believe without that it would it would jeopardize quite a bit of their experience and technology system availability is what we're what we deem as a marquee metric in the technology sector and this metric allows us to determine reliable access to student learning tools as well and so when we think about interim interim metrics these were the three that we thought had the highest highest impact they had the highest level of indication of if we're reliable or not and so there could be other metrics too and so with that said I'd like to just hear from the board as

134to are these three do they look like the things that you hear about are there addition metrics but we we're pretty confident that these can be an indicator of how well we're doing in terms of reliability um I'll just go ahead and dive in I think that bus on time arrival into your vacancy if we're talking about student outcomes are really two really good um indicators and they have definitely been instances where especially at the beginning of the year um does somebody else have a mic on [Music] um they've definitely been indicators especially at the beginning of the year uh or rather they've definitely been things that we've heard about pretty frequently um so that's my two cents I think that we're headed in the right direction with those uh other directors go ahead director

135Hampton uh by and let you uh consistent with what president Hersey said the teachers and transportation are definitely ones historically that we've I mean ditto to what everybody said uh I think that less about the well I guess it's hard to say on the technology systems because we went from like that's all we heard about too yeah so um yeah that less so I think the only one that's that I'm I feel I hear about all the time that's missing is enrollment uh just well I kids getting enrolled people getting enrolled their customer service experience with enrollment but also our data on uh I don't I don't think we've had I don't think I've seen a data report around um lost students that we lost during the pin I know it's something that that I've

136heard you're looking at but um and that is connected to our well it can obviously you can't learn if you're not in school um and it's connected to some a lot of the other issues the enrollment like overall enrollment right keeping our enrollment numbers up I know there's a kindergarten enrollment um something that you all are talking about trying to um we hear about the skill center on the the radio but uh uh yeah that's that's a service area that I hear about and then I had one my one question is uh whether or not as these things become consistently um proficient whether they would sort of slide down to a okay we're good here now we're going to focus on these other things is that part of the thinking or am I looking at

137that wrong but so I'll ask you the second question but before I do that um uh director hampson are you suggesting that enrollment would be prioritize over these or would they be in addition and how how describe your uh your prioritization of enrollment versus these I don't think you I don't know that I have because what we hear is anecdotal right so I don't know if I have enough data to indicate that it is a broader issue I'm asking the question meaning I would think in terms of reliable service that's a pretty major service area for us and we have open enrollment periods and so there's that whole thing and they're maybe changes to that coming depending on what happens with consolidation I don't know yeah so it just remains a big question mark for

138me because I don't feel like I have that I've heard any data on it and I guess maybe my question should have been have you looked at that as a potential area where there's a need to to improve um I can't say that it I mean the only one that I would potentially bump is technology but how do you how do you that's pretty important stuff so yeah in the 2023 context of declining enrollment um I I think I I agree with you it doesn't matter if I agree with you or not but I'm saying I'm acknowledging confirming that this is a really important piece and I think we weren't looking at that um even as as back in October as a such a critical such a critical item so um yeah I like the

139board maybe to think about that one in terms of if you wanted to tee that up as something that was really important you know we can certainly consider it because uh we are going to spend a lot of time on enrollment over the next year two years three years probably next 10 years given our projections so I think that's that's a really important one um as for the second uh question around um once we meet the mark uh we're meeting standard I'm not sure if we would lower it and say that's not the priority anymore because what how we've approached this is that it takes a lot to to maintain uh the standard and that that's the work that goes in into a behind the scenes and and uh Carlos's team Sarah's team Marty's team

140they're all working hard to keep that keep that at the industry standard but I want Fred to be able to kind of speak to that a little bit but it's really about a maintenance goal here yeah we were what we were trying to do here is find some significant metrics that um are at scale that represent system complexity and most importantly have direct impacts on students and there's always room for improvement in areas but in terms of a guard Railway we're hoping and this is the first time we've had a monitoring session on the guardrail so we we need feedback but we're trying to do is get a slate of indicators to give the board a overall sense of District Operations um and you know again areas that are complex and large scale and and

141they do take ongoing work I None of these things represent well once we figured this out it's solved and then we'll never come back to it again and so I think we we appreciate feedback do these give you the general sense of operations if there's you know a glaring Omission I think enrollment um and the services and this kind of enrollment Trends and and do those do you know how does enrollment um how do Roman trans reflect operations versus reflect other goals is an interesting conversation but the customer service you know if we're not approachable and the customer services part don't work that certainly has an impact so um I think that that is certainly one to consider but I think we would tend to think once we get the appropriate slate um depending on

142how guardrails work you know unless we're hearing from the board or the community that oh the and again our goal is to not um to never provide unreliable Services something rears up that you know that we're having something that needs a mitigation plan to get back to Reliable then we would certainly measure it but overall what we're hoping is to to find the right set and then report on them regularly follow-up question in terms of of doing what you said to the receipt of additional title type funds for students who have certain designations thus um creating additional funding sources where does that data scrub happen in communication with the state and it's less about where does it happen but are you confident superintendent Jones that that information is scrubbed sufficiently so that we and is

143that in the enrollment area because whether or not a box get checked gets checked means whether or not we get funding for that particular child for that service that is a team effort with uh enrollment and then the various program areas that would lead to funding and finance usually I I think there there's room for improvement um less accountability so if there's some way to harness that and so we can know who's accountable for those very important steps as Dr Thompson was laying out um I wanted to go back so the question I think was what do we think of these three was there something else we prioritize more I I agree with the selections I I my only I think question is regarding the hiring feeling vacancy rates it looks like it's centered solely

144on first day of school but as we all know throughout the year there are vacancies that sometimes sit way longer than they should especially in our special ed department so this looks really great we're green we're doing pretty good here but throughout the year I don't know how we're doing I mean I I just I don't really hear that it's hard in a lot of our buildings so that's the only place I would maybe look to expand upon or maybe Focus also on because this is important first day school is definitely important but throughout the year is like I feel equally as important especially in certain departments uh thank you for that because um the first day is an indicator of how ready we were how how we've made made sure that we're going to

145fill each classroom with the with the qualified educator and then as we go along the year we we measure we measure daily obviously but that's around mostly around sub fill rates and so we have a parallel process going around subfield rates we also have a we also have a process that we look at when a teacher goes on goes on leave how do we fill that position so that's that's all part of it that if you would think about this as the Top Line measure of an indicator is is what we're doing the first day throughout the year we're also measuring formatively you know how are we filling these classrooms and so I think there's a parallel process that's gonna that also answers the the concern about what are we doing throughout the year I've

146got one just follow-up question the more that I am like mulling this over and after reading the memo technology system availability is something that's just sticking around in my head um and I wanted to ask this question to you superintendent Jones but also like would love to get some feedback from either our coach or my fellow directors I'm looking or at least from my perspective one of the things I hear about regularly is communication follow-up and I don't necessarily know if that is related enough to student outcomes to justify it being a guard rail but I would love to hear just like from the folks that I mentioned if y'all understand kind of like the track where my brain is going in terms of ensuring that we're closing the loop on some of the most

147important like Communications that we receive because it's just common that we as board directors who get like XYZ like oh I haven't heard from staff nobody responded and a lot of times that's not related to student outcomes at all but sometimes it actually is and so I'm just wondering in terms of like Fidelity with follow-up in terms of like getting things to especially families and students when we say we're going to get them to them um as potentially something that we could look at measuring but wanted to hear some feedback if I'm way off base I know that I shouldn't be like giving any advice to you as a superintendent about what we're measuring but wanted to introduce that piece of the conversation so uh president Hurst you mentioned that related to technology were you

148referencing that being a feature of the systems availability or uh okay no something different because it's like I'm just not seeing how system availability in my mind is an adequate measure of this particular guard rail for technology but that's not to say that I can't be convinced of that I'm just struggling as I sit here thinking through like how well transportation and the vacancy pieces fit into like what we're trying to accomplish here with this guardrail it feels as though technology systems availability is uh kind of on the outside of those two things and again that's just me right like don't take this as like you need to go fix this or change this just providing feedback yes you you open that up to your your fellow board members I'd love to hear their responses

149uh but it again if this is uh a better interpretation of what you all intended uh for uh the superintendent will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service and the in that context communication would would be a priority um yeah we certainly can look at that and see how we can incorporate it but I I'll defer to board members in terms of priorities the way I'm thinking about what metrics would be um that I would like to see around this guard will are things that impact the day-to-day functioning of our school so I actually would include technology on that because if the technology wasn't um working that would really interfere with the work that of our staff so when I'm looking at these three um metrics I think they are appropriate um you know

150I go back to I have a Wonder like should we be including something around lunches because I do think that is directly uh impacts our student outcomes um and that is something that I often hear feedback from families about my child had to wait for a very long time for a meal or there's staff missing and so my child wasn't able to get something or there was a misdelivery of sex and so that that is something I anecdotally hear about I don't have any data to support that um but I just pose that to my colleagues if lunch should be considered I had a very similar question to director Rivera Smith around the human resources metric which I submitted and and the answer that was provided to us there was reference to a continuous operation

151plan and I I would be curious to know more about that and perhaps within that plan there are better ideas for metrics that we should be discussing um I can't speak to the exact details of the operations plan that really relates to again ongoing recruiting both for teachers and central office positions and then fill rates but we can certainly provide to the board you know what all the metrics at HR uses the um the guys everybody is well aware there's very much a cyclical pattern to our work in a school district and so that's why um the first day and that metric again we're looking we're trying to look for indicators that just kind of speak to the overall health of the system was our thinking about this memo and so that's why we think

152that's um really important that's not to say that this you know represents all the management statistics that every Department um speaks to so you know given that that will be complex if um this is acceptable to you I think we could follow up with how that operations plan works and send that to all the board and and see if if and then you can give some thought to are there metrics in there that would be a better indicator than our first day or in addition to [Music] clarification that continuous operations plan is specifically around Staffing not other okay regarding Staffing I have some concerns about how many grievances are filed by our staff I have significant concerns about the length of time it takes to finalize investigations and that student outcomes focused absolutely when teachers

153go missing and it takes a very very long time are we appropriately staffed with our investigators are we using alternative dispute resolution early on I I don't know those statistics and frankly I'm not sure you keep them and maybe we really should because we were in a terrible place about a decade ago and we climbed out of it and I suspect that we are slipping back there that that to me is an absolute operational goal and it affects the trust and it affects our risk management as well that's real money director Harris uh is your suggestion that that be a an element of the human resource fill rate or it's a standalone just that we do it I can bootstrap it any way you want okay all right well thank you so uh we'll take

154this feedback into consideration and we will uh maybe ask you a couple follow-up questions to you all as as uh you have a chance to think about it but we'll incorporate uh some elements of that some or none of it in in the next iteration so it just depends on how strongly you all feel about it um so uh uh we'll move to a more familiar part of progress monitoring let's let's talk about the data a little bit um and then after we do that we'll talk about strategy and that's when I'll maybe ask uh Marty Carlos and Sarah to come forward to help uh clarify any any detail but if you uh if we're looking at the first first off the human resource hiring vacancy feel rates and at this point I'm looking at

155the uh the chart on page three and if and if you have it please turn there if not please flip the page to page three on on this on the screen which you're not seeing but I can speak through speak to it uh since 2018 we've had around a 98 fill rate on the a teacher in the class on the first day uh it's it's dipped it's dipped in significantly in 2021 we can we probably have some data on why that dip but that was a covet year covert year so there's an anomaly there perhaps and then we're back up to uh 94 which is it's a little higher than when we we saw that dip and and first happened in 2021 so this is clear that we're what we where we want to go

156is keep it above 95 percent so we have a little work to do there but I also wanted to see if you all had questions about this data and I might employ Dr Pritchett to give some some detail about this any questions about this particular metric and where we are I I mean since the Garfield is around the like this the health of the system I think it's great to look at the data at a top line but I am also thinking about our goals that are written in a targeted universalism format so I'm curious if your team is looking at more granular data on a bi-school basis to ensure that um our students for this from educational Justice are not disproportionately being impacted by um missing teachers on the first day of school I

157must say that's tremendous insight and we we know for example that substitute field rates are disproportionately hitting certain schools with those demographics uh similarly we are also familiar with how the first day of school is impacting various schools and so we we we track those data as well and Dr Pritchett am I accurate on that she said yes okay so don't want to want to be accurate so I I that is a that is a component of this and that's one of those kind of one of those other data points that we that we track so I that's astute thank you so much very specific example was alluded to earlier this evening in public testimony which is uh math at Washington Middle School I think it's been really hard to staff those positions and we

158have a stated middle school math goal for our black students um and so I I think to the extent that you feel comfortable sharing some more granular data with the board I think that would be a healthy conversation for us to have and you oh sorry you touched on this as well briefly but I think that one of the things that we saw throughout the pandemic is in something that I experienced often in my time in the classroom was the lack of substitutes being filled into positions on a daily basis um and I think that that has a large impact on you know the same thing that we're trying to get at here um because there will be several instances of folks that like need to take the time and their contract off to do

159whatever they need to do but because substitutes are really difficult to come by for a myriad of reasons um loss of classroom time is a big thing that is impacted by that and so I I see a relation there and I would be interested in some data around that potentially um so I just didn't want to lose that threat uh first are we only looking at the human resources piece of it right now okay uh you set the target at 94 which is where we are now um or where we were no where we are now yeah because we just had that first day of school um do you have trends that give you a sense of was there are there any other indicators that tell you whether or not you'll be able to meet

160that next year I mean obviously Personnel you know separations Personnel reports that kind of stuff I'll ask Dr Pritchett to come up and maybe speak to that however uh I I think our Trends are all out of whack right now I think after we've had this this last year of uh pandemic I think um employment trends and and how we recruit all those type of things have been we have to kind of reconfigure think of think differently how we're doing it and so I know we've had to be much more creative in our recruitment efforts and we've had to be much more creative and how we're thinking about retention but I think there's some unknowns of the last two years that have really kind of changed how we how we do business and so if

161Dr Pritchett has some additional information on that I I offered a come on up but I don't think we have a good idea to be honest um good evening I just want to say one that um that looking at our Trends um it's kind of a year-long piece that we do we do meet with our principals building principles every year to talk about retention and talk about where they are talk about strategy around how they're keeping teachers particular teachers are there areas where they need additional support for teachers so those are ongoing conversations that we have we do look at climate data as just kind of another piece to say are we seeing high levels of retention and high climate scores are there things that we need to be working on as I'm coming aboard

162I'm looking to strengthen the relationships with directors of school so that they can also have that on their radar as they go in and talk with principals and school leaders um around Staffing so those are just some just some of the pieces in there I think we outlined them in the memo of some of the strategies that we use to kind of monitor Staffing and where we are where we're falling short where are some of the areas that particular schools are seeing more need as Dr Jones said I think that the with the pandemic we've seen kind of topsy-turvy and and people leaving or people coming on board we also saw a significant number of emergency certification for teachers and as people were emergency certified they also started to think whether or not this was

163a job for them so we've seen some turnover in there so there's just a lot of things that we're learning about that I'm learning about as coming into this position and completing a full cycle this year I have another HR question um just a consideration um one of the another thing that I experienced um in my time teaching was that there would oftentimes be variations in the evaluation depending on the principle right there uh in Federal Way I know that you know putting no one's business out there there would be tons of Educators who would spend like the vast majority of their careers on basic and would be basic year over year and that's not necessarily due to the educator that's due to either like a lack of support or a lack of understanding of

164how you know an evaluation cycle is intended to work by the administrator I would be curious to know if there is a link between the schools who are who have more Educators who spend year over year in the basic category and the outcomes of those schools versus Educators who where we see a different type of trajectory right and I'm very cognizant and cautious of asking that question because I don't want to see like administrators potentially just moving Educators up because they know they were looking at it and there's definitely you know the possibility to do that but it is I think a question that's worth asking to see like does our evaluation process for our Educators and the supports that we're providing them actually align to student outcomes and can we say that definitively right

165because if it's not then there could be space for us to especially in partnership with our Education Association look to see does is this a process that serves us and is there something that could be augmented I'm going to steal a little bit of Dr pritchett's Thunder here but what we do in in the strategy section what we'll talk about here in a few but there's data inputs from uh meetings that we have with principals around school by school and we take into into consideration non-renewals and movement of teachers and some of them sometimes it's due to Performance however uh I think there are multiple factors that we're looking at including riff analysis displacement voluntary movement non-renewals all that go into the mix for how that's going to happen but I think that is a

166a component of it I will just add that we um with our peer assistance and review program we're also looking at evaluations because right now I would say the majority of our evaluations are proficient or higher and so and does that necessarily track with student outcomes just a wonder and so um and so that's a that's a real question with the school district this size we're certainly not seeing the number just if you did percentage-wise a number of teachers that we would think would need additional support we're getting ready to funding that you should ask we're getting ready to roll out an another professional development with school leaders for next year as we've changed the Danielson requirements and the language that's coming forth with evaluations so this time to recalibrate as we get new leaders

167we need to recalibrate what they're seeing in the classroom again that's another opportunity to partner with principal supervisors to talk about what they're doing with principals as they're walking through classrooms and buildings so that we're getting that calibration there because that is a concern across the district as to how people are looking at classrooms what they're seeing how they're rating and then to also build up understanding that as school leaders teachers come into the classroom although we don't want to live in basic that is a space where you can be and you can grow and it's okay and so we really need to be having that conversation as well and so those are some of the things that we're talking about as we prepare for next year we'll have a section after we walk through

168the data to talk about our strategies if it's okay we'll move on to uh the data center availability all right I said it's warm up here okay yeah it's a little data center availability Network infrastructure availability and Office 365 available availability and so our overall system uptime is about 99.8 and that's a that's a really it's really correlates to an industry standard and okay if you if you move the slide one more please yeah thank you it really correlates to an industry standard uh in December for example we had an unscheduled data center power outage and that took our number down a little bit but our overall Network infrastructure availability was uh greater than 99 and so Carlos has uh researched in 99.9 I believe is the is the standard that we want to make

169sure that we meet so that's where we are right now and I think that we're there and it takes a lot to sustain that and there's different reasons why it can go up and down including events such as power outages and you know weather events but this is a an industry standard that we're looking at so uh any questions about the data center systems availability Network infrastructure availability and Office 365 availability so the data basically is derived in the idea that unless you have an outage it's being supplied is that kind of how it's it's pretty simple uh Carlos come on up here please sir because I'm gonna I'm out of my out of my league here but but that's the way I understand it but I'd like for Carlos to give some legitimacy to

170those responses I'm trying to understand the data collection it sounds like unless there's an outage we're assuming that the services were being supplied so for all of our calendar except for those two days of outage that's how we get the 99.8 yeah we we our goal is to have redundant systems you know when we're talking about the data center availability and networks we're actually talking about internet access you know access to the Learning Management Systems you know schoology you know you name it uh teams uh so we we do it we have a system that's called solar base uh solarwinds I'm sorry uh that keeps track of the app time with the number one enemy like Dr Jones is saying is uh when the do we have power outages and um we do have some

171redundancy and that's that's our goal how can we put systems in place did it redundant you know not only from the application side of the house but the data center and the infrastructure as well when when we have power outages uh here in the past in February um we were able I'm sorry in January that's when we got it right in January we actually put in place a a fell over in Roseville and that's what that's the work that's been going on for about two years the if we lose power and the main data center here in in the jccce we are able to automatically switch over to Roosevelt and still maintain the services to our teachers you know students and operations right now as part of our strategy moving forward as part of the

172Rainier Beach High School that we're building we have a a project to build another data center there so we have you know three prom redundancies so if this part of the city loses power we still have services to the rest of the city so that you know that's our goal um but yeah to answer your question um number one killer is the uh the power outages and and it's hard because you know the infrastructure of the city [Music] um I think the the metrics speak for there so that this is a highly reliable operation I'm thinking about risks and one that sometimes captures the headlines is when school district systems are hacked so I'm curious to know um from your like what is your plan mitigation plan or like how are you thinking about um

173that kind of threat to the reliability of our technology Carlos I want you to brag about April Mart up as part of this you know yeah we we I'm pretty proud of you know the uh incident response uh operations that we have as far as cyber uh April has a um created this instant response plan it starts with prevention basically uh and we do patches every every uh um every time that we see vulnerabilities they take care of that the uh I don't want to go my military background today I don't want to go into details to expose stuff but when I came when I first came out here I was very impressed by the way that they said the network and the systems to ensure that they have hacking coming in um it gets

174isolated right on the spot and we have we have had some instances with with they can see it and they stop it right in the spot which is I'm very proud of that April Murdoch and her team they do an amazing job and insurance that the network is that we can have some metrics we can do some reporting that we can provide to you guys or or maybe a quarterly briefing you know how we Do It um but yeah overall we we do oversee it fairly well and and that's the prevention piece in the case it would something will happen um we have a an Emergency Response very well laid out with you know notifications what the communication plan is um how do we notify the authorities uh how how we we actually you're telling

175too much to hear about our strategy we do we do have um association with with entities uh like sisa which is the government and then they have a K-12 school program that we are in contact all the time to ensure that we are in line with with new stuff that are coming up yeah I mean daily something comes out and we're on top of that thank you Carlos so can we go back to transportation in my haste I I skipped over Transportation it's it was an oversight not not a statement about prioritization if you if you can look at this graph you see there's a orange line and a blue line and orange line is zoom first student is blue uh collectively we are we are at or above our our goal of 94 94

176and we want to move this to once again that same number of 95 percent this key performance indicator is on our on time morning arrival and so that's what this this graph is talking about and so any questions about where we are what you're seeing on this uh on this metric on-time arrival president Hersey do you have any insight into what caused these dips is IT personnel is it construction I would imagine if they have the same routes and there's because I was stuck in traffic yesterday for 45 minutes surprisingly um when my commute normally takes like 20. I'm wondering like do you have any indication of like what is the fluctuation here I'll have Dr Campbell speak to the fluctuation I don't think these are big jumps they look like they look like it

177because uh the way we've graphed it yeah they're all nine but I but I know that um transportation and Staffing are the are the are the number one uh as Carlos said the number one killers of being on time but I'll I'll defer to Dr Campbell on that thank you good evening directors good to see you um I would equipment failure and traffic are there two most common causes of late arrivals so and that could be also a human error so bus operators are supposed to do a pre-trip check or they make sure the radio is working they make sure the doors are working that doesn't always happen it's and sometimes even if it does happen something can fail mid-ride but so those circumstances that are most often occurring it is it is that and

178then it is unexpected traffic I had the same question about Transportation the director of songwrits had about the uh HR metric which is where it's not where those it's not on time is their disproportionality and such as you know and so what schools students is it affecting and because that may be about things the city's not paying attention to right in certain parts of town it might be um it might be other things but so that I would be interested in that disaggregated data thank you and and I am as well and so the approach we took to it was to actually take our 13 Elementary literacy Focus schools and actually ask for student and zoom to report on the school specifically so that we could compare because of the number of routes and the

179I mean to sort of crunch that data on a regular basis um independent of that would we could undertake that but I feel like we already have a ready-made set of schools and that way we're both attending to a guard rail and a goal in supporting a goal and and that's something that I felt like was really important we felt like was really important for our Carriage as well to feel like they're participating in our third grade reading goal so what we are finding is that I mean it's still new we started in January but we're finding that in in some cases in those 13 schools it is outperforming that is there fewer late arrivals than in our other schools but that is something that we are going to look at doing and we're going

180to use that as a mechanism for doing and that's also just to point out many of our literacy focused schools have their literacy block first thing in the morning so it's really critical that kids arrive on time oh okay so uh let's we're going to jump to strategies um if we can go to the page around strategy implementation I'm going to start out with uh Transportation so you all had a chance to read this I'll just highlight a few pieces um first we we work to ensure we're carrying enough a number of strategic vehicles with and drivers so that's really to have a backup backup spare vehicle we do daily reports uh verifying Fleet and Driver Readiness we have uh Transportation staff meeting with zoom and first student leadership to make sure that we're all

181on the same page the transportation staff work directly with members of the special education department to make sure that we are paying close attention to those those specific needs and the transportation teams map are late and delayed route data to determine where there are persistent issues to be resolved that kind of gets at that last question around where where are the impacts and so these are the main strategies that we are teeing up for for transport station and so I want to just give you all another opportunity to respond to the to the strategies the are these strategies clear do you understand them and do you have any questions about the strategy the only thing I noticed missing is any qualitative data um that probably sounds like an oxymoron but it I mean data about

182the experience uh of students I have not heard negative reports about drivers and their interactions with students this year possibly not even I'm trying to remember the last time so I don't know if it's because there's been a Improvement or I'm just not I also am from a district where there may be fewer buses so yeah what um what kind of qualitative pieces are supporting this data as well thank you for that question and qualitative data is critical data it's very important anecdotal data matters as does the larger trending data um I um that's a great question we tend to hear more of those experiences when we have issues and problems we have an issue log that is updated daily so if there is a challenge with a bus driver with a ride that gets

183reported to us right away and then we have a team of interventionists who work that through but what we have not done is actually start to map that in a way that shows that the sort of Trends or diminishment of those Trends and I think that's a great suggestion that we that we actually start documenting that issue log a little bit more formally frankly we and so that that the percent of on-time arrival that you see is actually the result of a lot of really great work on the part of Fred and other people that get our two carriers in and really hard work in the transportation department team to get to this level of performance and we are now ready to actually start doing that more refined work and to actually say how are

184we tracking um the The Human Experience on the bus we we definitely know when that experience is not going well and that's something we we attend to immediately and take care of I will say and I don't want to imbalance either carrier but Zoom as a provider does use an app where families do rate their rides and then our alternative service providers because they're sort of ride-hailing services we also get data on those ride ratings we are working with first student on also getting their similar product on board so that is also and and so the feedback from the zoom families that are reporting that is very positive four and five star rights and that's on the buses not just on the cars I'm glad you brought up the first student app the missing app

185if you will they promised us they sat right here at this lectern that they had a working app and I believe it's part of the contract and I guess I'm really disappointed that this multinational corporation can't seem to get it together we are working on that and I would not I would not say that first student is has not been working on it we have been working on it together we have a pretty high bar of ADA compliance for apps that our families are engaging in and um that is something that we're working on with uh with first student and they're they are very diligently pursuing it and I would say given that this is a new thing for them to be launching this District they're they're doing a good job so we will be

186able to have that on board because we're finding that that's assisting in a lot of data support for us and for families as well I'm glad that you alluded to the alternative providers because very randomly the other day I took an Uber ride and that driver was a hop skip Drive driver as well and so I asked them about what their experience is like and she brought up something kind of there's almost a financial incentive for those drivers to wait until the last possible minute to pick up a take a ride essentially and so I would be interested in knowing um what is the qualitative data that you are getting from the students knowing that there is a financial incentive essentially for drivers to wait until um the last possible minute to decide that they're

187going to pick up a student they've been very reliable partners and very good to work with and they and ever driven um work together I mean sorry both of them work well ever driven um it's also a partner that we use frequently with our um students with IEPs so I think they they both serve a great purpose independently but that has not proven to be a problem for us yeah add and correct me if I'm wrong Marnie but we work to get consistent drivers for the alternative transportation so it isn't quite the same model that the typical ride hailing where because the consistency is important to us and on from their perspective you know it's it's a regular account that they can service so that generally works for us I don't think we often find

188ourselves perhaps for new arrangements or ad hoc Arrangements find ourselves where we're kind of our bride is being bid for it's more of a consistent arrangement and there are drivers who prefer that and so you may have had a driver for whom that's not the preferred client but we have quite a few drivers for whom that daily ride with a student is actually the thing that they're committed to and so it's actually a really been a very good model for us all right let's um let's talk about the strategies in human resources and um there are five essential strategies that we're working on one is ongoing one-on-one deep Dives around school roster knowing of retirements resignations Etc and that's how we plan for uh looking at field rates that's one of the strategies annual planning

189that supplements that just making sure that we're looking at uh that that late winter so that we're we're trending at the in the right direction so we can tee up types of recruitments data inputs to that we talked about around that drive the overall Staffing Staffing plan we're looking at site-based training for school-based teams that's that are led by principals so that they're invested in the in the process and then we're also looking at training of our uh our are graduates on the next steps for for applying an are as the Academy of rising educator that's our home our Educators that's our homegrown program for really making sure that Educators and that are that our parents can move into uh roles that are certificated so uh these are these are the strategies you all had

190a chance to read them but there's uh also one more piece I forgot there's another six strategy around we are aggressive in terms of partnering with with schools and filling vacancies and so before we were during my tenure we were a little passive now with Dr Pritchett and we're getting we're moving that to a much more aggressive posture so these are the strategies that we're looking at for fill raise thank you I think I neglected to ask this before but strategy is probably uh also an appropriate place these are classroom teachers only right that we're looking at traditional classroom teachers only so I'm not looking at the auxiliary we're not looking at special education classrooms I think we can extrapolate that these are also hard to feel positioned so uh from nurses to classroom teachers

191there's across the board so Sarah come on up please and make sure I'm I'm saying the right thing but uh this isn't just just teachers for it [Music] so first the metric is about teachers but I'm going to say that special education teachers are teachers so they're not separated out so we're looking at at all teachers it does this particular metric is not necessarily talking about the the other staff that are in the building so this is really about do we have certificated classroom teachers teaching students on the first day of school looking yes yes this actually goes around um anyway this actually is um something that we do so a lot of the work that we're doing in all of these areas apply to all of our positions within schools um but in particular

192we're really looking at are we what are we doing with our teachers we know that our paraprofessionals are a place where we seek out new teachers so we've started to build relationship with um some of our outside Partners City year and City University to start talking about how we can improve upon the quality of teachers that we're getting in the um they're helping us with some work around identifying substitutes through recent City or graduates who may be interested in becoming teachers who have already worked in schools that we traditionally are seeing higher sub unavailability rates you know in that so we're thinking about all kinds of creative things around different positions this just happened to be particularly to teachers but we do have other strategies that are specific particularly for our IAS and paraprofessionals where

193we're seeing significant shortages okay last but not least in terms of strategies we're for technology and systems availability um Carlos talked about the fact that we're setting up a new data center as part of the Rainier Beach School building project and that's really to increase our reliability and have the redundancy there dots is also upgrading the telecommunication Network infrastructure to improve reliability and redundancy once again and then the Telecommunications systems team now has a real-time backup of the critical Geo node Services database that houses our telephony and directory and voicemail data so uh and then lastly we have a process in place for new laptop iPad issuance and improved device processing for and accountability so these are these are all strategies that are contributing to the systems availability and I know you all had a

194chance to read that so any questions about the strategy or comments about the strategy for technology in our systems availability okay so thank you directors uh taking notes we will take all these things into consideration this was our first guardrail presentation opportunity these happen to be all green um just to dampen your expectations the next guard rails are not going to be green however we're still collecting data and so we're kind of we're seeing the trends and we're not shying away from describing gaps when we have them in the system that's part of what our brand is that we want to be transparent we want to always be in a mode of continuous Improvement these metrics happen to be metrics that are going to be more maintaining metrics than maintaining and sustaining metrics the other

195ones will probably be more looking like some of the some of the goal based metrics so with that said love to hear from AJ thank you for sticking with us I know it's late where you are and uh because it's actually late here so back to you and president Hershey okay I believe that we are going to have the questions up on the screen AJ's been doing some real time evaluation for us so just give us a second and AJ when you see him take it away the primary coaching I would offer is but there were a lot of technical questions that it would be helpful to ask in advance and there were a lot of questions where board members were expressing their opinions about whether they agreed or disagreed liked or didn't like some

196of the performance metrics and again I would generally encourage those conversations to be had in advance so that you can spend your time when you are together the day is really digging into the performance data that's in front of you this is a unique situation since it's your first time out but for future guardrail monitoring reports as well as future gold monitor reports I would really just encourage you all to have as much of those type of conversations where you have opinions about the interims or you have other technical questions and encourage you to get with your superintendent in advance as much as possible with the idea that when you are all together here you can focus as much of your attention on what is the Strategic direction that we're moving in in what's working

197and not working with the strategies that the superintendent has selected and so we didn't really get deep into that conversation we saw a few examples of those and so you see um I think there's one particular question that stands out it's line 21 that really is emblematic of that type of question and that's what I would encourage for the board is just as much as you can get the technical questions and the questions about the interims themselves out of the way in advance have the more strategic conversation the conversation that's really digging into what is the ongoing performance of the school system in these areas that you can focus on that when you're here together the days any questions that you all have for me any questions directors I would just highly recommend that we

198take this document and we'll make sure that folks have it and just dig into it we haven't done a progress monitors I'm not making any excuses for anybody including myself but um AJ I would love to find a time just to I think like having regular Refreshers on appropriate questioning uh is probably going to benefit this board so I will loop with you and figure out like what's the best way to go about doing that um and as is always it has super happy to visit with folks one-on-one just to support you as you are preparing for board meetings of thinking through what are the things that are really going to help you have an insight into where is District performance in the areas of your guardrails and so to the extent that anyone desires

199that level of support just know that it's the joy of my heart to make time to provide that yeah yeah yeah awesome thank you very much AJ uh uh any other things from directors on this piece go ahead director Summers I I just want to express my gratitude to Dr Jones and your team for doing this for because I know a lot of work was put behind this and I I think you can tell my enthusiasm around this guardrail I think this is wonderful work thank you very much well thank you and back at you because this was the board's adjusted guardrail number two and you all have the foresight to put it in front of us and so this this looks like teamwork to me so so thank you so much thank you everybody

200involved um thank you AJ okay we will come back to the time use evaluation during our next regular board meeting when we have the evaluation prepare for our April meetings before we return are there any other takeaways directors would like to discuss regarding our timings [Music] rest in peace Harry Belafonte thank you for that um there being no further business on to come before the board the regular board meeting is now adjourned at 7 48 p.m thank you very much have a good night get home safely foreign